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Mississippian (geology)
The Mississippian ( , also known as Lower Carboniferous or Early Carboniferous) is a subperiod in the geologic timescale or a subsystem of the geologic record. It is the earlier/lower of two subperiods of the Carboniferous period lasting from roughly 358.9 to 323.2 million years ago. As with most other geochronologic units, the rock beds that define the Mississippian are well identified, but the exact start and end dates are uncertain by a few million years. The Mississippian is so named because rocks with this age are exposed in the Mississippi River valley.
The Mississippian was a period of marine transgression in the Northern Hemisphere: the sea level was so high that only the Fennoscandian Shield and the Laurentian Shield were dry land. The cratons were surrounded by extensive delta systems and lagoons, and carbonate sedimentation on the surrounding continental platforms, covered by shallow seas.
In North America, where the interval consists primarily of marine limestones, it is treated as a geologic period between the Devonian and the Pennsylvanian. During the Mississippian an important phase of orogeny occurred in the Appalachian Mountains. It is a major rock-building period named for the exposures in the Mississippi Valley region. The USGS geologic time scale shows its relation to other periods.
In Europe, the Mississippian and Pennsylvanian are one more-or-less continuous sequence of lowland continental deposits and are grouped together as the Carboniferous system, and sometimes called the "Upper Carboniferous" and "Lower Carboniferous" instead.
In the official geologic timescale, the Mississippian is subdivided into three stages:
The lower two come from European stratigraphy, the top from Russian stratigraphy. Besides Europe and Russia, there are many local subdivisions that are used as alternatives for the international timescale. In the North American system, the Mississippian is subdivided into four stages: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18974 |
Meiosis
Meiosis (; from Greek μείωσις, "meiosis", meaning "lessening") is a special type of cell division in sexually-reproducing organisms used to produce the gametes, such as sperm or egg cells. It involves two rounds of division that ultimately result in four cells with only one copy of each chromosome (haploid). Additionally, prior to the division, genetic material from the paternal and maternal copies of each chromosome is crossed over, creating new combinations of code on each chromosome. Later on, during fertilisation, the haploid cells produced by meiosis from a male and female will fuse to create a cell with two copies of each chromosome again, the zygote.
Errors in meiosis resulting in aneuploidy (an abnormal number of chromosomes) are the leading known cause of miscarriage and the most frequent genetic cause of developmental disabilities.
In meiosis, DNA replication is followed by two rounds of cell division to produce four daughter cells, each with half the number of chromosomes as the original parent cell. The two meiotic divisions are known as meiosis I and meiosis II. Before meiosis begins, during S phase of the cell cycle, the DNA of each chromosome is replicated so that it consists of two identical sister chromatids, which remain held together through sister chromatid cohesion. This S-phase can be referred to as "premeiotic S-phase" or "meiotic S-phase". Immediately following DNA replication, meiotic cells enter a prolonged G2-like stage known as meiotic prophase. During this time, homologous chromosomes pair with each other and undergo genetic recombination, a programmed process in which DNA may be cut and then repaired, which allows them to exchange some of their genetic information. A subset of recombination events results in crossovers, which create physical links known as chiasmata (singular: chiasma, for the Greek letter Chi (X)) between the homologous chromosomes. In most organisms, these links can help direct each pair of homologous chromosomes to segregate away from each other during Meiosis I, resulting in two haploid cells that have half the number of chromosomes as the parent cell.
During meiosis II, the cohesion between sister chromatids is released and they segregate from one another, as during mitosis. In some cases, all four of the meiotic products form gametes such as sperm, spores or pollen. In female animals, three of the four meiotic products are typically eliminated by extrusion into polar bodies, and only one cell develops to produce an ovum. Because the number of chromosomes is halved during meiosis, gametes can fuse (i.e. fertilization) to form a diploid zygote that contains two copies of each chromosome, one from each parent. Thus, alternating cycles of meiosis and fertilization enable sexual reproduction, with successive generations maintaining the same number of chromosomes. For example, diploid human
cells contain 23 pairs of chromosomes including 1 pair of sex chromosomes (46 total), half of maternal origin and half of paternal origin. Meiosis produces haploid gametes (ova or sperm) that contain one set of 23 chromosomes. When two gametes (an egg and a sperm) fuse, the resulting zygote is once again diploid, with the mother and father each contributing 23 chromosomes. This same pattern, but not the same number of chromosomes, occurs in all organisms that utilize meiosis.
Meiosis occurs in all sexually-reproducing single-celled and multicellular organisms (which are all eukaryotes), including animals, plants and fungi. It is an essential process for oogenesis and spermatogenesis.
Although the process of meiosis is related to the more general cell division process of mitosis, it differs in two important respects:
Meiosis begins with a diploid cell, which contains two copies of each chromosome, termed homologs. First, the cell undergoes DNA replication, so each homolog now consists of two identical sister chromatids. Then each set of homologs pair with each other and exchange genetic information by homologous recombination often leading to physical connections (crossovers) between the homologs. In the first meiotic division, the homologs are segregated to separate daughter cells by the spindle apparatus. The cells then proceed to a second division without an intervening round of DNA replication. The sister chromatids are segregated to separate daughter cells to produce a total of four haploid cells. Female animals employ a slight variation on this pattern and produce one large ovum and two small polar bodies. Because of recombination, an individual chromatid can consist of a new combination of maternal and paternal genetic information, resulting in offspring that are genetically distinct from either parent. Furthermore, an individual gamete can include an assortment of maternal, paternal, and recombinant chromatids. This genetic diversity resulting from sexual reproduction contributes to the variation in traits upon which natural selection can act.
Meiosis uses many of the same mechanisms as mitosis, the type of cell division used by eukaryotes to divide one cell into two identical daughter cells. In some plants, fungi, and protists meiosis results in the formation of spores: haploid cells that can divide vegetatively without undergoing fertilization. Some eukaryotes, like bdelloid rotifers, do not have the ability to carry out meiosis and have acquired the ability to reproduce by parthenogenesis.
Meiosis does not occur in archaea or bacteria, which generally reproduce asexually via binary fission. However, a "sexual" process known as horizontal gene transfer involves the transfer of DNA from one bacterium or archaeon to another and recombination of these DNA molecules of different parental origin.
Meiosis was discovered and described for the first time in sea urchin eggs in 1876 by the German biologist Oscar Hertwig. It was described again in 1883, at the level of chromosomes, by the Belgian zoologist Edouard Van Beneden, in "Ascaris" roundworm eggs. The significance of meiosis for reproduction and inheritance, however, was described only in 1890 by German biologist August Weismann, who noted that two cell divisions were necessary to transform one diploid cell into four haploid cells if the number of chromosomes had to be maintained. In 1911, the American geneticist Thomas Hunt Morgan detected crossovers in meiosis in the fruit fly "Drosophila melanogaster", which helped to establish that genetic traits are transmitted on chromosomes.
The term "meiosis" (originally spelled "maiosis") is derived from the Greek word , meaning 'lessening'. It was introduced to biology by J.B. Farmer and J.E.S. Moore in 1905:
"We propose to apply the terms Maiosis or Maiotic phase to cover the whole series of nuclear changes included in the two divisions that were designated as Heterotype and Homotype by Flemming".
The term was linguistically corrected to "meiosis" by Koernicke (1905) and by Pantel and De Sinety (1906).
Meiosis is divided into meiosis I and meiosis II which are further divided into Karyokinesis I and Cytokinesis I and Karyokinesis II and Cytokinesis II respectively. The preparatory steps that lead up to meiosis are identical in pattern and name to interphase of the mitotic cell cycle. Interphase is divided into three phases:
Interphase is followed by meiosis I and then meiosis II. Meiosis I separates replicated homologous chromosomes, each still made up of two sister chromatids, into two daughter cells, thus reducing the chromosome number by half. During meiosis II, sister chromatids decouple and the resultant daughter chromosomes are segregated into four daughter cells. For diploid organisms, the daughter cells resulting from meiosis are haploid and contain only one copy of each chromosome. In some species, cells enter a resting phase known as interkinesis between meiosis I and meiosis II.
Meiosis I and II are each divided into prophase, metaphase, anaphase, and telophase stages, similar in purpose to their analogous subphases in the mitotic cell cycle. Therefore, meiosis includes the stages of meiosis I (prophase I, metaphase I, anaphase I, telophase I) and meiosis II (prophase II, metaphase II, anaphase II, telophase II).
Meiosis generates gamete genetic diversity in two ways: (1) Law of Independent Assortment. The independent orientation of homologous chromosome pairs along the metaphase plate during metaphase I and orientation of sister chromatids in metaphase II, this is the subsequent separation of homologs and sister chromatids during anaphase I and II, it allows a random and independent distribution of chromosomes to each daughter cell (and ultimately to gametes); and (2) Crossing Over. The physical exchange of homologous chromosomal regions by homologous recombination during prophase I results in new combinations of genetic information within chromosomes.
During meiosis, specific genes are more highly transcribed. In addition to strong meiotic stage-specific expression of mRNA, there are also pervasive translational controls (e.g. selective usage of preformed mRNA), regulating the ultimate meiotic stage-specific protein expression of genes during meiosis. Thus, both transcriptional and translational controls determine the broad restructuring of meiotic cells needed to carry out meiosis.
Meiosis I segregates homologous chromosomes, which are joined as tetrads (2n, 4c), producing two haploid cells (n chromosomes, 23 in humans) which each contain chromatid pairs (1n, 2c). Because the ploidy is reduced from diploid to haploid, meiosis I is referred to as a "reductional division". Meiosis II is an "equational division" analogous to mitosis, in which the sister chromatids are segregated, creating four haploid daughter cells (1n, 1c).
Prophase I is typically the longest phase of meiosis. During prophase I, homologous chromosomes pair and exchange genetic information (homologous recombination). This often results in chromosomal crossover. This process facilitates pairing between homologous chromosomes and hence accurate segregation of the chromosomes at the first meiosis division. The new combinations of DNA created during crossover are a significant source of genetic variation, and result in new combinations of alleles, which may be beneficial. The paired and replicated chromosomes are called bivalents or tetrads, which have two chromosomes and four chromatids, with one chromosome coming from each parent. The process of pairing the homologous chromosomes is called synapsis. At this stage, non-sister chromatids may cross-over at points called chiasmata (plural; singular chiasma). Prophase I has historically been divided into a series of substages which are named according to the appearance of chromosomes.
The first stage of prophase I is the "leptotene" stage, also known as "leptonema", from Greek words meaning "thin threads". In this stage of prophase I, individual chromosomes—each consisting of two sister chromatids—become "individualized" to form visible strands within the nucleus. The two sister chromatids closely associate and are visually indistinguishable from one another. During leptotene, lateral elements of the synaptonemal complex assemble. Leptotene is of very short duration and progressive condensation and coiling of chromosome fibers takes place.
The "zygotene" stage, also known as "zygonema", from Greek words meaning "paired threads", occurs as the chromosomes approximately line up with each other into homologous chromosome pairs. In some organisms, this is called the bouquet stage because of the way the telomeres cluster at one end of the nucleus. At this stage, the synapsis (pairing/coming together) of homologous chromosomes takes place, facilitated by assembly of the central element of the synaptonemal complex. Pairing is brought about in a zipper-like fashion and may start at the centromere (procentric), at the chromosome ends (proterminal), or at any other portion (intermediate). Individuals of a pair are equal in length and in position of the centromere. Thus pairing is highly specific and exact. The paired chromosomes are called bivalent or tetrad chromosomes.
The "pachytene" stage ( ), also known as "pachynema", from Greek words meaning "thick threads". At this point a tetrad of the chromosomes has formed known as a bivalent. This is the stage when homologous recombination, including chromosomal crossover (crossing over), occurs. Nonsister chromatids of homologous chromosomes may exchange genetic information over regions of homology. DNA damage induced by gamma radiation during the leptotene to early pachytene stages induces an homologous recombinational repair (HRR) pathway that employs the key proteins DMC1 and RAD51. This HRR pathway is replaced at mid-pachytene by the less accurate repair pathway of non-homologous end joining and an HRR pathway that does not depend on DMC1. Sex chromosomes, however, are not wholly identical, and only exchange information over a small region of homology. At the sites where exchange happens, chiasmata form. The exchange of information between the non-sister chromatids results in a recombination of information; each chromosome has the complete set of information it had before, and there are no gaps formed as a result of the process. Because the chromosomes cannot be distinguished in the synaptonemal complex, the actual act of crossing over is not perceivable through the microscope, and chiasmata are not visible until the next stage.
During the "diplotene" stage, also known as "diplonema", from Greek words meaning "two threads", the synaptonemal complex degrades and homologous chromosomes separate from one another a little. The chromosomes themselves uncoil a bit, allowing some transcription of DNA. However, the homologous chromosomes of each bivalent remain tightly bound at chiasmata, the regions where crossing-over occurred. The chiasmata remain on the chromosomes until they are severed at the transition to anaphase I.
In human fetal oogenesis, all developing oocytes develop to this stage and are arrested in prophase I before birth. This suspended state is referred to as the "dictyotene stage" or dictyate. It lasts until meiosis is resumed to prepare the oocyte for ovulation, which happens at puberty or even later.
Chromosomes condense further during the "diakinesis" stage, from Greek words meaning "moving through". This is the first point in meiosis where the four parts of the tetrads are actually visible. Sites of crossing over entangle together, effectively overlapping, making chiasmata clearly visible. Other than this observation, the rest of the stage closely resembles prometaphase of mitosis; the nucleoli disappear, the nuclear membrane disintegrates into vesicles, and the meiotic spindle begins to form.
Unlike mitotic cells, human and mouse oocytes do not have centrosomes to produce the meiotic spindle. In mice, approximately 80 MicroTubule Organizing Centers (MTOCs) form a sphere in the ooplasm and begin to nucleate microtubules that reach out towards chromosomes, attaching to the chromosomes at the kinetochore. Over time the MTOCs merge until two poles have formed, generating a barrel shaped spindle. In human oocytes spindle microtubule nucleation begins on the chromosomes, forming an aster that eventually expands to surround the chromosomes. Chromosomes then slide along the microtubules towards the equator of the spindle, at which point the chromosome kinetochores form end-on attachments to microtubules.
Homologous pairs move together along the metaphase plate: As "kinetochore microtubules" from both spindle poles attach to their respective kinetochores, the paired homologous chromosomes align along an equatorial plane that bisects the spindle, due to continuous counterbalancing forces exerted on the bivalents by the microtubules emanating from the two kinetochores of homologous chromosomes. This attachment is referred to as a bipolar attachment. The physical basis of the independent assortment of chromosomes is the random orientation of each bivalent along the metaphase plate, with respect to the orientation of the other bivalents along the same equatorial line. The protein complex cohesin holds sister chromatids together from the time of their replication until anaphase. In mitosis, the force of kinetochore microtubules pulling in opposite directions creates tension. The cell senses this tension and does not progress with anaphase until all the chromosomes are properly bi-oriented. In meiosis, establishing tension ordinarily requires at least one crossover per chromosome pair in addition to cohesin between sister chromatids (see Chromosome segregation).
Kinetochore microtubules shorten, pulling homologous chromosomes (which each consist of a pair of sister chromatids) to opposite poles. Nonkinetochore microtubules lengthen, pushing the centrosomes farther apart. The cell elongates in preparation for division down the center. Unlike in mitosis, only the cohesin from the chromosome arms is degraded while the cohesin surrounding the centromere remains protected by a protein named Shugoshin (Japanese for "guardian spirit"), what prevents the sister chromatids from separating. This allows the sister chromatids to remain together while homologs are segregated.
The first meiotic division effectively ends when the chromosomes arrive at the poles. Each daughter cell now has half the number of chromosomes but each chromosome consists of a pair of chromatids. The microtubules that make up the spindle network disappear, and a new nuclear membrane surrounds each haploid set. The chromosomes uncoil back into chromatin. Cytokinesis, the pinching of the cell membrane in animal cells or the formation of the cell wall in plant cells, occurs, completing the creation of two daughter cells. Sister chromatids remain attached during telophase I.
Cells may enter a period of rest known as interkinesis or interphase II. No DNA replication occurs during this stage.
Meiosis II is the second meiotic division, and usually involves equational segregation, or separation of sister chromatids. Mechanically, the process is similar to mitosis, though its genetic results are fundamentally different. The end result is production of four haploid cells (n chromosomes, 23 in humans) from the two haploid cells (with n chromosomes, each consisting of two sister chromatids) produced in meiosis I. The four main steps of meiosis II are: prophase II, metaphase II, anaphase II, and telophase II.
In prophase II, we see the disappearance of the nucleoli and the nuclear envelope again as well as the shortening and thickening of the chromatids. Centrosomes move to the polar regions and arrange spindle fibers for the second meiotic division.
In metaphase II, the centromeres contain two kinetochores that attach to spindle fibers from the centrosomes at opposite poles. The new equatorial metaphase plate is rotated by 90 degrees when compared to meiosis I, perpendicular to the previous plate.
This is followed by anaphase II, in which the remaining centromeric cohesin, not protected by Shugoshin anymore, is cleaved, allowing the sister chromatids to segregate. The sister chromatids by convention are now called sister chromosomes as they move toward opposing poles.
The process ends with telophase II, which is similar to telophase I, and is marked by decondensation and lengthening of the chromosomes and the disassembly of the spindle. Nuclear envelopes re-form and cleavage or cell plate formation eventually produces a total of four daughter cells, each with a haploid set of chromosomes.
Meiosis is now complete and ends up with four new daughter cells.
Meiosis occurs in eukaryotic life cycles involving sexual reproduction, consisting of the constant cyclical process of meiosis and fertilization. This takes place alongside normal mitotic cell division. In multicellular organisms, there is an intermediary step between the diploid and haploid transition where the organism grows. At certain stages of the life cycle, germ cells produce gametes. Somatic cells make up the body of the organism and are not involved in gamete production.
Cycling meiosis and fertilization events produces a series of transitions back and forth between alternating haploid and diploid states. The organism phase of the life cycle can occur either during the diploid state ("diplontic" life cycle), during the haploid state ("haplontic" life cycle), or both ("haplodiplontic" life cycle, in which there are two distinct organism phases, one during the haploid state and the other during the diploid state). In this sense there are three types of life cycles that utilize sexual reproduction, differentiated by the location of the organism phase(s).
In the "diplontic life cycle" (with pre-gametic meiosis), of which humans are a part, the organism is diploid, grown from a diploid cell called the zygote. The organism's diploid germ-line stem cells undergo meiosis to create haploid gametes (the spermatozoa for males and ova for females), which fertilize to form the zygote. The diploid zygote undergoes repeated cellular division by mitosis to grow into the organism.
In the "haplontic life cycle" (with post-zygotic meiosis), the organism is haploid instead, spawned by the proliferation and differentiation of a single haploid cell called the gamete. Two organisms of opposing sex contribute their haploid gametes to form a diploid zygote. The zygote undergoes meiosis immediately, creating four haploid cells. These cells undergo mitosis to create the organism. Many fungi and many protozoa utilize the haplontic life cycle.
Finally, in the "haplodiplontic life cycle" (with sporic or intermediate meiosis), the living organism alternates between haploid and diploid states. Consequently, this cycle is also known as the alternation of generations. The diploid organism's germ-line cells undergo meiosis to produce spores. The spores proliferate by mitosis, growing into a haploid organism. The haploid organism's gamete then combines with another haploid organism's gamete, creating the zygote. The zygote undergoes repeated mitosis and differentiation to become a diploid organism again. The haplodiplontic life cycle can be considered a fusion of the diplontic and haplontic life cycles.
Meiosis occurs in all animals and plants. The end result, the production of gametes with half the number of chromosomes as the parent cell, is the same, but the detailed process is different. In animals, meiosis produces gametes directly. In land plants and some algae, there is an alternation of generations such that meiosis in the diploid sporophyte generation produces haploid spores. These spores multiply by mitosis, developing into the haploid gametophyte generation, which then gives rise to gametes directly (i.e. without further meiosis). In both animals and plants, the final stage is for the gametes to fuse, restoring the original number of chromosomes.
In females, meiosis occurs in cells known as oocytes (singular: oocyte). Each primary oocyte divides twice in meiosis, unequally in each case. The first division produces a daughter cell, and a much smaller polar body which may or may not undergo a second division. In meiosis II, division of the daughter cell produces a second polar body, and a single haploid cell, which enlarges to become an ovum. Therefore, in females each primary oocyte that undergoes meiosis results in one mature ovum and one or two polar bodies.
Note that there are pauses during meiosis in females. Maturing oocytes are arrested in prophase I of meiosis I and lie dormant within a protective shell of somatic cells called the follicle. At the beginning of each menstrual cycle, FSH secretion from the anterior pituitary stimulates a few follicles to mature in a process known as folliculogenesis. During this process, the maturing oocytes resume meiosis and continue until metaphase II of meiosis II, where they are again arrested just before ovulation. If these oocytes are fertilized by sperm, they will resume and complete meiosis. During folliculogenesis in humans, usually one follicle becomes dominant while the others undergo atresia. The process of meiosis in females occurs during oogenesis, and differs from the typical meiosis in that it features a long period of meiotic arrest known as the dictyate stage and lacks the assistance of centrosomes.
In males, meiosis occurs during spermatogenesis in the seminiferous tubules of the testicles. Meiosis during spermatogenesis is specific to a type of cell called spermatocytes, which will later mature to become spermatozoa. Meiosis of primordial germ cells happens at the time of puberty, much later than in females. Tissues of the male testis suppress meiosis by degrading retinoic acid, proposed to be a stimulator of meiosis. This is overcome at puberty when cells within seminiferous tubules called Sertoli cells start making their own retinoic acid. Sensitivity to retinoic acid is also adjusted by proteins called nanos and DAZL. Genetic loss-of-function studies on retinoic acid-generating enzymes have shown that retinoic acid is required postnatally to stimulate spermatogonia differentiation which results several days later in spermatocytes undergoing meiosis, however retinoic acid is not required during the time when meiosis initiates.
In female mammals, meiosis begins immediately after primordial germ cells migrate to the ovary in the embryo. Some studies suggest that retinoic acid derived from the primitive kidney (mesonephros) stimulates meiosis in embryonic ovarian oogonia and that tissues of the embryonic male testis suppress meiosis by degrading retinoic acid. However, genetic loss-of-function studies on retinoic acid-generating enzymes have shown that retinoic acid is not required for initiation of either female meiosis which occurs during embryogenesis or male meiosis which initiates postnatally.
The normal separation of chromosomes in meiosis I or sister chromatids in meiosis II is termed "disjunction". When the segregation is not normal, it is called "nondisjunction". This results in the production of gametes which have either too many or too few of a particular chromosome, and is a common mechanism for trisomy or monosomy. Nondisjunction can occur in the meiosis I or meiosis II, phases of cellular reproduction, or during mitosis.
Most monosomic and trisomic human embryos are not viable, but some aneuploidies can be tolerated, such as trisomy for the smallest chromosome, chromosome 21. Phenotypes of these aneuploidies range from severe developmental disorders to asymptomatic. Medical conditions include but are not limited to:
The probability of nondisjunction in human oocytes increases with increasing maternal age, presumably due to loss of cohesin over time.
Alongside with the variations of meiosis related to the moment when meiosis occur in life cycles, resulting in post-zygotic, pre-gametic and intermediate meiosis (see above), the number of nuclear divisions in meiosis is also variable. The majority of eukaryotes have a two-divisional meiosis (though sometimes achiasmatic), but a very rare form, one-divisional meiosis, occurs in some flagellates (parabasalids and oxymonads) from the gut of the wood-feeding cockroach "Cryptocercus".
In order to understand meiosis, a comparison to mitosis is helpful. The table below shows the differences between meiosis and mitosis. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18976 |
MINIX
Minix (from "mini-Unix") is a POSIX-compliant (since version 2.0), Unix-like operating system based on a microkernel architecture.
Early versions of MINIX were created by Andrew S. Tanenbaum for educational purposes. Starting with MINIX 3, the primary aim of development shifted from education to the creation of a highly reliable and self-healing microkernel OS. MINIX is now developed as open-source software.
MINIX was first released in 1987, with its complete source code made available to universities for study in courses and research. It has been free and open-source software since it was re-licensed under the BSD license in April 2000.
Andrew S. Tanenbaum created MINIX at Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam to exemplify the principles conveyed in his textbook, "" (1987).
An abridged 12,000 lines of the C source code of the kernel, memory manager, and file system of MINIX 1.0 are printed in the book. Prentice-Hall also released MINIX source code and binaries on floppy disk with a reference manual. MINIX 1 was system-call compatible with Seventh Edition Unix.
Tanenbaum originally developed MINIX for compatibility with the IBM PC and IBM PC/AT microcomputers available at the time.
MINIX 1.5, released in 1991, included support for MicroChannel IBM PS/2 systems and was also ported to the Motorola 68000 and SPARC architectures, supporting the Atari ST, Commodore Amiga, Apple Macintosh and Sun SPARCstation computer platforms. There were also unofficial ports to Intel 386 PC compatibles (in 32-bit protected mode), National Semiconductor NS32532, ARM and Inmos transputer processors. Meiko Scientific used an early version of MINIX as the basis for the MeikOS operating system for its transputer-based Computing Surface parallel computers. A version of MINIX running as a user process under SunOS and Solaris was also available, a simulator named SMX.
Demand for the 68k-based architectures waned, however, and MINIX 2.0, released in 1997, was only available for the x86 and Solaris-hosted SPARC architectures. It was the subject of the second edition of Tanenbaum's textbook, cowritten with Albert Woodhull and was distributed on a CD-ROM included with the book. MINIX 2.0 added POSIX.1 compliance, support for 386 and later processors in 32-bit mode and replaced the Amoeba network protocols included in MINIX 1.5 with a TCP/IP stack.
Minix-vmd is a variant of MINIX 2 for Intel IA-32-compatible processors, created by two Vrije Universiteit researchers, which adds virtual memory and support for the X Window System.
Minix 3 was publicly announced on 24 October 2005 by Tanenbaum during his keynote speech at the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Symposium on Operating Systems Principles (SOSP). Although it still serves as an example for the new edition of Tanenbaum's textbook -coauthored by Albert S. Woodhull-, it is comprehensively redesigned to be "usable as a serious system on resource-limited and embedded computers and for applications requiring high reliability."
Minix 3 currently supports IA-32 and ARM architecture systems. It is available in a Live CD format that allows it to be used on a computer without installing it on the hard drive, and in versions compatible with hardware emulating and virtualizing systems, including Bochs, QEMU, VMware Workstation/Fusion, VirtualBox, and Microsoft Virtual PC.
Version 3.1.5 was released on 5 November 2009. It contains X11, emacs, vi, cc, gcc, perl, python, ash, bash, zsh, ftp, ssh, telnet, pine, and over 400 other common Unix utility programs. With the addition of X11, this version marks the transition away from a text-only system. In many cases it can automatically restart a crashed driver without affecting running processes. In this way, MINIX is self-healing and can be used in applications demanding high reliability. MINIX 3 also has support for virtual memory management, making it suitable for desktop OS use. Desktop applications such as Firefox and OpenOffice.org are not yet available for MINIX 3 however.
As of version 3.2.0, the userland was mostly replaced by that of NetBSD and support from pkgsrc became possible, increasing the available software applications that MINIX can use. Clang replaced the prior compiler (with GCC optionally supported), and GDB, the GNU debugger, was ported.
Minix 3.3.0, released in September 2014, brought ARM support.
Minix 3.4.0RC, Release Candidates became available in January 2016; however, a stable release of MINIX 3.4.0 is yet to be announced.
Minix supports many programming languages, including C, C++, FORTRAN, Modula-2, Pascal, Perl, Python, and Tcl.
Minix 3 still has an active development community with over 50 people attending MINIXCon 2016, a conference to discuss the history and future of MINIX.
All Intel chipsets post-2015 are running MINIX 3 internally as the software component of the Intel Management Engine.
Linus Torvalds used and appreciated Minix, but his design deviated from the Minix architecture in significant ways, most notably by employing a monolithic kernel instead of a microkernel. This was disapproved of by Tanenbaum in the Tanenbaum–Torvalds debate. Tanenbaum explained again his rationale for using a microkernel in May 2006.
Early Linux kernel development was done on a Minix host system, which led to Linux inheriting various features from Minix, such as the Minix file system.
In May 2004, Kenneth Brown of the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution made the accusation that major parts of the Linux kernel had been copied from the MINIX codebase, in a book named "Samizdat". These accusations were rebutted universally—most prominently by Tanenbaum, who strongly criticised Brown and published a long rebuttal on his own personal Web site, also claiming that Brown was funded by Microsoft.
At the time of MINIX's original development, its license was relatively liberal. Its licensing fee was very small ($69) relative to those of other operating systems. Tanenbaum wished for MINIX to be as accessible as possible to students, but his publisher was unwilling to offer material (such as the source code) that could be copied freely, so a restrictive license requiring a nominal fee (included in the price of Tanenbaum's book) was applied as a compromise. This prevented the use of MINIX as the basis for a freely distributed software system.
When free and open-source Unix-like operating systems such as Linux and 386BSD became available in the early 1990s, many volunteer software developers abandoned MINIX in favor of these. In April 2000, MINIX 2 became free and open-source software under a permissive free software license, but by this time other operating systems had surpassed its capabilities, and it remained primarily an operating system for students and hobbyists. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18977 |
Muscular dystrophy
Muscular dystrophy (MD) is a group of muscle diseases that results in increasing weakening and breakdown of skeletal muscles over time. The disorders differ in which muscles are primarily affected, the degree of weakness, how fast they worsen, and when symptoms begin. Many people will eventually become unable to walk. Some types are also associated with problems in other organs.
The muscular dystrophy group contains thirty different genetic disorders that are usually classified into nine main categories or types. The most common type is Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), which typically affects males beginning around the age of four. Other types include Becker muscular dystrophy, facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy, limb-girdle muscular dystrophy, and myotonic dystrophy. They are due to mutations in genes that are involved in making muscle proteins. This can occur due to either inheriting the defect from one's parents or the mutation occurring during early development. Disorders may be X-linked recessive, autosomal recessive, or autosomal dominant. Diagnosis often involves blood tests and genetic testing.
There is no cure for muscular dystrophy. Physical therapy, braces, and corrective surgery may help with some symptoms. Assisted ventilation may be required in those with weakness of breathing muscles. Medications used include steroids to slow muscle degeneration, anticonvulsants to control seizures and some muscle activity, and immunosuppressants to delay damage to dying muscle cells. Outcomes depend on the specific type of disorder.
Duchenne muscular dystrophy, which represents about half of all cases of muscular dystrophy, affects about one in 5,000 males at birth. Muscular dystrophy was first described in the 1830s by Charles Bell. The word "dystrophy" is from the Greek "dys", meaning "difficult" and "troph" meaning "nourish". Gene therapy, as a treatment, is in the early stages of study in humans.
The signs and symptoms consistent with muscular dystrophy are:
These conditions are generally inherited, and the different muscular dystrophies follow various inheritance patterns. Muscular dystrophy can be inherited by individuals as an X-linked disorder, a recessive or dominant disorder. Furthermore, it can be a spontaneous mutation which means errors in the replication of DNA and spontaneous lesions. Spontaneous lesions are due to natural damage to DNA, where the most common are depurination and deamination.
Dystrophin protein is found in muscle fiber membrane; its helical nature allows it to act like a spring or shock absorber. Dystrophin links actin in the cytoskeleton and dystroglycans of the muscle cell plasma membrane, known as the sarcolemma (extracellular). In addition to mechanical stabilization, dystrophin also regulates calcium levels.
The gene for dystrophin is located on the X chromosome. In males, the lone X chromosome has only one dystrophin gene. If there's a mutation in that gene, a male's muscles will lack dystrophin and slowly degenerate; mutations in the gene for dystrophin were identified as the cause of DMD by MDA researchers in 1986. A female almost always has two dystrophin genes, one on each X chromosome, and, even if one of these isn't working, the other gene suffices to keep dystrophin levels high enough to preserve muscle function in both the heart and skeletal muscles. Nevertheless, research has shown that a small minority of females having both a working and a non-working dystrophin gene can exhibit symptoms of DMD.
Recent studies on the interaction of proteins with missense mutations and its neighbors showed high degree of rigidity associated with central hub proteins involved in protein binding and flexible subnetworks having molecular functions involved with calcium.
The diagnosis of muscular dystrophy is based on the results of muscle biopsy, increased creatine phosphokinase (CpK3), electromyography, and genetic testing. A physical examination and the patient's medical history will help the doctor determine the type of muscular dystrophy. Specific muscle groups are affected by different types of muscular dystrophy.
Other tests that can be done are chest X-ray, echocardiogram, CT scan, and magnetic resonance image scan, which via a magnetic field can produce images whose detail helps diagnose muscular dystrophy. Quality of life can be measured using specific questionnaires.
Currently, there is no cure for muscular dystrophy. In terms of management, physical therapy, occupational therapy, orthotic intervention (e.g., ankle-foot orthosis), speech therapy, and respiratory therapy may be helpful. Low intensity corticosteroids such as prednisone, and deflazacort may help to maintain muscle tone. Orthoses (orthopedic appliances used for support) and corrective orthopedic surgery may be needed to improve the quality of life in some cases. The cardiac problems that occur with EDMD and myotonic muscular dystrophy may require a pacemaker. The myotonia (delayed relaxation of a muscle after a strong contraction) occurring in myotonic muscular dystrophy may be treated with medications such as quinine.
Occupational therapy assists the individual with MD to engage in activities of daily living (such as self-feeding and self-care activities) and leisure activities at the most independent level possible. This may be achieved with use of adaptive equipment or the use of energy-conservation techniques. Occupational therapy may implement changes to a person's environment, both at home or work, to increase the individual's function and accessibility; furthermore, it addresses psychosocial changes and cognitive decline which may accompany MD, and provides support and education about the disease to the family and individual.
Prognosis depends on the individual form of MD. In some cases, a person with a muscle disease will get progressively weaker to the extent that it shortens lifespan due to heart and breathing complications. However, some of the muscle diseases do not affect life expectancy at all, and ongoing research is attempting to find cures and treatments to slow muscle weakness.
In the 1860s, descriptions of boys who grew progressively weaker, lost the ability to walk, and died at an early age became more prominent in medical journals. In the following decade, French neurologist Guillaume Duchenne gave a comprehensive account of the most common and severe form of the disease, which now carries his name—Duchenne MD.
WHO International conducted trials on optimum steroid regimen for MD, in the UK in 2012. In terms of research within the United States, the primary federally funded organizations that focus on muscular dystrophy research, including gene therapy and regenerative medicine, are the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases, and National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
In 1966, the Muscular Dystrophy Association began its annual "Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon", which has probably done more to raise awareness of muscular dystrophy than any other event or initiative. Disability rights advocates, however, have criticized the telethon for portraying victims of the disease as deserving pity rather than respect.
On December 18, 2001, the MD CARE Act was signed into law in the USA; it amends the Public Health Service Act to provide research for the various muscular dystrophies. This law also established the Muscular Dystrophy Coordinating Committee to help focus research efforts through a coherent research strategy. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18982 |
Mongols
The Mongols (, "Mongolchuud", ) are an East Asian ethnic group native to Mongolia and to China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. They also live as minorities in other regions of China (e.g. Xinjiang), as well as in Russia. Mongolian people belonging to the Buryat and Kalmyk subgroups live predominantly in the Russian federal subjects of Buryatia and Kalmykia.
The Mongols are bound together by a common heritage and ethnic identity. Their indigenous dialects are collectively known as the Mongolian language. The ancestors of the modern-day Mongols are referred to as Proto-Mongols.
Broadly defined, the term includes the Mongols proper (also known as the Khalkha Mongols), Buryats, Oirats, the Kalmyk people and the Southern Mongols. The latter comprises the Abaga Mongols, Abaganar, Aohans, Baarins, Gorlos Mongols, Jalaids, Jaruud, Khishigten, Khuuchid, Muumyangan and Onnigud.
The designation "Mongol" briefly appeared in 8th century records of Tang China to describe a tribe of Shiwei. It resurfaced in the late 11th century during the Khitan-ruled Liao dynasty. After the fall of the Liao in 1125, the Khamag Mongols became a leading tribe on the Mongolian Plateau. However, their wars with the Jurchen-ruled Jin dynasty and the Tatar confederation had weakened them.
In the thirteenth century, the word Mongol grew into an umbrella term for a large group of Mongolic-speaking tribes united under the rule of Genghis Khan.
In various times Mongolic peoples have been equated with the Scythians, the Magog, and the Tungusic peoples. Based on Chinese historical texts the ancestry of the Mongolic peoples can be traced back to the Donghu, a nomadic confederation occupying eastern Mongolia and Manchuria. The identity of the Xiongnu (Hünnü) is still debated today. Although some scholars maintain that they were proto-Mongols, they were more likely a multi-ethnic group of Mongolic and Turkic tribes. It has been suggested that the language of the Huns was related to the Hünnü.
The Donghu, however, can be much more easily labeled proto-Mongol since the Chinese histories trace only Mongolic tribes and kingdoms (Xianbei and Wuhuan peoples) from them, although some historical texts claim a mixed Xiongnu-Donghu ancestry for some tribes (e.g. the Khitan).
See Genetic history of East Asians
The Donghu are mentioned by Sima Qian as already existing in Inner Mongolia north of Yan in 699–632 BCE along with the Shanrong. Mentions in the "Yi Zhou Shu" ("Lost Book of Zhou") and the "Classic of Mountains and Seas" indicate the Donghu were also active during the Shang dynasty (1600–1046 BCE).
The Xianbei formed part of the Donghu confederation, but had earlier times of independence, as evidenced by a mention in the "Guoyu" ("晉語八" section), which states that during the reign of King Cheng of Zhou (reigned 1042–1021 BCE) they came to participate at a meeting of Zhou subject-lords at Qiyang (岐阳) (now Qishan County) but were only allowed to perform the fire ceremony under the supervision of Chu since they were not vassals by covenant (诸侯). The Xianbei chieftain was appointed joint guardian of the ritual torch along with Xiong Yi.
These early Xianbei came from the nearby Zhukaigou culture (2200–1500 BCE) in the Ordos Desert, where maternal DNA corresponds to the Mongol Daur people and the Tungusic Evenks. The Zhukaigou Xianbei (part of the Ordos culture of Inner Mongolia and northern Shaanxi) had trade relations with the Shang. In the late 2nd century, the Han dynasty scholar Fu Qian (服虔) wrote in his commentary "Jixie" (集解) that "Shanrong and Beidi are ancestors of the present-day Xianbei". Again in Inner Mongolia another closely connected core Mongolic Xianbei region was the Upper Xiajiadian culture (1000–600 BCE) where the Donghu confederation was centered.
After the Donghu were defeated by Xiongnu king Modu Chanyu, the Xianbei and Wuhuan survived as the main remnants of the confederation. Tadun Khan of the Wuhuan (died 207 AD) was the ancestor of the proto-Mongolic Kumo Xi. The Wuhuan are of the direct Donghu royal line and the "New Book of Tang" says that in 209 BCE, Modu Chanyu defeated the Wuhuan instead of using the word Donghu. The Xianbei, however, were of the lateral Donghu line and had a somewhat separate identity, although they shared the same language with the Wuhuan. In 49 CE the Xianbei ruler Bianhe (Bayan Khan?) raided and defeated the Xiongnu, killing 2000, after having received generous gifts from Emperor Guangwu of Han. The Xianbei reached their peak under Tanshihuai Khan (reigned 156–181) who expanded the vast, but short lived, Xianbei state (93–234).
Three prominent groups split from the Xianbei state as recorded by the Chinese histories: the Rouran (claimed by some to be the Pannonian Avars), the Khitan people and the Shiwei (a subtribe called the "Shiwei Menggu" is held to be the origin of the Genghisid Mongols). Besides these three Xianbei groups, there were others such as the Murong, Duan and Tuoba. Their culture was nomadic, their religion shamanism or Buddhism and their military strength formidable. There is still no direct evidence that the Rouran spoke Mongolic languages, although most scholars agree that they were Proto-Mongolic. The Khitan, however, had two scripts of their own and many Mongolic words are found in their half-deciphered writings.
Geographically, the Tuoba Xianbei ruled the southern part of Inner Mongolia and northern China, the Rouran (Yujiulü Shelun was the first to use the title khagan in 402) ruled eastern Mongolia, western Mongolia, the northern part of Inner Mongolia and northern Mongolia, the Khitan were concentrated in eastern part of Inner Mongolia north of Korea and the Shiwei were located to the north of the Khitan. These tribes and kingdoms were soon overshadowed by the rise of the First Turkic Khaganate in 555, the Uyghur Khaganate in 745 and the Yenisei Kirghiz states in 840. The Tuoba were eventually absorbed into China. The Rouran fled west from the Göktürks and either disappeared into obscurity or, as some say, invaded Europe as the Avars under their Khan, Bayan I. Some Rouran under Tatar Khan migrated east, founding the Tatar confederation, who became part of the Shiwei. The Khitan, who were independent after their separation from the Kumo Xi (of Wuhuan origin) in 388, continued as a minor power in Manchuria until one of them, Ambagai (872–926), established the Liao dynasty (907–1125) as Emperor Taizu of Liao.
The destruction of Uyghur Khaganate by the Kirghiz resulted in the end of Turkic dominance in Mongolia. According to historians, Kirghiz were not interested in assimilating newly acquired lands; instead, they controlled local tribes through various manaps (tribal leader). The Khitans occupied the areas vacated by the Turkic Uyghurs bringing them under their control. The Yenisei Kirghiz state was centered on Khakassia and they were expelled from Mongolia by the Khitans in 924. Beginning in the 10th century, the Khitans, under the leadership of Abaoji, prevailed in several military campaigns against the Tang Dynastys border guards, and the Xi, Shiwei and Jurchen nomadic groups.
The Khitan fled west after being defeated by the Jurchens (later known as Manchu) and founded the Qara Khitai (1125–1218) in eastern Kazakhstan. In 1218, Genghis Khan destroyed the Qara Khitai after which the Khitan passed into obscurity. With the expansion of the Mongol Empire, the Mongolic peoples settled over almost all Eurasia and carried on military campaigns from the Adriatic Sea to Indonesian Java island and from Japan to Palestine (Gaza). They simultaneously became Padishahs of Persia, Emperors of China, and Great Khans of Mongolia, and one became Sultan of Egypt (Al-Adil Kitbugha). The Mongolic peoples of the Golden Horde established themselves to govern Russia by 1240. By 1279, they conquered the Song dynasty and brought all of China under control of the Yuan dynasty.
With the breakup of the empire, the dispersed Mongolic peoples quickly adopted the mostly Turkic cultures surrounding them and were assimilated, forming parts of Azerbaijanis, Uzbeks, Karakalpaks, Tatars, Bashkirs, Turkmens, Uyghurs, Nogays, Kyrgyzs, Kazakhs, Caucasaus peoples, Iranian peoples and Moghuls; linguistic and cultural Persianization also began to be prominent in these territories. Some Mongols assimilated into the Yakuts after their migration to Northern Siberia and about 30% of Yakut words have Mongol origin. However, most of the Yuan Mongols returned to Mongolia in 1368, retaining their language and culture. There were 250,000 Mongols in Southern China and many Mongols were massacred by the rebel army. The survivors were trapped in southern china and eventually assimilated. The Dongxiangs, Bonans, Yugur and Monguor people were invaded by Chinese Ming dynasty.
After the fall of the Yuan dynasty in 1368, the Mongols continued to rule the Northern Yuan dynasty in Mongolia homeland. However, the Oirads began to challenge the Eastern Mongolic peoples under the Borjigin monarchs in the late 14th century and Mongolia was divided into two parts: Western Mongolia (Oirats) and Eastern Mongolia (Khalkha, Inner Mongols, Barga, Buryats). The earliest written references to the plough in Middle Mongolian language sources appear towards the end of the 14th c.
In 1434, Eastern Mongolian Taisun Khan's (1433–1452) prime minister Western Mongolian Togoon Taish reunited the Mongols after killing Eastern Mongolian another king Adai (Khorchin). Togoon died in 1439 and his son Esen Taish became prime minister. Esen carried out successful policy for Mongolian unification and independence. The Ming Empire attempted to invade Mongolia in the 14–16th centuries, however, the Ming Empire was defeated by the Oirat, Southern Mongol, Eastern Mongol and united Mongolian armies. Esen's 30,000 cavalries defeated 500,000 Chinese soldiers in 1449. Within eighteen months of his defeat of the titular Khan Taisun, in 1453, Esen himself took the title of Great Khan (1454–1455) of the Great Yuan.
The Khalkha emerged during the reign of Dayan Khan (1479–1543) as one of the six tumens of the Eastern Mongolic peoples. They quickly became the dominant Mongolic clan in Mongolia proper. He reunited the Mongols again. The Mongols voluntarily reunified during Eastern Mongolian Tümen Zasagt Khan rule (1558–1592) for the last time (the Mongol Empire united all Mongols before this).
Eastern Mongolia was divided into three parts in the 17th century: Outer Mongolia (Khalkha), Inner Mongolia (Inner Mongols) and the Buryat region in southern Siberia.
The last Mongol khagan was Ligdan in the early 17th century. He got into conflicts with the Manchus over the looting of Chinese cities, and managed to alienate most Mongol tribes. In 1618, Ligdan signed a treaty with the Ming dynasty to protect their northern border from the Manchus attack in exchange for thousands of taels of silver. By the 1620s, only the Chahars remained under his rule.
The Chahar army was defeated in 1625 and 1628 by the Inner Mongol and Manchu armies due to Ligdan's faulty tactics. The Qing forces secured their control over Inner Mongolia by 1635, and the army of the last khan Ligdan moved to battle against Tibetan Gelugpa sect (Yellow Hat sect) forces. The Gelugpa forces supported the Manchus, while Ligdan supported Kagyu sect (Red Hat sect) of Tibetan Buddhism. Ligden died in 1634 on his way to Tibet. By 1636, most Inner Mongolian nobles had submitted to the Qing dynasty founded by the Manchus. Inner Mongolian Tengis noyan revolted against the Qing in the 1640s and the Khalkha battled to protect Sunud.
Western Mongolian Oirats and Eastern Mongolian Khalkhas vied for domination in Mongolia since the 15th century and this conflict weakened Mongolian strength. In 1688, Western Mongolian Dzungar Khanate's king Galdan Boshugtu attacked Khalkha after murder of his younger brother by Tusheet Khan Chakhundorj (main or Central Khalkha leader) and the Khalkha-Oirat War began. Galdan threatened to kill Chakhundorj and Zanabazar (Javzandamba Khutagt I, spiritual head of Khalkha) but they escaped to Sunud (Inner Mongolia). Many Khalkha nobles and folks fled to Inner Mongolia because of the war. Few Khalkhas fled to the Buryat region and Russia threatened to exterminate them if they did not submit, but many of them submitted to Galdan Boshugtu.
In 1683 Galdan's armies reached Tashkent and the Syr Darya and crushed two armies of the Kazakhs. After that Galdan subjugated the Black Khirgizs and ravaged the Fergana Valley. From 1685 Galdan's forces aggressively pushed the Kazakhs. While his general Rabtan took Taraz, and his main force forced the Kazakhs to migrate westwards. In 1687, he besieged the City of Turkistan. Under the leadership of Abul Khair Khan, the Kazakhs won major victories over the Dzungars at the Bulanty River in 1726, and at the Battle of Anrakay in 1729.
The Khalkha eventually submitted to Qing rule in 1691 by Zanabazar's decision, thus bringing all of today's Mongolia under the rule of the Qing dynasty but Khalkha "de facto" remained under the rule of Galdan Boshugtu Khaan until 1696. The Mongol-Oirat's Code (a treaty of alliance) against foreign invasion between the Oirats and Khalkhas was signed in 1640, however, the Mongols could not unite against foreign invasions. Chakhundorj fought against Russian invasion of Outer Mongolia until 1688 and stopped Russian invasion of Khövsgöl Province. Zanabazar struggled to bring together the Oirats and Khalkhas before the war.
Galdan Boshugtu sent his army to "liberate" Inner Mongolia after defeating the Khalkha's army and called Inner Mongolian nobles to fight for Mongolian independence. Some Inner Mongolian nobles, Tibetans, Kumul Khanate and some Moghulistan's nobles supported his war against the Manchus, however, Inner Mongolian nobles did not battle against the Qing.
There were three khans in Khalkha and Zasagt Khan Shar (Western Khalkha leader) was Galdan's ally. Tsetsen Khan (Eastern Khalkha leader) did not engage in this conflict. While Galdan was fighting in Eastern Mongolia, his nephew Tseveenravdan seized the Dzungarian throne in 1689 and this event made Galdan impossible to fight against the Qing Empire. The Russian and Qing Empires supported his action because this coup weakened Western Mongolian strength. Galdan Boshugtu's army was defeated by the outnumbering Qing army in 1696 and he died in 1697. The Mongols who fled to the Buryat region and Inner Mongolia returned after the war. Some Khalkhas mixed with the Buryats.
The Buryats fought against Russian invasion since the 1620s and thousands of Buryats were massacred. The Buryat region was formally annexed to Russia by treaties in 1689 and 1727, when the territories on both the sides of Lake Baikal were separated from Mongolia. In 1689 the Treaty of Nerchinsk established the northern border of Manchuria north of the present line. The Russians retained Trans-Baikalia between Lake Baikal and the Argun River north of Mongolia. The Treaty of Kyakhta (1727), along with the Treaty of Nerchinsk, regulated the relations between Imperial Russia and the Qing Empire until the mid-nineteenth century. It established the northern border of Mongolia. Oka Buryats revolted in 1767 and Russia completely conquered the Buryat region in the late 18th century. Russia and Qing were rival empires until the early 20th century, however, both empires carried out united policy against Central Asians.
The Qing Empire conquered Upper Mongolia or the Oirat's Khoshut Khanate in the 1720s and 80,000 people were killed. By that period, Upper Mongolian population reached 200,000. The Dzungar Khanate conquered by the Qing dynasty in 1755–1758 because of their leaders and military commanders conflicts. Some scholars estimate that about 80% of the Dzungar population were destroyed by a combination of warfare and disease during the Qing conquest of the Dzungar Khanate in 1755–1758. Mark Levene, a historian whose recent research interests focus on genocide, has stated that the extermination of the Dzungars was "arguably the eighteenth century genocide par excellence." The Dzungar population reached 600,000 in 1755.
About 200,000–250,000 Oirats migrated from Western Mongolia to Volga River in 1607 and established the Kalmyk Khanate.The Torghuts were led by their Tayishi, Höö Örlög. Russia was concerned about their attack but the Kalmyks became Russian ally and a treaty to protect Southern Russian border was signed between the Kalmyk Khanate and Russia.In 1724 the Kalmyks came under control of Russia. By the early 18th century, there were approximately 300–350,000 Kalmyks and 15,000,000 Russians. The Tsardom of Russia gradually chipped away at the autonomy of the Kalmyk Khanate. These policies, for instance, encouraged the establishment of Russian and German settlements on pastures the Kalmyks used to roam and feed their livestock. In addition, the Tsarist government imposed a council on the Kalmyk Khan, thereby diluting his authority, while continuing to expect the Kalmyk Khan to provide cavalry units to fight on behalf of Russia. The Russian Orthodox church, by contrast, pressured Buddhist Kalmyks to adopt Orthodoxy.In January 1771, approximately 200,000 (170,000) Kalmyks began the migration from their pastures on the left bank of the Volga River to Dzungaria (Western Mongolia), through the territories of their Bashkir and Kazakh enemies. The last Kalmyk khan Ubashi led the migration to restore Mongolian independence. Ubashi Khan sent his 30,000 cavalries to the Russo-Turkish War in 1768–1769 to gain weapon before the migration. The Empress Catherine the Great ordered the Russian army, Bashkirs and Kazakhs to exterminate all migrants and the Empress abolished the Kalmyk Khanate. The Kyrgyzs attacked them near Balkhash Lake. About 100,000–150,000 Kalmyks who settled on the west bank of the Volga River could not cross the river because the river did not freeze in the winter of 1771 and Catherine the Great executed influential nobles of them. After seven months of travel, only one-third (66,073) of the original group reached Dzungaria (Balkhash Lake, western border of the Qing Empire). The Qing Empire transmigrated the Kalmyks to five different areas to prevent their revolt and influential leaders of the Kalmyks died soon (killed by the Manchus). Russia states that Buryatia voluntarily merged with Russia in 1659 due to Mongolian oppression and the Kalmyks voluntarily accepted Russian rule in 1609 but only Georgia voluntarily accepted Russian rule.
In the early 20th century, the late Qing government encouraged Han Chinese colonization of Mongolian lands under the name of "New Policies" or "New Administration" (xinzheng). As a result, some Mongol leaders (especially those of Outer Mongolia) decided to seek Mongolian independence. After the Xinhai Revolution, the Mongolian Revolution on 30 November 1911 in Outer Mongolia ended over 200-year rule of the Qing dynasty.
With the independence of Outer Mongolia, the Mongolian army controlled Khalkha and Khovd regions (modern day Uvs, Khovd, and Bayan-Ölgii provinces), but Northern Xinjiang (the Altai and Ili regions of the Qing Empire), Upper Mongolia, Barga and Inner Mongolia came under control of the newly formed Republic of China. On February 2, 1913 the Bogd Khanate of Mongolia sent Mongolian cavalries to "liberate" Inner Mongolia from China. Russia refused to sell weapons to the Bogd Khanate, and the Russian czar, Nicholas II, referred to it as "Mongolian imperialism". Additionally, the United Kingdom urged Russia to abolish Mongolian independence as it was concerned that "if Mongolians gain independence, then Central Asians will revolt". Khalkha and Inner Mongolian cavalries (about 3,500 Inner Mongols) defeated 70,000 Chinese soldiers and controlled almost all of Inner Mongolia; however, the Mongolian army retreated due to lack of weapons in 1914. 400 Mongol soldiers and 3,795 Chinese soldiers died in this war. The Khalkhas, Khovd Oirats, Buryats, Dzungarian Oirats, Upper Mongols, Barga Mongols, most Inner Mongolian and some Tuvan leaders sent statements to support Bogd Khan's call of Mongolian reunification. In reality however, most of them were too prudent or irresolute to attempt joining the Bogd Khan regime. Russia encouraged Mongolia to become an autonomous region of China in 1914. Mongolia lost Barga, Dzungaria, Tuva, Upper Mongolia and Inner Mongolia in the 1915 Treaty of Kyakhta.
In October 1919, the Republic of China occupied Mongolia after the suspicious deaths of Mongolian patriotic nobles. On 3 February 1921 the White Russian army—led by Baron Ungern and mainly consisting of Mongolian volunteer cavalries, and Buryat and Tatar cossacks—liberated the Mongolian capital. Baron Ungern's purpose was to find allies to defeat the Soviet Union. The Statement of Reunification of Mongolia was adopted by Mongolian revolutionist leaders in 1921. The Soviet, however, considered Mongolia to be Chinese territory in 1924 during secret meeting with the Republic of China. However, the Soviets officially recognized Mongolian independence in 1945 but carried out various policies (political, economic and cultural) against Mongolia until its fall in 1991 to prevent Pan-Mongolism and other irredentist movements.
On 10 April 1932 Mongolians revolted against the government's new policy and Soviets. The government and Soviet soldiers defeated the rebels in October.
The Buryats started to migrate to Mongolia in the 1900s due to Russian oppression. Joseph Stalin's regime stopped the migration in 1930 and started a campaign of ethnic cleansing against newcomers and Mongolians. During the Stalinist repressions in Mongolia almost all adult Buryat men and 22–33,000 Mongols (3–5% of the total population; common citizens, monks, Pan-Mongolists, nationalists, patriots, hundreds military officers, nobles, intellectuals and elite people) were shot dead under Soviet orders. Some authors also offer much higher estimates, up to 100,000 victims. Around the late 1930s the Mongolian People's Republic had an overall population of about 700,000 to 900,000 people. By 1939, Soviet said "We repressed too many people, the population of Mongolia is only hundred thousands". Proportion of victims in relation to the population of the country is much higher than the corresponding figures of the Great Purge in the Soviet Union.
The Manchukuo (1932–1945), puppet state of the Empire of Japan (1868–1947) invaded Barga and some part of Inner Mongolia with Japanese help. The Mongolian army advanced to the Great Wall of China during the Soviet–Japanese War of 1945 (Mongolian name: "Liberation War of 1945"). Japan forced Inner Mongolian and Barga people to fight against Mongolians but they surrendered to Mongolians and started to fight against their Japanese and Manchu allies. Marshal Khorloogiin Choibalsan called Inner Mongolians and Xinjiang Oirats to migrate to Mongolia during the war but the Soviet Army blocked Inner Mongolian migrants way. It was a part of Pan-Mongolian plan and few Oirats and Inner Mongols (Huuchids, Bargas, Tümeds, about 800 Uzemchins) arrived. Inner Mongolian leaders carried out active policy to merge Inner Mongolia with Mongolia since 1911. They founded the Inner Mongolian Army in 1929 but the Inner Mongolian Army disbanded after ending World War II. The Japanese Empire supported Pan-Mongolism since the 1910s but there have never been active relations between Mongolia and Imperial Japan due to Russian resistance. Inner Mongolian nominally independent Mengjiang state (1936–1945) was established with support of Japan in 1936 also some Buryat and Inner Mongol nobles founded Pan-Mongolist government with support of Japan in 1919.
The Inner Mongols established the short-lived Republic of Inner Mongolia in 1945.
Another part of Choibalsan's plan was to merge Inner Mongolia and Dzungaria with Mongolia. By 1945, Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong requested the Soviets to stop Pan-Mongolism because China lost its control over Inner Mongolia and without Inner Mongolian support the Communists were unable to defeat Japan and Kuomintang.
Mongolia and Soviet-supported Xinjiang Uyghurs and Kazakhs' movement in the 1930–1940s. By 1945, Soviet refused to support them after its alliance with the Communist Party of China and Mongolia interrupted its relations with the separatists under pressure. Xinjiang Oirat's militant groups operated together the Turkic peoples but the Oirats did not have the leading role due to their small population. Basmachis or Turkic and Tajik militants fought to liberate Central Asia (Soviet Central Asia) until 1942.
On February 2, 1913 the Treaty of friendship and alliance between the Government of Mongolia and Tibet was signed. Mongolian agents and Bogd Khan disrupted Soviet secret operations in Tibet to change its regime in the 1920s.
On October 27, 1961, the United Nations recognized Mongolian independence and granted the nation full membership in the organization.
The Tsardom of Russia, Russian Empire, Soviet Union, capitalist and communist China performed many genocide actions against the Mongols (assimilate, reduce the population, extinguish the language, culture, tradition, history, religion and ethnic identity). Peter the Great said: "The headwaters of the Yenisei River must be Russian land". Russian Empire sent the Kalmyks and Buryats to war to reduce the populations (World War I and other wars). Soviet scientists attempted to convince the Kalmyks and Buryats that they're not the Mongols during the 20th century (demongolization policy). 35,000 Buryats were killed during and around one-third of Buryat population in Russia died in the 1900s–1950s. 10,000 Buryats of the Buryat-Mongol Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic were massacred by Stalin's order in the 1930s. In 1919 the Buryats established a small theocratic Balagad state in Kizhinginsky District of Russia and the Buryat's state fell in 1926. In 1958, the name "Mongol" was removed from the name of the Buryat-Mongol Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic.
On 22 January 1922 Mongolia proposed to migrate the Kalmyks during the Kalmykian Famine but bolshevik Russia refused.71–72,000 (93,000?; around half of the population) Kalmyks died during the Russian famine of 1921–22. The Kalmyks revolted against Soviet Union in 1926, 1930 and 1942–1943 (see Kalmykian Cavalry Corps). In 1913, Nicholas II, tsar of Russia, said: "We need to prevent from Volga Tatars. But the Kalmyks are more dangerous than them because they are the Mongols so send them to war to reduce the population". On 23 April 1923 Joseph Stalin, communist leader of Russia, said: "We are carrying out wrong policy on the Kalmyks who related to the Mongols.Our policy is too peaceful". In March 1927, Soviet deported 20,000 Kalmyks to Siberia, tundra and Karelia.The Kalmyks founded sovereign Republic of Oirat-Kalmyk on 22 March 1930. The Oirat's state had a small army and 200 Kalmyk soldiers defeated 1,700 Soviet soldiers in Durvud province of Kalmykia but the Oirat's state destroyed by the Soviet Army in 1930. Kalmykian nationalists and Pan-Mongolists attempted to migrate Kalmyks to Mongolia in the 1920s. Mongolia suggested to migrate the Soviet Union's Mongols to Mongolia in the 1920s but Russia refused the suggest.
Stalin deported all Kalmyks to Siberia in 1943 and around half of (97–98,000) Kalmyk people deported to Siberia died before being allowed to return home in 1957. The government of the Soviet Union forbade teaching Kalmyk language during the deportation. The Kalmyks' main purpose was to migrate to Mongolia and many Kalmyks joined the German Army.Marshal Khorloogiin Choibalsan attempted to migrate the deportees to Mongolia and he met with them in Siberia during his visit to Russia. Under the Law of the Russian Federation of April 26, 1991 "On Rehabilitation of Exiled Peoples" repressions against Kalmyks and other peoples were qualified as an act of genocide.
After the end of World War II, the Chinese Civil War resumed between the Chinese Nationalists (Kuomintang), led by Chiang Kai-shek, and the Chinese Communist Party, led by Mao Zedong. In December 1949, Chiang evacuated his government to Taiwan. Hundred thousands Inner Mongols were massacred during the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and China forbade Mongol traditions, celebrations and the teaching of Mongolic languages during the revolution. In Inner Mongolia, some 790,000 people were persecuted. Approximately 1,000,000 Inner Mongols were killed during the 20th century. In 1960 Chinese newspaper wrote that "Han Chinese ethnic identity must be Chinese minorities ethnic identity". China-Mongolia relations were tense from the 1960s to the 1980s as a result of Sino-Soviet split, and there were several border conflicts during the period. Cross-border movement of Mongols was therefore hindered.
On 3 October 2002 the Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that Taiwan recognizes Mongolia as an independent country, although no legislative actions were taken to address concerns over its constitutional claims to Mongolia. Offices established to support Taipei's claims over Outer Mongolia, such as the Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission, lie dormant.
Agin-Buryat Okrug and Ust-Orda Buryat Okrugs merged with Irkutsk Oblast and Chita Oblast in 2008 despite Buryats' resistance. Small scale protests occurred in Inner Mongolia in 2011. The Inner Mongolian People's Party is a member of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization and its leaders are to establish sovereign state or merge Inner Mongolia with Mongolia.
Mongolian is the official national language of Mongolia, where it is spoken by nearly 2.8 million people (2010 estimate), and the official provincial language of China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, where there are at least 4.1 million ethnic Mongols. Across the whole of China, the language is spoken by roughly half of the country's 5.8 million ethnic Mongols (2005 estimate) However, the exact number of Mongolian speakers in China is unknown, as there is no data available on the language proficiency of that country's citizens. The use of Mongolian in China, specifically in Inner Mongolia, has witnessed periods of decline and revival over the last few hundred years. The language experienced a decline during the late Qing period, a revival between 1947 and 1965, a second decline between 1966 and 1976, a second revival between 1977 and 1992, and a third decline between 1995 and 2012. However, in spite of the decline of the Mongolian language in some of Inner Mongolia's urban areas and educational spheres, the ethnic identity of the urbanized Chinese-speaking Mongols is most likely going to survive due to the presence of urban ethnic communities. The multilingual situation in Inner Mongolia does not appear to obstruct efforts by ethnic Mongols to preserve their language. Although an unknown number of Mongols in China, such as the Tumets, may have completely or partially lost the ability to speak their language, they are still registered as ethnic Mongols and continue to identify themselves as ethnic Mongols. The children of inter-ethnic Mongol-Chinese marriages also claim to be and are registered as ethnic Mongols.
The specific origin of the Mongolic languages and associated tribes is unclear. Linguists have traditionally proposed a link to the Tungusic and Turkic language families, included alongside Mongolic in the broader group of Altaic languages, though this remains controversial. Today the Mongolian peoples speak at least one of several Mongolic languages including Mongolian, Buryat, Oirat, Dongxiang, Tu, Bonan, Hazaragi, and Aimaq. Additionally, many Mongols speak either Russian or Mandarin Chinese as languages of inter-ethnic communication.
The original religion of the Mongolic peoples was Shamanism. The Xianbei came in contact with Confucianism and Daoism but eventually adopted Buddhism. However, the Xianbeis in Mongolia and Rourans followed a form of Shamanism. In the 5th century the Buddhist monk Dharmapriya was proclaimed State Teacher of the Rouran Khaganate and given 3000 families and some Rouran nobles became Buddhists. In 511 the Rouran Douluofubadoufa Khan sent Hong Xuan to the Tuoba court with a pearl-encrusted statue of the Buddha as a gift. The Tuoba Xianbei and Khitans were mostly Buddhists, although they still retained their original Shamanism. The Tuoba had a "sacrificial castle" to the west of their capital where ceremonies to spirits took place. Wooden statues of the spirits were erected on top of this sacrificial castle. One ritual involved seven princes with milk offerings who ascended the stairs with 20 female shamans and offered prayers, sprinkling the statues with the sacred milk. The Khitan had their holiest shrine on Mount Muye where portraits of their earliest ancestor Qishou Khagan, his wife Kedun and eight sons were kept in two temples. Mongolic peoples were also exposed to Zoroastrianism, Manicheism, Nestorianism, Eastern Orthodoxy and Islam from the west. The Mongolic peoples, in particular the Borjigin, had their holiest shrine on Mount Burkhan Khaldun where their ancestor Börte Chono (Blue Wolf) and Goo Maral (Beautiful Doe) had given birth to them. Genghis Khan usually fasted, prayed and meditated on this mountain before his campaigns. As a young man he had thanked the mountain for saving his life and prayed at the foot of the mountain sprinkling offerings and bowing nine times to the east with his belt around his neck and his hat held at his chest. Genghis Khan kept a close watch on the Mongolic supreme shaman Kokochu Teb who sometimes conflicted with his authority. Later the imperial cult of Genghis Khan (centered on the eight white gers and nine white banners in Ordos) grew into a highly organized indigenous religion with scriptures in the Mongolian script. Indigenous moral precepts of the Mongolic peoples were enshrined in oral wisdom sayings (now collected in several volumes), the anda (blood-brother) system and ancient texts such as the "Chinggis-un Bilig" (Wisdom of Genghis) and "Oyun Tulkhuur" (Key of Intelligence). These moral precepts were expressed in poetic form and mainly involved truthfulness, fidelity, help in hardship, unity, self-control, fortitude, veneration of nature, veneration of the state and veneration of parents.
In 1254 Möngke Khan organized a formal religious debate (in which William of Rubruck took part) between Christians, Muslims and Buddhists in Karakorum, a cosmopolitan city of many religions. The Mongolic Empire was known for its religious tolerance, but had a special leaning towards Buddhism and was sympathetic towards Christianity while still worshipping Tengri. The Mongolic leader Abaqa Khan sent a delegation of 13–16 to the Second Council of Lyon (1274), which created a great stir, particularly when their leader 'Zaganus' underwent a public baptism. A joint crusade was announced in line with the Franco-Mongol alliance but did not materialize because Pope Gregory X died in 1276. Yahballaha III (1245–1317) and Rabban Bar Sauma (c. 1220–1294) were famous Mongolic Nestorian Christians. The Keraites in central Mongolia were Christian. In Istanbul the Church of Saint Mary of the Mongols stands as a reminder of the Byzantine-Mongol alliance. The western Khanates, however, eventually adopted Islam (under Berke and Ghazan) and the Turkic languages (because of its commercial importance), although allegiance to the Great Khan and limited use of the Mongolic languages can be seen even in the 1330s. In 1521 the first Mughal emperor Babur took part in a military banner milk-sprinkling ceremony in the Chagatai Khanate where the Mongolian language was still used. Al-Adil Kitbugha (reigned 1294-1296), a Mongol Sultan of Egypt, and the half-Mongol An-Nasir Muhammad (reigned till 1341) built the Madrassa of Al-Nasir Muhammad in Cairo, Egypt. An-Nasir's Mongol mother was Ashlun bint Shaktay. The Mongolic nobility during the Yuan dynasty studied Confucianism, built Confucian temples (including Beijing Confucius Temple) and translated Confucian works into Mongolic but mainly followed the Sakya school of Tibetan Buddhism under Phags-pa Lama. The general populace still practised Shamanism. Dongxiang and Bonan Mongols adopted Islam, as did Moghol-speaking peoples in Afghanistan. In the 1576 the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism became the state religion of the Mongolia. The Red Hat school of Tibetan Buddhism coexisted with the Gelug Yellow Hat school which was founded by the half-Mongol Je Tsongkhapa (1357-1419). Shamanism was absorbed into the state religion while being marginalized in its purer forms, later only surviving in far northern Mongolia. Monks were some of the leading intellectuals in Mongolia, responsible for much of the literature and art of the pre-modern period. Many Buddhist philosophical works lost in Tibet and elsewhere are preserved in older and purer form in Mongolian ancient texts (e.g. the Mongol Kanjur). Zanabazar (1635–1723), Zaya Pandita (1599–1662) and Danzanravjaa (1803–1856) are among the most famous Mongol holy men. The 4th Dalai Lama Yonten Gyatso (1589–1617), a Mongol himself, is recognized as the only non-Tibetan Dalai Lama although the current 14th Dalai Lama is of Mongolic Monguor extraction. The name is a combination of the Mongolian word dalai meaning "ocean" and the Tibetan word (bla-ma) meaning "guru, teacher, mentor".[1] Many Buryats became Orthodox Christians due to the Russian expansion. During the socialist period religion was officially banned, although it was practiced in clandestine circles. Today, a sizable proportion of Mongolic peoples are atheist or agnostic. In the most recent census in Mongolia, almost forty percent of the population reported as being atheist, while the majority religion was Tibetan Buddhism, with 53%. Having survived suppression by the Communists, Buddhism among the Eastern, Northern, Southern and Western Mongols is today primarily of the Gelugpa (Yellow Hat sect) school of Tibetan Buddhism. There is a strong shamanistic influence in the Gelugpa sect among the Mongols.
Mongols battled against the most powerful armies and warriors in Eurasia. The beating of the kettle and smoke signals were signals for the start of battle. One battle formation that they used consisted of five squadrons or units. The typical squadrons were divided by ranks. The first two ranks were in the front. These warriors had the heaviest armor and weapons. The back three ranks broke out between the front ranks and attacked first with their arrows. The forces kept their distance from the enemy and killed them with arrow fire, during which time "archers did not aim at a specific target, but shot their arrows at a high path into a set 'killing zone' or target area." Mongolics also acquired engineers from the defeated armies. They made engineers a permanent part of their army, so that their weapons and machinery were complex and efficient.
The traditional Mongol family was patriarchal, patrilineal and patrilocal. Wives were brought for each of the sons, while daughters were married off to other clans. Wife-taking clans stood in a relation of inferiority to wife-giving clans. Thus wife-giving clans were considered "elder" or "bigger" in relation to wife-taking clans, who were considered "younger" or "smaller". This distinction, symbolized in terms of "elder" and "younger" or "bigger" and "smaller", was carried into the clan and family as well, and all members of a lineage were terminologically distinguished by generation and age, with senior superior to junior.
In the traditional Mongolian family, each son received a part of the family herd as he married, with the elder son receiving more than the younger son. The youngest son would remain in the parental tent caring for his parents, and after their death he would inherit the parental tent in addition to his own part of the herd. This inheritance system was mandated by law codes such as the Yassa, created by Genghis Khan. Likewise, each son inherited a part of the family's camping lands and pastures, with the elder son receiving more than the younger son. The eldest son inherited the farthest camping lands and pastures, and each son in turn inherited camping lands and pastures closer to the family tent until the youngest son inherited the camping lands and pastures immediately surrounding the family tent. Family units would often remain near each other and in close cooperation, though extended families would inevitably break up after a few generations. It is probable that the Yasa simply put into written law the principles of customary law.
After the family, the next largest social units were the subclan and clan. These units were derived from groups claiming patrilineal descent from a common ancestor, ranked in order of seniority (the "conical clan"). By the Chingissid era this ranking was symbolically expressed at formal feasts, in which tribal chieftains were seated and received particular portions of the slaughtered animal according to their status. The lineage structure of Central Asia had three different modes. It was organized on the basis of genealogical distance, or the proximity of individuals to one another on a graph of kinship; generational distance, or the rank of generation in relation to a common ancestor, and birth order, the rank of brothers in relation to each another. The paternal descent lines were collaterally ranked according to the birth of their founders, and were thus considered senior and junior to each other. Of the various collateral patrilines, the senior in order of descent from the founding ancestor, the line of eldest sons, was the most noble. In the steppe, no one had his exact equal; everyone found his place in a system of collaterally ranked lines of descent from a common ancestor. It was according to this idiom of superiority and inferiority of lineages derived from birth order that legal claims to superior rank were couched.
The Mongol kinship is one of a particular patrilineal type classed as Omaha, in which relatives are grouped together under separate terms that crosscut generations, age, and even sexual difference. Thus, oe uses different terms for a man's father's sister's children, his sister's children, and his daughter's children. A further attribute is strict terminological differentiation of siblings according to seniority.
The division of Mongolian society into senior elite lineages and subordinate junior lineages was waning by the twentieth century. During the 1920s, the Communist regime was established. The remnants of the Mongolian aristocracy fought alongside the Japanese and against Chinese, Soviets and Communist Mongols during World War II, but were defeated.
The anthropologist Herbert Harold Vreeland visited three Mongol communities in 1920 and published a highly detailed book with the results of his fieldwork, "Mongol community and kinship structure".
The royal clan of the Mongols is the Borjigin clan descended from Bodonchar Munkhag (c.850-900). This clan produced Khans and princes for Mongolia and surrounding regions until the early 20th century. All the Great Khans of the Mongol Empire, including its founder Genghis Khan, were of the Borjigin clan. The royal family of Mongolia was called the "Altan Urag" (Golden Lineage) and is synonymous with Genghisid. After the fall of the Northern Yuan Dynasty in 1635 the Dayan Khanid aristocracy continued the Genghisid legacy in Mongolia until 1937 when most were killed during the Stalinist purges. The four hereditary Khans of the Khalkha (Tüsheet Khan, Setsen Khan, Zasagt Khan and Sain Noyan Khan) were all descended from Dayan Khan (1464-1543) through Abtai Sain Khan, Sholoi Khan, Laikhur Khan and Tumenkhen Sain Noyan respectively. Dayan Khan was himself raised to power by Queen Mandukhai the Wise (c.1449-1510) during the crisis of the late 15th century when the line of Kublai Khan, the grandson of Genghis Khan, was on the verge of dying out.
Dayan Khan's ancestry is as follows. His father was Bayanmunkh Jonon (1448-1479) the son of Kharkhutsag Taij (?-1453), the son of Agbarjin Khan (1423-1454), the son of Ajai Taij (1399-1438), the son or younger brother of Elbeg Nigülesügchi Khan (1361-1399), the son of Uskhal Khan (1342-1388), the younger brother of Biligtü Khan (1340-1370) and the son of Toghon Temur Khan (1320-1370), the son of Khutughtu Khan (1300-1329), the son of Külüg Khan (1281-1311), the son of Darmabala (1264-1292), the son of Crown Prince Zhenjin (1243-1286), the son of Kublai Khan (1215-1294), the son of Tolui (1191-1232), the son of Genghis Khan (1162-1227). Okada (1994) noted that according to the Korean Veritable Records Taisun Khan, the brother of Agbarjin Khan, sent a Mongolian letter to Korea on May 9, 1442 where he named Kublai Khan as his ancestor. This, along with the direct Mongol account of the Erdeniin Tobchi as well as indirect indications from three different Mongolian chronicles noted in Okada, establishes the Kublaid descent of Elbeg Nigülesügchi Khan. Buyandelger (2000) noted that the year of birth of Elbeg Nigülesügchi Khan as well as the meaning of his name is the same as that of Maidarabala (买的里八剌) the son of Biligtü Khan's secondary consort Empress Kim (daughter of Kim Yunjang 金允藏). Further noting that Maidarabala was sent back to Mongolia in 1374 after being held hostage in Beiping (Beijing) for 3 years Buyandelger identified Maidarabala with Elbeg Nigülesügchi Khan. This does not change the Kublaid descent of Elbeg Nigülesügchi Khan and only changes his paternity from Uskhal Khan to his brother Biligtü Khan.
The Khongirad was the main consort clan of the Borjigin and provided numerous Empresses and consorts. There were five minor non-Khonggirad inputs from the maternal side which passed on to the Dayan Khanid aristocracy of Mongolia and Inner Mongolia. The first was the Keraite lineage added through Kublai Khan's mother Sorghaghtani Beki which linked the Borjigin to the Nestorian Christian tribe of Cyriacus Buyruk Khan. The second was the Turkic Karluk lineage added through Toghon Temur Khan's mother Mailaiti which linked the Borjigin to Bilge Kul Qadir Khan (840-893) of the Kara-Khanid Khanate and ultimately to the Lion-Karluks as well as the Ashina tribe of the 6th century Göktürks. The third was the Korean lineage added through Biligtü Khan's mother Empress Gi (1315-370) which linked the Borjigin to the Haengju Gi clan and ultimately to King Jun of Gojeoson (262-184 BC) and possibly even further to King Tang of Shang (1675-1646 BC) through Jizi. The fourth was the Esen Taishi lineage added through Bayanmunkh Jonon's mother Tsetseg Khatan which linked the Borjigin more firmly to the Oirats. The fifth was the Aisin Gioro lineage added during the Qing Dynasty.
The Dayan Khanid aristocracy still held power during the Bogd Khanate of Mongolia (1911-1919) and the Constitutional Monarchy period (1921-1924). They were accused of collaboration with the Japanese and executed in 1937 while their counterparts in Inner Mongolia were severely persecuted during the Cultural Revolution. Ancestral shrines of Genghis Khan were destroyed by the Red Guards during the 1960's and the Horse-Tail Banner of Genghis Khan disappeared. The Rinchen family in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia is a Dayan Khanid branch from Buryatia. Members of this family include the scholar Byambyn Rinchen (1905-1977), geologist Rinchen Barsbold (1935- ), diplomat Ganibal Jagvaral and Amartuvshin Ganibal (1974- ) the President of XacBank. There are many other families with aristocratic ancestry in Mongolia and it is often noted that most of the common populace already has some share of Genghisid ancestry. Mongolia, however, has remained a republic since 1924 and there has been no discussion of introducing a constitutional monarchy.
Today, the majority of Mongols live in the modern state of Mongolia, China (mainly Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang), Russia, Kyrgyzstan and Afghanistan.
The differentiation between tribes and peoples (ethnic groups) is handled differently depending on the country. The Tumed, Chahar, Ordos, Barga, Altai Uriankhai, Buryats, Dörböd (Dörvöd, Dörbed), Torguud, Dariganga, Üzemchin (or Üzümchin), Bayads, Khoton, Myangad (Mingad), Eljigin, Zakhchin, Darkhad, and Olots (or Öölds or Ölöts) are all considered as tribes of the Mongols.
The Eastern Mongols are mainly concentrated in Mongolia, including the Khalkha, Eljigin Khalkha, Darkhad, Sartuul Khalkha, and Dariganga (Khalkha).
The Buryats are mainly concentrated in their homeland, the Buryat Republic, a federal subject of Russia. They are the major northern subgroup of the Mongols. The Barga Mongols are mainly concentrated in Inner Mongolia, China, along with the Buryats and Hamnigan.
The Southern or Inner Mongols mainly are concentrated in Inner Mongolia, China. They comprise the Abaga Mongols, Abaganar, Aohan, Asud, Baarins, Chahar, Durved, Gorlos, Kharchin, Hishigten, Khorchin, Huuchid, Jalaid, Jaruud, Muumyangan, Naiman (Southern Mongols), Onnigud, Ordos, Sunud, Tümed, Urad, and Uzemchin.
The Western Mongols or Oirats are mainly concentrated in Western Mongolia:
Altai Uriankhai, Baatud, Bayad, Chantuu, Choros, Durvud, Khoshut, Khoid, Khoton, Myangad, Olots, Sart Kalmyks (mainly Olots), Torghut, Zakhchin.
In modern-day Mongolia, Mongols make up approximately 95% of the population, with the largest ethnic group being Khalkha Mongols, followed by Buryats, both belonging to the Eastern Mongolic peoples. They are followed by Oirats, who belong to the Western Mongolic peoples.
Mongolian ethnic groups:
Baarin, Baatud, Barga, Bayad, Buryat,
Selenge Chahar, Chantuu, Darkhad, Dariganga
Dörbet Oirat, Eljigin, Khalkha, Hamnigan, Kharchin, Khoid, Khorchin, Hotogoid, Khoton, Huuchid, Myangad, Olots, Sartuul,
Torgut, Tümed, Üzemchin, Zakhchin.
The 2010 census of the People's Republic of China counted more than 7 million people of various Mongolic groups. The 1992 census of China counted only 3.6 million ethnic Mongols. The 2010 census counted roughly 5.8 million ethnic Mongols, 621,500 Dongxiangs, 289,565 Mongours, 132,000 Daurs, 20,074 Baoans, and 14,370 Yugurs. Most of them live in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, followed by Liaoning. Small numbers can also be found in provinces near those two.
There were 669,972 Mongols in Liaoning in 2011, making up 11.52% of Mongols in China. The closest Mongol area to the sea is the Dabao Mongol Ethnic Township () in Fengcheng, Liaoning. With 8,460 Mongols (37.4% of the township population) it is located from the North Korean border and from Korea Bay of the Yellow Sea. Another contender for closest Mongol area to the sea would be Erdaowanzi Mongol Ethnic Township () in Jianchang County, Liaoning. With 5,011 Mongols (20.7% of the township population) it is located around from the Bohai Sea.
Other peoples speaking Mongolic languages are the Daur, Sogwo Arig, Monguor people, Dongxiangs, Bonans, Sichuan Mongols and eastern part of the Yugur people. Those do not officially count as part of the Mongol ethnicity, but are recognized as ethnic groups of their own. The Mongols lost their contact with the Mongours, Bonan, Dongxiangs, Yunnan Mongols since the fall of the Yuan dynasty. Mongolian scientists and journalists met with the Dongxiangs and Yunnan Mongols in the 2000s.
Inner Mongolia:
Southern Mongols, Barga, Buryat, Dörbet Oirat, Khalkha, Dzungar people, Eznee Torgut.
Xinjiang province:
Altai Uriankhai, Chahar, Khoshut, Olots, Torghut, Zakhchin.
Qinghai province: Upper Mongols: Choros, Khalkha Mongols, Khoshut, Torghut.
Two Mongolic ethnic groups are present in Russia; the 2010 census found 461,410 Buryats and 183,400 Kalmyks.
Smaller numbers of Mongolic peoples exist in Western Europe and North America. Some of the more notable communities exist in South Korea, the United States, the Czech Republic and the United Kingdom. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18984 |
Manga
Manga (, ; Japanese: 漫画 ) are comics or graphic novels originating from Japan. Most manga conform to a style developed in Japan in the late 19th century, though the art form has a long prehistory in earlier Japanese art. The term "manga" (katakana: ; hiragana: ) is used in Japan to refer to both comics and cartooning. Outside Japan, the word is typically used to refer to comics originally published in the country.
In Japan, people of all ages read manga. The medium includes works in a broad range of genres: action, adventure, business and commerce, comedy, detective, drama, historical, horror, mystery, romance, science fiction and fantasy, erotica ("hentai"), sports and games, and suspense, among others. Many manga are translated into other languages. Since the 1950s, manga has become an increasingly major part of the Japanese publishing industry. By 1995, the manga market in Japan was valued at (), with annual sales of 1.9billion manga books and manga magazines in Japan (equivalent to 15issues per person). Manga have also gained a significant worldwide audience. In 2008, in the U.S. and Canada, the manga market was valued at $175 million. Manga represented 38% of the French comics market , equivalent to approximately ten times that of the United States, and was valued at about ($million). In Europe and the Middle East, the market was valued at $250 million in 2012.
Manga stories are typically printed in black-and-white—due to time constraints, artistic reasons (as coloring could lessen the impact of the artwork) and to keep printing costs low—although some full-color manga exist (e.g., "Colorful"). In Japan, manga are usually serialized in large manga magazines, often containing many stories, each presented in a single episode to be continued in the next issue. Collected chapters are usually republished in "tankōbon" volumes, frequently but not exclusively paperback books. A manga artist ("mangaka" in Japanese) typically works with a few assistants in a small studio and is associated with a creative editor from a commercial publishing company. If a manga series is popular enough, it may be animated after or during its run. Sometimes, manga are based on previous live-action or animated films.
Manga-influenced comics, among original works, exist in other parts of the world, particularly in Algeria ("DZ-manga"), China, Hong Kong, Taiwan ("manhua"), and South Korea ("manhwa").
The word "manga" comes from the Japanese word 漫画, composed of the two kanji 漫 (man) meaning "whimsical or impromptu" and 画 (ga) meaning "pictures". The same term is the root of the Korean word for comics, ""manhwa"", and the Chinese word ""manhua"".
The word first came into common usage in the late 18th century with the publication of such works as Santō Kyōden's picturebook "Shiji no yukikai" (1798), and in the early 19th century with such works as Aikawa Minwa's "Manga hyakujo" (1814) and the celebrated "Hokusai Manga" books (1814–1834) containing assorted drawings from the sketchbooks of the famous ukiyo-e artist Hokusai. Rakuten Kitazawa (1876–1955) first used the word "manga" in the modern sense.
In Japanese, "manga" refers to all kinds of cartooning, comics, and animation. Among English speakers, "manga" has the stricter meaning of "Japanese comics", in parallel to the usage of "anime" in and outside Japan. The term "ani-manga" is used to describe comics produced from animation cels.
The history of manga is said to originate from scrolls dating back to the 12th century, and it is believed they represent the basis for the right-to-left reading style. During the Edo period (1603–1867), "Toba Ehon" embedded the concept of manga. The word itself first came into common usage in 1798, with the publication of works such as Santō Kyōden's picturebook "Shiji no yukikai" (1798), and in the early 19th century with such works as Aikawa Minwa's "Manga hyakujo" (1814) and the "Hokusai Manga" books (1814–1834). Adam L. Kern has suggested that "kibyoshi", picture books from the late 18th century, may have been the world's first comic books. These graphical narratives share with modern manga humorous, satirical, and romantic themes. Some works were mass-produced as serials using woodblock printing.
Writers on manga history have described two broad and complementary processes shaping modern manga. One view represented by other writers such as Frederik L. Schodt, Kinko Ito, and Adam L. Kern, stress continuity of Japanese cultural and aesthetic traditions, including pre-war, Meiji, and pre-Meiji culture and art. The other view, emphasizes events occurring during and after the Allied occupation of Japan (1945–1952), and stresses U.S. cultural influences, including U.S. comics (brought to Japan by the GIs) and images and themes from U.S. television, film, and cartoons (especially Disney).
Regardless of its source, an explosion of artistic creativity occurred in the post-war period, involving manga artists such as Osamu Tezuka ("Astro Boy") and Machiko Hasegawa ("Sazae-san"). "Astro Boy" quickly became (and remains) immensely popular in Japan and elsewhere, and the anime adaptation of "Sazae-san" drawing more viewers than any other anime on Japanese television in 2011. Tezuka and Hasegawa both made stylistic innovations. In Tezuka's "cinematographic" technique, the panels are like a motion picture that reveals details of action bordering on slow motion as well as rapid zooms from distance to close-up shots. This kind of visual dynamism was widely adopted by later manga artists. Hasegawa's focus on daily life and on women's experience also came to characterize later "shōjo manga". Between 1950 and 1969, an increasingly large readership for manga emerged in Japan with the solidification of its two main marketing genres, "shōnen manga" aimed at boys and "shōjo manga" aimed at girls.
In 1969 a group of female manga artists (later called the "Year 24 Group", also known as "Magnificent 24s") made their "shōjo" manga debut ("year 24" comes from the Japanese name for the year 1949, the birth-year of many of these artists). The group included Moto Hagio, Riyoko Ikeda, Yumiko Ōshima, Keiko Takemiya, and Ryoko Yamagishi. Thereafter, primarily female manga artists would draw "shōjo" for a readership of girls and young women. In the following decades (1975–present), "shōjo" manga continued to develop stylistically while simultaneously evolving different but overlapping subgenres. Major subgenres include romance, superheroines, and "Ladies Comics" (in Japanese, "redisu" , "redikomi" , and "josei" ).
Modern "shōjo" manga romance features love as a major theme set into emotionally intense narratives of self-realization. With the superheroines, "shōjo" manga saw releases such as Pink Hanamori's "Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch" Reiko Yoshida's "Tokyo Mew Mew", And, Naoko Takeuchi's "Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon", which became internationally popular in both manga and anime formats. Groups (or "sentais") of girls working together have also been popular within this genre. Like Lucia, Hanon, and Rina singing together, and Sailor Moon, Sailor Mercury, Sailor Mars, Sailor Jupiter, and Sailor Venus working together.
Manga for male readers sub-divides according to the age of its intended readership: boys up to 18 years old ("shōnen" manga) and young men 18 to 30 years old ("seinen" manga); as well as by content, including action-adventure often involving male heroes, slapstick humor, themes of honor, and sometimes explicit sex. The Japanese use different kanji for two closely allied meanings of "seinen"— for "youth, young man" and for "adult, majority"—the second referring to pornographic manga aimed at grown men and also called "seijin" ("adult" ) manga. "Shōnen", "seinen", and "seijin" manga share a number of features in common.
Boys and young men became some of the earliest readers of manga after World War II. From the 1950s on, "shōnen" manga focused on topics thought to interest the archetypal boy, including subjects like robots, space-travel, and heroic action-adventure. Popular themes include science fiction, technology, sports, and supernatural settings. Manga with solitary costumed superheroes like Superman, Batman, and Spider-Man generally did not become as popular.
The role of girls and women in manga produced for male readers has evolved considerably over time to include those featuring single pretty girls ("bishōjo") such as Belldandy from "Oh My Goddess!", stories where such girls and women surround the hero, as in "" and "Hanaukyo Maid Team", or groups of heavily armed female warriors ("sentō bishōjo")
With the relaxation of censorship in Japan in the 1990s, an assortment of explicit sexual material appeared in manga intended for male readers, and correspondingly continued into the English translations. However, in 2010 the Tokyo Metropolitan Government passed a bill to restrict such content.
The "gekiga" style of storytelling—thematically somber, adult-oriented, and sometimes deeply violent—focuses on the day-in, day-out grim realities of life, often drawn in a gritty and unvarnished fashion. "Gekiga" such as Sampei Shirato's 1959–1962 "Chronicles of a Ninja's Military Accomplishments" ("Ninja Bugeichō") arose in the late 1950s and 1960s partly from left-wing student and working-class political activism and partly from the aesthetic dissatisfaction of young manga artists like Yoshihiro Tatsumi with existing manga.
In Japan, manga constituted an annual 40.6 billion yen (approximately US$395 million) publication-industry by 2007. In 2006 sales of manga books made up for about 27% of total book-sales, and sale of manga magazines, for 20% of total magazine-sales. The manga industry has expanded worldwide, where distribution companies license and reprint manga into their native languages.
Marketeers primarily classify manga by the age and gender of the target readership. In particular, books and magazines sold to boys ("shōnen") and girls ("shōjo") have distinctive cover-art, and most bookstores place them on different shelves. Due to cross-readership, consumer response is not limited by demographics. For example, male readers may subscribe to a series intended for female readers, and so on. Japan has manga cafés, or "manga kissa" ("kissa" is an abbreviation of "kissaten"). At a "manga kissa", people drink coffee, read manga and sometimes stay overnight.
The Kyoto International Manga Museum maintains a very large website listing manga published in Japanese.
Manga magazines usually have many series running concurrently with approximately 20–40 pages allocated to each series per issue. Other magazines such as the anime fandom magazine "Newtype" featured single chapters within their monthly periodicals. Other magazines like "Nakayoshi" feature many stories written by many different artists; these magazines, or "anthology magazines", as they are also known (colloquially "phone books"), are usually printed on low-quality newsprint and can be anywhere from 200 to more than 850 pages thick. Manga magazines also contain one-shot comics and various four-panel "yonkoma" (equivalent to comic strips). Manga series can run for many years if they are successful. Manga artists sometimes start out with a few "one-shot" manga projects just to try to get their name out. If these are successful and receive good reviews, they are continued. Magazines often have a short life.
After a series has run for a while, publishers often collect the episodes together and print them in dedicated book-sized volumes, called "tankōbon". These can be hardcover, or more usually softcover books, and are the equivalent of U.S. trade paperbacks or graphic novels. These volumes often use higher-quality paper, and are useful to those who want to "catch up" with a series so they can follow it in the magazines or if they find the cost of the weeklies or monthlies to be prohibitive. "Deluxe" versions have also been printed as readers have gotten older and the need for something special grew. Old manga have also been reprinted using somewhat lesser quality paper and sold for 100 yen (about $1 U.S. dollar) each to compete with the used book market.
Kanagaki Robun and Kawanabe Kyōsai created the first manga magazine in 1874: "Eshinbun Nipponchi". The magazine was heavily influenced by "Japan Punch", founded in 1862 by Charles Wirgman, a British cartoonist. "Eshinbun Nipponchi" had a very simple style of drawings and did not become popular with many people. "Eshinbun Nipponchi" ended after three issues. The magazine "Kisho Shimbun" in 1875 was inspired by "Eshinbun Nipponchi", which was followed by "Marumaru Chinbun" in 1877, and then "Garakuta Chinpo" in 1879. "Shōnen Sekai" was the first "shōnen" magazine created in 1895 by Iwaya Sazanami, a famous writer of Japanese children's literature back then. "Shōnen Sekai" had a strong focus on the First Sino-Japanese War.
In 1905 the manga-magazine publishing boom started with the Russo-Japanese War, "Tokyo Pakku" was created and became a huge hit. After "Tokyo Pakku" in 1905, a female version of "Shōnen Sekai" was created and named "Shōjo Sekai", considered the first "shōjo" magazine. "Shōnen Pakku" was made and is considered the first children's manga magazine. The children's demographic was in an early stage of development in the Meiji period. "Shōnen Pakku" was influenced from foreign children's magazines such as "Puck" which an employee of Jitsugyō no Nihon (publisher of the magazine) saw and decided to emulate. In 1924, "Kodomo Pakku" was launched as another children's manga magazine after "Shōnen Pakku". During the boom, "Poten" (derived from the French "potin") was published in 1908. All the pages were in full color with influences from "Tokyo Pakku" and "Osaka Puck". It is unknown if there were any more issues besides the first one. "Kodomo Pakku" was launched May 1924 by Tokyosha and featured high-quality art by many members of the manga artistry like Takei Takeo, Takehisa Yumeji and Aso Yutaka. Some of the manga featured speech balloons, where other manga from the previous eras did not use speech balloons and were silent.
Published from May 1935 to January 1941, "Manga no Kuni" coincided with the period of the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945). "Manga no Kuni" featured information on becoming a mangaka and on other comics industries around the world. "Manga no Kuni" handed its title to "Sashie Manga Kenkyū" in August 1940.
"Dōjinshi", produced by small publishers outside of the mainstream commercial market, resemble in their publishing small-press independently published comic books in the United States. Comiket, the largest comic book convention in the world with around 500,000 visitors gathering over three days, is devoted to "dōjinshi". While they most often contain original stories, many are parodies of or include characters from popular manga and anime series. Some "dōjinshi" continue with a series' story or write an entirely new one using its characters, much like fan fiction. In 2007, "dōjinshi" sales amounted to 27.73 billion yen (US$245 million). In 2006 they represented about a tenth of manga books and magazines sales.
Thanks to the advent of the internet, there have been new ways for aspiring mangaka to upload and sell their manga online. Before, there were two main ways in which a mangaka's work could be published: taking their manga drawn on paper to a publisher themselves, or submitting their work to competitions run by magazines.
In recent years, there has been a rise in manga released digitally. Web manga, as it's known in Japan, has a seen an increase thanks in part to image hosting websites where anyone can upload pages from their works for free. Although released digitally, almost all web manga stick to the conventional black-and-white format despite some never getting physical publications. Pixiv is the most popular site where a host of amateur and professional works get published on the site. It has grown to be the most visited site for artwork in Japan. Twitter has also become a popular place for web manga with many artists releasing pages weekly on their accounts in the hopes of their works getting picked up or published professionally. One of the best examples of an amateur work becoming professional is One-Punch Man which was released online and later got a professional remake released digitally and an anime adaptation soon there after.
Many of the big print publishers have also released digital only magazines and websites where web manga get published alongside their serialized magazines. Shogakukan for instance has two websites, "Sunday Webry" and "Ura Sunday", that release weekly chapters for web manga and even offer contests for mangaka to submit their work. Both Sunday Webry and Ura Sunday have become one of the top web manga sites in Japan. Some have even released apps that teach how to draw professional manga and learn how to create them. Weekly Shōnen Jump released "Jump Paint", an app that guides users on how to make their own manga from making storyboards to digitally inking lines. It also offers more than 120 types of pen tips and more than 1,000 screentones for artists to practice. Kodansha has also used the popularity of web manga to launch more series and also offer better distribution of their officially translated works under Kodansha Comics thanks in part to the titles being released digitally first before being published physically.
The rise web manga has also been credited to smartphones and computers as more and more readers read manga on their phones rather than from a print publication. While paper manga has seen a decrease overtime, digital manga have been growing in sales each year. The Research Institute for Publications reports that sales of digital manga books excluding magazines jumped 27.1 percent to ¥146 billion in 2016 from the year before while sales of paper manga saw a record year-on-year decline of 7.4 percent to ¥194.7 billion. They have also said that if the digital and paper keep the same growth and drop rates, web manga will exceed their paper counterparts.
While webtoons have caught on in popularity as a new medium for comics in Asia, Japan has been slow to adopt webtoons as the traditional format and print publication still dominate the way manga is created and consumed. Despite this, one of the biggest webtoon publishers in the world, Comico, has had success in the traditional Japanese manga market. Comico was launched by NHN Japan, the Japanese subsidiary of Korean company, NHN Entertainment. As of now, there are only two webtoon publishers that publish Japanese webtoons: Comico and Naver Webtoon (under the name "XOY" in Japan). Kakao has also had success by offering licensed manga and translated Korean webtoons with their service Piccoma. All three companies credit their success to the webtoon pay model where users can purchase each chapter individually instead of having to buy the whole book while also offering some chapters for free for a period of time allowing anyone to read a whole series for free if they wait long enough. The added benefit of having all of their titles in color and some with special animations and effects have also helped them succeed. Some popular Japanese webtoons have also gotten anime adaptations and print releases, the most notable being "ReLIFE" and "Recovery of an MMO Junkie".
By 2007, the influence of manga on international comics had grown considerably over the past two decades. "Influence" is used here to refer to effects on the comics markets outside Japan and to aesthetic effects on comics artists internationally.
Traditionally, manga stories flow from top to bottom and from right to left. Some publishers of translated manga keep to this original format. Other publishers mirror the pages horizontally before printing the translation, changing the reading direction to a more "Western" left to right, so as not to confuse foreign readers or traditional comics-consumers. This practice is known as "flipping". For the most part, criticism suggests that flipping goes against the original intentions of the creator (for example, if a person wears a shirt that reads "MAY" on it, and gets flipped, then the word is altered to "YAM"), who may be ignorant of how awkward it is to read comics when the eyes must flow through the pages and text in opposite directions, resulting in an experience that's quite distinct from reading something that flows homogeneously. If the translation is not adapted to the flipped artwork carefully enough it is also possible for the text to go against the picture, such as a person referring to something on their left in the text while pointing to their right in the graphic. Characters shown writing with their right hands, the majority of them, would become left-handed when a series is flipped. Flipping may also cause oddities with familiar asymmetrical objects or layouts, such as a car being depicted with the gas pedal on the left and the brake on the right, or a shirt with the buttons on the wrong side, but these issues are minor when compared to the unnatural reading flow, and some of them could be solved with an adaptation work that goes beyond just translation and blind flipping.
Manga has influenced European cartooning in a way that is somewhat different from in the U.S. Broadcast anime in France and Italy opened the European market to manga during the 1970s. French art has borrowed from Japan since the 19th century (Japonism) and has its own highly developed tradition of bande dessinée cartooning. In France, beginning in the mid-1990s, manga has proven very popular to a wide readership, accounting for about one-third of comics sales in France since 2004. According to the Japan External Trade Organization, sales of manga reached $212.6 million within France and Germany alone in 2006. France represents about 50% of the European market and is the second worldwide market, behind Japan. In 2013, there were 41 publishers of manga in France and, together with other Asian comics, manga represented around 40% of new comics releases in the country, surpassing Franco-Belgian comics for the first time. European publishers marketing manga translated into French include Asuka, Casterman, Glénat, Kana, and Pika Édition, among others. European publishers also translate manga into Dutch, German, Italian, and other languages. In 2007, about 70% of all comics sold in Germany were manga.
Manga publishers based in the United Kingdom include Gollancz and Titan Books. Manga publishers from the United States have a strong marketing presence in the United Kingdom: for example, the Tanoshimi line from Random House.
Manga made their way only gradually into U.S. markets, first in association with anime and then independently. Some U.S. fans became aware of manga in the 1970s and early 1980s. However, anime was initially more accessible than manga to U.S. fans, many of whom were college-age young people who found it easier to obtain, subtitle, and exhibit video tapes of anime than translate, reproduce, and distribute "tankōbon"-style manga books. One of the first manga translated into English and marketed in the U.S. was Keiji Nakazawa's "Barefoot Gen", an autobiographical story of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima issued by Leonard Rifas and Educomics (1980–1982). More manga were translated between the mid-1980s and 1990s, including "Golgo 13" in 1986, "Lone Wolf and Cub" from First Comics in 1987, and "Kamui", "Area 88", and "Mai the Psychic Girl", also in 1987 and all from Viz Media-Eclipse Comics. Others soon followed, including "Akira" from Marvel Comics' Epic Comics imprint, "Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind" from Viz Media, and "Appleseed" from Eclipse Comics in 1988, and later "Iczer-1" (Antarctic Press, 1994) and Ippongi Bang's "F-111 Bandit" (Antarctic Press, 1995).
In the 1980s to the mid-1990s, Japanese animation, like "Akira", "Dragon Ball", "Neon Genesis Evangelion", and "Pokémon", made a bigger impact on the fan experience and in the market than manga. Matters changed when translator-entrepreneur Toren Smith founded Studio Proteus in 1986. Smith and Studio Proteus acted as an agent and translator of many Japanese manga, including Masamune Shirow's "Appleseed" and Kōsuke Fujishima's "Oh My Goddess!", for Dark Horse and Eros Comix, eliminating the need for these publishers to seek their own contacts in Japan.
Simultaneously, the Japanese publisher Shogakukan opened a U.S. market initiative with their U.S. subsidiary Viz, enabling Viz to draw directly on Shogakukan's catalogue and translation skills.
Japanese publishers began pursuing a U.S. market in the mid-1990s due to a stagnation in the domestic market for manga. The U.S. manga market took an upturn with mid-1990s anime and manga versions of Masamune Shirow's "Ghost in the Shell" (translated by Frederik L. Schodt and Toren Smith) becoming very popular among fans. An extremely successful manga and anime translated and dubbed in English in the mid-1990s was "Sailor Moon". By 1995–1998, the "Sailor Moon" manga had been exported to over 23 countries, including China, Brazil, Mexico, Australia, North America and most of Europe. In 1997, Mixx Entertainment began publishing "Sailor Moon", along with CLAMP's "Magic Knight Rayearth", Hitoshi Iwaaki's "Parasyte" and Tsutomu Takahashi's "Ice Blade" in the monthly manga magazine "MixxZine". Mixx Entertainment, later renamed Tokyopop, also published manga in trade paperbacks and, like Viz, began aggressive marketing of manga to both young male and young female demographics.
During this period, Dark Horse Manga was a major publisher of translated manga. In addition to "Oh My Goddess!", the company published "Akira", "Astro Boy", "Berserk", "Blade of the Immortal", "Ghost in the Shell", "Lone Wolf and Cub", Yasuhiro Nightow's "Trigun" and "Blood Blockade Battlefront", "Gantz", Kouta Hirano's "Hellsing" and "Drifters", "Blood+", "Multiple Personality Detective Psycho", "FLCL", "Mob Psycho 100", and "Oreimo". The company received 13 Eisner Award nominations for its manga titles, and three of the four manga creators admitted to The Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame — Osamu Tezuka, Kazuo Koike, and Goseki Kojima — were published in Dark Horse translations.
In the following years, manga became increasingly popular, and new publishers entered the field while the established publishers greatly expanded their catalogues. The "Pokémon" manga "Electric Tale of Pikachu" issue #1 sold over 1million copies in the United States, making it the best-selling single comic book in the United States since 1993. By 2008, the U.S. and Canadian manga market generated $175 million in annual sales. Simultaneously, mainstream U.S. media began to discuss manga, with articles in "The New York Times", "Time" magazine, "The Wall Street Journal", and "Wired" magazine. As of 2017, manga distributor Viz Media is the largest publisher of graphic novels and comic books in the United States, with a 23% share of the market. BookScan sales show that manga is one of the fastest-growing areas of the comic book and narrative fiction markets. From January 2019 to May 2019, the manga market grew 16%, compared to the overall comic book market's 5% growth. The NPD Group noted that, compared to other comic book readers, manga readers are younger (76% under 30) and more diverse, including a higher female readership (16% higher than other comic books).
A number of artists in the United States have drawn comics and cartoons influenced by manga. As an early example, Vernon Grant drew manga-influenced comics while living in Japan in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Others include Frank Miller's mid-1980s "Ronin", Adam Warren and Toren Smith's 1988 "The Dirty Pair", Ben Dunn's 1987 "Ninja High School" and "Manga Shi 2000" from Crusade Comics (1997).
By the 21st century several U.S. manga publishers had begun to produce work by U.S. artists under the broad marketing-label of manga. In 2002 I.C. Entertainment, formerly Studio Ironcat and now out of business, launched a series of manga by U.S. artists called "Amerimanga". In 2004 eigoMANGA launched the "Rumble Pak" and "Sakura Pakk" anthology series. Seven Seas Entertainment followed suit with "World Manga". Simultaneously, TokyoPop introduced original English-language manga (OEL manga) later renamed "Global Manga".
Francophone artists have also developed their own versions of manga ("manfra"), like Frédéric Boilet's "la nouvelle manga". Boilet has worked in France and in Japan, sometimes collaborating with Japanese artists.
The Japanese manga industry grants a large number of awards, mostly sponsored by publishers, with the winning prize usually including publication of the winning stories in magazines released by the sponsoring publisher. Examples of these awards include:
The Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs has awarded the International Manga Award annually since May 2007.
Kyoto Seika University in Japan has offered a highly competitive course in manga since 2000. Then, several established universities and vocational schools (専門学校: "Semmon gakkou") established a .
Shuho Sato, who wrote "Umizaru" and "Say Hello to Black Jack", has created some controversy on Twitter. Sato says, "Manga school is meaningless because those schools have very low success rates. Then, I could teach novices required skills on the job in three months. Meanwhile, those school students spend several million yen, and four years, yet they are good for nothing." and that, "For instance, Keiko Takemiya, the then professor of Seika Univ., remarked in the Government Council that 'A complete novice will be able to understand where is "Tachikiri" (i.e., margin section) during four years.' On the other hand, I would imagine that, It takes about thirty minutes to completely understand that at work." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18985 |
Mexico City
Mexico City (, ; abbreviated as CDMX; ), is the capital and largest city of Mexico and the most populous city in North America. Mexico City is one of the most important cultural and financial centres in the world. It is located in the Valley of Mexico (), a large valley in the high plateaus in the center of Mexico, at an altitude of . The city has 16 subdivisions, formerly known as boroughs.
The 2009 population for the city proper was approximately 8.84 million people, with a land area of . According to the most recent definition agreed upon by the federal and state governments, the population of Greater Mexico City is 21.3 million, which makes it the second largest metropolitan area of the Western Hemisphere, the eleventh-largest agglomeration (2017), and the largest Spanish-speaking city in the world.
Greater Mexico City has a GDP of $411 billion in 2011, making Greater Mexico City one of the most productive urban areas in the world. The city was responsible for generating 15.8% of Mexico's GDP, and the metropolitan area accounted for about 22% of total national GDP. If it were an independent country, in 2013, Mexico City would be the fifth-largest economy in Latin America, five times as large as Costa Rica and about the same size as Peru.
Mexico's capital is both the oldest capital city in the Americas and one of two founded by indigenous people, the other being Quito, Ecuador. The city was originally built on an island of Lake Texcoco by the Aztecs in 1325 as Tenochtitlan, which was almost completely destroyed in the 1521 siege of Tenochtitlan and subsequently redesigned and rebuilt in accordance with the Spanish urban standards. In 1524, the municipality of Mexico City was established, known as , and as of 1585, it was officially known as (Mexico City). Mexico City was the political, administrative, and financial center of a major part of the Spanish colonial empire. After independence from Spain was achieved, the federal district was created in 1824.
After years of demanding greater political autonomy, residents were finally given the right to elect both a head of government and the representatives of the unicameral Legislative Assembly by election in 1997. Ever since, left-wing parties (first the Party of the Democratic Revolution and later the National Regeneration Movement) have controlled both of them. The city has several progressive policies, such as abortion on demand, a limited form of euthanasia, no-fault divorce, and same-sex marriage.
On 29 January 2016, it ceased to be the "Federal District" ( or ) and is now officially known as (or ), with a greater degree of autonomy. A clause in the Constitution of Mexico, however, prevents it from becoming a state within the Mexican federation, as it is the seat of power in the country, unless the capital of the country were to be relocated elsewhere.
The oldest signs of human occupation in the area of Mexico City are those of the "Peñon woman" and others found in San Bartolo Atepehuacan (Gustavo A. Madero). They were believed to correspond to the lower Cenolithic period (9500-7000 BC). However, recent studies place the age of the Penon woman at 12,700 years old, making her one of the Americas' oldest human remains. Its origin due to its mitochondrial DNA suggests Asian, or Caucasian having an appearance like Western European whites, or Australian.
The area was the destination of the migrations of the Teochichimecas during the 8th and 13th centuries, peoples that would give rise to the Toltec, and Mexica (Aztecs) cultures. The latter arrived around the 14th century to settle first on the shores of the lake.
The city of Mexico-Tenochtitlan was founded by the Mexica people in 1325. The old Mexica city that is now simply referred to as Tenochtitlan was built on an island in the center of the inland lake system of the Valley of Mexico, which it shared with a smaller city-state called Tlatelolco. According to legend, the Mexicas' principal god, Huitzilopochtli, indicated the site where they were to build their home by presenting a golden eagle perched on a prickly pear devouring a rattlesnake.
Between 1325 and 1521, Tenochtitlan grew in size and strength, eventually dominating the other city-states around Lake Texcoco and in the Valley of Mexico. When the Spaniards arrived, the Aztec Empire had reached much of Mesoamerica, touching both the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean.
After landing in Veracruz, Spanish explorer Hernán Cortés advanced upon Tenochtitlan with the aid of many of the other native peoples,
arriving there on 8 November 1519. Cortés and his men marched along the causeway leading into the city from Iztapalapa, and the city's ruler, Moctezuma II, greeted the Spaniards; they exchanged gifts, but the camaraderie did not last long.
Cortés put Moctezuma under house arrest, hoping to rule through him.
Tensions increased until, on the night of 30 June 1520 – during a struggle known as "La Noche Triste" – the Aztecs rose up against the Spanish intrusion and managed to capture or drive out the Europeans and their Tlaxcalan allies. Cortés regrouped at Tlaxcala. The Aztecs thought the Spaniards were permanently gone, and they elected a new king, Cuitláhuac, but he soon died; the next king was Cuauhtémoc.
Cortés began a siege of Tenochtitlan in May 1521. For three months, the city suffered from the lack of food and water as well as the spread of smallpox brought by the Europeans. Cortés and his allies landed their forces in the south of the island and slowly fought their way through the city. Cuauhtémoc surrendered in August 1521. The Spaniards practically razed Tenochtitlan during the final siege of the conquest.
Cortés first settled in Coyoacán, but decided to rebuild the Aztec site to erase all traces of the old order. He did not establish a territory under his own personal rule, but remained loyal to the Spanish crown. The first Spanish viceroy arrived in Mexico City fourteen years later. By that time, the city had again become a city-state, having power that extended far beyond its borders.
Although the Spanish preserved Tenochtitlan's basic layout, they built Catholic churches over the old Aztec temples and claimed the imperial palaces for themselves. Tenochtitlan was renamed "Mexico" because the Spanish found the word easier to pronounce.
The city had been the capital of the Aztec empire and in the colonial era, Mexico City became the capital of New Spain. The viceroy of Mexico or vice-king lived in the viceregal palace on the main square or Zócalo. The Mexico City Metropolitan Cathedral, the seat of the Archbishopric of New Spain, was constructed on another side of the Zócalo, as was the archbishop's palace, and across from it the building housing the city council or "ayuntamiento" of the city.
A late seventeenth-century painting of the Zócalo by Cristóbal de Villalpando depicts the main square, which had been the old Aztec ceremonial center. The existing central place of the Aztecs was effectively and permanently transformed to the ceremonial center and seat of power during the colonial period, and remains to this day in modern Mexico, the central place of the nation.
The rebuilding of the city after the siege of Tenochtitlan was accomplished by the abundant indigenous labor in the surrounding area. Franciscan friar Toribio de Benavente Motolinia, one of the Twelve Apostles of Mexico who arrived in New Spain in 1524, described the rebuilding of the city as one of the afflictions or plagues of the early period:
The seventh plague was the construction of the great City of Mexico, which, during the early years used more people than in the construction of Jerusalem. The crowds of laborers were so numerous that one could hardly move in the streets and causeways, although they are very wide. Many died from being crushed by beams, or falling from high places, or in tearing down old buildings for new ones. Preconquest Tenochtitlan was built in the center of the inland lake system, with the city reachable by canoe and by wide causeways to the mainland. The causeways were rebuilt under Spanish rule with indigenous labor.
Colonial Spanish cities were constructed on a grid pattern, if no geographical obstacle prevented it. In Mexico City, the Zócalo (main square) was the central place from which the grid was then built outward. The Spanish lived in the area closest to the main square in what was known as the "traza", in orderly, well laid-out streets. Indian residences were outside that exclusive zone and houses were haphazardly located.
Spaniards sought to keep Indians separate from Spaniards but since the Zócalo was a center of commerce for Indians, they were a constant presence in the central area, so strict segregation was never enforced. At intervals Zócalo was where major celebrations took place as well as executions. It was also the site of two major riots in the seventeenth century, one in 1624, the other in 1692.
The city grew as the population did, coming up against the lake's waters. As the depth of the lake water fluctuated, Mexico City was subject to periodic flooding. A major labor draft, the "desagüe", compelled thousands of Indians over the colonial period to work on infrastructure to prevent flooding. Floods were not only an inconvenience but also a health hazard, since during flood periods human waste polluted the city's streets. By draining the area, the mosquito population dropped as did the frequency of the diseases they spread. However, draining the wetlands also changed the habitat for fish and birds and the areas accessible for Indian cultivation close to the capital.
The 16th century saw a proliferation of churches, many of which can still be seen today in the historic center.
Economically, Mexico City prospered as a result of trade. Unlike Brazil or Peru, Mexico had easy contact with both the Atlantic and Pacific worlds. Although the Spanish crown tried to completely regulate all commerce in the city, it had only partial success.
The concept of nobility flourished in New Spain in a way not seen in other parts of the Americas. Spaniards encountered a society in which the concept of nobility mirrored that of their own. Spaniards respected the indigenous order of nobility and added to it. In the ensuing centuries, possession of a noble title in Mexico did not mean one exercised great political power, for one's power was limited even if the accumulation of wealth was not. The concept of nobility in Mexico was not political but rather a very conservative Spanish social one, based on proving the worthiness of the family. Most of these families proved their worth by making fortunes in New Spain outside of the city itself, then spending the revenues in the capital, building churches, supporting charities and building extravagant palatial homes. The craze to build the most opulent residence possible reached its height in the last half of the 18th century. Many of these palaces can still be seen today, leading to Mexico City's nickname of "The city of palaces" given by Alexander Von Humboldt.
The Grito de Dolores ("Cry of Dolores"), also known as El Grito de la Independencia ("Cry of Independence"), marked the beginning of the Mexican War of Independence. The Battle of Guanajuato, the first major engagement of the insurgency, occurred four days later. After a decade of war, Mexico's independence from Spain was effectively declared in the Declaration of Independence of the Mexican Empire on 27 September 1821. Agustín de Iturbide is proclaimed Emperor of the First Mexican Empire by Congress, crowned in the Cathedral of Mexico. Unrest followed for the next several decades, as different factions fought for control of Mexico.
The Mexican Federal District was established by the new government and by the signing of their new constitution, where the concept of a federal district was adapted from the United States Constitution. Before this designation, Mexico City had served as the seat of government for both the State of Mexico and the nation as a whole. Texcoco de Mora and then Toluca became the capital of the State of Mexico.
During the 19th century, Mexico City was the center stage of all the political disputes of the country. It was the imperial capital on two occasions (1821-1823 and 1864-1867), and of two federalist states and two centralist states that followed innumerable coups d'états in the space of half a century before the triumph of the Liberals after the Reform War. It was also the objective of one of the two French invasions to Mexico (1861-1867), and occupied for a year by American troops in the framework of the Mexican–American War (1847-1848).
The Battle for Mexico City was the series of engagements from 8 to 15 September 1847, in the general vicinity of Mexico City during the U.S. Mexican War. Included are major actions at the battles of Molino del Rey and Chapultepec, culminating with the fall of Mexico City. The U.S. Army under Winfield Scott scored a major success that ended the war. The American invasion into the Federal District was first resisted during the Battle of Churubusco on 8 August, where the Saint Patrick's Battalion, which was composed primarily of Catholic Irish and German immigrants but also Canadians, English, French, Italians, Poles, Scots, Spaniards, Swiss, and Mexicans, fought for the Mexican cause, repelling the American attacks. After defeating the Saint Patrick's Battalion, the Mexican–American War came to a close after the United States deployed combat units deep into Mexico resulting in the capture of Mexico City and Veracruz by the U.S. Army's 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th Divisions. The invasion culminated with the storming of Chapultepec Castle in the city itself.
During this battle, on 13 September, the 4th Division, under John A. Quitman, spearheaded the attack against Chapultepec and carried the castle. Future Confederate generals George E. Pickett and James Longstreet participated in the attack. Serving in the Mexican defense were the cadets later immortalized as "Los Niños Héroes" (the "Boy Heroes"). The Mexican forces fell back from Chapultepec and retreated within the city. Attacks on the Belén and San Cosme Gates came afterwards. The treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed in what is now the far north of the city.
Events such as the Mexican–American War, the French Intervention and the Reform War left the city relatively untouched and it continued to grow, especially during the rule of President Porfirio Díaz. During this time the city developed a modern infrastructure, such as roads, schools, transportation systems and communication systems. However the regime concentrated resources and wealth into the city while the rest of the country languished in poverty.
Under the rule of Porfirio Díaz, Mexico City experienced a massive transformation. Díaz's goal was to create a city which could rival the great European cities. He and his government came to the conclusion that they would use Paris as a model, while still containing remnants of Amerindian and Hispanic elements. This style of Mexican-French fusion architecture became colloquially known as Porfirian Architecture. Porfirian architecture became very influenced by Paris' Haussmannization.
During this era of Porfirian rule, the city underwent an extensive modernization. Many Spanish Colonial style buildings were destroyed, replaced by new much larger Porfirian institutions and many outlying rural zones were transformed into urban or industrialized districts with most having electrical, gas and sewage utilities by 1908. While the initial focus was on developing modern hospitals, schools, factories and massive public works, perhaps the most long-lasting effects of the Porfirian modernization were creation of the Colonia Roma area and the development of Reforma Avenue. Many of Mexico City's major attractions and landmarks were built during this era in this style.
Diaz's plans called for the entire city to eventually be modernized or rebuilt in the Porfirian/French style of the Colonia Roma; but the Mexican Revolution began soon afterward and the plans never came to fruition, with many projects being left half-completed. One of the best examples of this is the Monument to the Mexican Revolution. Originally the monument was to be the main dome of Diaz's new senate hall, but when the revolution erupted only the dome of the senate hall and its supporting pillars were completed, this was subsequently seen as a symbol by many Mexicans that the Porfirian era was over once and for all and as such, it was turned into a monument to victory over Diaz.
The capital escaped the worst of the violence of the ten-year conflict of the Mexican Revolution. The most significant episode of this period for the city was the February 1913 la Decena Trágica ("The Ten Tragic Days"), when forces counter to the elected government of Francisco I. Madero staged a successful coup. The center of the city was subjected to artillery attacks from the army stronghold of the "ciudadela" or citadel, with significant civilian casualties and the undermining of confidence in the Madero government. Victoriano Huerta, chief general of the Federal Army, saw a chance to take power, forcing Madero and Pino Suarez to sign resignations. The two were murdered later while on their way to Lecumberri prison. Huerta's ouster in July 1914 saw the entry of the armies of Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata, but the city did not experience violence. Huerta had abandoned the capital and the conquering armies marched in. Venustiano Carranza's Constitutionalist faction ultimately prevailed in the revolutionary civil war and Carranza took up residence in the presidential palace.
The history of the rest of the 20th century to the present focuses on the phenomenal growth of the city and its environmental and political consequences. In 1900, the population of Mexico City was about 500,000. The city began to grow rapidly westward in the early part of the 20th century and then began to grow upwards in the 1950s, with the Torre Latinoamericana becoming the city's first skyscraper.
The rapid development of Mexico City as a center for modernist architecture was most fully manifested in the mid-1950s construction of the Ciudad Universitaria, Mexico City, the main campus of the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Designed by the most prestigious architects of the era, including Mario Pani, Eugenio Peschard, and Enrique del Moral, the buildings feature murals by artists Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and José Chávez Morado. It has since been recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The 1968 Olympic Games brought about the construction of large sporting facilities. In 1969, the Metro system was inaugurated.
Explosive growth in the population of the city started in the 1960s, with the population overflowing the boundaries of the Federal District into the neighboring State of Mexico, especially to the north, northwest, and northeast. Between 1960 and 1980 the city's population more than doubled to nearly 9 million.
In 1980 half of all the industrial jobs in Mexico were located in Mexico City. Under relentless growth, the Mexico City government could barely keep up with services. Villagers from the countryside who continued to pour into the city to escape poverty only compounded the city's problems. With no housing available, they took over lands surrounding the city, creating huge shantytowns that extended for many miles. This caused serious air pollution in Mexico City and water pollution problems, as well as subsidence due to overextraction of groundwater. Air and water pollution has been contained and improved in several areas due to government programs, the renovation of vehicles and the modernization of public transportation.
The autocratic government that ruled Mexico City since the Revolution was tolerated, mostly because of the continued economic expansion since World War II. This was the case even though this government could not handle the population and pollution problems adequately. Nevertheless, discontent and protests began in the 1960s leading to the massacre of an unknown number of protesting students in Tlatelolco.
Three years later, a demonstration in the Maestros avenue, organized by former members of the 1968 student movement, was violently repressed by a paramilitary group called "Los Halcones", composed of gang members and teenagers from many sports clubs who received training in the U.S.
On Thursday, 19 September 1985, at 7:19 am CST, Mexico City was struck by an earthquake of magnitude 8.1 on the Richter magnitude scale. Although this earthquake was not as deadly or destructive as many similar events in Asia and other parts of Latin America, it proved to be a disaster politically for the one-party government. The government was paralyzed by its own bureaucracy and corruption, forcing ordinary citizens to create and direct their own rescue efforts and to reconstruct much of the housing that was lost as well.
However, the last straw may have been the controversial elections of 1988. That year, the presidency was set between the P.R.I.'s candidate, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, and a coalition of left-wing parties led by Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, son of the former president Lázaro Cárdenas. The counting system "fell" because coincidentally the light went out and suddenly, when it returned, the winning candidate was Salinas, even though Cárdenas had the upper hand.
As a result of the fraudulent election, Cárdenas became a member of the Party of the Democratic Revolution. Discontent over the election eventually led Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas to become the first elected mayor of Mexico City in 1997. Cárdenas promised a more democratic government, and his party claimed some victories against crime, pollution, and other major problems. He resigned in 1999 to run for the presidency.
Mexico City is located in the Valley of Mexico, sometimes called the Basin of Mexico. This valley is located in the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt in the high plateaus of south-central Mexico. It has a minimum altitude of above sea level and is surrounded by mountains and volcanoes that reach elevations of over . This valley has no natural drainage outlet for the waters that flow from the mountainsides, making the city vulnerable to flooding. Drainage was engineered through the use of canals and tunnels starting in the 17th century.
Mexico City primarily rests on what was Lake Texcoco. Seismic activity is frequent there. Lake Texcoco was drained starting from the 17th century. Although none of the lake waters remain, the city rests on the lake bed's heavily saturated clay. This soft base is collapsing due to the over-extraction of groundwater, called "groundwater-related subsidence". Since the beginning of the 20th century the city has sunk as much as in some areas. This sinking is causing problems with runoff and wastewater management, leading to flooding problems, especially during the summer. The entire lake bed is now paved over and most of the city's remaining forested areas lie in the southern boroughs of Milpa Alta, Tlalpan and Xochimilco.
Mexico City has a subtropical highland climate (Köppen climate classification "Cwb"), due to its tropical location but high elevation. The lower region of the valley receives less rainfall than the upper regions of the south; the lower boroughs of Iztapalapa, Iztacalco, Venustiano Carranza and the east portion of Gustavo A. Madero are usually drier and warmer than the upper southern boroughs of Tlalpan and Milpa Alta, a mountainous region of pine and oak trees known as the range of Ajusco.
The average annual temperature varies from , depending on the altitude of the borough. The temperature is rarely below or above . At the Tacubaya observatory, the lowest temperature ever registered was on 13 February 1960, and the highest temperature on record was on 9 May 1998.
Overall precipitation is heavily concentrated in the summer months, and includes dense hail.
Snow falls in the city very rarely, although somewhat more often in nearby mountain tops. Throughout its history, the Central Valley of Mexico was accustomed to having several snowfalls per decade (including a period between 1878 and 1895 in which every single year—except 1880—recorded snowfalls) mostly lake-effect snow. The effects of the draining of Lake Texcoco and global warming have greatly reduced snowfalls after the snow flurries of 12 February 1907. Since 1908, snow has only fallen three times, snow on 14 February 1920; snow flurries on 14 March 1940; and on 12 January 1967, when of snow fell on the city, the most on record. The 1967 snowstorm coincided with the operation of "Deep Drainage System" that resulted in the total draining of what was left of Lake Texcoco. After the disappearance of Lake Texcoco, snow has never fallen again over Mexico City.
The region of the Valley of Mexico receives anti-cyclonic systems. The weak winds of these systems do not allow for the dispersion, outside the basin, of the air pollutants which are produced by the 50,000 industries and 4 million vehicles operating in and around the metropolitan area.
The area receives about of annual rainfall, which is concentrated from May through October with little or no precipitation the remainder of the year. The area has two main seasons. The wet humid summer runs from May to October when winds bring in tropical moisture from the sea, the wettest month being July. The cool sunny winter runs from November to April, when the air is relatively drier, the driest month being December. This season is subdivided into a cold winter period and a warm spring period. The cold period spans from November to February, when polar air masses push down from the north and keep the air fairly dry. The warm period extends from March to May when subtropical winds again dominate but do not yet carry enough moisture for rain to form.
Originally much of the valley lay beneath the waters of Lake Texcoco, a system of interconnected salt and freshwater lakes. The Aztecs built dikes to separate the fresh water used to raise crops in "chinampas" and to prevent recurrent floods. These dikes were destroyed during the siege of Tenochtitlan, and during colonial times the Spanish regularly drained the lake to prevent floods. Only a small section of the original lake remains, located outside Mexico City, in the municipality of Atenco, State of Mexico.
Architects Teodoro González de León and Alberto Kalach along with a group of Mexican urbanists, engineers and biologists have developed the project plan for "Recovering the City of Lakes". If approved by the government the project will contribute to the supply of water from natural sources to the Valley of Mexico, the creation of new natural spaces, a great improvement in air quality, and greater population establishment planning.
By the 1990s Mexico City had become infamous as one of the world's most polluted cities; however, the city has become a model for drastically lowering pollution levels. By 2014 carbon monoxide pollution had dropped drastically, while levels of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide were nearly three times lower than in 1992. The levels of signature pollutants in Mexico City are similar to those of Los Angeles. Despite the cleanup, the metropolitan area is still the most ozone-polluted part of the country, with ozone levels 2.5 times beyond WHO-defined safe limits.
To clean up pollution, the federal and local governments implemented numerous plans including the constant monitoring and reporting of environmental conditions, such as ozone and nitrogen oxides. When the levels of these two pollutants reached critical levels, contingency actions were implemented which included closing factories, changing school hours, and extending the "A day without a car" program to two days of the week. The government also instituted industrial technology improvements, a strict biannual vehicle emission inspection and the reformulation of gasoline and diesel fuels. The introduction of Metrobús bus rapid transit and the Ecobici bike-sharing were among efforts to encourage alternate, greener forms of transportation.
The Acta Constitutiva de la Federación of 31 January 1824, and the Federal Constitution of 4 October 1824, fixed the political and administrative organization of the United Mexican States after the Mexican War of Independence. In addition, Section XXVIII of Article 50 gave the new Congress the right to choose where the federal government would be located. This location would then be appropriated as federal land, with the federal government acting as the local authority. The two main candidates to become the capital were Mexico City and Querétaro.
Due in large part to the persuasion of representative Servando Teresa de Mier, Mexico City was chosen because it was the center of the country's population and history, even though Querétaro was closer to the center geographically. The choice was official on 18 November 1824, and Congress delineated a surface area of two leagues square (8,800 acres) centered on the Zocalo. This area was then separated from the State of Mexico, forcing that state's government to move from the Palace of the Inquisition (now Museum of Mexican Medicine) in the city to Texcoco. This area did not include the population centers of the towns of Coyoacán, Xochimilco, Mexicaltzingo and Tlalpan, all of which remained as part of the State of Mexico.
In 1854 president Antonio López de Santa Anna enlarged the area of Mexico City almost eightfold from the original , annexing the rural and mountainous areas to secure the strategic mountain passes to the south and southwest to protect the city in event of a foreign invasion. (The Mexican–American War had just been fought.) The last changes to the limits of Mexico City were made between 1898 and 1902, reducing the area to the current by adjusting the southern border with the state of Morelos. By that time, the total number of municipalities within Mexico City was twenty-two.
While Mexico City was ruled by the federal government through an appointed governor, the municipalities within it were autonomous, and this duality of powers created tension between the municipalities and the federal government for more than a century. In 1903, Porfirio Díaz largely reduced the powers of the municipalities within the Federal District. Eventually, in December 1928, the federal government decided to abolish all the municipalities of the Federal District. In place of the municipalities, the Federal District was divided into one "Central Department" and 13 "delegaciones" (boroughs) administered directly by the government of the Federal District. The Central Department was integrated by the former municipalities of Mexico City, Tacuba, Tacubaya and Mixcoac.
In 1941, the General Anaya borough was merged with the Central Department, which was then renamed "Mexico City" (thus reviving the name but not the autonomous municipality). From 1941 to 1970, the Federal District comprised twelve "delegaciones" and Mexico City. In 1970, Mexico City was split into four different "delegaciones": Cuauhtémoc, Miguel Hidalgo, Venustiano Carranza and Benito Juárez, increasing the number of "delegaciones" to 16. Since then, the whole Federal District, whose "delegaciones" had by then almost formed a single urban area, began to be considered "de facto" a synonym of Mexico City.
The lack of a "de jure" stipulation left a legal vacuum that led to a number of sterile discussions about whether one concept had engulfed the other or if the latter had ceased to exist altogether. In 1993, the situation was solved by an amendment to the 44th article of the Constitution of Mexico; Mexico City and the Federal District were stated to be the same entity. The amendment was later introduced into the second article of the Statute of Government of the Federal District.
On 29 January 2016, Mexico City ceased to be the "Federal District" (Spanish: "Distrito Federal" or D.F.), and was officially renamed "Ciudad de México" (or "CDMX"). On that date, Mexico City began a transition to become the country's 32nd federal entity, giving it a level of autonomy comparable to that of a state. It will have its own constitution and its legislature, and its "delegaciones" will now be headed by mayors. Because of a clause in the Mexican Constitution, however, as it is the seat of the powers of the federation, it can never become a state, or the capital of the country has to be relocated elsewhere.
Mexico City, being the seat of the powers of the Union, belongs not to any particular state but to all of them. Therefore, the president, representing the federation, used to designate the head of government of the national capital (today the head of the government of Mexico City), sometimes called outside Mexico as the "Mayor" of Mexico City. In the 1980s, the dramatic increase in population of the previous decades, the inherent political inconsistencies of the system, and dissatisfaction with the inadequate response of the federal government after the 1985 earthquake made residents begin to request political and administrative autonomy to manage their local affairs.
In response to the demands, Mexico City received a greater degree of autonomy, with the 1987 elaboration the first Statute of Government ("Estatuto de Gobierno") and the creation of an assembly of representatives. In the 1990s, this autonomy was further expanded, and since 1997, residents can directly elect the head of government to Mexico City and the representatives of a unicameral Legislative Assembly, which succeeded the previous assembly, by popular vote.
The first elected head of government was Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas. He resigned in 1999 to run in the 2000 presidential elections and designated Rosario Robles to succeed him, who became the first woman, elected or otherwise, to govern Mexico City. In 2000, Andrés Manuel López Obrador was elected, and he resigned in 2005 to run in the 2006 presidential elections; Alejandro Encinas was designated by the Legislative Assembly to finish the term. In 2006, Marcelo Ebrard was elected to serve until 2012.
The city has a Statute of Government, and as of its ratification on 31 January 2017, a , similar to the states of the Union. As part of the recent changes in autonomy, the budget is administered locally; it is proposed by the head of government and approved by the Legislative Assembly. Nonetheless, it is the Congress of the Union that sets the ceiling to internal and external public debt issued by the city government.
According to the 44th article of the Mexican Constitution, if the powers of the Union move to another city, Mexico City would become a new state, the "State of the Valley of Mexico", with the new limits set by the Congress of the Union.
In 2012, elections were held for the post of head of government and the representatives of the Legislative Assembly. Heads of government are elected for a six-year period without the possibility of re-election. Traditionally, the position has been considered as the second most important executive office in the country.
The Legislative Assembly of Mexico City is formed, as it is the case for state legislatures in Mexico, by both single-seat and proportional seats, making it a system of parallel voting. Mexico City is divided into 40 electoral constituencies of similar population which elect one representative by the plurality voting system, locally called "uninominal deputies". Mexico City, as a whole, is a single constituency for the parallel election of 26 representatives, elected by proportional representation, with open-party lists, locally called "plurinominal deputies".
Even though proportionality is supposed to prevent a party from being overrepresented, several restrictions apply in the assignation of the seats. No party can have more than 63% of all seats, both uninominal and plurinominal. In the 2006 elections, the PRD got the absolute majority in the direct uninominal elections, securing 34 of the 40 FPP seats. As such, the PRD was not assigned any plurinominal seat to comply with the law that prevents over-representation. The overall composition of the Legislative Assembly is:
The politics pursued by the administrations of heads of government in Mexico City since the second half of the 20th century have usually been more liberal than those of the rest of the country, whether with the support of the federal government, as was the case with the approval of several comprehensive environmental laws in the 1980s, or by laws that were since approved by the Legislative Assembly. The Legislative Assembly expanded provisions on abortions, becoming the first federal entity to expand abortion in Mexico beyond cases of rape and economic reasons, to permit it at the choice of the mother before the 12th week of pregnancy. In December 2009, the then Federal District became the first city in Latin America and one of very few in the world to legalize same-sex marriage.
For administrative purposes, the city is divided into 16 "alcadias", or councils (formerly "delegaciones"). While they are not fully equivalent to municipalities, the boroughs have gained significant autonomy, and since 2000, their heads of government have been elected directly by plurality (they had been appointed by the Head of Government). Since Mexico City is organized entirely as a Federal District, most of the city services are provided or organized by the city government, not by the boroughs themselves; in the constituent states, such services would be provided by the municipalities. The boroughs of Mexico City with their 2010 populations are:
The boroughs are composed of hundreds of "colonias", or neighborhoods, which have no jurisdictional autonomy or representation. The Historic Center, in the borough of Cuauhtémoc, is the oldest part of the city (along with some other, formerly separate colonial towns such as Coyoacán and San Ángel), some of the buildings dating back to the 16th century. Other well-known central neighborhoods include Condesa, known for its Art Deco architecture and its restaurant scene; Colonia Roma, a beaux arts neighborhood and artistic and culinary hot-spot, the Zona Rosa, formerly the center of nightlife and restaurants, now reborn as the center of the LGBT and Korean-Mexican communities; and Tepito and La Lagunilla, known for their local working-class folklore and large flea markets. Santa María la Ribera and San Rafael are the latest neighborhoods of magnificent Porfiriato architecture seeing the first signs of gentrification.
West of the Historic Center ("Centro Histórico") along Paseo de la Reforma are many of the city's wealthiest neighborhoods such as Polanco, Lomas de Chapultepec, Bosques de las Lomas, Santa Fe, and (in the State of Mexico) Interlomas, which are also the city's most important areas of class A office space, corporate headquarters, skyscrapers, and shopping malls. Nevertheless, some areas of lower-income "colonias" are right next to rich neighborhoods, particularly in the case of Santa Fe.
The south of the city is home to some other high-income neighborhoods such as Colonia del Valle and Jardines del Pedregal and the formerly separate colonial towns of Coyoacán, San Ángel, and San Jerónimo. Along Avenida Insurgentes from Paseo de la Reforma, near the center, south past the World Trade Center and UNAM university toward the Periférico ring road, is another important corridor of corporate office space. The far-southern boroughs of Xochimilco and Tláhuac have a significant rural population, with Milpa Alta being entirely rural.
East of the center are mostly lower-income areas with some middle-class neighborhoods such as Jardín Balbuena. Urban sprawl continues further east for many miles into the State of Mexico, including Ciudad Nezahualcoyotl, now increasingly middle class but once full of informal settlements. Such slums are still found on the eastern edges of the metropolitan area in the Chalco area.
North of the Historic Center, Azcapotzalco and Gustavo A. Madero have important industrial centers and neighborhoods that range from established middle-class "colonias" such as Claveria and Lindavista to huge low-income housing areas that share hillsides with adjacent municipalities in the State of Mexico. In recent years, much of northern Mexico City's industry has moved to nearby municipalities in the State of Mexico. Northwest of Mexico City itself is Ciudad Satélite, a vast middle-class to upper-middle-class residential and business area.
The Human Development Index report of 2005 shows that there were three boroughs with a very high Human Development Index, 12 with a high HDI value (9 above .85), and one with a medium HDI value (almost high). Benito Juárez borough had the highest HDI of the country (0.9510) followed by Miguel Hidalgo, which came up fourth nationally with an HDI of (0.9189), and Coyoacán was fifth nationally, with an HDI of (0.9169). Cuajimalpa (15th), Cuauhtémoc (23rd), and Azcapotzalco (25th) also had very high values of 0.8994, 0.8922, and 0.8915, respectively.
In contrast, the boroughs of Xochimilco (172nd), Tláhuac (177th), and Iztapalapa (183rd) presented the lowest HDI values of Mexico City, with values of 0.8481, 0.8473, and 0.8464, respectively, which are still in the global high-HDI range. The only borough that did not have a high HDI was that of rural Milpa Alta, which had a "medium" HDI of 0.7984, far below those of all the other boroughs (627th nationally, the rest being in the top 200). Mexico City's HDI for the 2005 report was 0.9012 (very high), and its 2010 value of 0.9225 (very high), or (by newer methodology) 0.8307, was Mexico's highest.
Greater Mexico City is formed by Mexico City, 60 municipalities from the State of Mexico and one from the state of Hidalgo. Greater Mexico City is the largest metropolitan area in Mexico and the area with the highest population density. , 21,163,226 people live in this urban agglomeration, of which 8,841,916 live in Mexico City proper. In terms of population, the biggest municipalities that are part of Greater Mexico City (excluding Mexico City proper) are:
The above municipalities are located in the state of Mexico but are part of the Greater Mexico City area. Approximately 75% (10 million) of the state of México's population live in municipalities that are part of Greater Mexico City's conurbation.
Greater Mexico City was the fastest growing metropolitan area in the country until the late 1980s. Since then, and through a policy of decentralization in order to reduce the environmental pollutants of the growing conurbation, the annual rate of growth of the agglomeration has decreased, and it is lower than that of the other four largest metropolitan areas (namely Greater Guadalajara, Greater Monterrey, Greater Puebla and Greater Toluca) even though it is still positive.
The net migration rate of Mexico City proper from 1995 to 2000 was negative, which implies that residents are moving to the suburbs of the metropolitan area, or to other states of Mexico. In addition, some inner suburbs are losing population to outer suburbs, indicating the continuing expansion of Greater Mexico City.
The Secretariat of Public Security of Mexico City (Secretaría de Seguridad Pública de la Ciudad de México – SSP) manages a combined force of over 90,000 officers in Mexico City. The SSP is charged with maintaining public order and safety in the heart of Mexico City. The historic district is also roamed by tourist police, aiming to orient and serve tourists. These horse-mounted agents dress in traditional uniforms.
The investigative Judicial Police of Mexico City (Policía Judicial de la Ciudad de México – PJCDMX) is organized under the Office of the Attorney General of Mexico City (the Procuraduría General de Justicia de la Ciudad de México). The PGJCDMX maintains 16 precincts (delegaciones) with an estimated 3,500 judicial police, 1,100 investigating agents for prosecuting attorneys (agentes del ministerio público), and nearly 1,000 criminology experts or specialists (peritos).
Between 2000 and 2004 an average of 478 crimes were reported each day in Mexico City; however, the actual crime rate is thought to be much higher "since most people are reluctant to report crime". Under policies enacted by Mayor Marcelo Ebrard between 2009 and 2011, Mexico City underwent a major security upgrade with violent and petty crime rates both falling significantly despite the rise in violent crime in other parts of the country. Some of the policies enacted included the installation of 11,000 security cameras around the city and a very large expansion of the police force. Mexico City has one of the world's highest police officer-to-resident ratios, with one uniformed officer per 100 citizens.
Since 1997 the prison population has increased by more than 500%. Political scientist Markus-Michael Müller argues that mostly informal street vendors are hit by these measures. He sees punishment "related to the growing politicisation of security and crime issues and the resulting criminalisation of the people living at the margins of urban society, in particular those who work in the city's informal economy."
In 2016, the incidence of femicides was 3.2 per 100 000 inhabitants, the national average being 4.2. A 2015 city government report found that two of three women over the age of 15 in the capital suffered some form of violence. In addition to street harassment, one of the places where women in Mexico City live in violence is public transport. Annually the Metro of Mexico City receives 300 complaints of sexual harassment.
While the violence against women in Mexico city is rising, there is still a large number of incidents of kidnappings and killings that go undetected and unreported due to the corruption in the police department.
Mexico City is home to some of the best private hospitals in the country, including Hospital Ángeles, Hospital ABC and Médica Sur. The national public healthcare institution for private-sector employees, IMSS, has its largest facilities in Mexico City—including the National Medical Center and the La Raza Medical Center—and has an annual budget of over 6 billion pesos. The IMSS and other public health institutions, including the ISSSTE (Public Sector Employees' Social Security Institute) and the National Health Ministry (SSA) maintain large specialty facilities in the city. These include the National Institutes of Cardiology, Nutrition, Psychiatry, Oncology, Pediatrics, Rehabilitation, among others.
The World Bank has sponsored a project to curb air pollution through public transport improvements and the Mexican government has started shutting down polluting factories. They have phased out diesel buses and mandated new emission controls on new cars; since 1993 all new cars must be fitted with a catalytic converter, which reduces the emissions released. Trucks must use only liquefied petroleum gas (LPG). Also construction of an underground rail system was begun in 1968 in order to help curb air pollution problems and alleviate traffic congestion. It currently has over of track and carries over 5 million people every day. Fees are kept low to encourage use of the system and during rush hours the crush is so great, that authorities have reserved a special carriage specifically for women. Due to these initiatives and others, the air quality in Mexico City has begun to improve; it is currently cleaner than it was in 1991, when the air quality was declared to be a public health risk for 355 days of the year.
Mexico City is one of the most important economic hubs in Latin America. The city proper produces 15.8% of the country's gross domestic product. According to a study conducted by PwC, Mexico City had a GDP of $390 billion, ranking it as the eighth richest city in the world and the richest in Latin America. Mexico City alone would rank as the 30th largest economy in the world.
Mexico City is the greatest contributor to the country's industrial GDP (15.8%) and also the greatest contributor to the country's GDP in the service sector (25.3%). Due to the limited non-urbanized space at the south—most of which is protected through environmental laws—the contribution of Mexico City in agriculture is the smallest of all federal entities in the country. Mexico City has one of the world's fastest-growing economies and its GDP is set to double from 2008 to 2020.
In 2002, Mexico City had a Human Development Index score of 0.915, identical to that of South Korea.
The top twelve percent of GDP per capita holders in the city had a mean disposable income of in 2007. The high spending power of Mexico City inhabitants makes the city attractive for companies offering prestige and luxury goods.
The economic reforms of President Carlos Salinas de Gortari had a tremendous effect on the city, as a number of businesses, including banks and airlines, were privatized. He also signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). This led to decentralization and a shift in Mexico City's economic base, from manufacturing to services, as most factories moved away to either the State of Mexico, or more commonly to the northern border. By contrast, corporate office buildings set their base in the city.
Historically, and since Pre-Columbian times, the Valley of Anahuac has been one of the most densely populated areas in Mexico. When the Federal District was created in 1824, the urban area of Mexico City extended approximately to the area of today's Cuauhtémoc borough. At the beginning of the 20th century, the "elites" began migrating to the south and west and soon the small towns of Mixcoac and San Ángel were incorporated by the growing conurbation. According to the 1921 census, 54.78% of the city's population was considered Mestizo (Indigenous mixed with European), 22.79% considered European, and 18.74% considered Indigenous. This was the last Mexican Census which asked people to self-identify with a heritage other than Amerindian. However, the census had the particularity that, unlike racial/ethnic census in other countries, it was focused in the perception of cultural heritage rather than in a racial perception, leading to a good number of white people to identify with "Mixed heritage" due to cultural influence. In 1921, Mexico City had less than one million inhabitants.
Up to the 1990s, the Federal District was the most populous federal entity in Mexico, but since then, its population has remained stable at around 8.7 million. The growth of the city has extended beyond the limits of the city to 59 municipalities of the State of Mexico and 1 in the state of Hidalgo. With a population of approximately 19.8 million inhabitants (2008), it is one of the most populous conurbations in the world. Nonetheless, the annual rate of growth of the Metropolitan Area of Mexico City is much lower than that of other large urban agglomerations in Mexico, a phenomenon most likely attributable to the environmental policy of decentralization. The net migration rate of Mexico City from 1995 to 2000 was negative.
Representing around 18.74% of the city's population, indigenous peoples from different areas of Mexico have migrated to the capital in search of better economic opportunities. Nahuatl, Otomi, Mixtec, Zapotec and Mazahua are the indigenous languages with the greatest number of speakers in Mexico City.
On the other hand, Mexico City is also home to large communities of expatriates and immigrants, most notably from the rest of North America (U.S. and Canada), from South America (mainly from Argentina and Colombia, but also from Brazil, Chile, Uruguay and Venezuela), from Central America and the Caribbean (mainly from Cuba, Guatemala, El Salvador, Haiti and Honduras); from Europe (mainly from Spain, Germany and Switzerland, but also from Czech Republic, Hungary, France, Italy, Ireland, the Netherlands, Poland and Romania), from the Middle East (mainly from Egypt, Lebanon and Syria); and recently from Asia-Pacific (mainly from China, Japan, Pakistan, India and South Korea). Historically since the era of New Spain, many Filipinos settled in the city and have become integrated in Mexican society. While no official figures have been reported, population estimates of each of these communities are quite significant.
Mexico City is home to the largest population of U.S. Americans living outside the United States. Current estimates are as high as 700,000 U.S. Americans living in Mexico City, while in 1999 the U.S. Bureau of Consular Affairs estimated over 440,000 Americans lived in the Mexico City Metropolitan Area.
The majority (82%) of the residents in Mexico City are Roman Catholic, slightly lower than the 2010 census national percentage of 87%, though it has been decreasing over the last decades. Many other religions and philosophies are also practiced in the city: many different types of Protestant groups, different types of Jewish communities, Buddhist, Islamic and other spiritual and philosophical groups. There are also growing numbers of irreligious people, whether agnostic or atheist.
The patron saint of Mexico City is Saint Philip of Jesus, a Mexican Catholic missionary who became one of the Twenty-six Martyrs of Japan.
The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Mexico is the largest archdiocese in the world. There are two Roman Catholic cathedrals in the city, the Mexico City Metropolitan Cathedral and the Iztapalapa Cathedral, and three former Catholic churches who are now the cathedrals of other rites, the San José de Gracia Cathedral (Anglican church), the Porta Coeli Cathedral (Melkite Greek Catholic church) and the Valvanera Cathedral (Maronite church).
Mexico City is a destination for many foreign tourists. The Historic center of Mexico City ("Centro Histórico") and the "floating gardens" of Xochimilco in the southern borough have been declared World Heritage Sites by UNESCO. Landmarks in the Historic Center include the Plaza de la Constitución (Zócalo), the main central square with its epoch-contrasting Spanish-era Metropolitan Cathedral and National Palace, ancient Aztec temple ruins Templo Mayor ("Major Temple") and modern structures, all within a few steps of one another. (The Templo Mayor was discovered in 1978 while workers were digging to place underground electric cables).
The most recognizable icon of Mexico City is the golden Angel of Independence on the wide, elegant avenue Paseo de la Reforma, modeled by the order of the Emperor Maximilian of Mexico after the Champs-Élysées in Paris. This avenue was designed over the Americas' oldest known major roadway in the 19th century to connect the National Palace (seat of government) with the Castle of Chapultepec, the imperial residence. Today, this avenue is an important financial district in which the Mexican Stock Exchange and several corporate headquarters are located. Another important avenue is the Avenida de los Insurgentes, which extends and is one of the longest single avenues in the world.
Chapultepec Park houses the Chapultepec Castle, now a museum on a hill that overlooks the park and its numerous museums, monuments and the national zoo and the National Museum of Anthropology (which houses the Aztec Calendar Stone). Another piece of architecture is the Palacio de Bellas Artes, a white marble theatre/museum whose weight is such that it has gradually been sinking into the soft ground below. Its construction began during the presidency of Porfirio Díaz and ended in 1934, after being interrupted by the Mexican Revolution in the 1920s. The Plaza de las Tres Culturas, in this square are located the College of Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco, that is the first and oldest European school of higher learning in the Americas, and the archaeological site of the city-state of Tlatelolco, and the shrine and Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe are also important sites. There is a double-decker bus, known as the "Turibus", that circles most of these sites, and has timed audio describing the sites in multiple languages as they are passed.
In addition, according to the Secretariat of Tourism, the city has about 170 museums—is among the top ten of cities in the world with highest number of museums—over 100 art galleries, and some 30 concert halls, all of which maintain a constant cultural activity during the whole year. It has either the third or fourth-highest number of theatres in the world after New York, London and perhaps Toronto. Many areas (e.g. Palacio Nacional and the National Institute of Cardiology) have murals painted by Diego Rivera. He and his wife Frida Kahlo lived in Coyoacán, where several of their homes, studios, and art collections are open to the public. The house where Leon Trotsky was initially granted asylum and finally murdered in 1940 is also in Coyoacán.
In addition, there are several "haciendas" that are now restaurants, such as the San Ángel Inn, the Hacienda de Tlalpan, Hacienda de Cortés and the Hacienda de los Morales.
Having been capital of a vast pre-Hispanic empire, and also the capital of richest viceroyalty within the Spanish Empire (ruling over a vast territory in the Americas and Spanish West Indies), and, finally, the capital of the United Mexican States, Mexico City has a rich history of artistic expression. Since the mesoamerican pre-Classical period the inhabitants of the settlements around Lake Texcoco produced many works of art and complex craftsmanship, some of which are today displayed at the world-renowned National Museum of Anthropology and the "Templo Mayor" museum. While many pieces of pottery and stone-engraving have survived, the great majority of the Amerindian iconography was destroyed during the Conquest of Mexico.
Much of the early colonial art stemmed from the codices (Aztec illustrated books), aiming to recover and preserve some Aztec and other Amerindian iconography and history. From then, artistic expressions in Mexico were mostly religious in theme. The Metropolitan Cathedral still displays works by Juan de Rojas, Juan Correa and an oil painting whose authorship has been attributed to Murillo. Secular works of art of this period include the equestrian sculpture of Charles IV of Spain, locally known as "El Caballito" ("The little horse"). This piece, in bronze, was the work of Manuel Tolsá and it has been placed at the Plaza Tolsá, in front of the Palacio de Mineria (Mining Palace). Directly in front of this building is the Museo Nacional de Arte (Munal) (the National Museum of Art).
During the 19th century, an important producer of art was the Academia de San Carlos (San Carlos Art Academy), founded during colonial times, and which later became the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas (the National School of Arts) including painting, sculpture and graphic design, one of UNAM's art schools. Many of the works produced by the students and faculty of that time are now displayed in the Museo Nacional de San Carlos (National Museum of San Carlos). One of the students, José María Velasco, is considered one of the greatest Mexican landscape painters of the 19th century. Porfirio Díaz's regime sponsored arts, especially those that followed the French school. Popular arts in the form of cartoons and illustrations flourished, e.g. those of José Guadalupe Posada and Manuel Manilla. The permanent collection of the San Carlos Museum also includes paintings by European masters such as Rembrandt, Velázquez, Murillo, and Rubens.
After the Mexican Revolution, an avant-garde artistic movement originated in Mexico City: muralism. Many of the works of muralists José Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro Siqueiros and Diego Rivera are displayed in numerous buildings in the city, most notably at the National Palace and the Palacio de Bellas Artes. Frida Kahlo, wife of Rivera, with a strong nationalist expression, was also one of the most renowned of Mexican painters. Her house has become a museum that displays many of her works.
The former home of Rivera muse Dolores Olmedo houses the namesake museum. The facility is in Xochimilco borough in southern Mexico City and includes several buildings surrounded by sprawling manicured lawns. It houses a large collection of Rivera and Kahlo paintings and drawings, as well as living "Xoloizcuintles" (Mexican Hairless Dog). It also regularly hosts small but important temporary exhibits of classical and modern art (e.g. Venetian Masters and Contemporary New York artists).
During the 20th century, many artists immigrated to Mexico City from different regions of Mexico, such as Leopoldo Méndez, an engraver from Veracruz, who supported the creation of the socialist Taller de la Gráfica Popular (Popular Graphics Workshop), designed to help blue-collar workers find a venue to express their art. Other painters came from abroad, such as Catalan painter Remedios Varo and other Spanish and Jewish exiles. It was in the second half of the 20th century that the artistic movement began to drift apart from the Revolutionary theme. José Luis Cuevas opted for a modernist style in contrast to the muralist movement associated with social politics.
Mexico City has numerous museums dedicated to art, including Mexican colonial, modern and contemporary art, and international art. The Museo Tamayo was opened in the mid-1980s to house the collection of international contemporary art donated by famed Mexican (born in the state of Oaxaca) painter Rufino Tamayo. The collection includes pieces by Picasso, Klee, Kandinsky, Warhol and many others, though most of the collection is stored while visiting exhibits are shown. The Museo de Arte Moderno (Museum of Modern Art) is a repository of Mexican artists from the 20th century, including Rivera, Orozco, Siqueiros, Kahlo, Gerzso, Carrington, Tamayo, among others, and also regularly hosts temporary exhibits of international modern art. In southern Mexico City, the Museo Carrillo Gil (Carrillo Gil Museum) showcases avant-garde artists, as does the University Museum/Contemporary Art (Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo – or MUAC), designed by famed Mexican architect Teodoro González de León, inaugurated in late 2008.
The Museo Soumaya, named after the wife of Mexican magnate Carlos Slim, has the largest private collection of original Rodin sculptures outside Paris. It also has a large collection of Dalí sculptures, and recently began showing pieces in its masters collection including El Greco, Velázquez, Picasso and Canaletto. The museum inaugurated a new futuristic-design facility in 2011 just north of Polanco, while maintaining a smaller facility in Plaza de Loreto in southern Mexico City. The Colección Júmex is a contemporary art museum located on the sprawling grounds of the Jumex juice company in the northern industrial suburb of Ecatepec. It is said to have the largest private contemporary art collection in Latin America and hosts pieces from its permanent collection as well as traveling exhibits by leading contemporary artists. The new Museo Júmex in Nuevo Polanco was slated to open in November 2013. The Museo de San Ildefonso, housed in the Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso in Mexico City's historic downtown district is a 17th-century colonnaded palace housing an art museum that regularly hosts world-class exhibits of Mexican and international art. Recent exhibits have included those on David LaChapelle, Antony Gormley and Ron Mueck. The National Museum of Art (Museo Nacional de Arte) is also located in a former palace in the historic center. It houses a large collection of pieces by all major Mexican artists of the last 400 years and also hosts visiting exhibits.
Jack Kerouac, the noted American author, spent extended periods of time in the city, and wrote his masterpiece volume of poetry "Mexico City Blues" here. Another American author, William S. Burroughs, also lived in the Colonia Roma neighborhood of the city for some time. It was here that he accidentally shot his wife.
Most of Mexico City's more than 150 museums can be visited from Tuesday to Sunday from 10 am to 5 pm, although some of them have extended schedules, such as the Museum of Anthropology and History, which is open to 7 pm. In addition to this, entrance to most museums are free on Sunday. In some cases a modest fee may be charged.
Another major addition to the city's museum scene is the Museum of Remembrance and Tolerance (Museo de la Memoria y Tolerancia), inaugurated in early 2011. The brainchild of two young Mexican women as a Holocaust museum, the idea morphed into a unique museum dedicated to showcasing all major historical events of discrimination and genocide. Permanent exhibits include those on the Holocaust and other large-scale atrocities. It also houses temporary exhibits; one on Tibet was inaugurated by the Dalai Lama in September 2011.
Mexico City is home to a number of orchestras offering season programs. These include the Mexico City Philharmonic, which performs at the Sala Ollin Yoliztli; the National Symphony Orchestra, whose home base is the Palacio de Bellas Artes (Palace of the Fine Arts), a masterpiece of art nouveau and art decó styles; the Philharmonic Orchestra of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (OFUNAM), and the Minería Symphony Orchestra, both of which perform at the Sala Nezahualcóyotl, which was the first wrap-around concert hall of the world's western hemisphere when inaugurated in 1976. There are also many smaller ensembles that enrich the city's musical scene, including the Carlos Chávez Youth Symphony, the Cuarteto Latinoamericano, the New World Orchestra (Orquesta del Nuevo Mundo), the National Polytechnical Symphony and the Bellas Artes Chamber Orchestra (Orquesta de Cámara de Bellas Artes).
The city is also a leading center of popular culture and music. There are a multitude of venues hosting Spanish and foreign-language performers. These include the 10,000-seat National Auditorium that regularly schedules the Spanish and English-language pop and rock artists, as well as many of the world's leading performing arts ensembles, the auditorium also broadcasts grand opera performances from New York's Metropolitan Opera on giant, high definition screens. In 2007 National Auditorium was selected world's best venue by multiple genre media.
Other sites for pop-artist performances include the 3,000-seat Teatro Metropolitan, the 15,000-seat Palacio de los Deportes, and the larger 50,000-seat Foro Sol Stadium, where popular international artists perform on a regular basis. The Cirque du Soleil has held several seasons at the Carpa Santa Fe, in the Santa Fe district in the western part of the city. There are numerous venues for smaller musical ensembles and solo performers. These include the Hard Rock Live, Bataclán, Foro Scotiabank, Lunario, Circo Volador and Voilá Acoustique. Recent additions include the 20,000-seat Arena Ciudad de México, the 3,000-seat Pepsi Center World Trade Center, and the 2,500-seat Auditorio Blackberry.
The Centro Nacional de las Artes (National Center for the Arts has several venues for music, theatre, dance. UNAM's main campus, also in the southern part of the city, is home to the Centro Cultural Universitario (the University Culture Center) (CCU). The CCU also houses the National Library, the interactive Universum, Museo de las Ciencias, the Sala Nezahualcóyotl concert hall, several theatres and cinemas, and the new University Museum of Contemporary Art (MUAC). A branch of the National University's CCU cultural center was inaugurated in 2007 in the facilities of the former Ministry of Foreign Affairs, known as Tlatelolco, in north-central Mexico City.
The José Vasconcelos Library, a national library, is located on the grounds of the former Buenavista railroad station in the northern part of the city.
The "Papalote children's museum", which houses the world's largest dome screen, is located in the wooded park of Chapultepec, near the "Museo Tecnológico", and "La Feria" amusement park. The theme park "Six Flags México" (the largest amusement park in Latin America) is located in the Ajusco neighborhood, in Tlalpan borough, southern Mexico City. During the winter, the main square of the Zócalo is transformed into a gigantic ice skating rink, which is said to be the largest in the world behind that of Moscow's Red Square.
The Cineteca Nacional (the Mexican Film Library), near the Coyoacán suburb, shows a variety of films, and stages many film festivals, including the annual International Showcase, and many smaller ones ranging from Scandinavian and Uruguayan cinema, to Jewish and LGBT-themed films. Cinépolis and Cinemex, the two biggest film business chains, also have several film festivals throughout the year, with both national and international movies. Mexico City has a number of IMAX theatres, providing residents and visitors access to films ranging from documentaries to blockbusters on these large screens.
Once considered plebeian fare, by the 19th century tacos had become a standard of Mexico City's cuisine. As authorities struggled to tax local taquerias, imposing licensing requirements and penalties, they recorded some details of the types of foods being served by these establishments. The most frequent reference was for "tacos de barbacoa". Also mentioned are enchiladas, "tacos de minero" and "gorditas", along with oyster shops and fried fish stands. There is evidence of some regional specialties being made available for recent migrants; at least two shops were known to serve "pozole", a type of stew similar to hominy that is a staple of Guadalajara, Jalisco.
Mexico City is known for having some of the freshest fish and seafood in Mexico's interior. La Nueva Viga Market is the second largest seafood market in the world after the Tsukiji fish market in Japan.
Mexico City offers a variety of cuisines: restaurants specializing in the regional cuisines of Mexico's 31 states are available in the city, and the city also has several branches of internationally recognized restaurants. These include Paris' Au Pied de Cochon and Brasserie Lipp, Philippe (by Philippe Chow); Nobu, Quintonil, Morimoto; Pámpano, owned by Mexican-raised opera singer Plácido Domingo. There are branches of Japanese restaurant Suntory, Italian restaurant Alfredo, as well as New York steakhouses Morton's and The Palm, and Monte Carlo's BeefBar. Three of Lima's Haute restaurants, serving Peruvian cuisine, have locations in Mexico City: La Mar, Segundo Muelle and Astrid y Gastón.
For the 2019 list of World's 50 Best Restaurants as named by the British magazine "Restaurant", Mexico City ranked 12th best with the Mexican avant-garde restaurant Pujol (owned by Mexican chef Enrique Olvera). Also notable is the Basque-Mexican fusion restaurant Biko (run and co-owned by Bruno Oteiza and Mikel Alonso), which placed outside the list at 59th, but in previous years has ranked within the top 50. Other that has been placed on the list in 2019 is the restaurant Sud 777 at 58th place.
At the other end of the scale are working class pulque bars known as "pulquerías", a challenge for tourists to locate and experience.
Mexico City has many modes of public transportation, from the metro (subway) system, to suburban rail, light rail, regular buses, BRT (bus rapid transit), 'pesero' minibuses, and trolleybuses, to bike share.
Mexico City is served by the "Sistema de Transporte Colectivo", a metro system, which is the largest in Latin America. The first portions were opened in 1969 and it has expanded to 12 lines with 195 stations. The metro transports 4.4 million people every day. It is the 8th busiest metro system in the world, behind Tokyo (10.0 million), Beijing (9.3 million), Shanghai (7.8 million), Seoul (7.3 million), Moscow (6.7 million), Guangzhou (6.2 million), and New York City (4.9 million). It is heavily subsidized, and has some of the lowest fares in the world, each trip costing 5.00 pesos (roughly US$0.27) from 05:00 am to midnight. Several stations display pre-Columbian artifacts and architecture that were discovered during the metro's construction. However, the metro covers less than half of the total urban area. The Metro stations are also differentiated by the use of icons and glyphs which were created for the illiterate, a unique system that has become iconic characteristic of Mexico City. Each icon was developed based on historical (characters, sites, pre-Hispanic motifs), linguistic, symbolic (glyphs) or geographic references. A complementary system of icons was used for the Metrobús (BRT) stops.
A suburban rail system, the "Tren Suburbano" serves the metropolitan area, beyond the reach of the metro, currently with only one line serving to municipalities such as Tlalnepantla and Cuautitlán Izcalli, but with future lines planned to serve e.g. Chalco and La Paz.
Peseros are typically half-length passenger buses (known as "microbús") that sit 22 passengers and stand up to 28. , the approximately 28,000 peseros carried up to 60 percent of the city's passengers. In August 2016, Mayor Mancera announced that new pesero vehicle and concessions would be eliminated completely unless they were ecologically friendly vehicles, and in October 2011 the city's Secretary of Mobility Héctor Serrano states that by the end of the current administration (2018) there would no longer by any peseros/microbuses circulating at all, and that new full-sized buses would take over the routes.
In 2014, the city launched so-called "Bus Rapid Service", with mid-sized Mercedes-Benz Boxer buses carrying 75–85 passengers painted purple-on-white, replacing 'peseros' on certain groups of routes. Operation is a concession to the private firms (SAUSA, COTOBUSA, TREPSA) instead of to individual vehicle operators.
City agency Red de Transporte de Pasajeros (RTP), formerly M1, operates various networks of large buses including regular, Ecobús, Circuito Bicentenario, Atenea, Express, school and night routes. In 2016, more bus routes were added to replace pesero routes.
In 2016, the SVBUS express bus service was launched, with limited stops and utilizing the city's toll roads on the second-level of the Periférico ring road and Supervía Poniente and connecting Toreo/Cuatro Caminos with Santa Fe, San Jerónimo Lídice and Tepepan near Xochimilco in the southeast.
Suburban buses also leave from the city's main intercity bus stations.
The city's first bus rapid transit line, the Metrobús, began operation in June 2005, along Avenida Insurgentes. More and more lines opened and as of mid-2017 there are 6 routes with a 7th planned along Paseo de la Reforma to connect Santa Fe with the city center and points north. As each line opened, the 'pesero' minibuses were removed from each route, in order to reduce pollution and commute times. As of mid-2017, there were 568 Metrobús buses. In late 2016 they transported an average of 1.1 million passengers daily.
Mexibús provides 3 bus rapid transit lines connecting Metro Ciudad Azteca and Metro Pantitlán with Cuautitlán, Ecatepec and other suburban areas in the State of Mexico.
Electric transport other than the metro also exists, in the form of several Mexico City trolleybus routes and the Xochimilco Light Rail line, both of which are operated by Servicio de Transportes Eléctricos. The central area's last streetcar line (tramway, or "") closed in 1979.
In the late 1970s many arterial roads were redesigned as "ejes viales"; high-volume one-way roads that cross, in theory, Mexico City proper from side to side. The "eje vial" network is based on a quasi-Cartesian grid, with the "ejes" themselves being called "Eje 1 Poniente", "Eje Central", and "Eje 1 Oriente", for example, for the north–south roads, and "Eje 2 Sur" and "Eje 3 Norte", for example, for east–west roads. Ring roads are the Circuito Interior (inner ring), Anillo Periférico; the Circuito Exterior Mexiquense ("State of Mexico outer loop") toll road skirting the northeastern and eastern edges of the metropolitan area, the Chamapa-La Venta toll road skirting the northwestern edge, and the Arco Norte completely bypassing the metropolitan area in an arc from northwest (Atlacomulco) to north (Tula, Hidalgo) to east (Puebla). A second level (where tolls are charged) of the Periférico, colloquially called the "segundo piso" ("second floor"), was officially opened in 2012, with sections still being completed. The Viaducto Miguel Alemán crosses the city east–west from Observatorio to the airport. In 2013 the Supervía Poniente opened, a toll road linking the new Santa Fe business district with southwestern Mexico City.
There is an environmental program, called Hoy No Circula ("Today Does Not Run", or "One Day without a Car"), whereby vehicles that have not passed emissions testing are restricted from circulating on certain days according to the ending digit of their license plates; this in an attempt to cut down on pollution and traffic congestion. While in 2003, the program still restricted 40% of vehicles in the metropolitan area, with the adoption of stricter emissions standards in 2001 and 2006, in practice, these days most vehicles are exempt from the circulation restrictions as long as they pass regular emissions tests.
Street parking in urban neighborhoods is mostly controlled by the "franeleros" a.k.a. ""viene vienes"" (lit. "come on, come on"), who ask drivers for a fee to park. Double parking is common (with "franeleros" moving the cars as required), impeding on the available lanes for traffic to pass. In order to mitigate that and other problems and to raise revenue, 721 parking meters (as of October 2013), have been installed in the west-central neighborhoods Lomas de Chapultepec, Condesa, Roma, Polanco and Anzures, in operation from 8 AM to 8 PM on weekdays and charging a rate of 2 pesos per 15 minutes, with offenders' cars booted, costing about 500 pesos to remove. 30 percent of the monthly 16 million-peso (as of October 2013) income from the parking-meter system (named "ecoParq") is earmarked for neighborhood improvements. The granting of the license for all zones exclusively to a new company without experience in operating parking meters, Operadora de Estacionamientos Bicentenario, has generated controversy.
The local government continuously strives for a reduction of massive traffic congestion, and has increased incentives for making a bicycle-friendly city. This includes North America's second-largest bicycle sharing system, EcoBici, launched in 2010, in which registered residents can get bicycles for 45 minutes with a pre-paid subscription of 300 pesos a year. There are, as of September 2013, 276 stations with 4,000 bicycles across an area stretching from the Historic center to Polanco. within of one another and are fully automatic using a transponder based card. Bicycle-service users have access to several permanent Ciclovías (dedicated bike paths/lanes/streets), including ones along Paseo de la Reforma and Avenida Chapultepec as well as one running from Polanco to Fierro del Toro, which is located south of Cumbres del Ajusco National Park, near the Morelos state line. The city's initiative is inspired by forward thinking examples, such as Denmark's Copenhagenization.
The city has four major bus stations (North, South, Observatorio, TAPO), which comprise one of the world's largest transportation agglomerations, with bus service to many cities across the country and international connections. There are some intercity buses that leave directly from the Mexico City International Airport.
Mexico City is served by Mexico City International Airport (IATA Airport Code: MEX). This airport is Latin America's busiest, with daily flights to United States and Canada, Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, South America, Europe and Asia. Aeroméxico (Skyteam) is based at this airport, and provide codeshare agreements with non-Mexican airlines that span the entire globe. The airport is also a hub for Volaris, Interjet and Aeromar.
In 2016, the airport handled almost 42 million passengers, about 3.3 million more than the year before. This traffic exceeds the current capacity of the airport, which has historically centralized the majority of air traffic in the country. An alternate option is Lic. Adolfo López Mateos International Airport (IATA Airport Code: TLC) in nearby Toluca, State of Mexico, although due to several airlines' decisions to terminate service to TLC, the airport has seen a passenger drop to just over 700,000 passengers in 2014 from over 2.1 million passengers just four years prior.
In the Mexico City airport, the government engaged in an extensive restructuring program that includes the addition of a new second terminal, which began operations in 2007, and the enlargement of four other airports (at the nearby cities of Toluca, Querétaro, Puebla and Cuernavaca) that, along with Mexico City's airport, comprise the "Grupo Aeroportuario del Valle de México", distributing traffic to different regions in Mexico. The city of Pachuca will also provide additional expansion to central Mexico's airport network.
In the Plaza de las Tres Culturas is the Colegio de Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco that is recognized for being the first and oldest European school of higher learning in the Americas and the first major school of interpreters and translators in the New World.
The National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), located in Mexico City, is the largest university on the continent, with more than 300,000 students from all backgrounds. Three Nobel laureates, several Mexican entrepreneurs and most of Mexico's modern-day presidents are among its former students. UNAM conducts 50% of Mexico's scientific research and has presence all across the country with satellite campuses, observatories and research centres. UNAM ranked 74th in the Top 200 World University Ranking published by Times Higher Education (then called Times Higher Education Supplement) in 2006, making it the highest ranked Spanish-speaking university in the world. The sprawling main campus of the university, known as Ciudad Universitaria, was named a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 2007.
The second largest higher-education institution is the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN), which includes among many other relevant centers the Centro de Investigación y de Estudios Avanzados (Cinvestav), where varied high-level scientific and technological research is done. Other major higher-education institutions in the city include the Metropolitan Autonomous University (UAM), the National School of Anthropology and History (ENAH), the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM), the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (3 campuses), the Universidad Panamericana (UP), the Universidad La Salle, the Universidad del Valle de Mexico (UVM), the Universidad Anáhuac, Simon Bolivar University (USB), the Alliant International University, the Universidad Iberoamericana, El Colegio de México (Colmex), Escuela Libre de Derecho and the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económica, (CIDE).
In addition, the prestigious University of California maintains a campus known as "Casa de California" in the city. The Universidad Tecnológica de México is also in Mexico City.
Unlike those of Mexican states' schools, curricula of Mexico City's public schools is managed by the federal Secretary of Public Education. The whole funding is allocated by the government of Mexico City (in some specific cases, such as El Colegio de México, funding comes from both the city's government and other public and private national and international entities). The city's public high school system is the "Instituto de Educación Media Superior de la Ciudad de México" (IEMS-DF).
A special case is that of El Colegio Nacional, created during the district's governmental period of Miguel Alemán Valdés to have, in Mexico, an institution similar to the College of France. The select and privileged group of Mexican scientists and artists belonging to this institution—membership is for life—include, among many, Mario Lavista, Ruy Pérez Tamayo, José Emilio Pacheco, Marcos Moshinsky (d.2009), Guillermo Soberón Acevedo. Members are obligated to publicly disclose their works through conferences and public events such as concerts and recitals.
Among its many public and private schools (K–13), the city offers multi-cultural, multi-lingual and international schools attended by Mexican and foreign students. Best known are the Colegio Alemán (German school with three main campuses), the Liceo Mexicano Japonés (Japanese), the Centro Cultural Coreano en México (Korean), the Lycée Franco-Mexicain (French), the American School, The Westhill Institute (American School), the Edron Academy and the Greengates School (British).
Mexico City offers an immense and varied consumer retail market, ranging from basic foods to ultra high-end luxury goods. Consumers may buy in fixed indoor markets, in mobile markets ("tianguis"), from street vendors, from downtown shops in a street dedicated to a certain type of good, in convenience stores and traditional neighborhood stores, in modern supermarkets, in warehouse and membership stores and the shopping centers that they anchor, in department stores, in big-box stores, and in modern shopping malls.
In addition, "tianguis" or mobile markets set up shop on streets in many neighborhoods, depending on day of week. Sundays see the largest number of these markets.
The city's main source of fresh produce is the Central de Abasto. This in itself is a self-contained mini-city in Iztapalapa borough covering an area equivalent to several dozen city blocks. The wholesale market supplies most of the city's "mercados", supermarkets and restaurants, as well as people who come to buy the produce for themselves. Tons of fresh produce are trucked in from all over Mexico every day.
The principal fish market is known as La Nueva Viga, in the same complex as the Central de Abastos. The world-renowned market of Tepito occupies 25 blocks, and sells a variety of products.
A staple for consumers in the city is the omnipresent "mercado". Every major neighborhood in the city has its own borough-regulated market, often more than one. These are large well-established facilities offering most basic products, such as fresh produce and meat/poultry, dry goods, tortillerías, and many other services such as locksmiths, herbal medicine, hardware goods, sewing implements; and a multitude of stands offering freshly made, home-style cooking and drinks in the tradition of aguas frescas and atole.
Street vendors ply their trade from stalls in the "tianguis" as well as at non-officially controlled concentrations around metro stations and hospitals; at "plazas comerciales", where vendors of a certain "theme" (e.g. stationery) are housed; originally these were organized to accommodate vendors formerly selling on the street; or simply from improvised stalls on a city sidewalk. In addition, food and goods are sold from people walking with baskets, pushing carts, from bicycles or the backs of trucks, or simply from a tarp or cloth laid on the ground. In the centre of the city informal street vendors are increasingly targeted by laws and prosecution. The weekly San Felipe de Jesús Tianguis is reported to be the largest in Latin America.
The Historic Center of Mexico City is widely known for specialized, often low-cost retailers. Certain blocks or streets are dedicated to shops selling a certain type of merchandise, with areas dedicated to over 40 categories such as home appliances, lamps and electricals, closets and bathrooms, housewares, wedding dresses, jukeboxes, printing, office furniture and safes, books, photography, jewelry, and opticians. The main department stores are also represented downtown.
Traditional markets downtown include the La Merced Market; the Mercado de Jamaica specializes in fresh flowers, the Mercado de Sonora in the occult, and La Lagunilla in furniture.
Ethnic shopping areas are located in Chinatown, downtown along Calle Dolores, but Mexico City's Koreatown, or Pequeño Seúl, is located in the Zona Rosa.
Large, modern chain supermarkets, hypermarkets and warehouse clubs including Soriana, Comercial Mexicana, Chedraui, Bodega Aurrerá, Walmart and Costco, are located across the city. Many anchor shopping centers that contain smaller shops, services, a food court and sometimes cinemas.
Small "mom-and-pop" corner stores ("abarroterías" or more colloquially as "changarros") abound in all neighborhoods, rich and poor. These are small shops offering basics such as soft drinks, packaged snacks, canned goods and dairy products. Thousands of C-stores or corner stores, such as Oxxo, 7-Eleven and Extra are located throughout the city.
Chapultepec, the city's most iconic public park, has history back to the Aztec emperors who used the area as a retreat. It is south of Polanco district, and houses the Chapultepec Zoo the main city's zoo, several ponds and seven museums, including the National Museum of Anthropology.
Other iconic city parks include the Alameda Central historic center, a city park since colonial times and renovated in 2013; Parque México and Parque España in the hip Condesa district; Parque Hundido and "Parque de los Venados" in Colonia del Valle, and Parque Lincoln in Polanco. There are many smaller parks throughout the city. Most are small "squares" occupying two or three square blocks amid residential or commercial districts.
Several other larger parks such as the Bosque de Tlalpan and Viveros de Coyoacán, and in the east Alameda Oriente, offer many recreational activities. Northwest of the city is a large ecological reserve, the Bosque de Aragón. In the southeast is the Xochimilco Ecological Park and Plant Market, a World Heritage site. West of Santa Fe district are the pine forests of the Desierto de los Leones National Park.
Amusement parks include Six Flags México, in Ajusco neighborhood which is the largest in Latin America. There are numerous seasonal fairs present in the city.
Mexico City has three zoos. Chapultepec Zoo, the San Juan de Aragon Zoo and Los Coyotes Zoo. Chapultepec Zoo is located in the first section of Chapultepec Park in the Miguel Hidalgo. It was opened in 1924. Visitors can see about 243 specimens of different species including kangaroos, giant panda, gorillas, caracal, hyena, hippos, jaguar, giraffe, lemur, lion, among others. Zoo San Juan de Aragon is near the San Juan de Aragon Park in the Gustavo A. Madero. In this zoo, opened in 1964, there are species that are in danger of extinction such as the jaguar and the Mexican wolf. Other guests are the golden eagle, pronghorn, bighorn sheep, caracara, zebras, African elephant, macaw, hippo, among others. Zoo Los Coyotes is a 27.68-acre (11.2 ha) zoo located south of Mexico City in the Coyoacan. It was inaugurated on 2 February 1999. It has more than 301 specimens of 51 species of wild native or endemic fauna from the area, featuring eagles, ajolotes, coyotes, macaws, bobcats, Mexican wolves, raccoons, mountain lions, teporingos, foxes, white-tailed deer.
Association football is the country's most popular and most televised franchised sport. Its important venues in Mexico City include the Azteca Stadium, home to the Mexico national football team and giants América, which can seat 91,653 fans, making it the biggest stadium in Latin America. The Olympic Stadium in Ciudad Universitaria is home to the football club giants Universidad Nacional, with a seating capacity of over 52,000. The Estadio Azul, which seats 33,042 fans, is near the World Trade Center Mexico City in the Nochebuena neighborhood, and is home to the giants Cruz Azul. The three teams are based in Mexico City and play in the First Division; they are also part, with Guadalajara-based giants Club Deportivo Guadalajara, of Mexico's traditional "Big Four" (though recent years have tended to erode the teams' leading status at least in standings).
The country hosted the FIFA World Cup in 1970 and 1986, and Azteca Stadium is the first stadium in World Cup history to host the final twice.
Mexico City is the first Latin American city to host the Olympic Games, having held the Summer Olympics in 1968, winning bids against Buenos Aires, Lyon and Detroit. The city hosted the 1955 and 1975 Pan American Games, the last after Santiago and São Paulo withdrew.
The ICF Flatwater Racing World Championships were hosted here in 1974 and 1994. Lucha libre is a Mexican style of wrestling, and is one of the more popular sports throughout the country. The main venues in the city are Arena México and Arena Coliseo.
The Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez is the main venue for motorsport, and hosts the Formula 1 Mexican Grand Prix since its return to the sport in 2015, the event being held in the past from 1962 to 1970, and again from 1986 to 1992. From 1980 to 1981 and again from 2002 to 2007, the circuit hosted the Champ Car World Series Gran Premio de México. Beginning in 2005, the NASCAR Nationwide Series ran the Telcel-Motorola México 200. 2005 also marked the first running of the Mexico City 250 by the Grand-Am Rolex Sports Car Series. Both races were removed from their series' schedules for 2009.
Baseball is another sport played professionally in the city. Mexico City is currently home of the Mexico City Red Devils of the Mexican League, which is considered a Triple-A league by Major League Baseball. The Devils play their home games at Estadio Alfredo Harp Helú designed by international Mexican-American architect FGP Atelier Founder Francisco Gonzalez Pulido in collaboration with local architect Taller ADG. Mexico City has some 10 Little Leagues for young baseball players.
In 2005, Mexico City became the first city to host an NFL regular season game outside of the United States, at the Azteca Stadium. The crowd of 103,467 people attending this game was the largest ever for a regular season game in NFL history until 2009. The city has also hosted several NBA pre-season games and has hosted international basketball's FIBA Americas Championship, along with north-of-the-border Major League Baseball exhibition games at Foro Sol. In 2017, NBA commissioner Adam Silver expressed interest in placing an NBA G League expansion team in Mexico City as early as 2018. This came to fruition on 12 December 2019 when commissioner Silver announced at a press conference in Mexico City Arena that current LNBP team, Capitanes de Ciudad de México will be joining the G League in the 2020–21 season on a five-year agreement.
Other sports facilities in Mexico City are the Palacio de los Deportes indoor arena, Francisco Márquez Olympic Swimming Pool, the Hipódromo de Las Américas, the Agustin Melgar Olympic Velodrome, and venues for equestrianism and horse racing, ice hockey, rugby, American-style football, baseball, and basketball.
Bullfighting takes place every Sunday during bullfighting season at the 50,000-seat Plaza México, the world's largest bullring.
Mexico City's golf courses have hosted Women's LPGA action, and two Men's Golf World Cups. Courses throughout the city are available as private as well as public venues.
Mexico City is Latin America's leading center for the television, music and film industries. It is also Mexico's most important for the printed media and book publishing industries. Dozens of daily newspapers are published, including "El Universal", "Excélsior", "Reforma" and "La Jornada". Other major papers include "Milenio", "Crónica", "El Economista" and "El Financiero". Leading magazines include "Expansión", "Proceso", "Poder", as well as dozens of entertainment publications such as "Vanidades", "Quién", "Chilango", "TV Notas", and local editions of "Vogue", "GQ", and "Architectural Digest".
It is also a leading center of the advertising industry. Most international ad firms have offices in the city, including Grey, JWT, Leo Burnett, Euro RSCG, BBDO, Ogilvy, Saatchi & Saatchi, and McCann Erickson. Many local firms also compete in the sector, including Alazraki, Olabuenaga/Chemistri, Terán, Augusto Elías, and Clemente Cámara, among others. There are 60 radio stations operating in the city and many local community radio transmission networks.
The two largest media companies in the Spanish-speaking world, Televisa and TV Azteca, are headquartered in Mexico City. Other local television channels include:
XHDF 1 (Azteca Uno),
XEW 2 (Televisa W),
XHCTMX 3,
XHTV 4,
XHGC 5,
XHTDMX 6,
XHIMT 7,
XEQ 9,
XEIPN 11,
XHUNAM 20,
XHCDM 21,
XEIMT 22,
XHTRES 28,
XHTVM 40 and
XHHCU 45.
Mexico City was traditionally known as "La Ciudad de los Palacios" ("the City of the Palaces"), a nickname attributed to Baron Alexander von Humboldt when visiting the city in the 19th century, who, sending a letter back to Europe, said Mexico City could rival any major city in Europe.
But it was English politician Charles Latrobe who really penned the following: "... look at their works: the moles, aqueducts, churches, roads —and the luxurious "City of Palaces" which has risen from the clay-builts ruins of Tenochtitlan...", on page 84 of the Letter V of "The Rambler in Mexico".
During all the colony the city's motto was "Muy Noble e Insigne, Muy Leal e Imperial" (Very Noble and Distinguished, Very Loyal and Imperial).
During Andrés López Obrador's administration a political slogan was introduced: "la Ciudad de la Esperanza" ("The City of Hope"). This motto was quickly adopted as a city nickname but has faded since the new motto, "Capital en Movimiento" ("Capital in Movement"), was adopted by the administration headed by Marcelo Ebrard, though the latter is not treated as often as a nickname in media. Since 2013, to refer to the City particularly in relation to government campaigns, the abbreviation CDMX has been used (from Ciudad de México), prior to this but recently, the abbreviation was "the DF" (from Distrito Federal de México).
The city is colloquially known as "Chilangolandia" after the locals' nickname "chilangos". Chilango is used pejoratively by people living outside Mexico City to "connote a loud, arrogant, ill-mannered, loutish person". For their part those living in Mexico City designate insultingly those who live elsewhere as living in "la provincia" ("the provinces", the periphery) and many proudly embrace the term chilango. Residents of Mexico City are more recently was called "defeños" (deriving from the postal abbreviation of the Federal District in Spanish: D.F., which is read "De-Efe"). They are formally called "capitalinos" (in reference to the city being the capital of the country), but "[p]erhaps because capitalino is the more polite, specific, and correct word, it is almost never utilized".
Mexico City is twinned with:
Mexico City also is a part of the Union of Ibero-American Capital Cities. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18987 |
Merlot
Merlot is a dark blue-colored wine grape variety, that is used as both a blending grape and for varietal wines. The name "Merlot" is thought to be a diminutive of "merle", the French name for the blackbird, probably a reference to the color of the grape. Its softness and "fleshiness", combined with its earlier ripening, makes Merlot a popular grape for blending with the sterner, later-ripening Cabernet Sauvignon, which tends to be higher in tannin.
Along with Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Shiraz Cabernet, Malbec and Petit Verdot, Merlot is one of the primary grapes used in Bordeaux wine, and it is the most widely planted grape in the Bordeaux wine regions. Merlot is also one of the most popular red wine varietals in many markets. This flexibility has helped to make it one of the world's most planted grape varieties. As of 2004, Merlot was estimated to be the third most grown variety at globally.
The area planted to Merlot has continued to increase, with in 2015.
While Merlot is made across the globe, there tend to be two main styles. The "International style" favored by many New World wine regions tends to emphasize late harvesting to gain physiological ripeness and produce inky, purple colored wines that are full in body with high alcohol and lush, velvety tannins with intense, plum and blackberry fruit. While this international style is practiced by many Bordeaux wine producers, the traditional "Bordeaux style" of Merlot involves harvesting Merlot earlier to maintain acidity and producing more medium-bodied wines with moderate alcohol levels that have fresh, red fruit flavors (raspberries, strawberries) and potentially leafy, vegetal notes.
The earliest recorded mention of Merlot (under the synonym of "Merlau") was in the notes of a local Bordeaux official who in 1784 labeled wine made from the grape in the Libournais region as one of the area's best. In 1824, the word "Merlot" itself appeared in an article on Médoc wine where it was described that the grape was named after the local black bird (called "merlau" in the local variant of Occitan language, "merle" in standard) who liked eating the ripe grapes on the vine. Other descriptions of the grape from the 19th century called the variety "lou seme doù flube" (meaning "the seedling from the river") with the grape thought to have originated on one of the islands found along the Garonne river.
By the 19th century it was being regularly planted in the Médoc on the "Left Bank" of the Gironde. After a series of setbacks that includes a severe frost in 1956 and several vintages in the 1960s lost to rot, French authorities in Bordeaux banned new plantings of Merlot vines between 1970 and 1975.
It was first recorded in Italy around Venice under the synonym "Bordò" in 1855. The grape was introduced to the Swiss, from Bordeaux, sometime in the 19th century and was recorded in the Swiss canton of Ticino between 1905 and 1910. In the 1990s, Merlot saw an upswing of popularity in the United States. Red wine consumption, in general, increased in the US following the airing of the "60 Minutes" report on the French Paradox and the potential health benefits of wine and, possibly, the chemical resveratrol. The popularity of Merlot stemmed in part from the relative ease in pronouncing the name of the wine as well as its softer, fruity profile that made it more approachable to some wine drinkers.
In the late 1990s, researchers at University of California, Davis showed that Merlot is an offspring of Cabernet Franc and is a half-sibling of Carménère, Malbec and Cabernet Sauvignon. The identity of the second parent of Merlot wouldn't be discovered till the late 2000s when an obscure and unnamed variety, first sampled in 1996 from vines growing in an abandoned vineyard in Saint-Suliac in Brittany, was shown by DNA analysis to be the mother of Merlot.
This grape, later discovered in front of houses as a decorative vine in the villages of Figers, Mainxe, Saint-Savinien and Tanzac in the Poitou-Charentes was colloquially known as "Madeleina" or "Raisin de La Madeleine" due to its propensity to be fully ripe and ready for harvest around the July 22nd feast day of Mary Magdalene. As the connection to Merlot became known, the grape was formally registered under the name Magdeleine Noire des Charentes. Through its relationship with Magdeleine Noire des Charentes, Merlot is related to the Southwest France wine grape Abouriou, though the exact nature of that relationship (with Abouriou potentially being either a parent of Magdeleine Noire or an offspring) is not yet known.
Grape breeders have used Merlot crossed with other grapes to create several new varieties including Carmine (an Olmo grape made by crossing a Carignan x Cabernet Sauvignon cross with Merlot), Ederena (with Abouriou), Evmolpia (with Mavrud), Fertilia (with Raboso Veronese), Mamaia (a Romanian wine grape made by crossing a Muscat Ottonel x Babeasca negra cross with Merlot), Nigra (with Barbera), Prodest (with Barbera) and Rebo (with Teroldego).
Over the years, Merlot has spawned a color mutation that is used commercially, a pink-skinned variety known as "Merlot gris". However, unlike the relationship between Grenache noir and Grenache blanc or Pinot noir and Pinot blanc, the variety known as Merlot blanc is not a color mutation but rather an offspring variety of Merlot crossing with Folle blanche.
Merlot grapes are identified by their loose bunches of large berries. The color has less of a blue/black hue than Cabernet Sauvignon grapes and with a thinner skin and fewer tannins per unit volume. It normally ripens up to two weeks earlier than Cabernet Sauvignon. Also compared to Cabernet, Merlot grapes tend to have a higher sugar content and lower malic acid. Ampelographer J.M. Boursiquot has noted that Merlot has seemed to inherit some of the best characteristics from its parent varieties—its fertility and easy ripening ability from Magdeleine Noire des Charentes and its color, tannin and flavor phenolic potential from Cabernet Franc.
Merlot thrives in cold soil, particularly ferrous clay. The vine tends to bud early which gives it some risk to cold frost and its thinner skin increases its susceptibility to the viticultural hazard of Botrytis bunch rot. If bad weather occurs during flowering, the Merlot vine is prone to develop coulure. The vine can also be susceptible to downy mildew (though it has better resistance to powdery mildew than other Bordeaux varieties) and to infection by leafhopper insect varieties.
Water stress is important to the vine with it thriving in well-drained soil more so than at base of a slope. Pruning is a major component to the quality of the wine that is produced with some producing believing it is best to prune the vine "short" (cutting back to only a few buds). Wine consultant Michel Rolland is a major proponent of reducing the yields of Merlot grapes to improve quality. The age of the vine is also important, with older vines contributing character to the resulting wine.
A characteristic of the Merlot grape is the propensity to quickly overripen once it hits its initial ripeness level, sometimes in a matter of a few days. There are two schools of thought on the right time to harvest Merlot. The wine makers of Château Pétrus favor early picking to best maintain the wine's acidity and finesse as well as its potential for aging. Others, such as Rolland, favor late picking and the added fruit body that comes with a little bit of over-ripeness.
Merlot is one of the world's most widely planted grape variety with plantings of the vine outpacing even the more well-known Cabernet Sauvignon in many regions, including the grape's homeland of France. Here, France is home to nearly two thirds of the world's total plantings of Merlot. Beyond France it is also grown in Italy (where it is the country's 5th most planted grape), Algeria,California, Romania, Australia, Argentina, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Greece, New Zealand, South Africa, Switzerland, Croatia, Hungary, Montenegro, Slovenia, Mexico and other parts of the United States such as Washington, Virginia and Long Island. It grows in many regions that also grow Cabernet Sauvignon but tends to be cultivated in the cooler portions of those areas. In areas that are too warm, Merlot will ripen too early.
In places like Israel, Merlot is the second most widely planted grape variety after Cabernet Sauvignon with in cultivation, making very "New World-style" wines. The grape can also be found in Turkey with in 2010 as well as Malta and Cyprus.
Merlot is the most commonly grown grape variety in France. In 2004, total French plantations stood at . By 2009, that number had risen slightly to . It is most prominent in Southwest France in regions like Bordeaux, Bergerac and Cahors where it is often blended with Malbec. The largest recent increase in Merlot plantations has occurred in the south of France, such as Languedoc-Roussillon, where it is often made under the designation of "Vin de Pays" wine. Here, Merlot accounted for , more than doubling the devoted to Cabernet Sauvignon in the Languedoc.
In the traditional Bordeaux blend, Merlot's role is to add body and softness. Despite accounting for 50-60% of overall plantings in Bordeaux, the grape tends to account for an average of 25% of the blends—especially in the Bordeaux wine regions of Graves and Médoc. Of these Left Bank regions, the commune of St-Estephe uses the highest percentage of Merlot in the blends. However, Merlot is much more prominent on the Right Bank of the Gironde in the regions of Pomerol and Saint-Émilion, where it will commonly comprise the majority of the blend. One of the most famous and rare wines in the world, Château Pétrus, is almost all Merlot. In Pomerol, where Merlot usually accounts for around 80% of the blend, the iron-clay soils of the region give Merlot more of a tannic backbone than what is found in other Bordeaux regions. It was in Pomerol that the "garagistes" movement began with small-scale production of highly sought after Merlot-based wines. In the sandy, clay-limestone-based soils of Saint-Émilion, Merlot accounts for around 60% of the blend and is usually blended with Cabernet Franc. In limestone, Merlot tends to develop more perfume notes while in sandy soils the wines are generally softer than Merlot grown in clay dominant soils.
Merlot can also be found in significant quantities in Provence, Loire Valley, Savoie, Ardèche, Charente, Corrèze, Drôme, Isère and Vienne.
In Italy, there were of the grape planted in 2000 with more than two-thirds of Italian Merlot being used in "Indicazione geografica tipica" (IGT) blends (such as the so-called "Super Tuscans") versus being used in classified "Denominazione di origine controllata" (DOC) or "Denominazione di Origine Controllata e Garantita" (DOCG) wines. A large portion of Merlot is planted in the Friuli wine region where it is made as a varietal or sometimes blended with Cabernet Sauvignon or Cabernet Franc. In other parts of Italy, such as the Maremma coast in Tuscany, it is often blended with Sangiovese to give the wine a similar softening effect as the Bordeaux blends.
Italian Merlots are often characterized by their light bodies and herbal notes. Merlot's low acidity serves as a balance for the higher acidity in many Italian wine grapes with the grape often being used in blends in the Veneto, Alto Adige and Umbria. Global warming is potentially having an influence on Italian Merlot as more cooler-climate regions in northern Italy are being able to ripen the grape successfully while other regions already planted are encountering issues with over-ripeness.
According to Master of Wine Jancis Robinson, some of the higher quality Italian Merlots are often from vineyards planted with cuttings sourced from France. Robinson describes the style of Fruili Merlots from regarded estates as having potentially a "Pomerol-quality" to them while Merlots from the warm plains of the Veneto can often be over-ripe with high yields giving them a "sweet and sour" quality. Robinson notes that the Merlots from Trentino-Alto-Adige can fall somewhere between those of Friuli and the Veneto.
The "Strada del Merlot" is a popular tourist route through Italian Merlot regions along the Isonzo river.
In the hot continental climate of many of Spain's major wine regions, Merlot is less valued than it is in the damp maritime climate of Bordeaux or the warm Mediterranean climate of the Tuscan coast. But as the popularity of international varieties continue to grow on the world wine market, Spanish wine producers have been experimenting with the variety with even winemakers in Rioja petitioning authorities to allow Merlot to be a permitted grape to be blended with Tempranillo in the red wines of the region.
In 2008, there were of Merlot, a significant increase from the that were being cultivated in the country only 4 years earlier. In 2015, this had dropped slightly to , making Merlot the eighth most planted red grape variety in Spain. The largest concentration of the grape is in the Mediterranean climate of Catalonia and the continental climate of Castilla–La Mancha, with significant plantings also in Navarra and Aragon. In Costers del Segre, the grape is often used in Bordeaux-style blends while in Aragon, Navarra, and Castilla-La Mancha it is sometimes blended with Tempranillo and other local Spanish wine grape varieties.
In Germany, there were of Merlot growing in 2008 with the grape mostly planted in the warmer German wine regions of the Palatinate and Rheinhessen.
In Switzerland, Merlot accounts for nearly 85% of the wine production in Ticino where it is often made in a pale "white Merlot" style. In 2009, there were plantings of Swiss Merlot.
Plantings of Merlot have increased in recent years in the Austrian wine region of Burgenland where vineyards previously growing Welschriesling are being uprooted to make room for more plantings. The grape still lags behind its parent variety, Cabernet Franc, with in cultivation in 2008. Outside of Burgenland, nearly half of all Austrian Merlot plantings are found in Lower Austria.
In the Eastern European countries of Bulgaria, Moldova, Croatia and Romania, Merlot is often produced as a full bodied wine that can be very similar to Cabernet Sauvignon. In Bulgaria, plantings of Merlot lag slightly behind Cabernet Sauvignon with in 2009 while Croatia had . In the Czech Republic, most of the country's were found in Moravia while Moldova had in 2009.
In Slovenia, Merlot was the most widely planted grape variety of any color in the Vipava Valley in the Slovene Littoral and the second most widely planted variety in the Gorizia Hills located across the Italian border from Friuli. In the Slovene Littoral, collectively, Merlot accounts for around 15% of total vineyard plantings with of Merlot in cultivation across Slovenia in 2009.
In Hungary, Merlot complements Kékfrankos, Kékoportó and Kadarka as a component in Bull's Blood. It is also made into varietal wine known as "Egri Médoc Noir" which is noted for its balanced acid levels and sweet taste. In 2009, there were of Merlot planted across Hungary. Most of these hectares can be found in the wine regions of Szekszárd and Villány on the warm Pannonian Basin with significant plantings also found in Kunság, Eger and Balaton.
In Romania, Merlot is the most widely exported red wine grape variety with in cultivation in 2008. Most of these plantings are found along the Black Sea in Dobruja, further inland in the Muntenia region of Dealu Mare and in the western Romanian wine region of Drăgășani. Here the grape is often made a varietal but is sometimes blended with other international varieties such as Cabernet Sauvignon and with local grape varieties such as Fetească neagră.
In 2009, Ukraine had of Merlot in cultivation.
Russia had .
Portugal, has only a very limited amount of Merlot compared to the abundance of native Portuguese grape varieties with planted in 2010, mostly in the Portuguese wine regions along the Tagus river.
In Greece, Merlot is one of the top six grape varieties planted in the eastern wine regions of Macedonia ()and Western Thrace (). In central Greece, there were of Merlot in cultivation as of 2012.
Merlot is grown across the United States with California and Washington growing the most. Other regions producing significant quantities of Merlot include New York State with in 2006 with most of it in the maritime climate of the Long Island AVA and multiple regions in Ohio. In Texas, Merlot is the second most widely planted red wine grape after Cabernet Sauvignon with . In Virginia, the grape was the widely most widely planted red variety with in 2010, most of it in the Monticello AVA and Shenandoah Valley AVA, while Oregon had in 2008 with most planted in the Rogue Valley AVA.
In the early history of California wine, Merlot was used primarily as a 100% varietal wine until winemaker Warren Winiarski encouraged taking the grape back to its blending roots with Bordeaux style blends. Following the "Merlot wine craze" of the 1990s sparked by "60 Minutes" French Paradox report, sales of Merlot spiked with the grape hitting its peak plantings of over in 2004. The 2004 movie "Sideways", where the lead character is a Pinot noir fan who expresses his disdain of Merlot, has been connected with declining Merlot sales in the US after its release (and an even larger spike of interest in Pinot noir). By 2010, plantings of California Merlot had dropped slightly to .
In California, Merlot can range from very fruity simple wines (sometimes referred to by critics as a "red Chardonnay") to more serious, barrel aged examples. It can also be used as a primary component in Meritage blends.
While Merlot is grown throughout the state, it is particularly prominent in Napa, Monterey and Sonoma County. In Napa, examples from Los Carneros, Mount Veeder, Oakville and Rutherford tend to show ripe blackberry and black raspberry notes. Sonoma Merlots from Alexander Valley, Carneros and Dry Creek Valley tend to show plum, tea leaf and black cherry notes.
In the 1980s, Merlot helped put the Washington wine industry on the world's wine map. Prior to this period there was a general perception that the climate of Washington State was too cold to produce red wine varietals. Merlots from Leonetti Cellar, Andrew Will, Columbia Crest and Chateau Ste. Michelle demonstrated that areas of the Eastern Washington were warm enough for red wine production. Today it is the second most widely grown red wine grape in the state (after Cabernet Sauvignon), following many years of being the most widely planted variety, and accounts for nearly one fifth of the state's entire production. In 2011, there were of Washington Merlot in cultivation.
It is widely planted throughout the Columbia Valley AVA but has earned particular notice from plantings grown in Walla Walla, Red Mountain and the Horse Heaven Hills. Washington Merlots are noted for their deep color and balanced acidity. The state's climate lends itself towards long days and hours of sunshine with cool nights that contributes to a significant diurnal temperature variation and produces wines with New World fruitiness and Old World structure.
In Canada, Merlot can be found across the country from Ontario, where there were of the grape in 2008, to British Columbia, where the grape is the most widely planted wine grape variety of either color at . Here Merlot accounts for almost a third of all red wine grape plantings and is used for both varietal and Bordeaux-style blends.
In Mexico, Merlot is cultivated primarily in the Valle de Guadalupe of Baja California, the country's main wine-producing area. Plantings have increased substantially since the 1980s, and cultivation has spread into the nearby areas of Ojos Negros and Santo Tomás. The grape can also be found in the north eastern Mexican wine region of Coahuila, across the border from Texas.
In Chile, Merlot thrives in the Apalta region of Colchagua Province. It is also grown in significant quantities in Curicó, Casablanca and the Maipo Valley. Until the early 1990s, the Chilean wine industry mistakenly sold a large quantity of wine made from the Carménère grape as Merlot. Following the discovery that many Chilean vineyards thought to be planted with Sauvignon blanc was actually Sauvignonasse, the owners of the Chilean winery Domaine Paul Bruno (who previously worked with Château Margaux and Château Cos d'Estournel) invited ampelographers to comb through their vineyards to make sure that their wines were properly identified. Genetic studies discovered that much of what had been grown as Merlot was actually Carménère, an old French variety that had gone largely extinct in France due to its poor resistance to phylloxera. While the vines, leaves and grapes look very similar, both grapes produce wines with distinct characteristics—Carménère being more strongly flavored with green pepper notes and Merlot having softer fruit with chocolate notes.
Today, "true" Merlot is the third most widely planted grape variety in Chile after Cabernet Sauvignon and Listán Prieto with in 2009. Most of these planting are in the Central Valley with Colchagua leading the way with followed by Maule Valley with and Curicó with .
In Argentina, Merlot plantings have been increasing in the Mendoza region with the grape showing an affinity to the Tupungato region of the Uco Valley. Argentine Merlots grown in the higher elevations of Tunpungato have shown a balance of ripe fruit, tannic structure and acidity. The grape is not as widely planted here due to the natural fruity and fleshiness of the popular Malbec and Douce noir/Bonarda grapes that often don't need to be "mellowed" by Merlot as Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc may benefit from. In 2008, there were of Merlot growing in Argentina, most of it in the Mendoza region and in the San Juan Province.
In Uruguay, Merlot is often blended with Tannat and is the 2nd most widely planted red grape variety, representing around 10% of total vineyard plantings. More widely planted than Cabernet Sauvignon, there were of the grape in cultivation in 2009. Brazil is home to of Merlot (as of 2007) with most of them in the Rio Grande do Sul region that is across the border with Uruguay. Other South American wine regions growing Merlot include Bolivia with as of 2012 and Peru.
In New Zealand, plantings of Merlot have increased in the Hawke's Bay region, particularly in Gimblett Gravels where the grape has shown the ability to produce Bordeaux-style wine. The grape has been growing in favor among New Zealand producers due to its ability to ripen better, with less green flavors, than Cabernet Sauvignon. Other regions with significant plantings include Auckland, Marlborough and Martinborough. In 2008, Merlot was the second most widely red grape variety (after Pinot noir) in New Zealand and accounted for nearly 5% of all the country's plantings with in cultivation.
In Australia, some vineyards labeled as "Merlot" were discovered to actually be Cabernet Franc. Merlot vines can also be found growing in the Barossa Valley, McLaren Vale and Wrattonbully in South Australia. In 2008, it was the third most widely planted red grape variety after Syrah and Cabernet Sauvignon with . As in California, the global "Merlot craze" spurred an increase of plantings, most of it in the warm, irrigated regions of Murray Darling, Riverina and Riverland where the grape variety could be mass-produced. Recent plantings, such as those in the Margaret River area of Western Australia have been focusing on making more Bordeaux-style blends.
In South Africa, plantings of Merlot have focused on cooler sites within the Paarl and Stellenbosch regions. Here the grape is the third most widely planted red grape variety, accounting for nearly 15% of all red wine grape plantings, with of Merlot in cultivation in 2008. The majority of these plantings are found in the Stellenbosch region with and Paarl with . According to wine expert Jancis Robinson, South African Merlot tend to be made as a varietal in a "chocolately, glossy California style".
In Asia, Merlot is planted in emerging wine regions in India. It can also be found in Japan with in 2009 and in China with .
As a varietal wine, Merlot can make soft, velvety wines with plum flavors. While Merlot wines tend to mature faster than Cabernet Sauvignon, some examples can continue to develop in the bottle for decades. There are three main styles of Merlot—a soft, fruity, smooth wine with very little tannins; a fruity wine with more tannic structure; and, finally, a brawny, highly tannic style made in the profile of Cabernet Sauvignon. Some of the fruit notes commonly associated with Merlot include cassis, black and red cherries, blackberry, blueberry, boysenberry, mulberry, ollalieberry and plum. Vegetable and earthy notes include black and green olives, cola nut, bell pepper, fennel, humus, leather, mushrooms, rhubarb and tobacco. Floral and herbal notes commonly associated with Merlot include green and black tea, eucalyptus, laurel, mint, oregano, pine, rosemary, sage, sarsaparilla and thyme. When Merlot has spent significant time in oak, the wine may show notes of caramel, chocolate, coconut, coffee bean, dill weed, mocha, molasses, smoke, vanilla and walnut.
White Merlot is made the same way as White Zinfandel. The grapes are crushed, and after very brief skin contact, the resulting pink juice is run off the must and is then fermented. It normally has a hint of raspberry. White Merlot was reputedly first marketed in the late 1990s. In Switzerland, a type of White Merlot is made in the Ticino region but has been considered more a rosé.
White Merlot should not be confused with the grape variety Merlot blanc, which is a cross between Merlot and Folle blanche that was discovered in 1891, nor should it be confused with the white mutant variety of the Merlot grape.
In food and wine pairings, the diversity of Merlot can lend itself to a wide array of matching options. Cabernet-like Merlots pair well with many of the same things that Cabernet Sauvignon would pair well with, such as grilled and charred meats. Softer, fruitier Merlots (particularly those with higher acidity from cooler climate regions like Washington State and Northeastern Italy) share many of the same food-pairing affinities with Pinot noir and go well with dishes like salmon, mushroom-based dishes and greens like chard and radicchio. Light-bodied Merlots can go well with shellfish like prawns or scallops, especially if wrapped in a protein-rich food such as bacon or prosciutto. Merlot tends not to go well with strong and blue-veined cheeses that can overwhelm the fruit flavors of the wine. The capsaicins of spicy foods can accentuate the perception of alcohol in Merlot and make it taste more tannic and bitter.
Over the years, Merlot has been known under many synonyms across the globe, including Alicante, Alicante noir, Bégney, Bidal, Bidalhe, Bigney, Bigney rouge, Bini, Bini Ruzh, Bioney, Black Alicante, Bordeleza belcha, Crabutet, Crabutet noir, Crabutet noir merlau, Hebigney, Higney, Higney rouge, Langon, Lecchumskij, Médoc noir, Merlau, Merlaut, Merlaut noir, Merle, Merle Petite, Merleau, Merlô, Merlot noir, Merlot black, Merlot blauer, Merlot crni, Merlot nero, Merlott, Merlou, Odzalesi, Odzhaleshi, Odzhaleshi Legkhumskii, Petit Merle, Picard, Pikard, Plan medre, Planet Medok, Plant du Médoc, Plant Médoc, Saint-Macaire, Same de la Canan, Same dou Flaube, Sème de la Canau, Sème Dou Flube, Semilhon rouge, Semilhoum rouge, Semilhoun rouge, Sémillon rouge, Sud des Graves, Vidal, Vini Ticinesi, Vitrai and Vitraille. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18989 |
Martin Scorsese
Martin Charles Scorsese (, ; born November 17, 1942) is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, and actor. One of the major figures of the New Hollywood era, he is widely regarded as one of the most significant and influential directors in film history. Scorsese's body of work explores themes such as Italian-American identity, Catholic concepts of guilt and redemption, faith, machismo, crime and tribalism. Many of his films are known for their depiction of violence, and the liberal use of profanity and rock music. In 1990, he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation and in 2017, he introduced the African Film Heritage Project.
Scorsese studied at New York University where he received a bachelor’s degree in English Literature in 1964, and received a Masters in Fine Arts in film from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts in 1966. In 1967 Scorsese's first feature film "Who's That Knocking at My Door" was released and was accepted into the Chicago Film Festival, where critic Roger Ebert saw it and called it "a marvelous evocation of American city life, announcing the arrival of an important new director". Scorsese's mentors included John Cassavetes, whose chatty, improvisational style did much to influence Scorsese’s scripts and production work, and who told him to "make films about what you know". In 1971 Scorsese moved to Hollywood, where he associated with some of the young directors who defined the decade, including Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola, Brian De Palma, and George Lucas. He directed "Boxcar Bertha" (1972), a cut-rate Depression-era film for Roger Corman, and "Mean Streets" (1973), a personal film about faith and redemption shot in Little Italy, starring Harvey Keitel and Robert De Niro.
He has established a filmmaking history involving repeat collaborations with actors and film technicians, including nine films made with Robert De Niro. His films with De Niro are the vigilante-thriller "Taxi Driver" (1976), the biographical sports drama "Raging Bull" (1980), the black comedy "The King of Comedy" (1982), the musical drama "New York, New York" (1977), the psychological thriller "Cape Fear" (1991), and the crime films "Mean Streets" (1973), "Goodfellas" (1990), "Casino" (1995) and "The Irishman" (2019). Scorsese has also been noted for his successful collaborations with actor Leonardo DiCaprio, having directed him in five films: the historical epic "Gangs of New York" (2002), the Howard Hughes biography "The Aviator" (2004), the crime thriller "The Departed" (2006), the psychological thriller "Shutter Island" (2010), and the Wall Street black comedy "The Wolf of Wall Street" (2013). "The Departed" won Scorsese the Academy Award for Best Director, in addition to winning the award for Best Picture. Scorsese is also known for his long-time collaboration with film editor Thelma Schoonmaker, who has edited every Scorsese film beginning with "Raging Bull". Scorsese's other film work includes the black comedy "After Hours" (1985), the romantic drama "The Age of Innocence" (1993), the historical adventure drama "Hugo" (2011), and the religious epics "The Last Temptation of Christ" (1988), "Kundun" (1997) and "Silence" (2016).
With nine Academy Award for Best Director nominations, Scorsese is the most-nominated living director and is second only to William Wyler's 12 nominations overall. In 2007, Scorsese was presented with the Kennedy Center Honor at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts for his influence in American culture. He also received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2003, a British Film Institute Fellowship in 1995, and a BAFTA Fellowship in 2012. Scorsese is also a recipient of the AFI Life Achievement Award for his contributions to the cinema, and has won an Academy Award, a Palme d'Or, Cannes Film Festival Best Director Award, Silver Lion, Grammy Award, Primetime Emmy Awards, Golden Globes, BAFTAs, and Directors Guild of America Awards. Scorsese is also known for his work in television, including directing the pilot episodes of the HBO series "Boardwalk Empire" and "Vinyl", the latter he also co-created. As a fan of rock music, he has directed several documentaries on the subject after editing "Woodstock" (1970), including "The Last Waltz" (1978), "No Direction Home" (2005), "Shine a Light" (2008), "" (2011), and "" (2019).
Martin Scorsese was born on November 17, 1942, in the Flushing area of New York City's Queens borough. His family moved to Little Italy in Manhattan before he started school. Both of Scorsese's parents, Charles Scorsese and Catherine Scorsese (born Cappa), worked in New York's Garment District. Charles was a clothes presser and an actor while Catherine was a seamstress and an actress. Both of them were of Italian descent: his paternal grandparents, Francesco Paolo and Teresa Scozzese, emigrated from Polizzi Generosa, while his maternal grandparents, Martino and Domenica Cappa, emigrated from Ciminna, both in the province of Palermo, Sicily. The original surname of the family was "Scozzese", later changed to Scorsese because of a transcription error. Scorsese was raised in a predominantly Catholic environment.
As a boy, he had asthma and could not play sports or take part in any activities with other children, so his parents and his older brother would often take him to movie theaters; it was at this stage in his life that he developed a passion for cinema. As a teenager in the Bronx, Scorsese frequently rented Powell and Pressburger's "The Tales of Hoffmann" (1951) from a store that had one copy of the reel. Scorsese was one of only two people who regularly rented it; the other was future film director George A. Romero.
Scorsese has cited Sabu and Victor Mature as his favorite actors during his youth. He has also spoken of the influence of the 1947–48 Powell and Pressburger films "Black Narcissus" and "The Red Shoes", whose innovative techniques later impacted his filmmaking. In his documentary titled "A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies", Scorsese said that he was enamored of historical epics in his adolescence, and at least two films of the genre, "Land of the Pharaohs" and "El Cid", appear to have had a deep and lasting impact on his cinematic psyche. Scorsese also developed an admiration for neorealist cinema at this time. He recounted its influence in a documentary on Italian neorealism, and commented on how "Bicycle Thieves", "Rome, Open City" and especially "Paisà" inspired him and influenced his view or portrayal of his Sicilian roots. In his documentary, "Il Mio Viaggio in Italia" ("My Voyage to Italy"), Scorsese noted that the Sicilian episode of Roberto Rossellini's "Paisà", which he first saw on television with his relatives who were themselves Sicilian immigrants, had a significant impact on his life. He acknowledges owing a great debt to the French New Wave and has stated that "the French New Wave has influenced all filmmakers who have worked since, whether they saw the films or not." He has also cited filmmakers including Satyajit Ray, Ingmar Bergman, Michelangelo Antonioni, and Federico Fellini as major influences on his career. He attended Cardinal Hayes High School in the Bronx. He had initially desired to become a priest, attending a preparatory seminary but failed after the first year. This gave way to cinema and consequently Scorsese enrolled in NYU's Washington Square College (now known as the College of Arts and Science), where he earned a B.A. in English in 1964. He went on to earn his M.F.A., film, from New York University's School of the Arts (now known as the Tisch School of the Arts) in 1968, a year after the school was founded.
While attending the Tisch School of the Arts, Scorsese made the short films "What's a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This?" (1963) and "It's Not Just You, Murray!" (1964). His most famous short of the period is the darkly comic "The Big Shave" (1967), which features Peter Bernuth. The film is an indictment of America's involvement in Vietnam, suggested by its alternative title "Viet '67". Scorsese has mentioned on several occasions that he was greatly inspired in his early days at New York University by film professor Haig P. Manoogian. In 1965, Scorsese married his first wife Laraine Marie Brennan, and they remained together for six years between 1965 and 1971; they have a daughter, Catherine, who was named after his mother. Following their divorce in 1972, Scorsese has had five wives and identifies himself as a lapsed Roman Catholic as a result of the Church's doctrinal position against divorce. As Scorsese has commented, "I'm a lapsed Catholic. But I am Roman Catholic; there's no way out of it."
In 1967, Scorsese made his first feature-length film, the black and white "I Call First", which was later retitled "Who's That Knocking at My Door", with his fellow students actor Harvey Keitel and editor Thelma Schoonmaker, both of whom were to become long-term collaborators. This film was intended to be the first of Scorsese's semi-autobiographical J. R. Trilogy, which would have included a later film, "Mean Streets". Throughout his career, Scorsese has avoided comparing his own films to those of other filmmakers whom he considers to be his contemporaries after 1967 when his own career in films began. The single exception is Kubrick’s 1968 film "".
Scorsese became friends with the influential "movie brats" of the 1970s: Brian De Palma, Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. It was De Palma who introduced Scorsese to Robert De Niro. During this period, Scorsese worked as the assistant director and one of the editors on the documentary "Woodstock" (1970) and met actor–director John Cassavetes, who became a close friend and mentor. In 1972, Scorsese made the Depression-era exploiter "Boxcar Bertha" for B-movie producer Roger Corman, who also helped directors such as Francis Ford Coppola, James Cameron, and John Sayles launch their careers. It was Corman who taught Scorsese that entertaining films could be shot with very little money or time, preparing the young director well for the challenges to come with "Mean Streets". Following the film's release, Cassavetes encouraged Scorsese to make the films that he wanted to make, rather than someone else's projects.
Championed by influential film critic Pauline Kael, "Mean Streets" was a breakthrough for Scorsese, De Niro, and Keitel. By now the signature Scorsese style was in place: macho posturing, bloody violence, Catholic guilt and redemption, gritty New York locale (though the majority of "Mean Streets" was shot in Los Angeles), rapid-fire editing and a soundtrack with contemporary music. Although the film was innovative, its wired atmosphere, edgy documentary style, and gritty street-level direction owed a debt to directors Cassavetes, Samuel Fuller and early Jean-Luc Godard. In 1974, actress Ellen Burstyn chose Scorsese to direct her in "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore", for which she won an Academy Award for Best Actress. Although well regarded, the film remains an anomaly in the director's early career as it focuses on a central female character. Returning to Little Italy to explore his ethnic roots, Scorsese next came up with "Italianamerican", a documentary featuring his parents Charles and Catherine Scorsese.
"Taxi Driver" followed in 1976—Scorsese's dark, urban nightmare of one lonely man's gradual descent into insanity. The film established him as an accomplished filmmaker and also brought attention to cinematographer Michael Chapman, whose style tends towards high contrasts, strong colors, and complex camera movements. The film starred Robert De Niro as the troubled and psychotic Travis Bickle, and co-starred Jodie Foster in a highly controversial role as an underage prostitute, with Harvey Keitel as her pimp. "Taxi Driver" also marked the start of a series of collaborations between Scorsese and writer Paul Schrader, whose influences included the diary of would-be assassin Arthur Bremer and "Pickpocket", a film by the French director Robert Bresson. Writer–director Schrader often returns to Bresson's work in films such as "American Gigolo", "Light Sleeper", and Scorsese's later "Bringing Out the Dead". Already controversial upon its release, "Taxi Driver" hit the headlines again five years later, when John Hinckley Jr. made an assassination attempt on then-president Ronald Reagan. He subsequently blamed his act on his obsession with Jodie Foster's "Taxi Driver" character (in the film, De Niro's character, Travis Bickle, makes an assassination attempt on a senator).
"Taxi Driver" won the Palme d'Or at the 1976 Cannes Film Festival, also receiving four Oscar nominations, including Best Picture. In 1976, Scorsese married the writer Julia Cameron, his second marriage; they have a daughter (Domenica Cameron-Scorsese, who is an actress and appeared in "The Age of Innocence"), but the marriage lasted only a year. The divorce was acrimonious and served as the basis of Cameron's first feature, the dark comedy "God's Will", which also starred their daughter, Domenica. She had a small role in "Cape Fear" using the name Domenica Scorsese and has continued to act, write, direct, and produce.
The critical and financial success of "Taxi Driver" encouraged Scorsese to move ahead with his first big-budget project: the highly stylized musical "New York, New York". This tribute to Scorsese's home town and the classic Hollywood musical was a box-office failure. The film was the director's third collaboration with Robert De Niro, co-starring with Liza Minnelli. The film is best remembered today for the title theme song, which was popularized by Frank Sinatra. Although possessing Scorsese's usual visual panache and stylistic bravura, many critics felt its enclosed studio-bound atmosphere left it leaden in comparison with his earlier work. Despite its weak reception, the film is regarded positively by some critics. Richard Brody in "The New Yorker" wrote:
In 1977 he directed the Broadway musical "The Act", starring Liza Minnelli. The disappointing reception that "New York, New York" received drove Scorsese into depression. By this stage the director had developed a serious cocaine addiction. However, he did find the creative drive to make the highly regarded "The Last Waltz", documenting the final concert by The Band. It was held at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco on American Thanksgiving Day, November 25, 1976, and featured one of the most extensive lineups of prominent guest performers at a single concert, including Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Ringo Starr, Muddy Waters, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, Paul Butterfield, Neil Diamond, Ronnie Wood, and Eric Clapton. However, Scorsese's commitments to other projects delayed the release of the film until 1978. Another Scorsese-directed documentary, titled "", also appeared in 1978, focusing on Steven Prince, the cocky gun salesman who appeared in "Taxi Driver". A period of wild partying followed, damaging the director's already fragile health. Scorsese helped provide footage for the documentary "Elvis on Tour". Before the end of 1979, Scorsese married actress Isabella Rossellini, and they stayed together for four years until their divorce in 1983.
By several accounts (Scorsese's included), Robert De Niro practically saved Scorsese's life when he persuaded him to kick his cocaine addiction to make his highly regarded film "Raging Bull". Writing for "The New Yorker" in March 2000, Mark Singer summarized Scorsese's condition stating: He (Scorsese) was more than mildly depressed. Drug abuse, and abuse of his body in general, culminated in a terrifying episode of internal bleeding. Robert De Niro came to see him in the hospital and asked, in so many words, whether he wanted to live or die. If you want to live, De Niro proposed, let's make this picture—referring to "Raging Bull," an as-told-to book by Jake La Motta, the former world middleweight boxing champion, that De Niro had given him to read years earlier. Convinced that he would never make another movie, he poured his energies into making this violent biopic of middleweight boxing champion Jake LaMotta, calling it a kamikaze method of film-making. The film is widely viewed as a masterpiece and was voted the greatest film of the 1980s by Britain's "Sight & Sound" magazine. It received eight Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Best Actor for Robert De Niro and Scorsese's first for Best Director. De Niro won, as did Thelma Schoonmaker for editing, but Best Director went to Robert Redford for "Ordinary People". From this work onwards, Scorsese's films are always labeled as "A Martin Scorsese Picture" on promotional material. "Raging Bull", filmed in high contrast black and white, is where Scorsese's style reached its zenith: "Taxi Driver" and "New York, New York" had used elements of expressionism to replicate psychological points of view, but here the style was taken to new extremes, employing extensive slow-motion, complex tracking shots, and extravagant distortion of perspective (for example, the size of boxing rings would change from fight to fight). Thematically too, the concerns carried on from "Mean Streets" and "Taxi Driver": insecure males, violence, guilt, and redemption.
Although the screenplay for "Raging Bull" was credited to Paul Schrader and Mardik Martin (who earlier co-wrote "Mean Streets"), the finished script differed extensively from Schrader's original draft. It was rewritten several times by various writers including Jay Cocks (who went on to co-script later Scorsese films "The Age of Innocence" and "Gangs of New York"). The final draft was largely written by Scorsese and Robert De Niro. The American Film Institute chose "Raging Bull" as the number one American sports film on their list of the top 10 sports films. In 1997, the Institute ranked "Raging Bull" as the twenty-fourth greatest film of all time on their AFI's 100 Years ... 100 Movies list. In 2007, they ranked "Raging Bull" as the fourth greatest film of all time on their AFI's 100 Years ... 100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) list.
Scorsese's next project was his fifth collaboration with Robert De Niro, "The King of Comedy" (1983). It is a satire on the world of media and celebrity, whose central character is a troubled loner who ironically becomes famous through a criminal act (kidnapping). The film was an obvious departure from the more emotionally committed films he had become associated with. Visually, it was far less kinetic than the style Scorsese had developed previously, often using a static camera and long takes. Here the expressionism of his previous work gave way to moments of almost total surrealism. It still bore many of Scorsese's trademarks, however. The "King of Comedy" failed at the box office, but has become increasingly well regarded by critics in the years since its release. German director Wim Wenders numbered it among his 15 favorite films. Also, in 1983, Scorsese made a brief cameo appearance in the film "Anna Pavlova" (also known as "A Woman for All Time"), originally intended to be directed by one of his heroes, Michael Powell. This led to a more significant acting appearance in Bertrand Tavernier's jazz film "Round Midnight". He also made a brief venture into television, directing an episode of Steven Spielberg's "Amazing Stories".
With "After Hours" (1985), Scorsese made an esthetic shift back to a pared-down, almost "underground" film-making style. Filmed on an extremely low budget, on location, and at night in the SoHo neighborhood of Manhattan, the film is a black comedy about one increasingly misfortunate night for a mild New York word processor (Griffin Dunne) and features cameos by such disparate actors as Teri Garr and Cheech and Chong. Along with the 1987 Michael Jackson music video "Bad", in 1986 Scorsese made "The Color of Money", a sequel to the much admired Robert Rossen film "The Hustler" (1961) with Paul Newman, which co-starred Tom Cruise. Although adhering to Scorsese's established style, "The Color of Money" was the director's first official foray into mainstream film-making. The film finally won actor Paul Newman an Oscar and gave Scorsese the clout to finally secure backing for a project that had been a longtime goal for him: "The Last Temptation of Christ".
In 1983, Scorsese began work on this long-cherished personal project. "The Last Temptation of Christ", based on the 1955 novel written by Nikos Kazantzakis, retold the life of Christ in human rather than divine terms. Barbara Hershey recalls introducing Scorsese to the book while they were filming "Boxcar Bertha". The film was slated to shoot under the Paramount Pictures banner, but shortly before principal photography was to start, Paramount pulled the plug on the project, citing pressure from religious groups. In this aborted 1983 version, Aidan Quinn was cast as Jesus, and Sting was cast as Pontius Pilate. (In the 1988 version, these roles were played by Willem Dafoe and David Bowie respectively.) However, following his mid-1980s flirtation with commercial Hollywood, Scorsese made a major return to personal filmmaking with the project, which was ultimately released in 1988. Even prior to its release, the film (adapted by "Taxi Driver" and "Raging Bull" veteran Paul Schrader) caused a massive furor, with worldwide protests against its perceived blasphemy effectively turning a low-budget independent film into a media sensation. Most of the controversy centered on the final passages of the film, which depicted Christ marrying and raising a family with Mary Magdalene in a Satan-induced hallucination while on the cross.
Looking past the controversy, "The Last Temptation of Christ" gained critical acclaim and remains an important work in Scorsese's canon: an explicit attempt to wrestle with the spirituality underpinning his films up until that point. The director went on to receive his second nomination for a Best Director Academy Award (again unsuccessfully, this time losing to Barry Levinson for "Rain Man"). Scorsese then married producer Barbara De Fina in 1985, his fourth of five marriages; their marriage ended in divorce in 1991. As a separate film project, and along with directors Woody Allen and Francis Ford Coppola in 1989, Scorsese provided one of three segments in the portmanteau film "New York Stories", called "Life Lessons".
After a decade of films considered by critics to be mixed results, some considered Scorsese's gangster epic "Goodfellas" (1990) his return to directorial form, and his most confident and fully realized film since "Raging Bull". De Niro and Joe Pesci offered a virtuoso display of Scorsese's bravura cinematic technique in the film and re-established, enhanced, and consolidated his reputation. After the film was released, Roger Ebert, a friend and supporter of Scorsese, named "Goodfellas" "the best mob movie ever". It is ranked No. 1 on Ebert's movie list for 1990, along with those of Gene Siskel and Peter Travers', and is widely considered one of the director's greatest achievements. The film was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, and Scorsese earned his third Best Director nomination but again lost to a first-time director, Kevin Costner ("Dances with Wolves"). Joe Pesci earned the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance. Scorsese and the film also won a number of other awards, including five BAFTA Awards, a Silver Lion and more. The American Film Institute placed "Goodfellas" at No. 94 on the AFI's 100 Years ... 100 Movies list. On the 2007 updated version, they moved "Goodfellas" up to No. 92 on the AFI's 100 Years ... 100 Movies list (10th Anniversary Edition) and put "Goodfellas" at No. 2 on their list of the top 10 gangster films (after "The Godfather").
In 1990, he released his only short-form documentary: "Made in Milan" about fashion designer Giorgio Armani. The following year brought "Cape Fear", a remake of a cult 1962 movie of the same name and the director's seventh collaboration with De Niro. Another foray into the mainstream, the film was a stylized thriller taking its cues heavily from Alfred Hitchcock and Charles Laughton's "The Night of the Hunter" (1955). "Cape Fear" received a mixed critical reception and was lambasted in many quarters for its scenes depicting misogynistic violence. However, the lurid subject matter gave Scorsese a chance to experiment with visual tricks and effects. The film garnered two Oscar nominations. Earning $80 million domestically, it stood as Scorsese's most commercially successful release until "The Aviator" (2004), and then "The Departed" (2006). The film also marked the first time Scorsese used wide-screen Panavision with an aspect ratio of 2.35:1. Throughout the early 1990s until 1997, Scorsese actively dated actress Illeana Douglas following his third divorce.
In 1990, Scorsese acted in a small role as Vincent van Gogh in the film "Dreams" by Japanese director Akira Kurosawa. Scorsese's 1994 cameo appearance in the Robert Redford film "Quiz Show" is remembered for the telling line: "You see, the audience didn't tune in to watch some amazing display of intellectual ability. They just wanted to watch the money." De Fina-Cappa was the production company he formed that same year with producer Barbara De Fina. In the early 1990s, Scorsese also expanded his role as a film producer. He produced a wide range of films, including major Hollywood studio productions ("Mad Dog and Glory", "Clockers"), low-budget independent films ("The Grifters", "Naked in New York", "Grace of My Heart", "Search and Destroy", "The Hi-Lo Country"), and even the foreign film ("Con gli occhi chiusi" (With Closed Eyes)).
"The Age of Innocence" (1993) was a significant departure for Scorsese, a period adaptation of the Edith Wharton novel about the constrictive high society of late-19th century New York. It was highly lauded by critics upon its original release but was a box office bomb, making an overall loss. As noted in "Scorsese on Scorsese" by editor–interviewer Ian Christie, the news that Scorsese wanted to make a film about a failed 19th-century romance raised many eyebrows among the film fraternity; all the more when Scorsese made it clear that it was a personal project and not a studio for-hire job.
Scorsese was interested in doing a "romantic piece", and he was strongly drawn to the characters and the story of Wharton's text. Scorsese wanted his film to be as rich an emotional experience as the book was to him rather than the traditional academic adaptations of literary works. To this end, Scorsese sought influence from diverse period films that had had an emotional impact on him. In "Scorsese on Scorsese", he documents influences from films such as Luchino Visconti's "Senso" and his "Il Gattopardo" (The Leopard) as well as Orson Welles's "The Magnificent Ambersons" and also Roberto Rossellini's "La prise de pouvoir par Louis XIV" (The Taking of Power by Louis XIV). Although "The Age of Innocence" was ultimately different from these films in terms of narrative, story, and thematic concern, the presence of a lost society, of lost values as well as detailed re-creations of social customs and rituals continues the tradition of these films. It came back into the public eye, especially in countries such as the UK and France, but still is largely neglected in North America. The film earned five Academy Award nominations (including Best Adapted Screenplay for Scorsese), winning the Costume Design Oscar. This was his first collaboration with the Academy Award-winning actor Daniel Day-Lewis, with whom he would work again on "Gangs of New York".
"Casino" (1995), like "The Age of Innocence" before it, focused on a tightly wound male whose well-ordered life is disrupted by the arrival of unpredictable forces. The fact that it was a violent gangster film made it more palatable to the director's fans who perhaps were baffled by the apparent departure of the earlier film. "Casino" was a box office success, but the film received mixed-to-positive notices from critics. In large part this was due to its significant stylistic similarities to his earlier "Goodfellas", and its excessive violence, which garnered it a reputation as possibly the most violent American gangster film. Indeed, many of the tropes and tricks of the earlier film resurfaced more or less intact, most obviously the casting of both Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci, with Pesci once again playing an unbridled psychopath. Sharon Stone was nominated for the Best Actress Academy Award for her performance. During the filming, Scorsese played a background part as a gambler at one of the tables.
Scorsese still found time for a four-hour documentary in 1995, titled "A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies", offering a thorough trek through American cinema. It covered the silent era to 1969, a year after which Scorsese began his feature career. He said, "I wouldn't feel right commenting on myself or my contemporaries." In the four-hour documentary, Scorsese lists the four aspects of the director he believes are the most important as (1) the director as storyteller; (2) the director as an illusionist: D. W. Griffith or F. W. Murnau, who created new editing techniques among other innovations that made the appearance of sound and color possible later on; (3) the director as a smuggler—filmmakers such as Douglas Sirk, Samuel Fuller, and Vincente Minnelli, who used to hide subversive messages in their films; and (4) the director as iconoclast. In the preface to this documentary, Scorsese states his commitment to the "Director's Dilemma", in which a successful contemporary director must be pragmatic about the realities of getting financing for films of personal esthetic interest by accepting the need of "making one film for the studio, and (then) making one for oneself."
If "The Age of Innocence" alienated and confused some fans, then "Kundun" (1997) went several steps further, offering an account of the early life of Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, the People's Liberation Army's entry into Tibet, and the Dalai Lama's subsequent exile to India. Not only a departure in subject matter, "Kundun" saw Scorsese employing a fresh narrative and visual approach. Traditional dramatic devices were substituted for a trance-like meditation achieved through an elaborate tableau of colorful visual images. The film was a source of turmoil for its distributor, Buena Vista Pictures, which was planning significant expansion into the Chinese market at the time. Initially defiant in the face of pressure from Chinese officials, Disney has since distanced itself from the project, hurting "Kundun"s commercial profile. In the short term, the sheer eclecticism in evidence enhanced the director's reputation. In the long term, however, it appears "Kundun" has been sidelined in most critical appraisals of the director, mostly noted as a stylistic and thematic detour. "Kundun" was the Scorsese's second attempt to profile the life of a great religious leader, following "The Last Temptation of Christ".
"Bringing Out the Dead" (1999) was a return to familiar territory, with the director and writer Paul Schrader constructing a pitch-black comic take on their own earlier "Taxi Driver". Like earlier Scorsese-Schrader collaborations, its final scenes of spiritual redemption explicitly recall the films of Robert Bresson. (It is also worth noting that the film's incident-filled nocturnal setting is reminiscent of "After Hours".) It received generally positive reviews, although not the universal critical acclaim of some of his other films. It stars Nicolas Cage, Ving Rhames, John Goodman, Tom Sizemore, and Patricia Arquette.
On various occasions Scorsese has been asked to present the Honorary Academy Award during the Oscar telecast. In 1998, at the 70th Academy Awards, Scorsese presented the award to film legend Stanley Donen. When accepting the award Donen quipped, "Marty this is backwards, I should be giving this to you, believe me". In 1999, at the 71st Academy Awards, Scorsese and De Niro presented the award to film director Elia Kazan. This would be a controversial pick for the Academy due to Kazan's past history regarding his involvement with the Hollywood Blacklist in the 1950s. Several members of the audience including Nick Nolte and Ed Harris refused to applaud Kazan when he received the award while others such as Warren Beatty, Meryl Streep, Kathy Bates, and Kurt Russell gave him a standing ovation. In 1999, Scorsese married his current spouse of twenty years, Helen Schermerhorn Morris. They have a daughter Francesca who appeared in "The Departed" and "The Aviator".
In 1999, Scorsese produced a documentary on Italian filmmakers titled "Il Mio Viaggio in Italia", also known as "My Voyage to Italy". The documentary foreshadowed the director's next project, the epic "Gangs of New York" (2002), influenced by (amongst many others) major Italian directors such as Luchino Visconti and filmed in its entirety at Rome's famous Cinecittà film studios. With a production budget said to be in excess of $100 million, "Gangs of New York" was Scorsese's biggest and arguably most mainstream venture to date. Like "The Age of Innocence", it was set in 19th-century New York, although focusing on the other end of the social scale (and like that film, also starring Daniel Day-Lewis). The film marked the first collaboration between Scorsese and actor Leonardo DiCaprio, who became a fixture in later Scorsese films. The production was highly troubled, with many rumors referring to the director's conflict with Miramax boss Harvey Weinstein. Despite denials of artistic compromise, some felt that "Gangs of New York" was the director's most conventional film, featuring standard film tropes that the director had traditionally avoided, such as characters existing purely for exposition purposes and explanatory flashbacks.
The final cut of the movie ran to 168 minutes, while the director's original cut was over 180 minutes long. Even so, the film received generally positive reviews with the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reporting that 75 percent of the reviews for the film they tallied were positive and summarizing the critics writing, "Though flawed, the sprawling, messy "Gangs of New York" is redeemed by impressive production design and Day-Lewis's electrifying performance." The film's central themes are consistent with the director's established concerns: New York, violence as culturally endemic, and subcultural divisions down ethnic lines. Originally filmed for a release in the winter of 2001 (to qualify for Academy Award nominations), Scorsese delayed the final production of the film until after the beginning of 2002; the studio consequently delayed the film until its release in the Oscar season of late 2002. "Gangs of New York" earned Scorsese his first Golden Globe for Best Director. In February 2003, "Gangs of New York" received 10 Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor for Daniel Day-Lewis; however, it did not win in any category.
The following year, Scorsese completed production of "The Blues", an expansive seven-part documentary tracing the history of blues music from its African roots to the Mississippi Delta and beyond. Seven film-makers including Wim Wenders, Clint Eastwood, Mike Figgis, and Scorsese himself each contributed a 90-minute film (Scorsese's entry was titled "Feel Like Going Home"). In the early 2000s, Scorsese produced several films for up-and-coming directors, such as "You Can Count on Me" (directed by Kenneth Lonergan), "Rain" (directed by Katherine Lindberg), "Lymelife" (directed by Derick Martini) and "The Young Victoria" (directed by Jean-Marc Vallée). At that time, he established Sikelia Productions. In 2003, producer Emma Tillinger Koskoff joined the company. Scorsese also produced several documentaries, such as "The Soul of a Man" (directed by Wim Wenders) and "Lightning in a Bottle" (directed by Antoine Fuqua).
Scorsese's film "The Aviator" (2004) is a lavish, large-scale biopic of eccentric aviation pioneer and film mogul Howard Hughes and reunited Scorsese with actor Leonardo DiCaprio. The film received highly positive reviews. The film was a widespread box office success and gained Academy recognition. "The Aviator" was nominated for six Golden Globe awards, including Best Motion Picture-Drama, Best Director, Best Screenplay, and Best Actor-Motion Picture Drama for Leonardo DiCaprio. It won three, including Best Motion Picture-Drama and Best Actor-Motion Picture Drama. In January 2005 "The Aviator" became the most-nominated film of the 77th Academy Awards nominations, nominated in 11 categories including Best Picture. The film also garnered nominations in nearly all the other major categories, including a fifth Best Director nomination for Scorsese. Despite having the most nominations, the film won only five Oscars. Scorsese lost again, this time to director Clint Eastwood for "Million Dollar Baby" (which also won Best Picture).
"No Direction Home" is a documentary film by Scorsese that tells of the life of Bob Dylan, and his impact on American popular music and the culture of the 20th century. The film does not cover Dylan's entire career; it focuses on his beginnings, his rise to fame in the 1960s, his then-controversial transformation from an acoustic guitar-based musician and performer to an electric guitar-influenced sound and his "retirement" from touring in 1966 following an infamous motorcycle accident. The film was first presented on television in both the United States (as part of the PBS "American Masters" series) and the United Kingdom (as part of the BBC Two "Arena" series) on September 26 to 27, 2005. A DVD version of the film was released the same month. The film won a Peabody Award and the Grammy Award for Best Long Form Music Video. In addition, Scorsese received an Emmy nomination for it.
Scorsese returned to the crime genre with the Boston-set thriller "The Departed", based on the Hong Kong police drama "Infernal Affairs" (which is co-directed by Andrew Lau and Alan Mak). The film continued Scorsese's collaboration with Leonardo DiCaprio and was the first time he worked with Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, Mark Wahlberg, and Martin Sheen.
"The Departed" opened to widespread critical acclaim, with some proclaiming it as one of the best efforts Scorsese had brought to the screen since 1990's "Goodfellas", and still others putting it at the same level as Scorsese's most celebrated classics "Taxi Driver" and "Raging Bull". With domestic box office receipts surpassing million, "The Departed" was Scorsese's highest-grossing film (not accounting for inflation) until 2010's "Shutter Island".
Scorsese's direction of "The Departed" earned him his second Golden Globe for Best Director, as well as a Critics' Choice Award, his first Directors Guild of America Award, and the Academy Award for Best Director. While being presented with the award, Scorsese poked fun at his previous track record of nominations, asking "Could you double-check the envelope?". It was presented to him by his longtime friends and colleagues Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, and Steven Spielberg. "The Departed" also received the Academy Award for the Best Motion Picture of 2006, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Film Editing by longtime Scorsese editor Thelma Schoonmaker, her third win for a Scorsese film.
"Shine a Light" is a concert film of the rock and roll band The Rolling Stones' performances at New York City's Beacon Theater on October 29 and November 1, 2006, intercut with brief news and interview footage from throughout the band's career. The film was initially scheduled for release on September 21, 2007, but Paramount Classics postponed its general release until April 2008. Its world premiere was at the opening of the 58th Berlinale Film Festival on February 7, 2008. In 2009, Scorsese signed a petition in support of director Roman Polanski, calling for his release from custody after he was detained in relation to his 1977 sexual abuse charges.
On October 22, 2007, "Daily Variety" reported that Scorsese would reunite with Leonardo DiCaprio on a fourth picture, "Shutter Island". Principal photography on the Laeta Kalogridis screenplay, based on the novel of the same name by Dennis Lehane, began in Massachusetts in March 2008. In December 2007, actors Mark Ruffalo, Max von Sydow, Ben Kingsley, and Michelle Williams joined the cast, marking the first time these actors had worked with Scorsese. The film was released on February 19, 2010. On May 20, 2010, the film became Scorsese's highest-grossing film. In 2010, "The Wall Street Journal" reported that Scorsese was supporting the David Lynch Foundation's initiative to help 10,000 military veterans overcome posttraumatic stress disorder through Transcendental Meditation; Scorsese has publicly discussed his own practice of TM.
Scorsese directed the series premiere for "Boardwalk Empire", an HBO drama series, starring Steve Buscemi and Michael Pitt, based on Nelson Johnson's book "Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times and Corruption of Atlantic City". Terence Winter, who wrote for "The Sopranos", created the series. In addition to directing the pilot (for which he won the 2011 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing), Scorsese also served as an executive producer on the series. The series premiered on September 19, 2010, and was broadcast for five seasons.
Scorsese directed the three-and-a-half-hour documentary "" about the life and music of former Beatles' member George Harrison, which premiered in the United States on HBO over two parts on October 5 and 6, 2011. His next film "Hugo" is a 3D adventure drama film based on Brian Selznick's novel "The Invention of Hugo Cabret". The film stars Asa Butterfield, Chloë Grace Moretz, Ben Kingsley, Sacha Baron Cohen, Ray Winstone, Emily Mortimer, Christopher Lee, and Jude Law. The film has been met with critical acclaim and earned Scorsese his third Golden Globe Award for Best Director. The film was also nominated for 11 Academy Awards, winning five of them and becoming tied with Michel Hazanavicius's film "The Artist" for the most Academy Awards won by a single film in 2011. "Hugo" also won two BAFTA awards, among numerous other awards and nominations. "Hugo" was Scorsese's first 3D film and was released in the United States on November 23, 2011.
Scorsese's 2013 film, "The Wolf of Wall Street", is an American biographical black comedy based on Jordan Belfort's memoir of the same name. The screenplay was written by Terence Winter and starred Leonardo DiCaprio as Belfort, along with Jonah Hill, Matthew McConaughey, and others. The film marked the fifth collaboration between Scorsese and DiCaprio and the second between Scorsese and Winter after "Boardwalk Empire". It was released on December 25, 2013. The film tells the story of a New York stockbroker, played by DiCaprio, who engages in a large securities fraud case involving illicit stock manipulation, by way of the practice of "pump and dump". DiCaprio was given the award for Best Actor-Motion Picture Musical or Comedy at the 2014 Golden Globe Awards. The film was also nominated for Best Motion Picture-Musical or Comedy as well. "The Wolf of Wall Street" was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor for Leonardo DiCaprio, Best Supporting Actor for Jonah Hill, Best Director for Martin Scorsese, and Best Adapted Screenplay for Terence Winter but did not win in any category. In a 2016 critics' poll conducted by the BBC, the film was ranked among the 100 greatest motion pictures since 2000.
Scorsese and David Tedeschi made a documentary about the history of the "New York Review of Books", titled "The 50 Year Argument". It screened as a work in progress at the Berlin International Film Festival in February 2014 and premiered in June 2014 at the Sheffield Doc/Fest. It was also screened in Oslo, and Jerusalem before being shown on the BBC's "Arena" series in July and at Telluride in August. In September, it was screened at the Toronto and Calgary International Film Festivals, and the New York Film Festival. It aired on HBO on September 29, 2014.
Scorsese directed the pilot for "Vinyl" written by Terence Winter and George Mastras, with Mick Jagger producing and Mastras as showrunner. The series stars Bobby Cannavale as Richie Finestra, founder and president of a top-tier record label, set in 1970s New York City's drug-and sex-fueled music business as punk and disco were breaking out, all told through the eyes of Finestra trying to resurrect his label and find the next new sound. Filming began on July 25, 2014. Co-stars include Ray Romano, Olivia Wilde, Juno Temple, Andrew Dice Clay, Ato Essandoh, Max Casella, and James Jagger. On December 2, 2014, "Vinyl" was picked up by HBO. The series lasted one season. Scorsese acted as executive producer of several indie films, like the 2014 "The Third Side of the River" (directed by his protege Celina Murga), another 2014 film "Revenge of the Green Dragons" (co-directed by Andrew Lau, whose film "Infernal Affairs" inspired "The Departed"), as well as "Bleed for This" and "Free Fire".
Scorsese directed "The Audition", a short film that also served as a promotional piece for casinos Studio City in Macau and City of Dreams in Manila, Philippines. The short brought together Scorsese's long-time muses Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro for the first time under his direction. The short film featured the two actors, playing fictionalized versions of themselves, competing for a role in Scorsese's next film. It was Scorsese's first collaboration with De Niro in two decades. The film premiered in October 2015 in conjunction with the grand opening of Studio City.
Scorsese had long anticipated filming an adaptation of Shūsaku Endō's novel "Silence", a drama about the lives of two Portuguese Jesuit priests in Japan during the 17th century. He had originally planned "Silence" as his next project following "Shutter Island." On April 19, 2013, financing was secured for "Silence" by Emmett/Furla Films, and filming began in January 2015. By November 2016, the film had completed post-production. It was written by Jay Cocks and Scorsese, based on the novel, and stars Andrew Garfield, Liam Neeson, and Adam Driver. The film was released on December 23, 2016. Scorsese was recognized as an Italian citizen by "jus sanguinis" in 2018.
On January 10, 2019, "Variety"s Chris Willman reported that Scorsese's long-anticipated documentary of Bob Dylan's 1975 tour, the Rolling Thunder Revue, would be released by Netflix: """ captures the troubled spirit of America in 1975 and the joyous music that Dylan performed during the fall of that year. Part documentary, part concert film, part fever dream, "Rolling Thunder" is a one of a kind experience, from master filmmaker Martin Scorsese." On April 25, 2019, it was announced that the documentary would be released on Netflix on June 12, 2019, with a concurrent theatrical engagement in twenty American, European, and Australian cities the night before, and an extended theatrical schedule in Los Angeles and New York so that the film will qualify for award consideration. After years of development, principal photography on Scorsese's crime film "The Irishman" began in August 2017, starring Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, and Al Pacino. The film had its world premiere at the 57th New York Film Festival on September 27, 2019. It received a limited theatrical release on November 1, 2019, followed by digital streaming on November 27, 2019, on Netflix. In January 2020, "The Irishman" received ten Academy Award nominations, including for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Supporting Actor for Pacino and Pesci.
In July 2019, Scorsese started scouting locations in preparation for the 2020 filming of his next film "Killers of the Flower Moon", a film adaptation of the book of the same name by David Grann. Scorsese will be teaming up with Leonardo DiCaprio for the sixth time and Robert De Niro for the tenth time. In December 2019, Scorsese's frequent cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto confirmed that "Flower Moon" was gearing up to start principal photography in March 2020.
Several recurring filmmaking techniques are identifiable in many of Scorsese's films. He has established a filmmaking history which involves repeat collaborations with actors, screenwriters, film editors, and cinematographers, sometimes extending over several decades, such as that with recurring cinematographers Michael Ballhaus, Robert Richardson, and Rodrigo Prieto.
Scorsese is known for his frequent use of slow motion, for example, in "Who's That Knocking at My Door" (1967) and "Mean Streets" (1973). He is also known for using freeze frames, such as: in the opening credits of "The King of Comedy" (1983), throughout "Goodfellas" (1990), "Casino" (1995), "The Departed" (2006), and in "The Irishman" (2019). His blonde leading ladies are usually seen through the eyes of the protagonist as angelic and ethereal; they wear white in their first scene and are photographed in slow motion—Cybill Shepherd in "Taxi Driver"; Cathy Moriarty's white bikini in "Raging Bull"; Sharon Stone's white minidress in "Casino". This may be a nod to director Alfred Hitchcock. Scorsese often uses long tracking shots, as seen in "Taxi Driver", "Goodfellas", "Casino", "Gangs of New York", and "Hugo". MOS sequences set to popular music or voice-over are regularly seen in his films, often involving aggressive camera movement and/or rapid editing. Scorsese sometimes highlights characters in a scene with an iris, an homage to 1920s silent film cinema (as scenes at the time sometimes used this transition). This effect can be seen in "Casino" (it is used on Sharon Stone and Joe Pesci), "Life Lessons", "The Departed" (on Matt Damon), and "Hugo". Some of his films include references/allusions to Westerns, particularly "Rio Bravo", "The Great Train Robbery", "Shane", "The Searchers", and "The Oklahoma Kid". Slow motion flashbulbs and accented camera/flash/shutter sounds are often used, as is the song "Gimme Shelter" by The Rolling Stones heard in several of Scorsese's films: "Goodfellas", "Casino", and "The Departed".
Scorsese usually has a quick cameo in his films ("Who's That Knocking at My Door", "Boxcar Bertha", "Mean Streets", "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore", "Taxi Driver", "The King of Comedy", "After Hours", "The Last Temptation of Christ" (albeit hidden under a hood), "The Age of Innocence", "Gangs of New York", "Hugo"), he is also known to contribute his voice to a film without appearing on screen (e.g. as in "The Aviator" and "The Wolf of Wall Street"). In "The Age of Innocence", for example, he appears in the non-speaking role of a large format portrait photographer in one of the passing scenes of the film. He provides the opening voice-over narration in "Mean Streets" and "The Color of Money"; plays the off-screen dressing room attendant in the final scene of "Raging Bull", and provides the voice of the unseen ambulance dispatcher in "Bringing Out the Dead". He also appears as the director of fictional newly formed Vatican Television in the Italian comedy "In the Pope's Eye".
Guilt is a prominent theme in many of his films, as is the role of Catholicism in creating and dealing with guilt ("Who's That Knocking at My Door", "Mean Streets", "Raging Bull", "Bringing Out the Dead", "The Departed", "Shutter Island", and "The Irishman"). In a similar manner, Scorsese considered "Silence" a "passion project": it had been in development since 1990, two years after the release of his film "The Last Temptation of Christ", which also contained strongly religious themes. When asked why he retained interest in a project dealing with strong theological themes for over 26 years, Scorsese said,As you get older, ideas go and come. Questions, answers, loss of the answer again and more questions, and this is what really interests me. Yes, the cinema and the people in my life and my family are most important, but ultimately as you get older, there's got to be more ... "Silence" is just something that I'm drawn to in that way. It's been an obsession, it has to be done ... it's a strong, wonderful true story, a thriller in a way, but it deals with those questions.
More recently, his films have featured corrupt authority figures, such as policemen in "The Departed" and politicians in "Gangs of New York" and "The Aviator". He is also known for his liberal usage of profanity, dark humor, and violence.
Scorsese's interest in political corruption as depicted in his films was expanded further in his 2019 film "The Irishman". Richard Brody writing for "The New Yorker" found the main interpretation of the film to be a dark allegory of a realist reading of American politics and American society stating: The real-life Hoffa... (was) a crucial player in both gangland politics and the actual practical politics of the day, and the movie's key through line is the inseparability of those two realms. "The Irishman" is a sociopolitical horror story that views much of modern American history as a continuous crime in motion, in which every level of society—from domestic life through local business through big business through national and international politics—is poisoned by graft and bribery, shady deals and dirty money, threats of violence and its gruesome enactment, and the hard-baked impunity that keeps the entire system running.
Scorsese often casts the same actors in his films, particularly Robert De Niro, who has collaborated with Scorsese on nine feature films and one short film. Included are the three films ("Taxi Driver", "Raging Bull", and "Goodfellas") that made AFI's 100 Years ... 100 Movies list. Scorsese has often said he thinks De Niro's best work under his direction was Rupert Pupkin in "The King of Comedy". After the turn of the century, Scorsese found a new muse with younger actor Leonardo DiCaprio, collaborating on five feature films and one short to date. Several critics have compared Scorsese's new partnership with DiCaprio with his previous one with De Niro. Frequent collaborators also include: Victor Argo (6), Harvey Keitel (6), Harry Northup (6), Murray Moston (5), Illeana Douglas (4), J. C. MacKenzie (4), Joe Pesci (4), Frank Vincent (3), Barry Primus (3), and Verna Bloom (3). Others who have appeared in multiple Scorsese films include Daniel Day-Lewis, who had become very reclusive to the Hollywood scene, Alec Baldwin, Willem Dafoe, Ben Kingsley, Jude Law, Dick Miller, Liam Neeson, Emily Mortimer, John C. Reilly, David Carradine, Barbara Hershey, Kevin Corrigan, Jake Hoffman, Frank Sivero, Ray Winstone and Nick Nolte. Before their deaths, Scorsese's parents, Charles Scorsese and Catherine Scorsese, appeared in bit parts, walk-ons or supporting roles, such as in "Goodfellas".
For his crew, Scorsese frequently worked with editors Marcia Lucas and Thelma Schoonmaker, cinematographers Michael Ballhaus, Robert Richardson, Michael Chapman and Rodrigo Prieto, screenwriters Paul Schrader, Mardik Martin, Jay Cocks, Terrence Winter, John Logan and Steven Zaillian, costume designer Sandy Powell, production designers Dante Ferretti and Bob Shaw, music producer Robbie Robertson, and composers Howard Shore and Elmer Bernstein. Schoonmaker, Richardson, Powell, and Ferretti have each won Academy Awards in their respective categories on collaborations with Scorsese. Elaine and Saul Bass, the latter being Hitchcock's frequent title designer, designed the opening credits for "Goodfellas", "The Age of Innocence", "Casino" and "Cape Fear".
, Scorsese has directed a total of 25 full-length films and 14 documentary films. He won an Academy Award for his 2006 film "The Departed".
In 2012, Scorsese participated in the "Sight & Sound" film polls of that year. Held every ten years to select the greatest films of all time, contemporary directors were asked to select ten films of their choice. Scorsese, however, picked 12, which are listed below, in alphabetical order:
Scorsese had been at the forefront in film preservation and restoration ever since 1990, when he created The Film Foundation, a non-profit film organization which collaborates with film studios to restore prints of old or damaged films. Scorsese launched the organization with Woody Allen, Robert Altman, Francis Ford Coppola, Clint Eastwood, Stanley Kubrick, George Lucas, Sydney Pollack, Robert Redford, and Steven Spielberg, who all sat on the foundation's original board of directors. In 2006, Paul Thomas Anderson, Wes Anderson, Curtis Hanson, Peter Jackson, Ang Lee and Alexander Payne joined them. In 2015, Christopher Nolan also joined the board. The foundation has restored more than 800 films from around the world and conducts a free educational curriculum for young people on the language and history of film. For his advocacy in film restoration he received the Robert Osborne Award at the 2018 TCM Film Festival. The award was given to Scorsese as "an individual who has significantly contributed to preserving the cultural heritage of classic films".
In 2007, Scorsese established the World Cinema Project with the mission, to preserve and present marginalized and infrequently screened films from regions generally ill equipped to preserve their own cinema history. Scorsese's organization has worked with the Criterion Collection to not only preserve the films but to allow them to be released on DVD and Blu-ray boxsets and on streaming services such as The Criterion Channel. Films in the WCP include Ousmane Sembène's "Black Girl" (1966), and Djibril Diop Mambéty's "Touki Bouki" (1973).
The Criterion Collection so far has released two Vol. boxsets on DVD and Blu-ray, titled, "Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Project". The first Volume includes 6 titles, "Touki Bouki" (1973), "Redes" (1936), "A River Called Titas" (1973), "Dry Summer" (1964), "Trances" (1981) and "The Housemaid" (1960). The second volume also includes 6 titles, "Insiang" (1976), "Mysterious Object at Noon" (2000), "Revenge" (1989), "Limite" (1931), "Law of the Border" (1967), and "Taipei Story" (1985).
In 2017, Scorsese also introduced The African Film Heritage Project (AFHP), which is a joint initiative between Scorsese’s non-profit The Film Foundation, UNESCO, Cineteca di Bologna, and the Pan African Federation of Filmmakers (FEPACI). The project aims to locate and preserve 50 classic African films, some thought lost and others beyond repair, with hopes to make them available to audiences everywhere. In an interview with "Cinema Escapist" in 2018, Scorsese talked about the ambitious collaboration saying, "Our first goal is to launch and conduct a thorough investigation in film archives and laboratories around the world, in order to locate the best surviving elements—original negatives, we hope—for our first 50 titles." He also stated that "Restoration is always the primary goal, of course, but within the initiative, it’s also a starting point of a process that follows through with exhibition and dissemination in Africa and abroad. And of course, our restoration process always includes the creation of preservation elements."
In 2019, the AFHP, announced that they would screen restorations of four African films on their home continent for the first time as part of the 50th anniversary of the Pan African Film Festival of Ouagadougou. The movies in question are Med Hondo’s "Soleil Ô" (1970), Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina’s "Chronique des années de braise" (1975), Timité Bassori’s "La Femme au couteau" (1969), and Jean-Pierre Dikongue-Pipa’s "Muna Moto" (1975).
Scorsese's films have been nominated for numerous awards both nationally and internationally, with an Academy Award win for "The Departed". In 1997, Scorsese received the AFI Life Achievement Award. In 1998, the American Film Institute placed three Scorsese films on their list of the greatest American movies: "Raging Bull" at #24, "Taxi Driver" at #47, and "Goodfellas" at #94. For the tenth-anniversary edition of their list, "Raging Bull" was moved to #4, "Taxi Driver" was moved to #52, and "Goodfellas" was moved to #92. In 2001, the American Film Institute placed two Scorsese films on their list of the most "heart-pounding movies" in American cinema: "Taxi Driver" at #22 and "Raging Bull" at #51. At a ceremony in Paris, France, on January 5, 2005, Martin Scorsese was awarded the French Legion of Honour in recognition of his contribution to cinema. On February 8, 2006, at the 48th Annual Grammy Awards, Scorsese was awarded the Grammy Award for Best Long Form Music Video for "No Direction Home".
In 2007, Scorsese was listed among "Time" magazine's 100 Most Influential People in The World. In August 2007, Scorsese was named the second-greatest director of all time in a poll by "Total Film" magazine, in front of Steven Spielberg and behind Alfred Hitchcock. In 2007, Scorsese was honored by the National Italian American Foundation (N.I.A.F.) at the nonprofit's thirty-second Anniversary Gala. During the ceremony, Scorsese helped launch N.I.A.F.'s Jack Valenti Institute in memory of former foundation board member and past president of the Motion Picture Association of America (M.P.A.A.) Jack Valenti. The Institute provides support to Italian film students in the U.S. Scorsese received his award from Mary Margaret Valenti, Jack Valenti's widow. Certain pieces of Scorsese's film-related material and personal papers are contained in the Wesleyan University Cinema Archives, to which scholars and media experts from around the world may have full access. On September 11, 2007, the Kennedy Center Honors committee, which recognizes career excellence and cultural influence, named Scorsese as one of the honorees for the year. On June 17, 2008, the American Film Institute placed two of Scorsese's films on the AFI's 10 Top 10 list: "Raging Bull" at number one for the Sports genre and "Goodfellas" at number two for the Gangster genre. In 2013, the staff of "Entertainment Weekly" voted "Mean Streets" the seventh greatest film ever made.
On January 17, 2010, at the 67th Golden Globe Awards, Scorsese was the recipient of the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award. On September 18, 2011, at the 63rd Primetime Emmy Awards, Scorsese won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series for his work on the series premiere of "Boardwalk Empire". In 2011, Scorsese received an honorary doctorate from the National Film School in Lodz. At the awards ceremony he said, "I feel like I'm a part of this school and that I attended it," paying tribute to the films of Wajda, Munk, Has, Polanski and Skolimowski. King Missile wrote "Martin Scorsese" in his honor. On February 12, 2012, at the 65th British Academy Film Awards, Scorsese was the recipient of the BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award.
On September 16, 2012, Scorsese won two Emmy Awards for Outstanding Directing for Nonfiction Programming and Outstanding Nonfiction Special for his work on the documentary "George Harrison: Living in the Material World". In 2013, the National Endowment for the Humanities selected Scorsese for the Jefferson Lecture, the U.S. federal government's highest honor for achievement in the humanities. He was the first filmmaker chosen for the honor. His lecture, delivered on April 1, 2013, at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, was titled "Persistence of Vision: Reading the Language of Cinema". Scorsese was awarded the Polish Gold Medal for Merit to Culture – Gloria Artis on April 11, 2017, in recognition of his contribution to Polish cinema.
Scorsese has also garnered favorable responses from numerous film giants including Ingmar Bergman, Frank Capra, Jean-Luc Godard, Werner Herzog, Elia Kazan, Akira Kurosawa, David Lean, Michael Powell, Satyajit Ray, and François Truffaut. He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Oxford on June 20, 2018. As of 2019, five of Scorsese's film have been selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". In commenting on Scorsese's 2019 film "The Irishman", Guillermo del Toro cited Scorsese's ability as a director for the depiction of character development comparable to the films of "Renoir, Bresson, Bergman, Oliveira or Kurosawa". Sam Mendes, in his acceptance speech after winning the 2020 Golden Globe Award for Best Director for "1917", praised Scorsese's contribution to cinema, stating, "There's not one director in this room, not one director in the world, that is not in the shadow of Martin Scorsese... I just have to say that." Bong Joon-ho, in his acceptance speech for the 2020 Academy Award for Best Director for "Parasite", said, "When I was young and studying cinema, there was a saying that I carved deep into my heart, which is, the most personal is the most creative." He then said that this quote had come from Scorsese, which prompted the audience to give Scorsese a standing ovation. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18995 |
Kangaroo
The kangaroo is a marsupial from the family Macropodidae (macropods, meaning "large foot"). In common use the term is used to describe the largest species from this family, the red kangaroo, as well as the antilopine kangaroo, eastern grey kangaroo, and western grey kangaroo. Kangaroos are indigenous to Australia. The Australian government estimates that 34.3 million kangaroos lived within the commercial harvest areas of Australia in 2011, up from 25.1 million one year earlier.
As with the terms "wallaroo" and "wallaby", "kangaroo" refers to a paraphyletic grouping of species. All three refer to members of the same taxonomic family, Macropodidae, and are distinguished according to size. The largest species in the family are called "kangaroos" and the smallest are generally called "wallabies". The term "wallaroos" refers to species of an intermediate size. There are also the tree-kangaroos, another type of macropod, which inhabit the tropical rainforests of New Guinea, far northeastern Queensland and some of the islands in the region. A general idea of the relative size of these informal terms could be:
Kangaroos have large, powerful hind legs, large feet adapted for leaping, a long muscular tail for balance, and a small head. Like most marsupials, female kangaroos have a pouch called a marsupium in which joeys complete postnatal development.
The large kangaroos have adapted much better than the smaller macropods to land clearing for pastoral agriculture and habitat changes brought to the Australian landscape by humans. Many of the smaller species are rare and endangered, while kangaroos are relatively plentiful.
The kangaroo is a symbol of Australia and appears on the Australian coat of arms and on some of its currency and is used by some of Australia's well known organisations, including Qantas and the Royal Australian Air Force. The kangaroo is important to both Australian culture and the national image, and consequently there are numerous popular culture references.
Wild kangaroos are shot for meat, leather hides, and to protect grazing land. Although controversial, kangaroo meat has perceived health benefits for human consumption compared with traditional meats due to the low level of fat on kangaroos.
The word "kangaroo" derives from the Guugu Yimithirr word "gangurru", referring to eastern grey kangaroos. The name was first recorded as "kanguru" on 12 July 1770 in an entry in the diary of Sir Joseph Banks; this occurred at the site of modern Cooktown, on the banks of the Endeavour River, where under the command of Lieutenant James Cook was beached for almost seven weeks to repair damage sustained on the Great Barrier Reef. Cook first referred to kangaroos in his diary entry of 4 August. Guugu Yimithirr is the language of the people of the area.
A common myth about the kangaroo's English name is that it was a Guugu Yimithirr phrase for "I don't know" or "I don't understand". According to this legend, Cook and Banks were exploring the area when they happened upon the animal. They asked a nearby local what the creatures were called. The local responded "kangaroo", said to mean "I don't know/understand", which Cook then took to be the name of the creature. Anthropologist Walter Roth was trying to correct this legend as far back as in 1898, but few took note until 1972 when linguist John B. Haviland in his research with the Guugu Yimithirr people was able to fully confirm the proper etymology. There are similar, more credible stories of naming confusion, such as with the Yucatán Peninsula.
Kangaroos are often colloquially referred to as "roos". Male kangaroos are called bucks, boomers, jacks, or old men; females are does, flyers, or jills; and the young ones are joeys. The collective noun for a group of kangaroos is a mob, court, or troupe.
There are four extant species that are commonly referred to as kangaroos:
In addition, there are about 50 smaller macropods closely related to the kangaroo in the family Macropodidae. Kangaroos and other macropods share a common ancestor with Phalangeridae from the Middle Miocene. This ancestor was likely arboreal and lived in the canopies of the extensive forests that covered most of Australia at that time, when the climate was much wetter, and fed on leaves and stems. From the Late Miocene through the Pliocene and into the Pleistocene the climate got drier, which led to a decline of forests and expansion of grasslands. At this time there was a radiation of macropodids characterised by enlarged body size and adaptation to the low quality grass diet with the development of foregut fermentation. The most numerous early macropods, the Balbaridae and the Bulungmayinae, became extinct in the Late Miocene around 5–10 mya. There is dispute over the relationships of the two groups to modern kangaroos and rat-kangaroos. Some argue that the balbarines were the ancestors of rat-kangaroos and the bulungmayines were the ancestors of kangaroos. while others hold the contrary view.
The middle to late bulungmayines, "Ganguroo" and "Wanburoo" lacked digit 1 of the hind foot and digits 2 and 3 were reduced and partly under the large digit 4, much like the modern kangaroo foot. This would indicate that they were bipedal. In addition, their ankle bones had an articulation that would have prohibited much lateral movements, an adaptation for bipedal hopping. Species related to the modern grey kangaroos and wallaroos begin to appear in the Pliocene. The red kangaroo appears to be the most recently evolved kangaroo, with its fossil record not going back beyond the Pleistocene era, 1–2 mya.
The first kangaroo to be exhibited in the Western world was an example shot by John Gore, an officer on Captain Cook's ship, the HMS "Endeavour", in 1770. The animal was shot and its skin and skull transported back to England whereupon it was stuffed (by taxidermists who had never seen the animal before) and displayed to the general public as a curiosity. The first glimpse of a kangaroo for many 18th-century Britons was a painting by George Stubbs.
Kangaroos and wallabies belong to the same taxonomic family (Macropodidae) and often the same genera, but kangaroos are specifically categorised into the six largest species of the family. The term wallaby is an informal designation generally used for any macropod that is smaller than a kangaroo or wallaroo that has not been designated otherwise.
Kangaroos are the only large animals to use hopping as a means of locomotion. The comfortable hopping speed for a red kangaroo is about , but speeds of up to can be attained over short distances, while it can sustain a speed of for nearly . During a hop, the powerful gastrocnemius muscles lift the body off the ground while the smaller plantaris muscle, which attaches near the large fourth toe, is used for push-off. Seventy percent of potential energy is stored in the elastic tendons. At slow speeds, it employs pentapedal locomotion, using its tail to form a tripod with its two forelimbs while bringing its hind feet forward. Both pentapedal walking and fast hopping are energetically costly. Hopping at moderate speeds is the most energy efficient, and a kangaroo moving above maintains energy consistency more than similarly-sized animal running at the same speed. Kangaroos are adept swimmers, and often flee into waterways if threatened by a predator. If pursued into the water, a kangaroo may use its forepaws to hold the predator underwater so as to drown it.
Kangaroos have single-chambered stomachs quite unlike those of cattle and sheep, which have four compartments. They sometimes regurgitate the vegetation they have eaten, chew it as cud, and then swallow it again for final digestion. However, this is a different, more strenuous, activity than it is in ruminants, and does not take place as frequently.
Different species of kangaroos have different diets, although all are strict herbivores. The eastern grey kangaroo is predominantly a grazer, and eats a wide variety of grasses, whereas some other species such as the red kangaroo include significant amounts of shrubs in their diets. Smaller species of kangaroos also consume hypogeal fungi. Many species are nocturnal, and crepuscular, usually spending the hot days resting in shade, and the cool evenings, nights and mornings moving about and feeding.
Because of its grazing habits, the kangaroo has developed specialized teeth that are rare among mammals. Its incisors are able to crop grass close to the ground and its molars chop and grind the grass. Since the two sides of the lower jaw are not joined or fused together, the lower incisors are farther apart, giving the kangaroo a wider bite. The silica in grass is abrasive, so kangaroo molars are ground down and they actually move forward in the mouth before they eventually fall out, and are replaced by new teeth that grow in the back. This process is known as polyphyodonty and, amongst other mammals, only occurs in elephants and manatees.
Despite having herbivorous diets similar to ruminants such as cattle, which release large quantities of digestive methane through exhaling and eructation (burping), kangaroos release virtually none. The hydrogen byproduct of fermentation is instead converted into acetate, which is then used to provide further energy. Scientists are interested in the possibility of transferring the bacteria responsible for this process from kangaroos to cattle, since the greenhouse gas effect of methane is 23 times greater than carbon dioxide per molecule.
Groups of kangaroos are called "mobs" "courts" or "troupes", which usually have 10 or more kangaroos in them. Living in mobs can provide protection for some of the weaker members of the group. The size and stability of mobs vary between geographic regions, with eastern Australia having larger and more stable aggregations than in arid areas farther west. Larger aggregations display high amounts of interactions and complex social structures, comparable to that of ungulates. One common behavior is nose touching and sniffing, which mostly occurs when an individual joins a group. The kangaroo performing the sniffing gains much information from smell cues. This behavior enforces social cohesion without consequent aggression. During mutual sniffing, if one kangaroo is smaller, it will hold its body closer to the ground and its head will quiver, which serves as a possible form of submission. Greetings between males and females are common, with larger males being the most involved in meeting females. Most other non-antagonistic behavior occurs between mothers and their young. Mother and young reinforce their bond though grooming. A mother will groom her young while it is suckling or after it is finished suckling. A joey will nuzzle its mother's pouch if it wants access to it.
Sexual activity of kangaroos consists of consort pairs. Oestrous females roam widely and attract the attention of males with conspicuous signals. A male will monitor a female and follow her every movement. He sniffs her urine to see if she is in oestrus, a process exhibiting the flehmen response. The male will then proceed to approach her slowly to avoid alarming her. If the female does not run away, the male will continue by licking, pawing, and scratching her, and copulation will follow. After copulation is over, the male will move on to another female. Consort pairing may take several days and the copulation is also long. Thus, a consort pair is likely to attract the attention of a rival male. As larger males are tending bonds with females near oestrus, smaller males will tend to females that are farther from oestrus. Dominant males can avoid having to sort through females to determine their reproductive status by searching for tending bonds held by the largest male they can displace without a fight.
Fighting has been described in all species of kangaroos. Fights between kangaroos can be brief or long and ritualised. In highly competitive situations, such as males fighting for access to oestrous females or at limited drinking spots, the fights are brief. Both sexes will fight for drinking spots, but long, ritualised fighting or "boxing" is largely done by males. Smaller males fight more often near females in oestrus, while the large males in consorts do not seem to get involved. Ritualised fights can arise suddenly when males are grazing together. However, most fights are preceded by two males scratching and grooming each other. One or both of them will adopt a high standing posture, with one male issuing a challenge by grasping the other male's neck with its forepaw. Sometimes, the challenge will be declined. Large males often reject challenges by smaller males. During fighting, the combatants adopt a high standing posture and paw at each other's heads, shoulders and chests. They will also lock forearms and wrestle and push each other as well as balance on their tails to kick each other in the abdomen.
Brief fights are similar, except there is no forearm locking. The losing combatant seems to use kicking more often, perhaps to parry the thrusts of the eventual winner. A winner is decided when a kangaroo breaks off the fight and retreats. Winners are able to push their opponents backwards or down to the ground. They also seem to grasp their opponents when they break contact and push them away. The initiators of the fights are usually the winners. These fights may serve to establish dominance hierarchies among males, as winners of fights have been seen to displace their opponent from resting sites later in the day. Dominant males may also pull grass to intimidate subordinates.
Kangaroos have a few natural predators. The thylacine, considered by palaeontologists to have once been a major natural predator of the kangaroo, is now extinct. Other extinct predators included the marsupial lion, "Megalania" and "Wonambi". However, with the arrival of humans in Australia at least 50,000 years ago and the introduction of the dingo about 5,000 years ago, kangaroos have had to adapt. Wedge-tailed eagles and other raptors usually eat kangaroo carrion. Goannas and other carnivorous reptiles also pose a danger to smaller kangaroo species when other food sources are lacking.
Along with dingoes, introduced species such as foxes, feral cats, and both domestic and feral dogs, pose a threat to kangaroo populations. Kangaroos and wallabies are adept swimmers, and often flee into waterways if presented with the option. If pursued into the water, a large kangaroo may use its forepaws to hold the predator underwater so as to drown it. Another defensive tactic described by witnesses is catching the attacking dog with the forepaws and disembowelling it with the hind legs.
Kangaroos have developed a number of adaptations to a dry, infertile country and highly variable climate. As with all marsupials, the young are born at a very early stage of development—after a gestation of 31–36 days. At this stage, only the forelimbs are somewhat developed, to allow the newborn to climb to the pouch and attach to a teat. In comparison, a human embryo at a similar stage of development would be about seven weeks old, and premature babies born at less than 23 weeks are usually not mature enough to survive. When the joey is born, it is about the size of a lima bean. The joey will usually stay in the pouch for about nine months (180–320 days for the Western Grey) before starting to leave the pouch for small periods of time. It is usually fed by its mother until reaching 18 months.
The female kangaroo is usually pregnant in permanence, except on the day she gives birth; however, she has the ability to freeze the development of an embryo until the previous joey is able to leave the pouch. This is known as embryonic diapause, and will occur in times of drought and in areas with poor food sources. The composition of the milk produced by the mother varies according to the needs of the joey. In addition, the mother is able to produce two different kinds of milk simultaneously for the newborn and the older joey still in the pouch.
Unusually, during a dry period, males will not produce sperm, and females will conceive only if enough rain has fallen to produce a large quantity of green vegetation.
There is also a link between the hopping action and breathing: as the feet leave the ground, air is expelled from the lungs; bringing the feet forward ready for landing refills the lungs, providing further energy efficiency. Studies of kangaroos and wallabies have demonstrated, beyond the minimum energy expenditure required to hop at all, increased speed requires very little extra effort (much less than the same speed increase in, say, a horse, dog or human), and the extra energy is required to carry extra weight. For kangaroos, the key benefit of hopping is not speed to escape predators—the top speed of a kangaroo is no higher than that of a similarly sized quadruped, and the Australian native predators are in any case less fearsome than those of other countries—but economy: in an infertile country with highly variable weather patterns, the ability of a kangaroo to travel long distances at moderately high speed in search of food sources is crucial to survival.
New research has revealed that a kangaroo's tail acts as a third leg rather than just a balancing strut. Kangaroos have a unique three-stage walk where they plant their front legs and tail first, then push off their tail, followed lastly by the back legs. The propulsive force of the tail is equal to that of both the front and hind legs combined and performs as much work as what a human leg walking can at the same speed.
A DNA sequencing project of the genome of a member of the kangaroo family, the tammar wallaby, was started in 2004. It was a collaboration between Australia (mainly funded by the State of Victoria) and the National Institutes of Health in the US. The tammar's genome was fully sequenced in 2011. The genome of a marsupial such as the kangaroo is of great interest to scientists studying comparative genomics, because marsupials are at an ideal degree of evolutionary divergence from humans: mice are too close and have not developed many different functions, while birds are genetically too remote. The dairy industry could also benefit from this project.
Eye disease is rare but not new among kangaroos. The first official report of kangaroo blindness took place in 1994, in central New South Wales. The following year, reports of blind kangaroos appeared in Victoria and South Australia. By 1996, the disease had spread "across the desert to Western Australia". Australian authorities were concerned the disease could spread to other livestock and possibly humans. Researchers at the Australian Animal Health Laboratories in Geelong detected a virus called the Wallal virus in two species of midges, believed to have been the carriers. Veterinarians also discovered fewer than 3% of kangaroos exposed to the virus developed blindness.
Kangaroo reproduction is similar to that of opossums. The egg (still contained in the shell membrane, a few micrometres thick, and with only a small quantity of yolk within it) descends from the ovary into the uterus. There it is fertilised and quickly develops into a neonate. Even in the largest kangaroo (the red kangaroo), the neonate emerges after only 33 days. Usually, only one young is born at a time. It is blind, hairless, and only a few centimetres long; its hindlegs are mere stumps; it instead uses its more developed forelegs to climb its way through the thick fur on its mother's abdomen into the pouch, which takes about three to five minutes. Once in the pouch, it fastens onto one of the four teats and starts to feed. Almost immediately, the mother's sexual cycle starts again. Another egg descends into the uterus and she becomes sexually receptive. Then, if she mates and a second egg is fertilised, its development is temporarily halted. Meanwhile, the neonate in the pouch grows rapidly. After about 190 days, the baby (joey) is sufficiently large and developed to make its full emergence out of the pouch, after sticking its head out for a few weeks until it eventually feels safe enough to fully emerge. From then on, it spends increasing time in the outside world and eventually, after about 235 days, it leaves the pouch for the last time. The lifespan of kangaroos averages at six years in the wild to in excess of 20 years in captivity, varying by species. Most individuals, however, do not reach maturity in the wild.
The kangaroo has always been a very important animal for Aboriginal Australians, for its meat, hide, bone, and tendon. Kangaroo hides were also sometimes used for recreation; in particular there are accounts of some tribes (Kurnai) using stuffed kangaroo scrotum as a ball for the traditional football game of marngrook. In addition, there were important Dreaming stories and ceremonies involving the kangaroo. Aherrenge is a current kangaroo dreaming site in the Northern Territory.
Unlike many of the smaller macropods, kangaroos have fared well since European settlement. European settlers cut down forests to create vast grasslands for sheep and cattle grazing, added stock watering points in arid areas, and have substantially reduced the number of dingoes.
Kangaroos are shy and retiring by nature, and in normal circumstances present no threat to humans. In 2003, Lulu, an eastern grey which had been hand-reared, saved a farmer's life by alerting family members to his location when he was injured by a falling tree branch. She received the RSPCA Australia National Animal Valour Award on 19 May 2004.
There are very few records of kangaroos attacking humans without provocation; however, several such unprovoked attacks in 2004 spurred fears of a rabies-like disease possibly affecting the marsupials. The only reliably documented case of a fatality from a kangaroo attack occurred in New South Wales, in 1936. A hunter was killed when he tried to rescue his two dogs from a heated fray. Other suggested causes for erratic and dangerous kangaroo behaviour include extreme thirst and hunger. In July 2011, a male red kangaroo attacked a 94-year-old woman in her own backyard as well as her son and two police officers responding to the situation. The kangaroo was capsicum sprayed (pepper sprayed) and later put down after the attack.
A collision with a vehicle is capable of killing a kangaroo. Kangaroos dazzled by headlights or startled by engine noise often leap in front of cars. Since kangaroos in mid-bound can reach speeds of around 50 km/h (31 mph) and are relatively heavy, the force of impact can be severe. Small vehicles may be destroyed, while larger vehicles may suffer engine damage. The risk of harm or death to vehicle occupants is greatly increased if the windscreen is the point of impact. As a result, "kangaroo crossing" signs are commonplace in Australia.
Vehicles that frequent isolated roads, where roadside assistance may be scarce, are often fitted with "roo bars" to minimise damage caused by collision. Bonnet-mounted devices, designed to scare wildlife off the road with ultrasound and other methods, have been devised and marketed.
If a female is the victim of a collision, animal welfare groups ask that her pouch be checked for any surviving joey, in which case it may be removed to a wildlife sanctuary or veterinary surgeon for rehabilitation. Likewise, when an adult kangaroo is injured in a collision, a vet, the RSPCA Australia or the National Parks and Wildlife Service can be consulted for instructions on proper care. In New South Wales, rehabilitation of kangaroos is carried out by volunteers from WIRES. Council road signs often list phone numbers for callers to report injured animals.
The kangaroo is a recognisable symbol of Australia. The kangaroo and emu feature on the Australian coat of arms. Kangaroos have also been featured on coins, most notably the five kangaroos on the Australian one dollar coin. The Australian Made logo consists of a golden kangaroo in a green triangle to show that a product is grown or made in Australia.
Registered trademarks of early Australian companies using the kangaroo included Yung, Schollenberger & Co. Walla Walla Brand leather and skins (1890); Arnold V. Henn (1892) whose emblem showed a family of kangaroos playing with a skipping rope; Robert Lascelles & Co. linked the speed of the animal with its velocipedes (1896); while some overseas manufacturers, like that of "The Kangaroo" safety matches (made in Japan) of the early 1900s, also adopted the symbol. Even today, Australia's national airline, Qantas, uses a bounding kangaroo for its logo.
The kangaroo and wallaby feature predominantly in Australian sports teams names and mascots. Examples include the Australian national rugby league team (the Kangaroos) and the Australian national rugby union team (the Wallabies). In a nation-wide competition held in 1978 for the XII Commonwealth Games by the Games Australia Foundation Limited in 1982, Hugh Edwards' design was chosen; a simplified form of six thick stripes arranged in pairs extending from along the edges of a triangular centre represent both the kangaroo in full flight, and a stylised "A" for Australia.
Kangaroos are well represented in films, television, books, toys and souvenirs around the world. "Skippy the Bush Kangaroo" was a popular 1960s Australian children's television series about a fictional pet kangaroo. Kangaroos are featured in the Rolf Harris song "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport" and several Christmas carols.
Historically, the kangaroo has been a source of food for indigenous Australians. Kangaroo meat is high in protein and low in fat (about 2%). Kangaroo meat has a high concentration of conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) compared with other foods, and is a rich source of vitamins and minerals. Low fat diets rich in CLA have been studied for their potential in reducing obesity and atherosclerosis.
Most kangaroo meat is currently sourced from wild animals as a byproduct of population control programs. Kangaroos are hunted by licensed shooters in accordance with a strict code of practice and are protected by state and federal legislation.
Kangaroo meat is exported to many countries around the world. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17064 |
Kirlian photography
Kirlian photography is a collection of photographic techniques used to capture the phenomenon of electrical coronal discharges. It is named after Semyon Kirlian, who, in 1939, accidentally discovered that if an object on a photographic plate is connected to a high-voltage source, an image is produced on the photographic plate.
The technique has been variously known as
"electrography",
"electrophotography",
"corona discharge photography" (CDP),
"bioelectrography",
"gas discharge visualization (GDV)",
"electrophotonic imaging (EPI)", and, in Russian literature, "Kirlianography".
Kirlian photography has been the subject of scientific research, parapsychology research and art. Paranormal claims have been made about Kirlian photography, but these claims are unsupported by the scientific community. To a large extent, it has been used in alternative medicine research.
In 1889, Czech B. Navratil coined the word "electrography". Seven years later in 1896, a French experimenter, , created electrographs of hands and leaves.
In 1898, Polish-Belarusian engineer Jakub Jodko-Narkiewicz demonstrated electrography at the fifth exhibition of the Russian Technical Society.
In 1939, two Czechs, S. Pratt and J. Schlemmer published photographs showing a glow around leaves. The same year, Russian electrical engineer Semyon Kirlian and his wife Valentina developed Kirlian photography after observing a patient in Krasnodar hospital who was receiving medical treatment from a high-frequency electrical generator. They had noticed that when the electrodes were brought near the patient's skin, there was a glow similar to that of a neon discharge tube.
The Kirlians conducted experiments in which photographic film was placed on top of a conducting plate, and another conductor was attached to a hand, a leaf or other plant material. The conductors were energized by a high-frequency high-voltage power source, producing photographic images typically showing a silhouette of the object surrounded by an aura of light.
In 1958, the Kirlians reported the results of their experiments for the first time. Their work was virtually unknown until 1970, when two Americans, Lynn Schroeder and Sheila Ostrander, published a book, "Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain". High-voltage electrophotography soon became known to the general public as Kirlian photography. Although little interest was generated among western scientists, Russians held a conference on the subject in 1972 at Kazakh State University.
Kirlian photography was used in the former Eastern Bloc in the 1970s. The corona discharge glow at the surface of an object subjected to a high-voltage electrical field was referred to as a "Kirlian aura" in Russia and Eastern Europe. In 1975, Belarusian scientist Victor Adamenko wrote a dissertation titled "Research of the structure of High-frequency electric discharge (Kirlian effect) images". Scientific study of what the researchers called the Kirlian effect was conducted by Victor Inyushin at Kazakh State University.
Early in the 1970s, Thelma Moss and Kendall Johnson at the Center for Health Sciences at the UCLA conducted extensive research into Kirlian photography. Moss led an independent and unsupported parapsychology laboratory that was shut down by the university in 1979.
Kirlian photography is a technique for creating contact print photographs using high voltage. The process entails placing sheet photographic film on top of a metal discharge plate. The object to be photographed is then placed directly on top of the film. High voltage is momentarily applied to the object, thus creating an exposure. The corona discharge between the object and the plate due to high-voltage is captured by the film. The developed film results in a Kirlian photograph of the object.
Color photographic film is calibrated to produce faithful colors when exposed to normal light. Corona discharges can interact with minute variations in the different layers of dye used in the film, resulting in a wide variety of colors depending on the local intensity of the discharge. Film and digital imaging techniques also record light produced by photons emitted during corona discharge (see Mechanism of corona discharge).
Photographs of inanimate objects such as a coins, keys and leaves can be made more effectively by grounding the object to the earth, a cold water pipe or to the opposite (polarity) side of the high-voltage source. Grounding the object creates a stronger corona discharge.
Kirlian photography does not require the use of a camera or a lens because it is a contact print process. It is possible to use a transparent electrode in place of the high-voltage discharge plate, for capturing the resulting corona discharge with a standard photo or video camera.
Visual artists such as Robert Buelteman, Ted Hiebert, and Dick Lane have used Kirlian photography to produce artistic images of a variety of subjects. Photographer Mark D. Roberts, who has worked with Kirlian imagery for over 40 years, published a portfolio of plant images entitled "Vita Occulta Plantarum" or "The Secret Life of Plants," first exhibited in 2012 at the Bakken Museum in Minneapolis, and currently being marketed to botanical gardens and galleries across the United States. Additionally, he has experimented with techniques of coloring by hand as well as digitally.
Kirlian photography has been a subject of scientific research, parapsychology research and pseudoscientific claims.
Results of scientific experiments published in 1976 involving Kirlian photography of living tissue (human finger tips) showed that most of the variations in corona discharge streamer length, density, curvature and color can be accounted for by the moisture content on the surface of and within the living tissue.
Konstantin Korotkov developed a technique similar to Kirlian photography called "gas discharge visualization" (GDV). Korotkov's GDV camera system consists of hardware and software to directly record, process and interpret GDV images with a computer. Korotkov's web site promotes his device and research in a medical context. Izabela Ciesielska at the Institute of Architecture of Textiles in Poland used Korotkov's GDV camera to evaluate the effects of human contact with various textiles on biological factors such as heart rate and blood pressure, as well as corona discharge images. The experiments captured corona discharge images of subjects' fingertips while the subjects wore sleeves of various natural and synthetic materials on their forearms. The results failed to establish a relationship between human contact with the textiles and the corona discharge images and were considered inconclusive.
In 1968, Thelma Moss, a psychology professor, headed the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute (NPI), which was later renamed the Semel Institute. The NPI had a laboratory dedicated to parapsychology research and staffed mostly with volunteers. The lab was unfunded, unsanctioned and eventually shut down by the university. Toward the end of her tenure at UCLA, Moss became interested in Kirlian photography, a technique that supposedly measured the "auras" of a living being. According to Kerry Gaynor, one of her former research assistants, "many felt Kirlian photography's effects were just a natural occurrence."
Paranormal claims of Kirlian photography have not been observed or replicated in experiment by the scientific community. The physiologist Gordon Stein has written that Kirlian photography is a hoax that has "nothing to do with health, vitality, or mood of a subject photographed."
Kirlian believed that images created by Kirlian photography might depict a conjectural energy field, or aura, thought, by some, to surround living things. Kirlian and his wife were convinced that their images showed a life force or energy field that reflected the physical and emotional states of their living subjects. They thought that these images could be used to diagnose illnesses. In 1961, they published their first article on the subject in the Russian Journal of Scientific and Applied Photography. Kirlian's claims were embraced by energy treatments practitioners.
A typical demonstration used as evidence for the existence of these energy fields involved taking Kirlian photographs of a picked leaf at set intervals. The gradual withering of the leaf was thought to correspond with a decline in the strength of the aura. In some experiments, if a section of a leaf was torn away after the first photograph, a faint image of the missing section sometimes remains when a second photograph was taken. However, if the imaging surface is cleaned of contaminants and residual moisture before the second image is taken, then no image of the missing section will appear.
The living aura theory is at least partially repudiated by demonstrating that leaf moisture content has a pronounced effect on the electric discharge coronas; more moisture creates larger corona discharges. As the leaf dehydrates, the coronas will naturally decrease in variability and intensity. As a result, the changing water content of the leaf can affect the so-called Kirlian aura. Kirlian's experiments did not provide evidence for an energy field other than the electric fields produced by chemical processes and the streaming process of coronal discharges.
The coronal discharges identified as Kirlian auras are the result of stochastic electric ionization processes and are greatly affected by many factors, including the voltage and frequency of the stimulus, the pressure with which a person or object touches the imaging surface, the local humidity around the object being imaged, how well grounded the person or object is, and other local factors affecting the conductivity of the person or object being imaged. Oils, sweat, bacteria, and other ionizing contaminants found on living tissues can also affect the resulting images.
Scientists such as Beverly Rubik have explored the idea of a human biofield using Kirlian photography research, attempting to explain the Chinese discipline of Qigong. Qigong teaches that there is a vitalistic energy called qi (or chi) that permeates all living things.
Rubik's experiments relied on Konstantin Korotkov's GDV device to produce images, which were thought to visualize these qi biofields in chronically ill patients. Rubik acknowledges that the small sample size in her experiments "was too small to permit a meaningful statistical analysis". Claims that these energies can be captured by special photographic equipment are criticized by skeptics.
Kirlian photography has appeared as a fictional element in numerous books, films, television series, and media productions, including the 1975 film "The Kirlian Force", re-released under the more sensational title "Psychic Killer". Kirlian photographs have been used as visual components in various media, such as the sleeve of George Harrison's 1973 album "Living in the Material World", which features Kirlian photographs of his hand holding a Hindu medallion on the front sleeve and American coins on the back, shot at Thelma Moss's UCLA parapsychology laboratory. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17066 |
Chios
Chios (; ) is the fifth largest of the Greek islands, situated in the northern Aegean Sea. The island is separated from Turkey by the Chios Strait. Chios is notable for its exports of mastic gum and its nickname is "the Mastic Island". Tourist attractions include its medieval villages and the 11th-century monastery of "Nea Moni", a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Administratively, the island forms a separate municipality within the Chios regional unit, which is part of the North Aegean region. The principal town of the island and seat of the municipality is Chios. Locals refer to Chios town as "Chora" ( literally means land or country, but usually refers to the capital or a settlement at the highest point of a Greek island).
It was also the site of the Chios massacre, in which tens of thousands of Greeks on the island were massacred by Ottoman troops during the Greek War of Independence in 1822.
Chios island is crescent or kidney shaped, long from north to south, and at its widest, covering an area of . The terrain is mountainous and arid, with a ridge of mountains running the length of the island. The two largest of these mountains, Pelineon () and Epos (), are situated in the north of the island. The center of the island is divided between east and west by a range of smaller peaks, known as Provatas.
Chios can be divided into five regions:
Midway up the east coast lie the main population centers, the main town of Chios, and the regions of Vrontados and Kambos. Chios Town, with a population of 32,400, is built around the island's main harbour and medieval castle. The current castle, with a perimeter of , was principally constructed during the time of Venetian and Ottoman rule, although remains have been found dating settlements there back to 2000 B.C. The town was substantially damaged by an earthquake in 1881, and only partially retains its original character.
North of Chios Town lies the large suburb of Vrontados (population 4,500), which claims to be the birthplace of Homer. The suburb lies in the Omiroupoli municipality, and its connection to the poet is supported by an archaeological site known traditionally as "Teacher's Rock".
In the southern region of the island are the Mastichochoria (literally "Mastic Villages"), the seven villages of Mesta (Μεστά), Pyrgi (Πυργί), Olympi (Ολύμποι), Kalamoti (Καλαμωτń), Vessa (Βέσσα), Lithi (Λιθί), and Elata (Ελάτα), which together have controlled the production of mastic gum in the area since the Roman period. The villages, built between the 14th and 16th centuries, have a carefully designed layout with fortified gates and narrow streets to protect against the frequent raids by marauding pirates. Between Chios Town and the Mastichochoria lie a large number of historic villages including Armolia (Αρμόλια), Myrmighi (Μυρμήγκι), and Kalimassia (Καλλιμασιά). Along the east coast are the fishing villages of Kataraktis (Καταρράκτης) and to the south, Nenita (Νένητα).
Directly in the centre of the island, between the villages of Avgonyma to the west and Karyes to the east, is the 11th century monastery of Nea Moni, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The monastery was built with funds given by the Byzantine Emperor Constantine IX, after three monks, living in caves nearby, had petitioned him while he was in exile on the island of Lesbos. The monastery had substantial estates attached, with a thriving community until the massacre of 1822. It was further damaged during the 1881 earthquake. In 1952, due to the shortage of monks, Nea Moni was converted to a convent.
The island's climate is warm and moderate, categorised as Temperate, Mediterranean (Csa), with modest variation due to the stabilising effect of the surrounding sea. Average temperatures normally range from a summer high of to a winter low of in January, although temperatures of over or below freezing can sometimes be encountered.
The island normally experiences steady breezes (average ) throughout the year, with wind direction predominantly northerly ("Etesian" Wind—locally called the "Meltemi") or southwesterly (Sirocco).
The Chios Basin is a hydrographic sub-unit of the Aegean Sea adjacent to the island of Chios.
Known as "Ophioússa" (, "snake island") and "Pityoussa" (, "pine-tree island") in antiquity, during the later Middle Ages the island was ruled by a number of non-Greek powers and was known as (Genoese), (Italian) and "Sakız" ( —Ottoman Turkish). The capital during that time was Kastron (, "castle").
Archaeological research on Chios has found evidence of habitation dating back at least to the Neolithic era. The primary sites of research for this period have been cave dwellings at Hagio(n) Galas in the north and a settlement and accompanying necropolis in modern-day Emporeio at the far south of the island. Scholars lack information on this period. The size and duration of these settlements have therefore not been well-established.
The British School at Athens under the direction of Sinclair Hood excavated the Emporeio site in 1952–1955, and most current information comes from these digs. The Greek Archaeological Service has also been excavating periodically on Chios since 1970, though much of its work on the island remains unpublished.
The noticeable uniformity in the size of houses at Emporeio leads some scholars to believe that there may have been little social distinction during the Neolithic era on the island. The inhabitants apparently all benefited from agricultural and livestock farming.
It is also widely held by scholars that the island was not occupied by humans during the Middle Bronze Age (2300–1600), though researchers have recently suggested that the lack of evidence from this period may only demonstrate the lack of excavations on Chios and the northern Aegean.
By at least the 11th century BC the island was ruled by a monarchy, and the subsequent transition to aristocratic (or possibly tyrannic) rule occurred sometime over the next four centuries. Future excavations may reveal more information about this period. 9th-century Euboean and Cypriote presence on the island is attested by ceramics, while a Phoenician presence is noted at Erythrae, the traditional competitor of Chios on the mainland.
Pherecydes, native to the Aegean, wrote that the island was occupied by the Leleges, aboriginal Greeks who were reported to be subjected to the Minoans on Crete. They were eventually driven out by invading Ionians.
Chios was one of the original twelve member states of the Ionian League. As a result, Chios, at the end of the 7th century BC, was one of the first cities to strike or mint coins, establishing the sphinx as its symbol. It maintained this tradition for almost 900 years.
In the 6th century BC, Chios' government adopted a constitution similar to that developed by Solon in Athens and later developed democratic elements with a voting assembly and people's magistrates called "damarchoi".
In 546 BC, Chios was subjected to the Persian Empire. Chios joined the Ionian Revolt against the Persians in 499 BC. The naval power of Chios during this period is demonstrated by the fact that the Chians had the largest fleet (100 ships) of all of the Ionians at the Battle of Lade in 494 BC. At Lade, the Chian fleet doggedly continued to fight the Persian fleet even after the defection of the Samians and others, but the Chians were ultimately forced to retreat and were again subjected to Persian domination.
The defeat of Persia at the Battle of Mycale in 479 BC meant the liberation of Chios from Persian rule. When the Athenians formed the Delian League, Chios joined as one of the few members who did not have to pay tribute but who supplied ships to the alliance.
By the fifth to fourth centuries BC, the island had grown to an estimated population of over 120,000 (two to three times the estimated population in 2005), based on the huge necropolis at the main city of Chios. It is thought that the majority of the population lived in that area.
In 412 BC, during the Peloponnesian War, Chios revolted against Athens, and the Athenians besieged it. Relief only came the following year when the Spartans were able to raise the siege. In the 4th century BC, Chios was a member of the Second Athenian League but revolted against Athens during the Social War (357–355 BC), and Chios became independent again until the rise of Macedonia.
Theopompus returned to Chios with the other exiles in 333 BC after Alexander had invaded Asia Minor and decreed their return, as well as the exile or trial of Persian supporters on the island. Theopompus was exiled again sometime after Alexander's death and took refuge in Egypt.
During this period, the island also had become the largest exporter of Greek wine, which was noted for being of relatively high quality (see "Chian wine"). Chian amphoras, with a characteristic sphinx emblem and bunches of grapes, have been found in nearly every country with whom the ancient Greeks traded. These countries included Gaul, Upper Egypt, and Southern Russia.
During the Third Macedonian War, thirty-five vessels allied to Rome, carrying about 1,000 Galatian troops, as well as a number of horses, were sent by Eumenes II to his brother Attalus.
Leaving from Elaea, they were headed to the harbour of Phanae, planning to disembark from there to Macedonia. However, Perseus's naval commander Antenor intercepted the fleet between Erythrae (on the Western coast of Turkey) and Chios.
According to Livy, they were caught completely off-guard by Antenor. Eumenes' officers at first thought the intercepting fleet were friendly Romans, but scattered upon realizing they were facing an attack by their Macedonian enemy, some choosing to abandon ship and swim to Erythrae. Others, crashing their ships into land on Chios, fled toward the city.
The Chians however closed their gates, startled at the calamity. And the Macedonians, who had docked closer to the city anyway, cut the rest of the fleet off outside the city gates, and on the road leading to the city. Of the 1,000 men, 800 were killed, 200 taken prisoner.'
After the Roman conquest Chios became part of the province of Asia.
Pliny remarks upon the islanders' use of variegated marble in their buildings, and their appreciation for such stone above murals or other forms of artificial decoration.
According to the Acts of the Apostles, Luke the Evangelist, Paul the Apostle and their companions passed Chios during Paul's third missionary journey, on a passage from Lesbos to Samos.
After the permanent division of the Roman Empire in 395 AD, Chios was for six centuries part of the Byzantine Empire. This came to an end when the island was briefly held (1090–97) by Tzachas, a Turkish bey in the region of Smyrna during the first expansion of the Turks to the Aegean coast. However, the Turks were driven back from the Aegean coast by the Byzantines aided by the First Crusade, and the island was restored to Byzantine rule by admiral Constantine Dalassenos.
This relative stability was ended by the sacking of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade (1204) and during the turmoil of the 13th century the island's ownership was constantly affected by the regional power struggles. After the Fourth Crusade, the Byzantine empire was divided up by the Latin emperors of Constantinople, with Chios nominally becoming a possession of the Republic of Venice. However, defeats for the Latin empire resulted in the island reverting to Byzantine rule in 1225.
The Byzantine rulers had little influence and through the Treaty of Nymphaeum, authority was ceded to the Republic of Genoa (1261). At this time the island was frequently attacked by pirates, and by 1302–1303 was a target for the renewed Turkish fleets. To prevent Turkish expansion, the island was reconquered and kept as a renewable concession, at the behest of the Byzantine emperor Andronicus II Palaeologus, by the Genovese Benedetto I Zaccaria (1304), then admiral to Philip of France. Zaccaria installed himself as ruler of the island, founding the short-lived Lordship of Chios. His rule was benign and effective control remained in the hands of the local Greek landowners. Benedetto Zacharia was followed by his son Paleologo and then his grandsons or nephews Benedetto II and Martino. They attempted to turn the island towards the Latin and Papal powers, and away from the predominant Byzantine influence. The locals, still loyal to the Byzantine Empire, responded to a letter from the emperor and, despite a standing army of a thousand infantrymen, a hundred cavalrymen and two galleys, expelled the Zacharia family from the island (1329) and dissolved the fiefdom.
Local rule was brief. In 1346, a chartered company or "Maona" (the ""Maona di Chio e di Focea"") was set up in Genoa to reconquer and exploit Chios and the neighbouring town of Phocaea in Asia Minor. Although the islanders firmly rejected an initial offer of protection, the island was invaded by a Genoese fleet, led by Simone Vignoso, and the castle besieged. Again rule was transferred peacefully, as on 12 September the castle was surrendered and a treaty signed with no loss of privileges to the local landowners as long as the new authority was accepted. The Maona was controlled by the Giustiniani family.
The Genoese, being interested in profit rather than conquest, controlled the trade-posts and warehouses, in particular the trade of mastic, alum, salt and pitch. Other trades such as grain, wine oil and cloth and most professions were run jointly with the locals. After a failed uprising in 1347, and being heavily outnumbered (less than 10% of the population in 1395), the Latins maintained light control over the local population, remaining largely in the town and allowing full religious freedom. In this way the island remained under Genoese control for two centuries. By 1566, when Genoa lost Chios to the Ottoman Empire, there were 12.000 Greeks and 2.500 Genoese (or 17% of the total population) in the island.
During Ottoman rule, the government and tax gathering again remained in the hands of Greeks and the Turkish garrison was small and inconspicuous.
As well as the Latin and Turkish influx, documents record a small Jewish population from at least 1049 AD. The original Greek (Romaniote) Jews, thought to have been brought over by the Romans, were later joined by Sephardic Jews welcomed by the Ottomans during the Iberian expulsions of the 15th century.
The mainstay of the island's famous wealth was the mastic crop. Chios was able to make a substantial contribution to the imperial treasury while at the same time maintaining only a light level of taxation. The Ottoman government regarded it as one of the most valuable provinces of the Empire.
When the Greek War of Independence broke out, the island's leaders were reluctant to join the revolutionaries, fearing the loss of their security and prosperity. However, in March 1822, several hundred armed Greeks from the neighbouring island of Samos landed in Chios. They proclaimed the revolution and launched attacks against the Turks, at which point islanders decided to join the struggle.
Ottomans landed a large force on the island consequently and put down the rebellion. The Ottoman massacre of Chios expelled, killed or enslaved thousands of the inhabitants of the island.
It wiped out whole villages and affected the Mastichochoria area, the mastic growing villages in the south of the island. It triggered also negative public reaction in Western Europe, as portrayed by Eugène Delacroix, and in the writing of Lord Byron and Victor Hugo. Finally, Chios was not included in the modern Greek state and remained under Ottoman rule.
In 1881, an earthquake, estimated as 6.5 on the moment magnitude scale, damaged a large portion of the island's buildings and resulted in great loss of life. Reports of the time spoke of 5,500–10,000 fatalities.
Meanwhile, Chios during emerged as the motherland of the modern Greek shipping industry. Indicatively, in 1764, Chios had 6 vessels with 90 sailors on record, in 1875 there were 104 ships with over 60,000 registered tonnes in 1889 were recorded 440 sailing ships of various types with 3,050 sailors. The dynamic development of Chian shipping in the 19th century is further attested by the various shipping related services that were present in the island during this time, such as the creation of the shipping insurance companies "Chiaki Thalassoploia" (Χιακή Θαλασσοπλοΐα), "Dyo Adelfai" (Δυο Αδελφαί), "Omonoia" (Ομόνοια) and the shipping bank "Archangelos" (Αρχάγγελος) (1863). The boom of Chian shipping took place with the successful transition from sailing vessels to steam. To this end, Chian ship owners were supported by the strong "diaspora" presence of Chian merchants and bankers, and the connections they had developed with the financing centers of the time (Istanbul, London), the establishment in London of shipping businessmen, the creation of shipping academies in Chios and the expertise of Chian personnel on board.
Chios joined the rest of independent Greece after the First Balkan War (1912). The Greek Navy liberated Chios in November 1912 in a hard-fought, but brief amphibious operation. The Ottoman Empire recognized Greece's annexation of Chios and the other Aegean islands by the Treaty of London (1913).
Although Greece was officially neutral, the island was occupied by the British during World War I. They landed on 17 February 1916. This may have been due to the island's proximity to the Ottoman Empire and the city of İzmir in particular.
It was affected also by the population exchange after the Greco–Turkish War of 1919–1922, with the incoming Greek refugees settling in Kastro (previously a Turkish neighborhood) and in new settlements hurriedly built south of Chios town.
The island saw some local violence during the Greek Civil War setting neighbour against neighbour. This ended when the final band of communist fighters was trapped and killed in the orchards of Kampos and their bodies driven through the main town on the back of a truck. In March 1948, the island was used as an internment camp for female political detainees (communists or relatives of guerillas) and their children, who were housed in military barracks near the town of Chios. Up to 1300 women and 50 children were housed in cramped and degrading conditions, until March 1949 when the camp was closed and the inhabitants moved to Trikeri.
The production of mastic was threatened by the Chios forest fire that swept the southern half of the island in August 2012 and destroyed some mastic groves.
According to the 2011 census, Chios has a permanent resident population of 52,674.
The present municipality Chios was formed at the 2011 local government reform by the merger of the following 8 former municipalities, that became municipal units:
The local merchant shipping community transports several locally grown products including mastic, olives, figs, wine, mandarins, and cherries.
Local specialities of the island include:
Sporadically for some time at early 19th century to 1950s there was mining activity on the island at Keramos Antimony Mines.
Chios is twinned with:
A native of Chios is known in English as a Chian, or a Chioti. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17067 |
Kurds
Kurds () or Kurdish people are an Iranic ethnic group native to a mountainous region of Western Asia known as Kurdistan, which spans southeastern Turkey, northwestern Iran, northern Iraq, and northern Syria. There are exclaves of Kurds in Central Anatolia, Khorasan, and the Caucasus, as well as significant Kurdish diaspora communities in the cities of western Turkey (in particular Istanbul) and Western Europe (primarily in Germany). The Kurdish population is estimated to be between 30 and 45 million.
Kurds speak the Kurdish languages and the Zaza–Gorani languages, which belong to the Western Iranian branch of the Iranian languages in the Indo-European language family. A majority of Kurds belong to the Shafi‘i school of Sunni Islam, but significant numbers practise Shia Islam and Alevism, while some are adherents of Yarsanism, Yazidism, Zoroastrianism and Christianity.
After World War I and the defeat of the Ottoman Empire, the victorious Western allies made provision for a Kurdish state in the 1920 Treaty of Sevres. However, that promise was broken three years later, when the Treaty of Lausanne set the boundaries of modern Turkey and made no such provision, leaving Kurds with minority status in all of the new countries. Recent history of the Kurds includes numerous genocides and rebellions, along with ongoing armed conflicts in Turkish Kurdistan, Iranian Kurdistan, Rojava, and Iraqi Kurdistan. Kurds in Iraq and Syria have autonomous regions, while Kurdish movements continue to pursue greater cultural rights, autonomy, and independence throughout Kurdistan.
Kurdish (Kurdish: "Kurdî" or کوردی) is a collection of related dialects spoken by the Kurds. It is mainly spoken in those parts of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey which comprise Kurdistan. Kurdish holds official status in Iraq as a national language alongside Arabic, is recognized in Iran as a regional language, and in Armenia as a minority language.
Most Kurds are either bilingual or multilingual, speaking the language of their respective nation of origin, such as Arabic, Persian, and Turkish as a second language alongside their native Kurdish, while those in diaspora communities often speak three or more languages.
According to Mackenzie, there are few linguistic features that all Kurdish dialects have in common and that are not at the same time found in other Iranian languages.
The Kurdish dialects according to Mackenzie are classified as:
The Zaza and Gorani are ethnic Kurds, but the Zaza–Gorani languages are not classified as Kurdish.
Commenting on the differences between the dialects of Kurdish, Kreyenbroek clarifies that in some ways, Kurmanji and Sorani are as different from each other as is English from German, giving the example that Kurmanji has grammatical gender and case endings, but Sorani does not, and observing that referring to Sorani and Kurmanji as "dialects" of one language is supported only by "their common origin ... and the fact that this usage reflects the sense of ethnic identity and unity of the Kurds."
The number of Kurds living in Southwest Asia is estimated at close to 30 million, with another one or two million living in diaspora. Kurds comprise anywhere from 18% to 20% of the population in Turkey, possibly as high as 25%; 15 to 20% in Iraq; 10% in Iran; and 9% in Syria. Kurds form regional majorities in all four of these countries, "viz." in Turkish Kurdistan, Iraqi Kurdistan, Iranian Kurdistan and Syrian Kurdistan. The Kurds are the fourth largest ethnic group in West Asia after the Arabs, Persians, and Turks.
The total number of Kurds in 1991 was placed at 22.5 million, with 48% of this number living in Turkey, 18% in Iraq, 24% in Iran, and 4% in Syria.
Recent emigration accounts for a population of close to 1.5 million in Western countries, about half of them in Germany.
A special case are the Kurdish populations in the Transcaucasus and Central Asia, displaced there mostly in the time of the Russian Empire, who underwent independent developments for more than a century and have developed an ethnic identity in their own right. This groups' population was estimated at close to 0.4 million in 1990.
"The land of Karda" is mentioned on a Sumerian clay tablet dated to the 3rd millennium BC. This land was inhabited by "the people of Su" who dwelt in the southern regions of Lake Van; The philological connection between "Kurd" and "Karda" is uncertain but the relationship is considered possible. Other Sumerian clay tablets referred to the people, who lived in the land of Karda, as the Qarduchi (Karduchi, Karduchoi) and the Qurti. Karda/Qardu is etymologically related to the Assyrian term Urartu and the Hebrew term Ararat. However, some modern scholars do not believe that the Qarduchi are connected to Kurds.
Qarti or Qartas, who were originally settled on the mountains north of Mesopotamia, are considered as a probable ancestor of the Kurds. The Akkadians were attacked by nomads coming through Qartas territory at the end of 3rd millennium BC and distinguished them as the Guti, speakers of a pre-Iranic language isolate. They conquered Mesopotamia in 2150 BC and ruled with 21 kings until defeated by the Sumerian king Utu-hengal.
Many Kurds consider themselves descended from the Medes, an ancient Iranian people, and even use a calendar dating from 612 BC, when the Assyrian capital of Nineveh was conquered by the Medes. The claimed Median descent is reflected in the words of the Kurdish national anthem: "We are the children of the Medes and Kai Khosrow." However, MacKenzie and Asatrian challenge the relation of the Median language to Kurdish. The Kurdish languages, on the other hand, form a subgroup of the Northwestern Iranian languages like Median. Some researchers consider the independent Kardouchoi as the ancestors of the Kurds, while others prefer Cyrtians. The term "Kurd", however, is first encountered in Arabic sources of the seventh century. Books from the early Islamic era, including those containing legends such as the Shahnameh and the Middle Persian Kar-Namag i Ardashir i Pabagan, and other early Islamic sources provide early attestation of the name "Kurd". The Kurds have ethnically diverse origins.
During the Sassanid era, in "Kar-Namag i Ardashir i Pabagan", a short prose work written in Middle Persian, Ardashir I is depicted as having battled the Kurds and their leader, Madig. After initially sustaining a heavy defeat, Ardashir I was successful in subjugating the Kurds. In a letter Ardashir I received from his foe, Ardavan V, which is also featured in the same work, he is referred to as being a Kurd himself. The usage of the term "Kurd" during this time period most likely was a social term, designating Northwestern Iranian nomads, rather than a concrete ethnic group.
Similarly, in AD 360, the Sassanid king Shapur II marched into the Roman province Zabdicene, to conquer its chief city, Bezabde, present-day Cizre.
He found it heavily fortified, and guarded by three legions and a large body of Kurdish archers. After a long and hard-fought siege, Shapur II breached the walls, conquered the city and massacred all its defenders. Thereafter he had the strategically located city repaired, provisioned and garrisoned with his best troops.
Qadishaye, settled by Kavad in Singara, were probably Kurds and worshiped the martyr Abd al-Masih. They revolted against the Sassanids and were raiding the whole Persian territory. Later they, along with Arabs and Armenians, joined the Sassanids in their war against the Byzantines.
There is also a 7th-century text by an unidentified author, written about the legendary Christian martyr Mar Qardagh. He lived in the 4th century, during the reign of Shapur II, and during his travels is said to have encountered Mar Abdisho, a deacon and martyr, who, after having been questioned of his origins by Mar Qardagh and his Marzobans, stated that his parents were originally from an Assyrian village called Hazza, but were driven out and subsequently settled in Tamanon, a village in "the land of the Kurds", identified as being in the region of Mount Judi.
Early Syriac sources use the terms "Hurdanaye, Kurdanaye, Kurdaye" to refer to the Kurds. According to Michael the Syrian, Hurdanaye separated from Tayaye Arabs and sought refuge with the Byzantine Emperor Theophilus. He also mentions the Persian troops who fought against Musa chief of Hurdanaye in the region of Qardu in 841. According to Barhebreaus, a king appeared to the Kurdanaye and they rebelled against the Arabs in 829. Michael the Syrian considered them as pagan, followers of mahdi and adepts of Magianism. Their mahdi called himself Christ and the Holy Ghost.
In the early Middle Ages, the Kurds sporadically appear in Arabic sources, though the term was still not being used for a specific people; instead it referred to an amalgam of nomadic western Iranian tribes, who were distinct from Persians. However, in the High Middle Ages, the Kurdish ethnic identity gradually materialized, as one can find clear evidence of the Kurdish ethnic identity and solidarity in texts of the 12th and 13th century, though, the term was also still being used in the social sense. From 11th century onward, the term Kurd is explicitly defined as an ethnonym and this does not suggest synonymity with the ethnographic category nomad. Al-Tabari wrote that in 639, Hormuzan, a Sasanian general originating from a noble family, battled against the Islamic invaders in Khuzestan, and called upon the Kurds to aid him in battle. However, they were defeated and brought under Islamic rule.
In 838, a Kurdish leader based in Mosul, named Mir Jafar, revolted against the Caliph Al-Mu'tasim who sent the commander Itakh to combat him. Itakh won this war and executed many of the Kurds. Eventually Arabs conquered the Kurdish regions and gradually converted the majority of Kurds to Islam, often incorporating them into the military, such as the Hamdanids whose dynastic family members also frequently intermarried with Kurds.
In 934 the Daylamite Buyid dynasty was founded, and subsequently conquered most of present-day Iran and Iraq. During the time of rule of this dynasty, Kurdish chief and ruler, Badr ibn Hasanwaih, established himself as one of the most important emirs of the time.
In the 10th-12th centuries, a number of Kurdish principalities and dynasties were founded, ruling Kurdistan and neighbouring areas:
Due to the Turkic invasion of Anatolia, the 11th century Kurdish dynasties crumbled and became incorporated into the Seljuk Dynasty. Kurds would hereafter be used in great numbers in the armies of the Zengids. Succeeding the Zengids, the Kurdish Ayyubids established themselves in 1171, first under the leadership of Saladin. Saladin led the Muslims to recapture the city of Jerusalem from the Crusaders at the Battle of Hattin; also frequently clashing with the Assassins. The Ayyubid dynasty lasted until 1341 when the Ayyubid sultanate fell to Mongolian invasions.
The Safavid Dynasty, established in 1501, also established its rule over Kurdish-inhabited territories. The paternal line of this family actually had Kurdish roots, tracing back to Firuz-Shah Zarrin-Kolah, a dignitary who moved from Kurdistan to Ardabil in the 11th century. The Battle of Chaldiran in 1514 that culminated in what is nowadays Iran's West Azerbaijan Province, marked the start of the Ottoman-Persian Wars between the Iranian Safavids (and successive Iranian dynasties) and the Ottomans. For the next 300 years, many of the Kurds found themselves living in territories that frequently changed hands between Ottoman Turkey and Iran during the protracted series of Ottoman-Persian Wars.
The Safavid king Ismail I (r. 1501-1524) put down a Yezidi rebellion which went on from 1506-1510. A century later, the year-long Battle of Dimdim took place, wherein the Safavid king Abbas I (r. 1588-1629) succeeded in putting down the rebellion led by the Kurdish ruler Amir Khan Lepzerin. Thereafter, many Kurds were deported to Khorasan, not only to weaken the Kurds, but also to protect the eastern border from invading Afghan and Turkmen tribes. Other forced movements and deportations of other groups were also implemented by Abbas I and his successors, most notably of the Armenians, the Georgians, and the Circassians, who were moved en masse to and from other districts within the Persian empire.
The Kurds of Khorasan, numbering around 700,000, still use the Kurmanji Kurdish dialect. Several Kurdish noblemen served the Safavids and rose to prominence, such as Shaykh Ali Khan Zanganeh, who served as the grand vizier of the Safavid shah Suleiman I (r. 1666–1694) from 1669 to 1689. Due to his efforts in reforming the declining Iranian economy, he has been called the "Safavid Amir Kabir" in modern historiography. His son, Shahqoli Khan Zanganeh, also served as a grand vizier from 1707 to 1716. Another Kurdish statesman, Ganj Ali Khan, was close friends with Abbas I, and served as governor in various provinces and was known for his loyal service.
After the fall of the Safavids, Iran fell under the control of the Afsharid Empire ruled by Nader Shah at its peak. After Nader's death, Iran fell into civil war, with multiple leaders trying to gain control over the country. Ultimately, it was Karim Khan, a Laki general of the Zand tribe who would come to power.
The country would flourish during Karim Khan's reign; a strong resurgence of the arts would take place, and international ties were strengthened. Karim Khan was portrayed as being a ruler who truly cared about his subjects, thereby gaining the title Vakil e-Ra'aayaa (meaning Representative of the People in Persian). Though not as powerful in its geo-political and military reach as the preceding Safavids and Afsharids or even the early Qajars, he managed to reassert Iranian hegemony over its integral territories in the Caucasus, and presided over an era of relative peace, prosperity, and tranquility. In Ottoman Iraq, following the Ottoman–Persian War (1775–76), Karim Khan managed to seize Basra for several years.
After Karim Khan's death, the dynasty would decline in favour of the rival Qajars due to infighting between the Khan's incompetent offspring. It was not until Lotf Ali Khan, 10 years later, that the dynasty would once again be led by an adept ruler. By this time however, the Qajars had already progressed greatly, having taken a number of Zand territories. Lotf Ali Khan made multiple successes before ultimately succumbing to the rivaling faction. Iran and all its Kurdish territories would hereby be incorporated in the Qajar dynasty.
The Kurdish tribes present in Baluchistan and some of those in Fars are believed to be remnants of those that assisted and accompanied Lotf Ali Khan and Karim Khan, respectively.
When Sultan Selim I, after defeating Shah Ismail I in 1514, annexed Western Armenia and Kurdistan, he entrusted the organisation of the conquered territories to Idris, the historian, who was a Kurd of Bitlis. He divided the territory into "sanjaks" or districts, and, making no attempt to interfere with the principle of heredity, installed the local chiefs as governors. He also resettled the rich pastoral country between Erzerum and Erivan, which had lain in waste since the passage of Timur, with Kurds from the Hakkari and Bohtan districts. For the next centuries, from the Peace of Amasya until the first half of the 19th century, several regions of the wide Kurdish homelands would be contested as well between the Ottomans and the neighbouring rival successive Iranian dynasties (Safavids, Afsharids, Qajars) in the frequent Ottoman-Persian Wars.
The Ottoman centralist policies in the beginning of the 19th century aimed to remove power from the principalities and localities, which directly affected the Kurdish emirs. Bedirhan Bey was the last emir of the Cizre Bohtan Emirate after initiating an uprising in 1847 against the Ottomans to protect the current structures of the Kurdish principalities. Although his uprising is not classified as a nationalist one, his children played significant roles in the emergence and the development of Kurdish nationalism through the next century.
The first modern Kurdish nationalist movement emerged in 1880 with an uprising led by a Kurdish landowner and head of the powerful Shemdinan family, Sheik Ubeydullah, who demanded political autonomy or outright independence for Kurds as well as the recognition of a Kurdistan state without interference from Turkish or Persian authorities. The uprising against Qajar Persia and the Ottoman Empire was ultimately suppressed by the Ottomans and Ubeydullah, along with other notables, were exiled to Istanbul.
Kurdish nationalism emerged after World War I with the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, which had historically successfully integrated (but not assimilated) the Kurds, through use of forced repression of Kurdish movements to gain independence. Revolts did occur sporadically but only in 1880 with the uprising led by Sheik Ubeydullah did the Kurds as an ethnic group or nation make demands. Ottoman sultan Abdul Hamid II () responded with a campaign of integration by co-opting prominent Kurdish opponents to strengthen Ottoman power with offers of prestigious positions in his government. This strategy appears to have been successful, given the loyalty displayed by the Kurdish Hamidiye regiments during World War I.
The Kurdish ethno-nationalist movement that emerged following World War I and the end of the Ottoman Empire in 1922 largely represented a reaction to the changes taking place in mainstream Turkey, primarily to the radical secularization, the centralization of authority, and to the rampant Turkish nationalism in the new Turkish Republic.
Jakob Künzler, head of a missionary hospital in Urfa, documented the large-scale ethnic cleansing of both Armenians and Kurds by the Young Turks. He has given a detailed account of the deportation of Kurds from Erzurum and Bitlis in the winter of 1916. The Kurds were perceived to be subversive elements who would take the Russian side in the war. In order to eliminate this threat, Young Turks embarked on a large-scale deportation of Kurds from the regions of "Djabachdjur", "Palu", "Musch", "Erzurum" and "Bitlis". Around 300,000 Kurds were forced to move southwards to Urfa and then westwards to Aintab and Marasch. In the summer of 1917 Kurds were moved to Konya in central Anatolia. Through these measures, the Young Turk leaders aimed at weakening the political influence of the Kurds by deporting them from their ancestral lands and by dispersing them in small pockets of exiled communities. By the end of World War I, up to 700,000 Kurds had been forcibly deported and almost half of the displaced perished.
Some of the Kurdish groups sought self-determination and the confirmation of Kurdish autonomy in the 1920 Treaty of Sèvres, but in the aftermath of World War I, Kemal Atatürk prevented such a result. Kurds backed by the United Kingdom declared independence in 1927 and established the Republic of Ararat. Turkey suppressed Kurdist revolts in 1925, 1930, and 1937–1938, while Iran in the 1920s suppressed Simko Shikak at Lake Urmia and Jaafar Sultan of the Hewraman region, who controlled the region between Marivan and north of Halabja. A short-lived Soviet-sponsored Kurdish Republic of Mahabad (January to December, 1946) existed in an area of present-day Iran.
From 1922–1924 in Iraq a Kingdom of Kurdistan existed. When Ba'athist administrators thwarted Kurdish nationalist ambitions in Iraq, war broke out in the 1960s. In 1970 the Kurds rejected limited territorial self-rule within Iraq, demanding larger areas, including the oil-rich Kirkuk region.
During the 1920s and 1930s, several large-scale Kurdish revolts took place in Kurdistan. Following these rebellions, the area of Turkish Kurdistan was put under martial law and many of the Kurds were displaced. The Turkish government also encouraged resettlement of Albanians from Kosovo and Assyrians in the region to change the make-up of the population. These events and measures led to long-lasting mutual distrust between Ankara and the Kurds.
Kurdish officers from the Iraqi army [...] were said to have approached Soviet army authorities soon after their arrival in Iran in 1941 and offered to form a Kurdish volunteer force to fight alongside the Red Army. This offer was declined.
During the relatively open government of the 1950s in Turkey, Kurds gained political office and started working within the framework of the Turkish Republic to further their interests, but this move towards integration was halted with the 1960 Turkish coup d'état. The 1970s saw an evolution in Kurdish nationalism as Marxist political thought influenced some in the new generation of Kurdish nationalists opposed to the local feudal authorities who had been a traditional source of opposition to authority; in 1978 Kurdish students would form the militant separatist organization PKK, also known as the Kurdistan Workers' Party in English. The Kurdistan Workers' Party later abandoned Marxism-Leninism.
Kurds are often regarded as "the largest ethnic group without a state", though it seems that Pashtuns have a better claim to this 'title'. The Kurdish claim of "statelessness" is rejected by some researchers such as Martin van Bruinessen and some other scholars who seem to agree with the official Turkish position. They argue that while some level of Kurdish cultural, social, political and ideological heterogeneity may exist, the Kurdish community has long thrived over the centuries as a generally peaceful and well-integrated part of Turkish society, with hostilities erupting only in recent years.
Michael Radu, who worked for the United States's Pennsylvania Foreign Policy Research Institute, notes that the claim of Kurdish "statelessness" comes primarily from Kurdish nationalists, Western human-rights activists, and European leftists.
The exact origins of the name "Kurd" are unclear. The underlying toponym is recorded in Assyrian as "Qardu" and in Middle Bronze Age Sumerian as "Kar-da". Assyrian "Qardu" refers to an area in the upper Tigris basin, and it is presumably reflected in corrupted form in Classical Arabic "Ǧūdī", re-adopted in Kurdish as "Cûdî". The name would be continued as the first element in the toponym "Corduene", mentioned by Xenophon as the tribe who opposed the retreat of the Ten Thousand through the mountains north of Mesopotamia in the 4th century BC.
There are, however, dissenting views, which do not derive the name of the Kurds from "Qardu" and "Corduene" but opt for derivation from "Cyrtii" ("Cyrtaei") instead.
Regardless of its possible roots in ancient toponymy, the ethnonym "Kurd" might be derived from a term "kwrt-" used in Middle Persian as a common noun to refer to "nomads" or "tent-dwellers," which could be applied as an attribute to any Iranian group with such a lifestyle.
The term gained the characteristic of an ethnonym following the Muslim conquest of Persia, as it was adopted into Arabic and gradually became associated with an amalgamation of Iranian and Iranicised tribes and groups in the region.
It is also hypothesized that "Kurd" could derive from the Persian word "gord" , because the Arabic script lacks a symbol corresponding uniquely to "g" (گ).
Sherefxan Bidlisi in the 16th century states that there are four division of "Kurds": "Kurmanj", "Lur", "Kalhor" and "Guran", each of which speak a different dialect or language variation. Paul (2008) notes that the 16th-century usage of the term "Kurd" as recorded by Bidlisi, regardless of linguistic grouping, might still reflect an incipient Northwestern Iranian "Kurdish" ethnic identity uniting the Kurmanj, Kalhur, and Guran.
According to CIA Factbook, Kurds formed approximately 18% of the population in Turkey (approximately 14 million) in 2008. One Western source estimates that up to 25% of the Turkish population is Kurdish (approximately 18-19 million people). Kurdish sources claim there are as many as 20 or 25 million Kurds in Turkey.
In 1980, Ethnologue estimated the number of Kurdish-speakers in Turkey at around five million, when the country's population stood at 44 million. Kurds form the largest minority group in Turkey, and they have posed the most serious and persistent challenge to the official image of a homogeneous society. This classification was changed to the new euphemism of "Eastern Turk" in 1980. Nowadays the Kurds, in Turkey, are still known under the name "Easterner" (Doğulu).
Several large scale Kurdish revolts in 1925, 1930 and 1938 were suppressed by the Turkish government and more than one million Kurds were forcibly relocated between 1925 and 1938. The use of Kurdish language, dress, folklore, and names were banned and the Kurdish-inhabited areas remained under martial law until 1946. The Ararat revolt, which reached its apex in 1930, was only suppressed after a massive military campaign including destruction of many villages and their populations.
By the 1970s, Kurdish leftist organizations such as "Kurdistan Socialist Party-Turkey" (KSP-T) emerged in Turkey which were against violence and supported civil activities and participation in elections. In 1977, "Mehdi Zana" a supporter of KSP-T won the mayoralty of Diyarbakir in the local elections. At about the same time, generational fissures gave birth to two new organizations: the "National Liberation of Kurdistan" and the "Kurdistan Workers Party".
The words "Kurds", "Kurdistan", or "Kurdish" were officially banned by the Turkish government. Following the military coup of 1980, the Kurdish language was officially prohibited in public and private life. Many people who spoke, published, or sang in Kurdish were arrested and imprisoned. The Kurds are still not allowed to get a primary education in their mother tongue and they do not have a right to self-determination, even though Turkey has signed the ICCPR. There is ongoing discrimination against and “otherization” of Kurds in society.
The Kurdistan Workers' Party or PKK (Kurdish: "Partiya Karkerên Kurdistanê") is Kurdish militant organization which has waged an armed struggle against the Turkish state for cultural and political rights and self-determination for the Kurds. Turkey's military allies the US, the EU, and NATO label the PKK as a terrorist organization while the UN, Switzerland, Russia, China and India have refused to add the PKK to their terrorist list. Some of them have even supported the PKK.
Between 1984 and 1999, the PKK and the Turkish military engaged in open war, and much of the countryside in the southeast was depopulated, as Kurdish civilians moved from villages to bigger cities such as Diyarbakır, Van, and Şırnak, as well as to the cities of western Turkey and even to western Europe. The causes of the depopulation included mainly the Turkish state's military operations, state's political actions, Turkish Deep state actions, the poverty of the southeast and PKK atrocities against Kurdish clans which were against them. Turkish State actions have included forced inscription, forced evacuation, destruction of villages, severe harassment, illegal arrests and executions of Kurdish civilians.
Since the 1970s, the European Court of Human Rights has condemned Turkey for the thousands of human rights abuses. The judgments are related to executions of Kurdish civilians, torturing, forced displacements systematic destruction of villages, arbitrary arrests murdered and disappeared Kurdish journalists.
Leyla Zana, the first Kurdish female MP from Diyarbakir, caused an uproar in Turkish Parliament after adding the following sentence in Kurdish to her parliamentary oath during the swearing-in ceremony in 1994: "I take this oath for the brotherhood of the Turkish and Kurdish peoples."
In March 1994, the Turkish Parliament voted to lift the immunity of Zana and five other Kurdish DEP members: Hatip Dicle, Ahmet Turk, Sirri Sakik, Orhan Dogan and Selim Sadak. Zana, Dicle, Sadak and Dogan were sentenced to 15 years in jail by the Supreme Court in October 1995. Zana was awarded the Sakharov Prize for human rights by the European Parliament in 1995. She was released in 2004 amid warnings from European institutions that the continued imprisonment of the four Kurdish MPs would affect Turkey's bid to join the EU. The 2009 local elections resulted in 5.7% for Kurdish political party DTP.
Officially protected death squads are accused of the disappearance of 3,200 Kurds and Assyrians in 1993 and 1994 in the so-called "mystery killings".
Kurdish politicians, human-rights activists, journalists, teachers and other members of intelligentsia were among the victims. Virtually none of the perpetrators were investigated nor punished. Turkish government also encouraged Islamic extremist group Hezbollah to assassinate suspected PKK members and often ordinary Kurds. "Azimet Köylüoğlu", the state minister of human rights, revealed the extent of security forces' excesses in autumn 1994:
"While acts of terrorism in other regions are done by the PKK; in Tunceli it is state terrorism. In Tunceli, it is the state that is evacuating and burning villages. In the southeast there are two million people left homeless."
The Kurdish region of Iran has been a part of the country since ancient times. Nearly all Kurdistan was part of Persian Empire until its Western part was lost during wars against the Ottoman Empire. Following the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 Tehran had demanded all lost territories including Turkish Kurdistan, Mosul, and even Diyarbakır, but demands were quickly rejected by Western powers. This area has been divided by modern Turkey, Syria and Iraq. Today, the Kurds inhabit mostly northwestern territories known as Iranian Kurdistan but also the northeastern region of Khorasan, and constitute approximately 7-10% of Iran's overall population (6.5–7.9 million), compared to 10.6% (2 million) in 1956 and 8% (800 thousand) in 1850.
Unlike in other Kurdish-populated countries, there are strong ethnolinguistical and cultural ties between Kurds, Persians and others as Iranian peoples. Some modern Iranian dynasties like the Safavids and Zands are considered to be partly of Kurdish origin. Kurdish literature in all of its forms (Kurmanji, Sorani, and Gorani) has been developed within historical Iranian boundaries under strong influence of the Persian language. The Kurds sharing much of their history with the rest of Iran is seen as reason for why Kurdish leaders in Iran do not want a separate Kurdish state
The government of Iran has never employed the same level of brutality against its own Kurds like Turkey or Iraq, but it has always been implacably opposed to any suggestion of Kurdish separatism. During and shortly after the First World War the government of Iran was ineffective and had very little control over events in the country and several Kurdish tribal chiefs gained local political power, even established large confederations. At the same time waves of nationalism from the disintegrating Ottoman Empire partly influenced some Kurdish chiefs in border regions to pose as Kurdish nationalist leaders. Prior to this, identity in both countries largely relied upon religion i.e. Shia Islam in the particular case of Iran. In 19th century Iran, Shia–Sunni animosity and the describing of Sunni Kurds as an Ottoman fifth column was quite frequent.
During the late 1910s and early 1920s, tribal revolt led by Kurdish chieftain Simko Shikak struck north western Iran. Although elements of Kurdish nationalism were present in this movement, historians agree these were hardly articulate enough to justify a claim that recognition of Kurdish identity was a major issue in Simko's movement, and he had to rely heavily on conventional tribal motives. Government forces and non-Kurds were not the only ones to suffer in the attacks, the Kurdish population was also robbed and assaulted. Rebels do not appear to have felt any sense of unity or solidarity with fellow Kurds. Kurdish insurgency and seasonal migrations in the late 1920s, along with long-running tensions between Tehran and Ankara, resulted in border clashes and even military penetrations in both Iranian and Turkish territory. Two regional powers have used Kurdish tribes as tool for own political benefits: Turkey has provided military help and refuge for anti-Iranian Turcophone Shikak rebels in 1918-1922, while Iran did the same during Ararat rebellion against Turkey in 1930. Reza Shah's military victory over Kurdish and Turkic tribal leaders initiated a repressive era toward non-Iranian minorities. Government's forced detribalization and sedentarization in 1920s and 1930s resulted with many other tribal revolts in Iranian regions of Azerbaijan, Luristan and Kurdistan. In particular case of the Kurds, this repressive policies partly contributed to developing nationalism among some tribes.
As a response to growing Pan-Turkism and Pan-Arabism in region which were seen as potential threats to the territorial integrity of Iran, Pan-Iranist ideology has been developed in the early 1920s. Some of such groups and journals openly advocated Iranian support to the Kurdish rebellion against Turkey. Secular Pahlavi dynasty has endorsed Iranian ethnic nationalism which saw the Kurds as integral part of the Iranian nation. Mohammad Reza Pahlavi has personally praised the Kurds as "pure Iranians" or "one of the most noble Iranian peoples". Another significant ideology during this period was Marxism which arose among Kurds under influence of USSR. It culminated in the Iran crisis of 1946 which included a separatist attempt of KDP-I and communist groups to establish the Soviet puppet government called Republic of Mahabad. It arose along with Azerbaijan People's Government, another Soviet puppet state. The state itself encompassed a very small territory, including Mahabad and the adjacent cities, unable to incorporate the southern Iranian Kurdistan which fell inside the Anglo-American zone, and unable to attract the tribes outside Mahabad itself to the nationalist cause. As a result, when the Soviets withdrew from Iran in December 1946, government forces were able to enter Mahabad unopposed.
Several nationalist and Marxist insurgencies continued for decades (1967, 1979, 1989–96) led by KDP-I and Komalah, but those two organization have never advocated a separate Kurdish state or greater Kurdistan as did the PKK in Turkey. Still, many of dissident leaders, among others Qazi Muhammad and Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou, were executed or assassinated. During Iran–Iraq War, Tehran has provided support for Iraqi-based Kurdish groups like KDP or PUK, along with asylum for 1,400,000 Iraqi refugees, mostly Kurds. Kurdish Marxist groups have been marginalized in Iran since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. In 2004 new insurrection started by PJAK, separatist organization affiliated with the Turkey-based PKK and designated as terrorist by Iran, Turkey and the United States. Some analysts claim PJAK do not pose any serious threat to the government of Iran. Cease-fire has been established in September 2011 following the Iranian offensive on PJAK bases, but several clashes between PJAK and IRGC took place after it. Since the Iranian Revolution of 1979, accusations of "discrimination" by Western organizations and of "foreign involvement" by Iranian side have become very frequent.
Kurds have been well integrated in Iranian political life during reign of various governments. Kurdish liberal political Karim Sanjabi has served as minister of education under Mohammad Mossadegh in 1952. During the reign of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi some members of parliament and high army officers were Kurds, and there was even a Kurdish Cabinet Minister. During the reign of the Pahlavis Kurds received many favours from the authorities, for instance to keep their land after the land reforms of 1962. In the early 2000s, presence of thirty Kurdish deputies in the 290-strong parliament has also helped to undermine claims of discrimination. Some of the more influential Kurdish politicians during recent years include former first vice president Mohammad Reza Rahimi and Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Mayor of Tehran and second-placed presidential candidate in 2013. Kurdish language is today used more than at any other time since the Revolution, including in several newspapers and among schoolchildren. Many Iranian Kurds show no interest in Kurdish nationalism, particularly Kurds of the Shia faith who sometimes even vigorously reject idea of autonomy, preferring direct rule from Tehran. The issue of Kurdish nationalism and Iranian national identity is generally only questioned in the peripheral Kurdish dominated regions where the Sunni faith is prevalent.
Kurds constitute approximately 17% of Iraq's population. They are the majority in at least three provinces in northern Iraq which are together known as Iraqi Kurdistan. Kurds also have a presence in Kirkuk, Mosul, Khanaqin, and Baghdad. Around 300,000 Kurds live in the Iraqi capital Baghdad, 50,000 in the city of Mosul and around 100,000 elsewhere in southern Iraq.
Kurds led by Mustafa Barzani were engaged in heavy fighting against successive Iraqi regimes from 1960 to 1975. In March 1970, Iraq announced a peace plan providing for Kurdish autonomy. The plan was to be implemented in four years. However, at the same time, the Iraqi regime started an Arabization program in the oil-rich regions of Kirkuk and Khanaqin. The peace agreement did not last long, and in 1974, the Iraqi government began a new offensive against the Kurds. Moreover, in March 1975, Iraq and Iran signed the Algiers Accord, according to which Iran cut supplies to Iraqi Kurds. Iraq started another wave of Arabization by moving Arabs to the oil fields in Kurdistan, particularly those around Kirkuk. Between 1975 and 1978, 200,000 Kurds were deported to other parts of Iraq.
During the Iran–Iraq War in the 1980s, the regime implemented anti-Kurdish policies and a "de facto" civil war broke out. Iraq was widely condemned by the international community, but was never seriously punished for oppressive measures such as the mass murder of hundreds of thousands of civilians, the wholesale destruction of thousands of villages and the deportation of thousands of Kurds to southern and central Iraq.
The genocidal campaign, conducted between 1986 and 1989 and culminating in 1988, carried out by the Iraqi government against the Kurdish population was called "Anfal" ("Spoils of War"). The Anfal campaign led to destruction of over two thousand villages and killing of 182,000 Kurdish civilians. The campaign included the use of ground offensives, aerial bombing, systematic destruction of settlements, mass deportation, firing squads, and chemical attacks, including the most infamous attack on the Kurdish town of Halabja in 1988 that killed 5000 civilians instantly.
After the collapse of the Kurdish uprising in March 1991, Iraqi troops recaptured most of the Kurdish areas and 1.5 million Kurds abandoned their homes and fled to the Turkish and Iranian borders. It is estimated that close to 20,000 Kurds succumbed to death due to exhaustion, lack of food, exposure to cold and disease. On 5 April 1991, UN Security Council passed resolution 688 which condemned the repression of Iraqi Kurdish civilians and demanded that Iraq end its repressive measures and allow immediate access to international humanitarian organizations. This was the first international document (since the League of Nations arbitration of Mosul in 1926) to mention Kurds by name. In mid-April, the Coalition established "safe havens" inside Iraqi borders and prohibited Iraqi planes from flying north of 36th parallel. In October 1991, Kurdish guerrillas captured Erbil and Sulaimaniyah after a series of clashes with Iraqi troops. In late October, Iraqi government retaliated by imposing a food and fuel embargo on the Kurds and stopping to pay civil servants in the Kurdish region. The embargo, however, backfired and Kurds held parliamentary elections in May 1992 and established Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).
The Kurdish population welcomed the American troops in 2003 by holding celebrations and dancing in the streets. The area controlled by Peshmerga was expanded, and Kurds now have effective control in Kirkuk and parts of Mosul. The authority of the KRG and legality of its laws and regulations were recognized in the articles 113 and 137 of the new Iraqi Constitution ratified in 2005. By the beginning of 2006, the two Kurdish administrations of Erbil and Sulaimaniya were unified. On 14 August 2007, Yazidis were targeted in a series of bombings that became the deadliest suicide attack since the Iraq War began, killing 796 civilians, wounding 1,562.
Kurds account for 9% of Syria's population, a total of around 1.6 million people. This makes them the largest ethnic minority in the country. They are mostly concentrated in the northeast and the north, but there are also significant Kurdish populations in Aleppo and Damascus. Kurds often speak Kurdish in public, unless all those present do not. According to Amnesty International, Kurdish human rights activists are mistreated and persecuted. No political parties are allowed for any group, Kurdish or otherwise.
Techniques used to suppress the ethnic identity of Kurds in Syria include various bans on the use of the Kurdish language, refusal to register children with Kurdish names, the replacement of Kurdish place names with new names in Arabic, the prohibition of businesses that do not have Arabic names, the prohibition of Kurdish private schools, and the prohibition of books and other materials written in Kurdish. Having been denied the right to Syrian nationality, around 300,000 Kurds have been deprived of any social rights, in violation of international law. As a consequence, these Kurds are in effect trapped within Syria. In March 2011, in part to avoid further demonstrations and unrest from spreading across Syria, the Syrian government promised to tackle the issue and grant Syrian citizenship to approximately 300,000 Kurds who had been previously denied the right.
On 12 March 2004, beginning at a stadium in Qamishli (a largely Kurdish city in northeastern Syria), clashes between Kurds and Syrians broke out and continued over a number of days. At least thirty people were killed and more than 160 injured. The unrest spread to other Kurdish towns along the northern border with Turkey, and then to Damascus and Aleppo.
As a result of Syrian civil war, since July 2012, Kurds were able to take control of large parts of Syrian Kurdistan from Andiwar in extreme northeast to Jindires in extreme northwest Syria. The Syrian Kurds started the Rojava Revolution in 2013.
Kurdish-inhabited Afrin Canton has been occupied by Turkish Armed Forces and Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army since the Turkish military operation in Afrin in early 2018. Between 150,000 and 200,000 people were displaced due to the Turkish intervention.
In October 2019, Turkey and the Syrian Interim Government began an offensive into Kurdish-populated areas in Syria, prompting about 100,000 civilians to flee from the area fearing that Turkey would commit an ethnic cleansing.
Between the 1930s and 1980s, Armenia was a part of the Soviet Union, within which Kurds, like other ethnic groups, had the status of a protected minority. Armenian Kurds were permitted their own state-sponsored newspaper, radio broadcasts and cultural events. During the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh, many non-Yazidi Kurds were forced to leave their homes since both the Azeri and non-Yazidi Kurds were Muslim.
In 1920, two Kurdish-inhabited areas of Jewanshir (capital Kalbajar) and eastern Zangazur (capital Lachin) were combined to form the Kurdistan Okrug (or "Red Kurdistan"). The period of existence of the Kurdish administrative unit was brief and did not last beyond 1929. Kurds subsequently faced many repressive measures, including deportations, imposed by the Soviet government. As a result of the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh, many Kurdish areas have been destroyed and more than 150,000 Kurds have been deported since 1988 by separatist Armenian forces.
According to a report by the Council of Europe, approximately 1.3 million Kurds live in Western Europe. The earliest immigrants were Kurds from Turkey, who settled in Germany, Austria, the Benelux countries, the United Kingdom, Switzerland and France during the 1960s. Successive periods of political and social turmoil in the region during the 1980s and 1990s brought new waves of Kurdish refugees, mostly from Iran and Iraq under Saddam Hussein, came to Europe.
In recent years, many Kurdish asylum seekers from both Iran and Iraq have settled in the United Kingdom (especially in the town of Dewsbury and in some northern areas of London), which has sometimes caused media controversy over their right to remain.
There have been tensions between Kurds and the established Muslim community in Dewsbury, which is home to very traditional mosques such as the Markazi. Since the beginning of the turmoil in Syria many of the refugees of the Syrian Civil War are Syrian Kurds and as a result many of the current Syrian asylum seekers in Germany are of Kurdish descent.
There was substantial immigration of ethnic Kurds in Canada and the United States, who are mainly political refugees and immigrants seeking economic opportunity. According to a 2011 Statistics Canada household survey, there were 11,685 people of Kurdish ethnic background living in Canada, and according to the 2011 Census, 10,325 Canadians spoke Kurdish language. In the United States, Kurdish immigrants started to settle in large numbers in Nashville in 1976, which is now home to the largest Kurdish community in the United States and is nicknamed "Little Kurdistan". Kurdish population in Nashville is estimated to be around 11,000. The total number of ethnic Kurds residing in the United States is estimated by the US Census Bureau to be 20,591. Other sources claim that there are 20,000 ethnic Kurds in the United States.
As a whole, the Kurdish people are adherents to various religions and creeds, perhaps constituting the most religiously diverse people of West Asia. Traditionally, Kurds have been known to take great liberties with their practices. This sentiment is reflected in the saying "Compared to the unbeliever, the Kurd is a Muslim".
Today, the majority of Kurds are Sunni Muslim, belonging to the Shafi school. The Kurdish following of the Shafi legal code has caused some tension when pushed up against Sunni Turks and Sunni Arabs who subscribe to the Hanafi legal code.
The majority of Sunni Muslim Kurds belonging to the Shafi school speak the Northern Kurdish (Kurmanji) dialect.
There is also a significant minority of Kurds who are Shia Muslims. A side of sources mention that most of Kurds in Iran are Shias, | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17068 |
Kaluza–Klein theory
In physics, Kaluza–Klein theory (KK theory) is a classical unified field theory of gravitation and electromagnetism built around the idea of a fifth dimension beyond the usual four of space and time and considered an important precursor to string theory. Nordstrom had an earlier, similar idea. But in that case, a fifth component was added to the electromagnetic vector potential, representing the Newtonian gravitational potential, and writing the Maxwell equations in 5 dimensions.
The five-dimensional (5D) theory developed in three steps. The original hypothesis came from Theodor Kaluza, who sent his results to Einstein in 1919, and published them in 1921. Kaluza presented a purely classical extension of general relativity to 5D, with a metric tensor of 15 components. 10 components are identified with the 4D spacetime metric, four components with the electromagnetic vector potential, and one component with an unidentified scalar field sometimes called the "radion" or the "dilaton". Correspondingly, the 5D Einstein equations yield the 4D Einstein field equations, the Maxwell equations for the electromagnetic field, and an equation for the scalar field. Kaluza also introduced the "cylinder condition" hypothesis, that no component of the five-dimensional metric depends on the fifth dimension. Without this assumption, terms are introduced that involve derivatives of the fields with respect to the fifth coordinate. This extra degree of freedom is such that the field equations of fully variable 5D relativity grow enormous in complexity. Standard 4D physics seems to manifest the cylinder condition, and the corresponding simpler mathematics.
In 1926, Oskar Klein gave Kaluza's classical five-dimensional theory a quantum interpretation, to accord with the then-recent discoveries of Heisenberg and Schrödinger. Klein introduced the hypothesis that the fifth dimension was curled up and microscopic, to explain the cylinder condition. Klein suggested that the geometry of the extra fifth dimension could take the form of a circle, with the radius of . Klein also made a contribution to the classical theory by providing a properly normalized 5D metric.. Work continued on the Kaluza field theory during the 1930s by Einstein and colleagues at Princeton.
In the 1940s the classical theory was completed, and the full field equations including the scalar field were obtained by three independent research groups: Thiry, working in France on his dissertation under Lichnerowicz; Jordan, Ludwig, and Müller in Germany, with critical input from Pauli and Fierz; and Scherrer working alone in Switzerland. Jordan's work led to the scalar–tensor theory of Brans–Dicke; Brans and Dicke were apparently unaware of Thiry or Scherrer. The full Kaluza equations under the cylinder condition are quite complex, and most English-language reviews as well as the English translations of Thiry contain some errors. The curvature tensors for the complete Kaluza equations were evaluated using tensor algebra software in 2015, verifying results of Ferrari and Coquereaux & Esposito-Farese. The 5D covariant form of the energy-momentum source terms is treated by Williams .
In his 1921 paper, Kaluza established all the elements of the classical five-dimensional theory: the metric, the field equations, the equations of motion, the stress–energy tensor, and the cylinder condition. With no free parameters, it merely extends general relativity to five dimensions. One starts by hypothesizing a form of the five-dimensional metric formula_1, where Latin indices span five dimensions. Let one also introduce the four-dimensional spacetime metric formula_2, where Greek indices span the usual four dimensions of space and time; a 4-vector formula_3 identified with the electromagnetic vector potential; and a scalar field formula_4. Then decompose the 5D metric so that the 4D metric is framed by the electromagnetic vector potential, with the scalar field at the fifth diagonal. This can be visualized as:
One can write more precisely
where the index formula_7 indicates the fifth coordinate by convention even though the first four coordinates are indexed with 0, 1, 2, and 3. The associated inverse metric is
This decomposition is quite general and all terms are dimensionless. Kaluza then applies the machinery of standard general relativity to this metric. The field equations are obtained from five-dimensional Einstein equations, and the equations of motion from the five-dimensional geodesic hypothesis. The resulting field equations provide both the equations of general relativity and of electrodynamics; the equations of motion provide the four-dimensional geodesic equation and the Lorentz force law, and one finds that electric charge is identified with motion in the fifth dimension.
The hypothesis for the metric implies an invariant five-dimensional length element formula_9:
The field equations of the 5-dimensional theory were never adequately provided by Kaluza or Klein because they ignored the scalar field. The full Kaluza field equations are generally attributed to Thiry, who obtained vacuum field equations, although Kaluza originally provided a stress–energy tensor for his theory and Thiry included a stress–energy tensor in his thesis. But as described by Gonner, several independent groups worked on the field equations in the 1940s and earlier. Thiry is perhaps best known only because an English translation was provided by Applequist, Chodos, & Freund in their review book. Applequist et al. also provided an English translation of Kaluza's paper. There are no English translations of the Jordan papers.. The first correct English-language Kaluza field equations, including the scalar field, were provided by .
To obtain the 5D field equations, the 5D connections formula_11 are calculated from the 5D metric formula_12, and the 5D Ricci tensor formula_13 is calculated from the 5D connections.
The classic results of Thiry and other authors presume the cylinder condition:
Without this assumption, the field equations become much more complex, providing many more degrees of freedom that can be identified with various new fields. Paul Wesson and colleagues have pursued relaxation of the cylinder condition to gain extra terms that can be identified with the matter fields, for which Kaluza otherwise inserted a stress–energy tensor by hand.
It has been an objection to the original Kaluza hypothesis to invoke the fifth dimension only to negate its dynamics. But Thiry argued that the interpretation of the Lorentz force law in terms of a 5-dimensional geodesic militates strongly for a fifth dimension irrespective of the cylinder condition. Most authors have therefore employed the cylinder condition in deriving the field equations. Furthermore, vacuum equations are typically assumed for which
where
and
The vacuum field equations obtained in this way by Thiry and Jordan's group are as follows.
The field equation for formula_4 is obtained from
where formula_20,
where formula_21, and where formula_22 is a standard, 4D covariant derivative. It shows that the electromagnetic field is a source for the scalar field. Note that the scalar field cannot be set to a constant without constraining the electromagnetic field. The earlier treatments by Kaluza and Klein did not have an adequate description of the scalar field, and did not realize the implied constraint on the electromagnetic field by assuming the scalar field to be constant.
The field equation for formula_23 is obtained from
It has the form of the vacuum Maxwell equations if the scalar field is constant.
The field equation for the 4D Ricci tensor formula_25 is obtained from
where formula_27 is the standard 4D Ricci scalar.
This equation shows the remarkable result, called the "Kaluza miracle", that the precise form for the electromagnetic stress–energy tensor emerges from the 5D vacuum equations as a source in the 4D equations: field from the vacuum. This relation allows the definitive identification of formula_28 with the electromagnetic vector potential. Therefore, the field needs to be rescaled with a conversion constant formula_29 such that formula_30.
The relation above shows that we must have
where formula_32 is the gravitational constant and formula_33 is the permeability of free space. In the Kaluza theory, the gravitational constant can be understood as an electromagnetic coupling constant in the metric. There is also a stress–energy tensor for the scalar field. The scalar field behaves like a variable gravitational constant, in terms of modulating the coupling of electromagnetic stress energy to spacetime curvature. The sign of formula_34 in the metric is fixed by correspondence with 4D theory so that electromagnetic energy densities are positive. It is often assumed that the 5th coordinate is spacelike in its signature in the metric.
In the presence of matter, the 5D vacuum condition can not be assumed. Indeed, Kaluza did not assume it. The full field equations require evaluation of the 5D Einstein tensor
as seen in the recovery of the electromagnetic stress–energy tensor above. The 5D curvature tensors are complex, and most English-language reviews contain errors in either formula_36 or formula_37, as does the English translation of. See for a complete set of 5D curvature tensors under the cylinder condition, evaluated using tensor algebra software.
The equations of motion are obtained from the five-dimensional geodesic hypothesis in terms of a 5-velocity formula_38:
This equation can be recast in several ways, and it has been studied in various forms by authors including Kaluza, Pauli, Gross & Perry, Gegenberg & Kunstatter, and Wesson & Ponce de Leon,
but it is instructive to convert it back to the usual 4-dimensional length element formula_40, which is related to the 5-dimensional length element formula_41 as given above:
Then the 5D geodesic equation can be written for the spacetime components of the 4-velocity,
The term quadratic in formula_45 provides the 4D geodesic equation plus some electromagnetic terms:
The term linear in formula_45 provides the Lorentz force law:
This is another expression of the "Kaluza miracle". The same hypothesis for the 5D metric that provides electromagnetic stress–energy in the Einstein equations, also provides the Lorentz force law in the equation of motions along with the 4D geodesic equation. Yet correspondence with the Lorentz force law requires that we identify the component of 5-velocity along the 5th dimension with electric charge:
where formula_50 is particle mass and formula_51 is particle electric charge. Thus, electric charge is understood as motion along the 5th dimension. The fact that the Lorentz force law could be understood as a geodesic in 5 dimensions was to Kaluza a primary motivation for considering the 5-dimensional hypothesis, even in the presence of the aesthetically unpleasing cylinder condition.
Yet there is a problem: the term quadratic in formula_52
If there is no gradient in the scalar field, the term quadratic in formula_52 vanishes. But otherwise the expression above implies
For elementary particles, formula_56. The term quadratic in formula_52 should dominate the equation, perhaps in contradiction to experience. This was the main shortfall of the 5-dimensional theory as Kaluza saw it, and he gives it some discussion in his original article.
The equation of motion for formula_52 is particularly simple under the cylinder condition. Start with the alternate form of the geodesic equation, written for the covariant 5-velocity:
This means that under the cylinder condition, formula_60 is a constant of the 5-dimensional motion:
Kaluza proposed a 5D matter stress tensor formula_62 of the form
where formula_64 is a density and the length element formula_41 is as defined above.
Then, the spacetime component gives a typical "dust" stress energy tensor:
The mixed component provides a 4-current source for the Maxwell equations:
Just as the five-dimensional metric comprises the 4-D metric framed by the electromagnetic vector potential, the 5-dimensional stress–energy tensor comprises the 4-D stress–energy tensor framed by the vector 4-current.
Kaluza's original hypothesis was purely classical and extended discoveries of general relativity. By the time of Klein's contribution, the discoveries of Heisenberg, Schrödinger, and de Broglie were receiving a lot of attention. Klein's "Nature" paper suggested that the fifth dimension is closed and periodic, and that the identification of electric charge with motion in the fifth dimension can be interpreted as standing waves of wavelength formula_68, much like the electrons around a nucleus in the Bohr model of the atom. The quantization of electric charge could then be nicely understood in terms of integer multiples of fifth-dimensional momentum. Combining the previous Kaluza result for formula_52 in terms of electric charge, and a de Broglie relation for momentum formula_70, Klein obtained an expression for the 0th mode of such waves:
where formula_72 is the Planck constant. Klein found formula_73 cm, and thereby an explanation for the cylinder condition in this small value.
Klein's "Zeitschrift für Physik" paper of the same year, gave a more detailed treatment that explicitly invoked the techniques of Schroedinger and de Broglie. It recapitulated much of the classical theory of Kaluza described above, and then departed into Klein's quantum interpretation. Klein solved a Schroedinger-like wave equation using an expansion in terms of fifth-dimensional waves resonating in the closed, compact fifth dimension.
In 1926, Oskar Klein proposed that the fourth spatial dimension is curled up in a circle of a very small radius, so that a particle moving a short distance along that axis would return to where it began. The distance a particle can travel before reaching its initial position is said to be the size of the dimension. This extra dimension is a compact set, and construction of this compact dimension is referred to as compactification.
In modern geometry, the extra fifth dimension can be understood to be the circle group U(1), as electromagnetism can essentially be formulated as a gauge theory on a fiber bundle, the circle bundle, with gauge group U(1). In Kaluza–Klein theory this group suggests that gauge symmetry is the symmetry of circular compact dimensions. Once this geometrical interpretation is understood, it is relatively straightforward to replace "U"(1) by a general Lie group. Such generalizations are often called Yang–Mills theories. If a distinction is drawn, then it is that Yang–Mills theories occur on a flat spacetime, whereas Kaluza–Klein treats the more general case of curved spacetime. The base space of Kaluza–Klein theory need not be four-dimensional spacetime; it can be any (pseudo-)Riemannian manifold, or even a supersymmetric manifold or orbifold or even a noncommutative space.
The construction can be outlined, roughly, as follows. One starts by considering a principal fiber bundle "P" with gauge group "G" over a manifold M. Given a connection on the bundle, and a metric on the base manifold, and a gauge invariant metric on the tangent of each fiber, one can construct a bundle metric defined on the entire bundle. Computing the scalar curvature of this bundle metric, one finds that it is constant on each fiber: this is the "Kaluza miracle". One did not have to explicitly impose a cylinder condition, or to compactify: by assumption, the gauge group is already compact. Next, one takes this scalar curvature as the Lagrangian density, and, from this, constructs the Einstein–Hilbert action for the bundle, as a whole. The equations of motion, the Euler–Lagrange equations, can be then obtained by considering where the action is stationary with respect to variations of either the metric on the base manifold, or of the gauge connection. Variations with respect to the base metric gives the Einstein field equations on the base manifold, with the energy–momentum tensor given by the curvature (field strength) of the gauge connection. On the flip side, the action is stationary against variations of the gauge connection precisely when the gauge connection solves the Yang–Mills equations. Thus, by applying a single idea: the principle of least action, to a single quantity: the scalar curvature on the bundle (as a whole), one obtains simultaneously all of the needed field equations, for both the spacetime and the gauge field.
As an approach to the unification of the forces, it is straightforward to apply the Kaluza–Klein theory in an attempt to unify gravity with the strong and electroweak forces by using the symmetry group of the Standard Model, SU(3) × SU(2) × U(1). However, an attempt to convert this interesting geometrical construction into a bona-fide model of reality flounders on a number of issues, including the fact that the fermions must be introduced in an artificial way (in nonsupersymmetric models). Nonetheless, KK remains an important touchstone in theoretical physics and is often embedded in more sophisticated theories. It is studied in its own right as an object of geometric interest in K-theory.
Even in the absence of a completely satisfying theoretical physics framework, the idea of exploring extra, compactified, dimensions is of considerable interest in the experimental physics and astrophysics communities. A variety of predictions, with real experimental consequences, can be made (in the case of large extra dimensions and warped models). For example, on the simplest of principles, one might expect to have standing waves in the extra compactified dimension(s). If a spatial extra dimension is of radius "R", the invariant mass of such standing waves would be "M""n" = "nh"/"Rc" with "n" an integer, "h" being Planck's constant and "c" the speed of light. This set of possible mass values is often called the Kaluza–Klein tower. Similarly, in Thermal quantum field theory a compactification of the euclidean time dimension leads to the Matsubara frequencies and thus to a discretized thermal energy spectrum.
However, Klein's approach to a quantum theory is flawed and, for example, leads to a calculated electron mass in the order of magnitude of the Planck mass.
Examples of experimental pursuits include work by the CDF collaboration, which has re-analyzed particle collider data for the signature of effects associated with large extra dimensions/warped models.
Brandenberger and Vafa have speculated that in the early universe, cosmic inflation causes three of the space dimensions to expand to cosmological size while the remaining dimensions of space remained microscopic.
One particular variant of Kaluza–Klein theory is space–time–matter theory or induced matter theory, chiefly promulgated by Paul Wesson and other members of the Space–Time–Matter Consortium. In this version of the theory, it is noted that solutions to the equation
may be re-expressed so that in four dimensions, these solutions satisfy Einstein's equations
with the precise form of the "T""μν" following from the Ricci-flat condition on the five-dimensional space. In other words, the cylinder condition of the previous development is dropped, and the stress–energy now comes from the derivatives of the 5D metric with respect to the fifth coordinate. Because the energy–momentum tensor is normally understood to be due to concentrations of matter in four-dimensional space, the above result is interpreted as saying that four-dimensional matter is induced from geometry in five-dimensional space.
In particular, the soliton solutions of formula_74 can be shown to contain the Friedmann–Lemaître–Robertson–Walker metric in both radiation-dominated (early universe) and matter-dominated (later universe) forms. The general equations can be shown to be sufficiently consistent with classical tests of general relativity to be acceptable on physical principles, while still leaving considerable freedom to also provide interesting cosmological models.
The Kaluza–Klein theory has a particularly elegant presentation in terms of geometry. In a certain sense, it looks just like ordinary gravity in free space, except that it is phrased in five dimensions instead of four.
The equations governing ordinary gravity in free space can be obtained from an action, by applying the variational principle to a certain action. Let "M" be a (pseudo-)Riemannian manifold, which may be taken as the spacetime of general relativity. If "g" is the metric on this manifold, one defines the action "S"("g") as
where "R"("g") is the scalar curvature and vol("g") is the volume element. By applying the variational principle to the action
one obtains precisely the Einstein equations for free space:
Here, "R""ij" is the Ricci tensor.
By contrast, the Maxwell equations describing electromagnetism can be understood to be the Hodge equations of a principal U(1)-bundle or circle bundle with fiber U(1). That is, the electromagnetic field "F" is a harmonic 2-form in the space Ω2("M") of differentiable 2-forms on the manifold "M". In the absence of charges and currents, the free-field Maxwell equations are
where ∗ is the Hodge star operator.
To build the Kaluza–Klein theory, one picks an invariant metric on the circle "S"1 that is the fiber of the U(1)-bundle of electromagnetism. In this discussion, an "invariant metric" is simply one that is invariant under rotations of the circle. Suppose this metric gives the circle a total length of Λ. One then considers metrics formula_80 on the bundle "P" that are consistent with both the fiber metric, and the metric on the underlying manifold "M". The consistency conditions are:
The Kaluza–Klein action for such a metric is given by
The scalar curvature, written in components, then expands to
where π∗ is the pullback of the fiber bundle projection . The connection "A" on the fiber bundle is related to the electromagnetic field strength as
That there always exists such a connection, even for fiber bundles of arbitrarily complex topology, is a result from homology and specifically, K-theory. Applying Fubini's theorem and integrating on the fiber, one gets
Varying the action with respect to the component "A", one regains the Maxwell equations. Applying the variational principle to the base metric "g", one gets the Einstein equations
with the stress–energy tensor being given by
sometimes called the Maxwell stress tensor.
The original theory identifies Λ with the fiber metric "g"55, and allows Λ to vary from fiber to fiber. In this case, the coupling between gravity and the electromagnetic field is not constant, but has its own dynamical field, the radion.
In the above, the size of the loop Λ acts as a coupling constant between the gravitational field and the electromagnetic field. If the base manifold is four-dimensional, the Kaluza–Klein manifold "P" is five-dimensional. The fifth dimension is a compact space, and is called the compact dimension. The technique of introducing compact dimensions to obtain a higher-dimensional manifold is referred to as compactification. Compactification does not produce group actions on chiral fermions except in very specific cases: the dimension of the total space must be 2 mod 8 and the G-index of the Dirac operator of the compact space must be nonzero.
The above development generalizes in a more-or-less straightforward fashion to general principal "G"-bundles for some arbitrary Lie group "G" taking the place of U(1). In such a case, the theory is often referred to as a Yang–Mills theory, and is sometimes taken to be synonymous. If the underlying manifold is supersymmetric, the resulting theory is a super-symmetric Yang–Mills theory.
No experimental or observational signs of extra dimensions have been officially reported. Many theoretical search techniques for detecting Kaluza–Klein resonances have been proposed using the mass couplings of such resonances with the top quark. However, until the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) reaches full operational power, observation of such resonances are unlikely. An analysis of results from the LHC in December 2010 severely constrains theories with large extra dimensions.
The observation of a Higgs-like boson at the LHC establishes a new empirical test which can be applied to the search for Kaluza–Klein resonances and supersymmetric particles.
The loop Feynman diagrams that exist in the Higgs interactions allow any particle with electric charge and mass to run in such a loop. Standard Model particles besides the top quark and W boson do not make big contributions to the cross-section observed in the decay, but if there are new particles beyond the Standard Model, they could potentially change the ratio of the predicted Standard Model cross-section to the experimentally observed cross-section. Hence a measurement of any dramatic change to the cross-section predicted by the Standard Model is crucial in probing the physics beyond it.
Another more recent paper from July 2018 gives some hope for this theory; in the paper they dispute that gravity is leaking into higher dimensions as in brane theory. However the paper does demonstrate that EM and gravity share the same number of dimensions, and this fact lends support to Kaluza–Klein theory; whether the number of dimensions is really 3+1 or in fact 4+1 is the subject of further debate. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17070 |
Kangchenjunga
Kangchenjunga, also spelled Kanchenjunga, is the third highest mountain in the world. It rises with an elevation of in a section of the Himalayas called "Kangchenjunga Himal" delimited in the west by the Tamur River, in the north by the Lhonak Chu and Jongsang La, and in the east by the Teesta River. It lies between Nepal and Sikkim, India, with three of the five peaks (Main, Central, and South) directly on the border, and the remaining two (West and Kangbachen) in Nepal's Taplejung District.
Until 1852, Kangchenjunga was assumed to be the highest mountain in the world, but calculations based on various readings and measurements made by the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India in 1849 came to the conclusion that Mount Everest, known as Peak XV at the time, was the highest. Allowing for further verification of all calculations, it was officially announced in 1856 that Kangchenjunga is the third highest mountain in the world.
Kangchenjunga was first climbed on 25 May 1955 by Joe Brown and George Band, who were part of a British expedition. They stopped short of the summit in accordance with the promise given to the Chogyal that the top of the mountain would remain intact. Every climber or climbing group that has reached the summit has followed this tradition.
"Kangchenjunga" is the official spelling adopted by Douglas Freshfield, Alexander Mitchell Kellas, and the Royal Geographical Society that gives the best indication of the Tibetan pronunciation. Freshfield referred to the spelling used by the Indian Government since the late 19th century. There are a number of alternative spellings including "Kangchendzönga", "Khangchendzonga", and "Kanchenjunga".
The brothers Hermann, Adolf and Robert Schlagintweit explained the local name 'Kanchinjínga' meaning “The five treasures of the high snow” as originating from the Tibetan word "gangs" meaning snow, ice; "chen" meaning great; "mzod" meaning treasure; "lnga" meaning five.
Local Lhopo people believe that the treasures are hidden but reveal to the devout when the world is in peril; the treasures comprise salt, gold, turquoise and precious stones, sacred scriptures, invincible armor or ammunition, grain, and medicine.
Kangchenjunga's name in the Limbu language is "Senjelungma" or "Seseylungma", and is believed to be an abode of the omnipotent goddess Yuma Sammang.
Its name in Chinese is 干城章嘉峰 (Gānchéng zhāngjiāfēng).
The Kangchenjunga landscape is a complex of three distinct ecoregions: the eastern Himalayan broad-leaved and coniferous forests, the Eastern Himalayan alpine shrub and meadows, and the Terai-Duar savanna and grasslands.
The Kangchenjunga transboundary landscape is shared by Bhutan, China, India, and Nepal, and comprises 14 protected areas with a total of :
These protected areas are habitats for many globally significant plant species such as rhododendrons and orchids and many endangered flagship species such as snow leopard, Asian black bear, red panda, white-bellied musk deer, blood pheasant, and chestnut-breasted partridge.
The "Kangchenjunga Himal" section of the Himalayas lies both in Nepal and India and encompasses 16 peaks over . In the north, it is limited by the Lhonak Chu, Goma Chu, and Jongsang La, and in the east by the Teesta River. The western limit runs from the Jongsang La down the Gingsang and Kangchenjunga glaciers and the rivers of Ghunsa and Tamur. Kanchenjunga rises about south of the general alignment of the Great Himalayan range about east-southeast of Mount Everest as the crow flies. South of the southern face of Kanchenjunga runs the high Singalila Ridge that separates Sikkim from Nepal and northern West Bengal.
Kangchenjunga and its satellite peaks form a huge mountain massif. The massif's five highest peaks are listed in the following table.
The main ridge of the massif runs from north-northeast to south-southwest and forms a watershed to several rivers. Together with ridges running roughly from east to west they form a giant cross. These ridges contain a host of peaks between . The northern section includes Yalung Kang, Kangchenjunga Central and South, Kangbachen, Kirat Chuli, and Gimmigela Chuli, and runs up to the Jongsang La. The eastern ridge in Sikkim includes Siniolchu. The southern section runs along the Nepal-Sikkim border and includes Kabru I to III. This ridge extends southwards to the Singalila Ridge. The western ridge culminates in the Kumbhakarna, also known as Jannu.
Four main glaciers radiate from the peak, pointing roughly to the northeast, southeast, northwest, and southwest. The "Zemu" glacier in the northeast and the "Talung" glacier in the southeast drain to the Teesta River; the "Yalung" glacier in the southwest and the "Kangchen" glacier in the northwest drain to the Arun and Kosi rivers.
The glaciers spread over the area above approximately , and the glacialized area covers about in total. There are 120 glaciers in the Kanchenjunga Himal, of which 17 are debris-covered. Between 1958 and 1992, more than half of 57 examined glaciers had retreated, possibly due to rising of air temperature.
Kangchenjunga Main is the highest elevation of the Brahmaputra River basin, which forms part of the southeast Asian monsoon regime and is among the globally largest river basins.
Kangchenjunga is one of six peaks above located in the basin of the Koshi river, which is among the largest tributaries of the Ganges.
The Kangchenjunga massif forms also part of the Ganges Basin.
Although it is the third highest peak in the world, Kangchenjunga is only ranked 29th by topographic prominence, a measure of a mountain's independent stature. The key col for Kangchenjunga lies at a height of , along the watershed boundary between Arun and Brahmaputra rivers in Tibet. It is however, the 4th most prominent peak in the Himalaya, after Everest, and the western and eastern anchors of the Himalaya, Nanga Parbat, and Namcha Barwa, respectively.
There are four climbing routes to reach the summit of Kangchenjunga, three of which are in Nepal from the southwest, northwest, and northeast, and one from northeastern Sikkim in India. To date, the northeastern route from Sikkim has been successfully used only three times. The Indian government has banned expeditions to Kanchenjunga; therefore, this route has been closed since 2000.
In 1955, Joe Brown and George Band made the first ascent on 25 May, followed by Norman Hardie and Tony Streather on 26 May. The full team also included John Clegg (team doctor), Charles Evans (team leader), John Angelo Jackson, Neil Mather, and Tom Mackinnon.
The ascent proved that Aleister Crowley's 1905 route (also investigated by the 1954 reconnaissance) was viable. The route starts on the Yalung Glacier to the southwest of the peak, and climbs the Yalung Face, which is high. The main feature of this face is the "Great Shelf", a large sloping plateau at around , covered by a hanging glacier. The route is almost entirely on snow, glacier, and one icefall; the summit ridge itself can involve a small amount of travel on rock. The first ascent expedition made six camps above their base camp, two below the Shelf, two on it, and two above it. They started on 18 April, and everyone was back to base camp by 28 May. Other members of this expedition included John Angelo Jackson and Tom Mackinon.
Despite improved climbing gear the fatality rate of climbers attempting to summit Kanchenjunga is high. Since the 1990s, more than 20% of people died while climbing Kanchenjunga's main peak.
Because of its remote location in Nepal and the difficulty involved in accessing it from India, the Kangchenjunga region is not much explored by trekkers. It has, therefore, retained much of its pristine beauty. In Sikkim too, trekking into the Kangchenjunga region has just recently been permitted. The Goecha La trek is gaining popularity amongst tourists. It goes to the Goecha La Pass, located right in front of the huge southeast face of Kangchenjunga. Another trek to Green Lake Basin has recently been opened for trekking. This trek goes to the Northeast side of Kangchenjunga along the famous Zemu Glacier. The film Singalila in the Himalaya is journey around Kangchenjunga.
The area around Kangchenjunga is said to be home to a mountain deity, called "Dzö-nga" or "Kangchenjunga Demon", a type of yeti or rakshasa. A British geological expedition in 1925 spotted a bipedal creature which they asked the locals about, who referred to it as the "Kangchenjunga Demon".
For generations, there have been legends recounted by the inhabitants of the areas surrounding Mount Kanchenjunga, both in Sikkim and in Nepal, that there is a valley of immortality hidden on its slopes. These stories are well known to both the original inhabitants of the area, the Lepcha people, and Kirat People and those of the Tibetan Buddhist cultural tradition. In Tibetan, this valley is known as Beyul Demoshong. In 1962 a Tibetan Lama by the name of Tulshuk Lingpa led over 300 followers into the high snow slopes of Kanchenjunga to ‘open the way’ to Beyul Demoshong. The story of this expedition is recounted in the 2011 book "A Step Away from Paradise".
The above Himalayan Journal References were all also reproduced in the "50th Anniversary of the First Ascent of Kangchenjunga" The Himalayan Club, Kolkata Section 2005. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17073 |
Kenilworth Castle
Kenilworth Castle is located in the town of Kenilworth in Warwickshire, England. Constructed from Norman through to Tudor times, the castle has been described by the architectural historian Anthony Emery as "the finest surviving example of a semi-royal palace of the later middle ages, significant for its scale, form and quality of workmanship". Kenilworth has also played an important historical role. The castle was the subject of the six-month-long Siege of Kenilworth in 1266, thought to be the longest siege in Medieval English history, and formed a base for Lancastrian operations in the Wars of the Roses. Kenilworth was also the scene of the removal of Edward II from the English throne, the French insult to Henry V in 1414 (said by John Strecche to have encouraged the Agincourt campaign), and the Earl of Leicester's lavish reception of Elizabeth I in 1575.
The castle was built over several centuries. Founded in the 1120s around a powerful Norman great tower, the castle was significantly enlarged by King John at the beginning of the 13th century. Huge water defences were created by damming the local streams, and the resulting fortifications proved able to withstand assaults by land and water in 1266. John of Gaunt spent lavishly in the late 14th century, turning the medieval castle into a palace fortress designed in the latest perpendicular style. The Earl of Leicester then expanded the castle during his tenure in the 16th century, constructing new Tudor buildings and exploiting the medieval heritage of Kenilworth to produce a fashionable Renaissance palace.
Although now ruined as a result of the slighting, or partial destruction of the castle by Parliamentary forces in 1649 to prevent it being used as a military stronghold after the English Civil War, Kenilworth illustrates five centuries of English military and civil architecture. The castle is built almost entirely from local new red sandstone.
To the south-east of the main castle lie the Brays, a corruption of the French word "braie", meaning an external fortification with palisades. Only earthworks and fragments of masonry remain of what was an extensive 13th-century barbican structure including a stone wall and an external gatehouse guarding the main approach to the castle. The area now forms part of the car park for the castle.
Beyond the Brays are the ruins of the Gallery Tower, a second gatehouse remodelled in the 15th century. The Gallery Tower originally guarded the long, narrow walled-causeway that still runs from the Brays to the main castle. This causeway was called the Tiltyard, as it was used for tilting, or jousting, in medieval times. The Tiltyard causeway acted both as a dam and as part of the barbican defences. To the east of the Tiltyard is a lower area of marshy ground, originally flooded and called the Lower Pool, and to the west an area once called the Great Mere. The Great Mere has been drained and cultivated as a meadow, but it was originally a large lake covering around , dammed by the Tiltyard causeway.
The outer bailey of Kenilworth Castle is usually entered through Mortimer's Tower, today a modest ruin but originally a Norman stone gatehouse, extended in the late 13th and 16th centuries. The outer bailey wall, long and relatively low, was built mainly by King John; it has numerous buttresses but only a few towers, being designed to be defended primarily by the water system of the Great Mere and Lower Pool. The north side of the outer bailey wall was almost entirely destroyed during the slighting. Moving clockwise around the outer bailey from Mortimer's Tower, the defences include a west-facing watergate, which would originally have led onto the Great Mere; the King's gate, a late 17th-century agricultural addition; the Swan Tower, a late 13th-century tower with 16th-century additions, then named after the swans that lived on the Great Mere; the early 13th-century Lunn's Tower; and the 14th-century Water Tower, so named because it overlooked the Lower Pool.
Kenilworth's inner court consists of a number of buildings set against a bailey wall, originally of Norman origin. It exploits the defensive value of a natural knoll that rises up steeply from the surrounding area. The 12th-century great tower occupies the knoll itself and forms the north-east corner of the bailey. Ruined during the slighting, the great tower is notable for its huge corner turrets, essentially hugely exaggerated Norman pilaster buttresses. Its walls are thick, and the towers high. Although Kenilworth's great tower is larger, it is similar to that of Brandon Castle near Coventry; both were built by the local Clinton family in the 1120s. The tower can be termed a hall keep, as it is longer than it is wide. The lowest floor is filled with earth, possibly taken from the earlier motte that may have been present on the site, and is further protected by a sloping stone plinth around the base. The tall Tudor windows at the top of the tower date from the 1570s.
Much of the northern part of the inner bailey was built by the 14th-century noble John of Gaunt between 1372 and 1380. This part of the castle is considered by historian Anthony Emery to be "the finest surviving example of a semi-royal palace of the later middle ages, significant for its scale, form and quality of workmanship". Gaunt's architectural style emphasised rectangular design, the separation of ground floor service areas from the upper stories and a contrast of austere exteriors with lavish interiors, especially on the 1st floor of the inner bailey buildings. The result is considered "an early example of the perpendicular style".
The most significant of Gaunt's buildings is his great hall. The great hall replaced an earlier sequence of great halls on the same site, and was strongly influenced by Edward III's design at Windsor Castle. The hall consists of a "ceremonial sequence of rooms", approached by a particularly grand staircase, now lost. From the great hall, visitors could look out through huge windows to admire the Great Mere or the inner court. The undercroft to the hall, used by the service staff, was lit with slits, similar to design at the contemporary Wingfield Manor. The roof was built in 1376 by William Wintringham, producing the widest hall, unsupported by pillars, existing in England at the time. There is some debate amongst historians as to whether this roof was a hammerbeam design, a collar and truss-brace design, or a combination of the two.
There was an early attempt at symmetry in the external appearance of the great hall – the Strong and Saintlowe Towers architecturally act as near symmetrical "wings" to the hall itself, while the plinth of the hall is designed to mirror that of the great tower opposite it. An unusual multi-sided tower, the Oriel, provides a counterpoint to the main doorway of the hall and was intended for private entertainment by Gaunt away from the main festivities on major occasions. The Oriel tower is based on Edward III's ""La Rose"" Tower at Windsor, which had a similar function. Gaunt's Strong Tower is so named for being entirely vaulted in stone across all its floors, an unusual and robust design. The great hall influenced the design of Bolton and Raby castles. The hall's roof design was independently famous and was copied at Arundel Castle and Westminster Hall.
Other parts of the castle built by Gaunt include the southern range of state apartments, Gaunt's Tower and the main kitchen. Although now extensively damaged, these share the same style as the great hall; this would have unified the appearance of Gaunt's palace in a distinct break from the more eclectic medieval tradition of design. Gaunt's kitchen replaced the original 12th-century kitchens, built alongside the great tower in a similar fashion to the arrangement at Conisbrough. Gaunt's new kitchen was twice the size of that in equivalent castles, measuring .
The remainder of the inner court was built by Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester, in the 1570s. He built a tower now known as Leicester's building on the south edge of the court as a guest wing, extending out beyond the inner bailey wall for extra space. Leicester's building was four floors high and built in a fashionable contemporary Tudor style with "brittle, thin walls and grids of windows". The building was intended to appear well-proportioned alongside the ancient great tower, one of the reasons for its considerable height. Leicester's building set the style for later Elizabethan country house design, especially in the Midlands, with Hardwick Hall being a classic example. Modern viewing platforms, installed in 2014, provide views from Elizabeth I's's former bedroom.
Leicester also built a loggia, or open gallery, beside the great keep to lead to the new formal gardens. The loggia was designed to elegantly frame the view as the observer slowly admired the gardens, and was a new design in the 16th century, only recently imported from Italy.
The rest of Kenilworth Castle's interior is divided into three areas: the base court, stretching between Mortimer's Tower and Leicester's gatehouse; the left-hand court, stretching south-west around the outside of the inner court; and the right-hand court, to the north-west of the inner court. The line of trees that cuts across the base court today is a relatively modern mid-19th century addition, and originally this court would have been more open, save for the collegiate chapel that once stood in front of the stables. Destroyed in 1524, only the chapel's foundations remain. Each of the courts was designed to be used for different purposes: the base court was considered a relatively public area, with the left and right courts used for more private occasions.
Leicester's gatehouse was built on the north side of the base court, replacing an older gatehouse to provide a fashionable entrance from the direction of Coventry. The external design, with its symbolic towers and, originally, battlements, echoes a style popular a century or more before, closely resembling Kirby Muxloe and the Beauchamp gatehouse at Warwick Castle. By contrast the interior, with its contemporary wood panelling, is in the same, highly contemporary Elizabethan fashion of Leicester's building in the inner court. Leicester's gatehouse is one of the few parts of the castle to remain intact. The stables built by John Dudley in the 1550s also survive and lie along the east side of the base court. The stable block is a large building built mostly in stone, but with a timber-framed, decoratively panelled first storey designed in an anachronistic, vernacular style. Both buildings could have easily been seen from Leicester's building and were therefore on permanent display to visitors. Leciester's intent may have been to create a deliberately anachronistic view across the base court, echoing the older ideals of chivalry and romance alongside the more modern aspects of the redesign of the castle.
Much of the right-hand court of Kenilworth Castle is occupied by the castle garden. For most of Kenilworth's history the role of the castle garden, used for entertainment, would have been very distinct from that of the surrounding chase, used primarily for hunting. From the 16th century onwards there were elaborate knot gardens in the base court. The gardens today are designed to reproduce as closely as possible the primarily historical record of their original appearance in 1575, with a steep terrace along the south side of the gardens and steps leading down to eight square knot gardens. In Elizabethan gardens "the plants were almost incidental", and instead the design focus was on sculptures, including four wooden obelisks painted to resemble porphyry and a marble fountain with a statue of two Greek mythological figures. A timber aviary contains a range of birds. The original garden was heavily influenced by the Italian Renaissance garden at Villa d'Este.
To the north-west of the castle are earthworks marking the spot of the "Pleasance", created in 1414 by Henry V. The Pleasance was a banqueting house built in the style of a miniature castle. Surrounded by two diamond-shaped moats with its own dock, the Pleasance was positioned on the far side of the Great Mere and had to be reached by boat. It resembled Richard II's retreat at Sheen from the 1380s, and was later copied by his younger brother, Duke Humphrey of Gloucester, at Greenwich in the 1430s, as well by his son, John of Lancaster at Fulbrook. The Pleasance was eventually dismantled by Henry VIII and partially moved into the left-hand court inside the castle itself, possibly to add to the anachronistic appearance. These elements were finally destroyed in the 1650s.
Kenilworth Castle was founded in the early 1120s by Geoffrey de Clinton, Lord Chamberlain and treasurer to Henry I. The castle's original form is uncertain. It has been suggested that it consisted of a motte, an earthen mound surmounted by wooden buildings; however, the stone great tower may have been part of the original design. Clinton was a local rival to Roger de Beaumont, the Earl of Warwick and owner of the neighbouring Warwick Castle, and the king made Clinton the sheriff in Warwickshire to act as a counterbalance to Beaumont's power. Clinton had begun to lose the king's favour after 1130, and when he died in 1133 his son, also called Geoffrey, was only a minor. Geoffrey and his uncle William de Clinton were forced to come to terms with Beaumont; this set-back, and the difficult years of the Anarchy (1135–54), delayed any further development of the castle.
Henry II succeeded to the throne at the end of the Anarchy but during the revolt of 1173–74 he faced a significant uprising led by his son, Henry, backed by the French crown. The conflict spread across England and Kenilworth was garrisoned by Henry II's forces; Geoffrey II de Clinton died in this period and the castle was taken fully into royal possession, a sign of its military importance. The Clintons themselves moved on to Buckinghamshire. By this point Kenilworth Castle consisted of the great keep, the inner bailey wall, a basic causeway across the smaller lake that preceded the creation of the Great Mere, and the local chase for hunting.
Henry's successor, Richard I, paid relatively little attention to Kenilworth, but under King John significant building resumed at the castle. When John was excommunicated in 1208, he embarked on a programme of rebuilding and enhancing several major royal castles. These included Corfe, Odiham, Dover, Scarborough as well as Kenilworth. John spent £1,115 on Kenilworth Castle between 1210 and 1216, building the outer bailey wall in stone and improving the other defences, including creating Mortimer's and Lunn's Towers. He also significantly improved the castle's water defences by damming the Finham and Inchford Brooks, creating the Great Mere. The result was to turn Kenilworth into one of the largest English castles of the time, with one of the largest artificial lake defences in England. Because John had poured so many resources into the building of the castle and considered it an important strategic castle, he appointed household knights such as Robert of Ropsley to act as castellans. John was forced to cede the castle to the baronial opposition as part of the guarantee of the Magna Carta, before it reverted to royal control early in the reign of his son, Henry III.
Henry III granted Kenilworth in 1244 to Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, who later became a leader in the Second Barons' War (1263–67) against the king, using Kenilworth as the centre of his operations. Initially the conflict went badly for King Henry, and after the Battle of Lewes in 1264 he was forced to sign the Mise of Lewes, under which his son, Prince Edward, was given over to the rebels as a hostage. Edward was taken back to Kenilworth, where chroniclers considered he was held in unduly harsh conditions. Released in early 1265, Edward then defeated Montfort at the Battle of Evesham; the surviving rebels under the leadership of Henry de Hastings, Montfort's constable at Kenilworth, regrouped at the castle the following spring. Edward's forces proceeded to lay siege to the rebels.
The Siege of Kenilworth Castle in 1266 was "probably the longest in English history" according to historian Norman Pounds, and at the time was also the largest siege to have occurred in England in terms of the number of soldiers involved. Simon de Monfort's son, Simon de Montfort the Younger, promised in January 1266 to hand over the castle to the king. Five months later this had not happened, and Henry III laid siege to Kenilworth Castle on 21 June. Protected by the extensive water defences, the castle withstood the attack, despite Edward targeting the weaker north wall, employing huge siege towers and even attempting a night attack using barges brought from Chester. The distance between the royal trebuchets and the walls severely reduced their effectiveness, and heavier trebuchets had to be sent for from London. Papal intervention through the legate Ottobuono finally resulted in the compromise of the Dictum of Kenilworth, under which the rebels were allowed to re-purchase their confiscated lands provided they surrendered the castle; the siege ended on 14 December 1266. The water defences at Kenilworth influenced the construction of later castles in Wales, most notably Caerphilly.
Henry granted Kenilworth to his son, Edmund Crouchback, in 1267. Edmund held many tournaments at Kenilworth in the late 13th century, including a huge event in 1279, presided over by the royal favourite Roger de Mortimer, in which a hundred knights competed for three days in the tiltyard in an event called "the Round Table", in imitation of the popular Arthurian legends.
Edmund Crouchback passed on the castle to his eldest son, Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, in 1298. Lancaster married Alice de Lacy, which made him the richest nobleman in England. Kenilworth became the primary castle of the Lancaster estates, replacing Bolingbroke, and acted as both a social and a financial centre for Thomas. Thomas built the first great hall at the castle from 1314 to 1317 and constructed the Water Tower along the outer bailey, as well as increasing the size of the chase. Lancaster, with support from many of the other English barons, found himself in increasing opposition to Edward II. War broke out in 1322, and Lancaster was captured at the Battle of Boroughbridge and executed. His estates, including Kenilworth, were confiscated by the crown. Edward and his wife, Isabella of France, spent Christmas 1323 at Kenilworth, amidst major celebrations.
In 1326, however, Edward was deposed by an alliance of Isabella and her lover, Roger Mortimer. Edward was eventually captured by Isabella's forces and the custody of the king was assigned to Henry, Earl of Lancaster, who had backed Isabella's invasion. Henry, reoccupying most of the Lancaster lands, was made constable of Kenilworth and Edward was transported there in late 1326; Henry's legal title to the castle was finally confirmed the following year. Kenilworth was chosen for this purpose by Isabella probably both because it was a major fortification, and also because of the symbolism of its former owners' links to popular ideals of freedom and good government. Royal writs were issued in Edward's name by Isabella from Kenilworth until the next year. A deputation of leading barons led by Bishop Orleton was then sent to Kenilworth to first persuade Edward to resign and, when that failed, to inform him that he had been deposed as king. Edward formally resigned as king in the great hall of the castle on 21 January 1327. As the months went by, however, it became clear that Kenilworth was proving a less than ideal location to imprison Edward. The castle was in a prominent part of the Midlands, in an area that held several nobles who still supported Edward and were believed to be trying to rescue him. Henry's loyalty was also coming under question. In due course, Isabella and Mortimer had Edward moved by night to Berkeley Castle, where he died shortly afterwards. Isabella continued to use Kenilworth as a royal castle until her fall from power in 1330.
Henry of Grosmont, the Duke of Lancaster, inherited the castle from his father in 1345 and remodelled the great hall with a grander interior and roof. On his death Blanche of Lancaster inherited the castle. Blanche married John of Gaunt, the third son of Edward III; their union, and combined resources, made John the second richest man in England next to the king himself. After Blanche's death, John married Constance, who had a claim to the kingdom of Castile, and John styled himself the king of Castile and León. Kenilworth was one of the most important of his thirty or more castles in England. John began building at Kenilworth between 1373 and 1380 in a style designed to reinforce his royal claims in Iberia. John constructed a grander great hall, the Strong Tower, Saintlowe Tower, the state apartments and the new kitchen complex. He made these renovations before his nephew took over his position. When not campaigning abroad, John spent much of his time at Kenilworth and Leicester, and used Kenilworth even more after 1395 when his health began to decline. In his final years, John made extensive repairs to the whole of the castle complex..
Many castles, especially royal castles, were left to decay in the 15th century; Kenilworth, however, continued to be used as a centre of choice, forming a late medieval "palace fortress". Henry IV, John of Gaunt's son, returned Kenilworth to royal ownership when he took the throne in 1399 and made extensive use of the castle. Henry V also used Kenilworth extensively, but preferred to stay in the Pleasance, the mock castle he had built on the other side of the Great Mere. According to the contemporary chronicler John Strecche, who lived at the neighbouring Kenilworth Priory, the French openly mocked Henry in 1414 by sending him a gift of tennis balls at Kenilworth. The French aim was to imply a lack of martial prowess; according to Strecche, the gift spurred Henry's decision to fight the Agincourt campaign. The account was used by Shakespeare as the basis for a scene in his play "Henry V".
English castles, including Kenilworth, did not play a decisive role during the Wars of the Roses (1455–85), which were fought primarily in the form of pitched battles between the rival factions of the Lancastrians and the Yorkists. With the mental collapse of King Henry VI, Queen Margaret used the Duchy of Lancaster lands in the Midlands, including Kenilworth, as one of her key bases of military support. Margaret removed Henry from London in 1456 for his own safety and until 1461, Henry's court divided almost all its time among Kenilworth, Leicester and Tutbury Castle for the purposes of protection. Kenilworth remained an important Lancastrian stronghold for the rest of the war, often acting as a military balance to the nearby castle of Warwick. With the victory of Henry VII at Bosworth, Kenilworth again received royal attention; Henry visited frequently and had a tennis court constructed at the castle for his use. His son, Henry VIII, decided that Kenilworth should be maintained as a royal castle. He abandoned the Pleasance and had part of the timber construction moved into the base court of the castle.
The castle remained in royal hands until it was given to John Dudley in 1553. Dudley came to prominence under Henry VIII and became the leading political figure under Edward VI. Dudley was a patron of John Shute, an early exponent of classical architecture in England, and began the process of modernising Kenilworth. Before his execution in 1553 by Queen Mary for attempting to place Lady Jane Grey on the throne, Dudley had built the new stable block and widened the tiltyard to its current form.
Kenilworth was restored to Dudley's son, Robert, Earl of Leicester, in 1563, four years after the succession of Elizabeth I to the throne. Leicester's lands in Warwickshire were worth between £500–£700 but Leicester's power and wealth, including monopolies and grants of new lands, depended ultimately on his remaining a favourite of the queen.
Leicester continued his father's modernisation of Kenilworth, attempting to ensure that Kenilworth would attract the interest of Elizabeth during her regular tours around the country. Elizabeth visited in 1566 and 1568, by which time Leicester had commissioned the royal architect Henry Hawthorne to produce plans for a dramatic, classical extension of the south side of the inner court. In the event this proved unachievable and instead Leicester employed William Spicer to rebuild and extend the castle so as to provide modern accommodation for the royal court and symbolically boost his own claims to noble heritage. After negotiation with his tenants, Leicester also increased the size of the chase once again. The result has been termed an English "Renaissance palace".
Elizabeth viewed the partially finished results at Kenilworth in 1572, but the complete effect of Leicester's work was only apparent during the queen's last visit in 1575. Leicester was keen to impress Elizabeth in a final attempt to convince her to marry him, and no expense was spared. Elizabeth brought an entourage of thirty-one barons and four hundred staff for the royal visit that lasted an exceptional nineteen days; twenty horsemen a day arrived at the castle to communicate royal messages. Leicester entertained the Queen and much of the neighbouring region with pageants, fireworks, bear baiting, mystery plays, hunting and lavish banquets. The cost was reputed to have amounted to many thousand pounds, almost bankrupting Leicester, though it probably did not exceed £1,700 in reality. The event was considered a huge success and formed the longest stay at such a property during any of Elizabeth's tours, yet the queen did not decide to marry Leicester.
An inventory of the furnishings of the castle in 1583 including paintings and tapestry runs to 50 pages. Kenilworth Castle was valued at £10,401 in 1588, when Leicester died without legitimate issue and heavily in debt. In accordance with his will, the castle passed first to his brother Ambrose, Earl of Warwick, and after the latter's death in 1590, to his illegitimate son, Sir Robert Dudley.
Sir Robert Dudley, having tried and failed to establish his legitimacy in front of the Court of the Star Chamber, went to Italy in 1605. In the same year Sir Thomas Chaloner, governor (and from 1610 chamberlain) to James I's eldest son Prince Henry, was commissioned to oversee repairs to the castle and its grounds, including the planting of gardens, the restoration of fish-ponds and improvement to the game park. During 1611–12 Dudley arranged to sell Kenilworth Castle to Henry, by then Prince of Wales. Henry died before completing the full purchase, which was finalised by his brother, Charles, who bought out the interest of Dudley's abandoned wife, Alice Dudley. When Charles became king, he gave the castle to his wife, Henrietta Maria; he bestowed the stewardship on Robert Carey, Earl of Monmouth, and after his death gave it to Carey's sons Henry and Thomas. Kenilworth remained a popular location for both King James I and his son Charles, and accordingly was well maintained. The most famous royal visit occurred in 1624, when Ben Jonson's "The Masque of Owls at Kenilworth" was performed for Charles.
The First English Civil War broke out in 1642. During its early campaigns, Kenilworth formed a useful counterbalance to the Parliamentary stronghold of Warwick. Kenilworth was used by Charles on his advance to Edgehill in October 1642 as a base for raids on Parliamentary strongholds in the Midlands. After the battle, however, the royalist garrison was withdrawn on the approach of Lord Brooke, and the castle was then garrisoned by parliamentary forces. In April 1643 the new governor of the castle, Hastings Ingram, was arrested as a suspected Royalist double agent. By January 1645 the Parliamentary forces in Coventry had strengthened their hold on the castle, and attempts by Royalist forces to dislodge them from Warwickshire failed. Security concerns continued after the end of the First Civil War in 1646, and in 1649 Parliament ordered the slighting of Kenilworth. One wall of the great tower, various parts of the outer bailey and the battlements were destroyed, but not before the building was surveyed by the antiquarian William Dugdale, who published his results in 1656.
Colonel Joseph Hawkesworth, responsible for the implementation of the slighting, acquired the estate for himself and converted Leicester's gatehouse into a house; part of the base court was turned into a farm, and many of the remaining buildings were stripped for their materials. In 1660 Charles II was restored to the throne, and Hawkesworth was promptly evicted from Kenilworth. The Queen Mother, Henrietta Maria, briefly regained the castle, with the Earls of Monmouth acting as stewards once again, but after her death King Charles II granted the castle to Sir Edward Hyde, whom he later created Baron Hyde of Hindon and Earl of Clarendon. The ruined castle continued to be used as a farm, with the gatehouse as the principal dwelling; the King's Gate was added to the outer bailey wall during this period for the use of farm workers.
Kenilworth remained a ruin during the 18th and 19th centuries, still used as a farm but increasingly also popular as a tourist attraction. The first guidebook to the castle, "A Concise history and description of Kenilworth Castle", was printed in 1777 with many later editions following in the coming decades.
The castle's cultural prominence increased after Sir Walter Scott wrote "Kenilworth" in 1821 describing the royal visit of Queen Elizabeth. Very loosely based on the events of 1575, Scott's story reinvented aspects of the castle and its history to tell the story of "the pathetic, beautiful, undisciplined heroine Amy Robsart and the steely Elizabeth I". Although considered today as a less successful literary novel than some of his other historical works, it popularised Kenilworth Castle in the Victorian imagination as a romantic Elizabethan location. "Kenilworth" spawned "numerous stage adaptations and burlesques, at least eleven operas, popular redactions, and even a scene in a set of dioramas for home display", including Sir Arthur Sullivan's 1865 cantata "The Masque at Kenilworth". J. M. W. Turner painted several watercolours of the castle.
The number of visitors increased, including Queen Victoria and Charles Dickens. Work was undertaken during the 19th century to protect the stonework from further decline, with particular efforts to remove ivy from the castle in the 1860s.
The castle remained the property of the Clarendons until 1937, when Lord Clarendon found the maintenance of the castle too expensive and sold Kenilworth to the industrialist Sir John Siddeley. Siddeley, whose tax accounting in the 1930s had been at least questionable, was keen to improve his public image and gave over the running of the castle, complete with a charitable donation, to the Commissioner of Works. In 1958 his son gave the castle itself to the town of Kenilworth and English Heritage has managed the property since 1984 and is open to the public. The castle is classed as a Grade I listed building and as a scheduled monument.
Between 2005 and 2009, English Heritage attempted to restore Kenilworth's garden more closely to its Elizabethan form, using as a basis the description in the Langham letter and details from recent archaeological investigations. The reconstruction cost more than £2 million and was criticised by some archaeologists as being a "matter of simulation as much as reconstruction", due to the limited amount of factual information on the nature of the original gardens. In 2008 plans were put forward to re-create and flood the original Great Mere around the castle. As well as re-creating the look of the castle it was hoped that a new mere would be part of the ongoing flood alleviation plan for the area and that the lake could be used for boating and other waterside recreations. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17076 |
Konrad Lorenz
Konrad Zacharias Lorenz (; 7 November 1903 – 27 February 1989) was an Austrian zoologist, ethologist, and ornithologist. He shared the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Nikolaas Tinbergen and Karl von Frisch. He is often regarded as one of the founders of modern ethology, the study of animal behavior. He developed an approach that began with an earlier generation, including his teacher Oskar Heinroth.
Lorenz studied instinctive behavior in animals, especially in greylag geese and jackdaws. Working with geese, he investigated the principle of imprinting, the process by which some nidifugous birds (i.e. birds that leave their nest early) bond instinctively with the first moving object that they see within the first hours of hatching. Although Lorenz did not discover the topic, he became widely known for his descriptions of imprinting as an instinctive bond. In 1936 he met Tinbergen, and the two collaborated in developing ethology as a separate sub-discipline of biology. A "Review of General Psychology" survey, published in 2002, ranked Lorenz as the 65th most cited scholar of the 20th century in the technical psychology journals, introductory psychology textbooks, and survey responses.
Lorenz's work was interrupted by the onset of World War II and in 1941 he was recruited into the German Army as a medic. In 1944 he was sent to the Eastern Front where he was captured by the Soviet Red Army and spent four years as a German prisoner of war in Soviet Armenia. After the war he regretted his membership in the Nazi Party.
Lorenz wrote numerous books, some of which, such as "King Solomon's Ring", "On Aggression", and "Man Meets Dog", became popular reading. His last work "Here I Am – Where Are You?" is a summary of his life's work and focuses on his famous studies of greylag geese.
In his autobiographical essay, published in 1973 in "Les Prix Nobel" (winners of the prizes are requested to provide such essays), Lorenz credits his career to his parents, who "were supremely tolerant of my inordinate love for animals", and to his childhood encounter with Selma Lagerlöf's "The Wonderful Adventures of Nils", which filled him with a great enthusiasm about wild geese. "
At the request of his father, Adolf Lorenz, he began a premedical curriculum in 1922 at Columbia University, but he returned to Vienna in 1923 to continue his studies at the University of Vienna. He graduated as Doctor of Medicine (MD) in 1928 and became an assistant professor at the Institute of Anatomy until 1935. He finished his zoological studies in 1933 and received his second doctorate (PhD).
While still a student, Lorenz began developing what would become a large menagerie, ranging from domestic to exotic animals. In his popular book "King Solomon's Ring", Lorenz recounts that while studying at the University of Vienna he kept a variety of animals at his parents' apartment, ranging from fish to a capuchin monkey named Gloria.
In 1936, at an international scientific symposium on instinct, Lorenz met his great friend and colleague Nikolaas Tinbergen. Together they studied geese—wild, domestic, and hybrid. One result of these studies was that Lorenz "realized that an overpowering increase in the drives of feeding as well as of copulation and a waning of more differentiated social instincts is characteristic of very many domestic animals". Lorenz began to suspect and fear "that analogous processes of deterioration may be at work with civilized humanity." This observation of bird hybrids caused Lorenz to believe that domestication resulting from urbanisation in humans might also cause dysgenic effects, and to argue in two papers that the Nazi eugenics policies against this were therefore scientifically justified.
In 1940 he became a professor of psychology at the University of Königsberg. He was drafted into the Wehrmacht in 1941. He sought to be a motorcycle mechanic, but instead he was assigned as a military psychologist, conducting racial studies on humans in occupied Poznań under Rudolf Hippius. The objective was to study the biological characteristics of "German-Polish half-breeds" to determine whether they 'benefitted' from the same work ethics as 'pure' Germans. The degree to which Lorenz participated in the project is unknown, but the project director Hippius referred a couple of times to Lorenz as an "examining psychologist".
Lorenz later described that he once saw transports of concentration camp inmates at Fort VII near Poznań, which made him "fully realize the complete inhumanity of the Nazis".
He was sent to the Russian front in 1944 where he quickly became a prisoner of war in the Soviet Union from 1944 to 1948. In captivity in Soviet Armenia, he continued to work as a medic and "became tolerably fluent in Russian and got quite friendly with some Russians, mostly doctors." When he was repatriated, he was allowed to keep the manuscript of a book he had been writing, and his pet starling. He arrived back in Altenberg (his family home, near Vienna) both "with manuscript and bird intact." The manuscript became his 1973 book "".
The Max Planck Society established the Lorenz Institute for Behavioral Physiology in Buldern, Germany, in 1950. In his memoirs Lorenz described the chronology of his war years differently from what historians have been able to document after his death. He himself claimed that he was captured in 1942, where in reality he was only sent to the front and captured in 1944, leaving out entirely his involvement with the Poznań project.
In 1958, Lorenz transferred to the Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Physiology in Seewiesen. He shared the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for discoveries in individual and social behavior patterns" with two other important early ethologists, Nikolaas Tinbergen and Karl von Frisch. In 1969, he became the first recipient of the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca.
He was a friend and student of renowned biologist Sir Julian Huxley (grandson of "Darwin's bulldog", Thomas Henry Huxley). Famed psychoanalyst Ralph Greenson and Sir Peter Scott were good friends. Lorenz and Karl Popper were childhood friends; many years after they met, during the celebration of Popper's 80 years, they wrote together a book entitled "Die Zukunft ist offen".
He retired from the Max Planck Institute in 1973 but continued to research and publish from Altenberg and Grünau im Almtal in Austria. He died on 27 February 1989 in Altenberg.
Lorenz is recognized as one of the founding fathers of the field of ethology, the study of animal behavior. He is best known for his discovery of the principle of attachment, or imprinting, through which in some species a bond is formed between a new born animal and its caregiver. This principle had been discovered by Douglas Spalding in the 19th century, and Lorenz's mentor Oskar Heinroth had also worked on the topic, but Lorenz's description of "Prägung", imprinting, in nidifugous birds such as greylag geese in his 1935 book "Der Kumpan in der Umwelt des Vogels" ("The Companion in the Environment of Birds") became the foundational description of the phenomenon.
Here, Lorenz used Jakob von Uexküll's concept of Umwelt to understand how the limited perception of animals filtered out certain phenomena with which they interacted instinctively. For example, a young goose instinctively bonds with the first moving stimulus it perceives, whether it be its mother, or a person. Lorenz showed that this behavior of imprinting is what allows the goose to learn to recognize members of its own species, enabling them to be the object of subsequent behavior patterns such as mating. He developed a theory of instinctive behavior that saw behavior patterns as largely innate but triggered through environmental stimuli, for example the hawk/goose effect. He argued that animals have an inner drive to carry out instinctive behaviors, and that if they do not encounter the right stimulus they will eventually engage in the behavior with an inappropriate stimulus.
Lorenz's approach to ethology derived from a skepticism towards the studies of animal behavior done in laboratory settings. He considered that in order to understand the mechanisms of animal behavior, it was necessary to observe their full range of behaviors in their natural context. Lorenz did not carry out much traditional fieldwork but observed animals near his home. His method involved empathizing with animals, often using anthropomorphization to imagine their mental states. He believed that animals were capable of experiencing many of the same emotions as humans.
Tinbergen, Lorenz's friend with whom he conjointly received the Nobel prize, summarized Lorenz's major contribution to ethology as making behavior a topic of biological inquiry, considering behavior a part of an animal's evolutionary equipment. Tinbergen and Lorenz contributed to making Ethology a recognized sub-discipline within Biology and founded the first specialized journal of the field "Ethology" (originally "Zeitschift für Tierpsychologie")
Lorenz joined the Nazi Party in 1938 and accepted a university chair under the Nazi regime. In his application for party membership he wrote, "I'm able to say that my whole scientific work is devoted to the ideas of the National Socialists." His publications during that time led in later years to allegations that his scientific work had been contaminated by Nazi sympathies. His published writing during the Nazi period included support for Nazi ideas of "racial hygiene" couched in pseudoscientific metaphors.
In his autobiography, Lorenz wrote:
I was frightened—as I still am—by the thought that analogous genetical processes of deterioration may be at work with civilized humanity. Moved by this fear, I did a very ill-advised thing soon after the Germans had invaded Austria: I wrote about the dangers of domestication and, in order to be understood, I couched my writing in the worst of Nazi terminology. I do not want to extenuate this action. I did, indeed, believe that some good might come of the new rulers. The precedent narrow-minded catholic regime in Austria induced better and more intelligent men than I was to cherish this naive hope. Practically all my friends and teachers did so, including my own father who certainly was a kindly and humane man. None of us as much as suspected that the word "selection", when used by these rulers, meant murder. I regret those writings not so much for the undeniable discredit they reflect on my person as for their effect of hampering the future recognition of the dangers of domestication.
After the war, Lorenz denied having been a party member, until his membership application was made public; and he denied having known the extent of the genocide, despite his position as a psychologist in the Office of Racial Policy. He was also shown to have made anti-Semitic jokes on 'Jewish characteristics' in letters to his mentor Heinroth. In 2015, the University of Salzburg posthumously rescinded an honorary doctorate awarded to Lorenz in 1983, citing his party membership and his assertions in his application that he was "always a National Socialist", and that his work "stands to serve National Socialist thought". The university also accused him of using his work to spread "basic elements of the racist ideology of National Socialism".
During the final years of his life, Lorenz supported the fledgling Austrian Green Party and in 1984 became the figurehead of the Konrad Lorenz Volksbegehren, a grass-roots movement that was formed to prevent the building of a power plant at the Danube near Hainburg an der Donau and thus the destruction of the surrounding woodland.
Lorenz has been called 'The father of ethology', by Niko Tinbergen. Perhaps Lorenz's most important contribution to ethology was his idea that behavior patterns can be studied as anatomical organs. This concept forms the foundation of ethological research. However, Richard Dawkins called Lorenz a "'good of the species' man", stating that the idea of group selection was "so deeply ingrained" in Lorenz's thinking that he "evidently did not realize that his statements contravened orthodox Darwinian theory."
Together with Nikolaas Tinbergen, Lorenz developed the idea of an innate releasing mechanism to explain instinctive behaviors (fixed action patterns). They experimented with "supernormal stimuli" such as giant eggs or dummy bird beaks which they found could release the fixed action patterns more powerfully than the natural objects for which the behaviors were adapted. Influenced by the ideas of William McDougall, Lorenz developed this into a "psychohydraulic" model of the motivation of behavior, which tended towards group selectionist ideas, which were influential in the 1960s. Another of his contributions to ethology is his work on imprinting. His influence on a younger generation of ethologists; and his popular works, were important in bringing ethology to the attention of the general public.
Lorenz claimed that there was widespread contempt for the descriptive sciences. He attributed this to the denial of perception as the source of all scientific knowledge: "a denial that has been elevated to the status of religion." He wrote that in comparative behavioral research, "it is necessary to describe various patterns of movement, record them, and above all, render them unmistakably recognizable."
There are three research institutions named after Lorenz in Austria: the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research (KLI) was housed in Lorenz' family mansion at Altenberg before moving to Klosterneuburg in 2013 Discover the KLI; the Konrad Lorenz Forschungsstelle (KLF) at his former field station in Grünau; and the Konrad Lorenz Institute of Ethology, an external research facility of the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna.
Lorenz predicted the relationship between market economics and the threat of ecological catastrophe. In his 1973 book, "Civilized Man's Eight Deadly Sins", Lorenz addresses the following paradox:
All the advantages that man has gained from his ever-deepening understanding of the natural world that surrounds him, his technological, chemical and medical progress, all of which should seem to alleviate human suffering... tends instead to favor humanity's destruction
Lorenz adopts an ecological model to attempt to grasp the mechanisms behind this contradiction. Thus "all species... are adapted to their environment... including not only inorganic components... but all the other living beings that inhabit the locality." p31.
Fundamental to Lorenz's theory of ecology is the function of negative feedback mechanisms, which, in hierarchical fashion, dampen impulses that occur beneath a certain threshold. The thresholds themselves are the product of the interaction of contrasting mechanisms. Thus pain and pleasure act as checks on each other:
To gain a desired prey, a dog or wolf will do things that, in other contexts, they would shy away from: run through thorn bushes, jump into cold water and expose themselves to risks which would normally frighten them. All these inhibitory mechanisms... act as a counterweight to the effects of learning mechanisms... The organism cannot allow itself to pay a price which is not worth paying. p53.
In nature, these mechanisms tend towards a 'stable state' among the living beings of an ecology:
A closer examination shows that these beings... not only do not damage each other, but often constitute a community of interests. It is obvious that the predator is strongly interested in the survival of that species, animal or vegetable, which constitutes its prey. ... It is not uncommon that the prey species derives specific benefits from its interaction with the predator species... pp31–33.
Lorenz states that humanity is the one species not bound by these mechanisms, being the only one that has defined its own environment:
[The pace of human ecology] is determined by the progress of man's technology (p35)... human ecology (economy) is governed by mechanisms of POSITIVE feedback, defined as a mechanism which tends to encourage behavior rather than to attenuate it (p43). Positive feedback always involves the danger of an 'avalanche' effect... One particular kind of positive feedback occurs when individuals OF THE SAME SPECIES enter into competition among themselves... For many animal species, environmental factors keep... intraspecies selection from [leading to] disaster... But there is no force which exercises this type of healthy regulatory effect on humanity's cultural development; unfortunately for itself, humanity has learned to overcome all those environmental forces which are external to itself p44.
Regarding aggression in human beings, Lorenz states:
Let us imagine that an absolutely unbiased investigator on another planet, perhaps on Mars, is examining human behavior on earth, with the aid of a telescope whose magnification is too small to enable him to discern individuals and follow their separate behavior, but large enough for him to observe occurrences such as migrations of peoples, wars, and similar great historical events. He would never gain the impression that human behavior was dictated by intelligence, still less by responsible morality. If we suppose our extraneous observer to be a being of pure reason, devoid of instincts himself and unaware of the way in which all instincts in general and aggression in particular can miscarry, he would be at a complete loss how to explain history at all. The ever-recurrent phenomena of history do not have reasonable causes. It is a mere commonplace to say that they are caused by what common parlance so aptly terms "human nature." Unreasoning and unreasonable human nature causes two nations to compete, though no economic necessity compels them to do so; it induces two political parties or religions with amazingly similar programs of salvation to fight each other bitterly, and it impels an Alexander or a Napoleon to sacrifice millions of lives in his attempt to unite the world under his scepter. We have been taught to regard some of the persons who have committed these and similar absurdities with respect, even as "great" men, we are wont to yield to the political wisdom of those in charge, and we are all so accustomed to these phenomena that most of us fail to realize how abjectly stupid and undesirable the historical mass behavior of humanity actually is
Lorenz does not see human independence from natural ecological processes as necessarily bad. Indeed, he states that:
A completely new [ecology] which corresponds in every way to [humanity's] desires... could, theoretically, prove as durable as that which would have existed without his intervention (36).
However, the principle of competition, typical of Western societies, destroys any chance of this:
The competition between human beings destroys with cold and diabolic brutality... Under the pressure of this competitive fury we have not only forgotten what is useful to humanity as a whole, but even that which is good and advantageous to the individual. [...] One asks, which is more damaging to modern humanity: the thirst for money or consuming haste... in either case, fear plays a very important role: the fear of being overtaken by one's competitors, the fear of becoming poor, the fear of making wrong decisions or the fear of not being up to snuff... pp45–47.
In this book, Lorenz proposes that the best hope for mankind lies in our looking for mates based on the kindness of their hearts rather than good looks or wealth. He illustrates this with a Jewish story, explicitly described as such.
Lorenz was one of the early scientists who recognised the significance of human overpopulation. The number one deadly sin of civilized man in his book is overpopulation, which is what leads to aggression.
In his 1973 book "", Lorenz considers the old philosophical question of whether our senses correctly inform us about the world as it is, or provide us only with an illusion. His answer comes from evolutionary biology. Only traits that help us survive and reproduce are transmitted. If our senses gave us wrong information about our environment, we would soon be extinct. Therefore, we can be sure that our senses give us correct information, for otherwise we would not be here to be deceived.
Lorenz's best-known books are "King Solomon's Ring" and "On Aggression", both written for a popular audience. His scientific work appeared mainly in journal articles, written in German; it became widely known to English-speaking scientists through its description in Tinbergen's 1951 book "The Study of Instinct", though many of his papers were later published in English translation in the two volumes titled "Studies in Animal and Human Behavior". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17077 |
K. W. Jeter
Kevin Wayne Jeter (born March 26, 1950), known both personally and professionally as K. W. Jeter, is an American science fiction and horror author known for his literary writing style, dark themes, and paranoid, unsympathetic characters. He has written novels set in the "Star Trek" and "Star Wars" universes, and has written three sequels to "Blade Runner".
Jeter attended college at California State University, Fullerton where he became friends with James P. Blaylock and Tim Powers, and through them, Philip K. Dick. Jeter was actually the inspiration for "Kevin" in Dick's semi-autobiographical novel, "Valis". Many of Jeter's books focus on the subjective nature of reality in a way reminiscent of Dick's.
Philip K. Dick enthusiastically recommended Jeter's early cyberpunk novel, "Dr. Adder". Due to its violent and sexually provocative content, it took Jeter around ten years to find a publisher for it. Jeter would also coin the term steampunk, in reference to cyberpunk in a letter to "Locus" in April 1987, in order to describe the steam-technology, alternate-history works that he published along with his friends, Blaylock and Powers. Jeter's steampunk novels are "Morlock Night", "Infernal Devices", and its sequel "Fiendish Schemes" (2013).
As well as his own original novels, K. W. Jeter has written three authorized novel sequels to the critically acclaimed 1982 motion picture "Blade Runner", which was adapted from Philip K. Dick's novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17078 |
Kay Redfield Jamison
Kay Redfield Jamison (born June 22, 1946) is an American clinical psychologist and writer. Her work has centered on bipolar disorder, which she has had since her early adulthood. She holds the post of the Dalio Professor in Mood Disorders and Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and is an Honorary Professor of English at the University of St Andrews.
Jamison began her study of clinical psychology at University of California, Los Angeles in the late 1960s, receiving both B.A. and M.A. degrees in 1971. She continued on at UCLA, receiving a C.Phil. in 1973 and a Ph.D. in 1975, and became a faculty member at the university. She went on to found and direct the school's Affective Disorders Clinic, a large teaching and research facility for outpatient treatment. She also studied zoology and neurophysiology as an undergraduate at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.
After several years as a tenured professor at UCLA, Jamison was offered a position as Assistant Professor and then Professor of Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Jamison has given visiting lectures at a number of different institutions while maintaining her professorship at Hopkins. She was distinguished lecturer at Harvard University in 2002 and the Litchfield lecturer at the University of Oxford in 2003. She was Honorary President and Board Member of the Canadian Psychological Association from 2009–2010. In 2010, she was a panelist in the series of discussions on the latest research into the brain, hosted by Charlie Rose with series scientist Eric Kandel on PBS.
Jamison has won numerous awards and published over 100 academic articles. She has been named one of the "Best Doctors in the United States" and was chosen by "Time" as a "Hero of Medicine." She was also chosen as one of the five individuals for the public television series "Great Minds of Medicine". Jamison is the recipient of the National Mental Health Association's William Styron Award (1995), the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention Research Award (1996), the Community Mental Health Leadership Award (1999), and was a 2001 MacArthur Fellowship recipient.
In 2010, Jamison was conferred with an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters from the University of St Andrews in recognition of all her life's work. In May 2011, The General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church, New York, made her a Doctor of Divinity "honoris causa" at its annual Commencement. In 2017 Jamison was elected a Corresponding Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (CorrFRSE).
Her latest book, "Robert Lowell: Setting the River on Fire" was a Pulitzer Prize Finalist for Biography in 2018.
Her book "Manic-Depressive Illness", first published in 1990 and co-authored with psychiatrist Frederick K. Goodwin is considered a classic textbook on bipolar disorder. The Acknowledgements section states that Goodwin "received unrestricted educational grants to support
the production of this book from Abbott, AstraZeneca, Bristol Meyers Squibb, Forest, GlaxoSmithKline, Janssen, Eli
Lilly, Pfizer, and Sanofi", but that although Jamison has "received occasional lecture honoraria
from AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline, and Eli Lilly" she "has received no research support from any pharmaceutical or biotechnology company" and donates her royalties to a non-profit foundation.
Her seminal works among laypeople are her memoir "An Unquiet Mind", which details her experience with severe mania and depression, and "Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide", providing historical, religious, and cultural responses to suicide, as well as the relationship between mental illness and suicide. In "Night Falls Fast", Jamison dedicates a chapter to American public policy and public opinion as it relates to suicide. Her second memoir, "Nothing Was the Same", examines her relationship with her second husband, the psychiatrist Richard Jed Wyatt, who was Chief of the Neuropsychiatry Branch of the National Institute of Mental Health until his death in 2002.
In her study "Exuberance: The Passion for Life", she cites research that suggests that 15 percent of people who could be diagnosed as bipolar may never actually become depressed; in effect, they are permanently "high" on life. She mentions President Theodore Roosevelt as an example.
"Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament" is Jamison's exploration of how bipolar disorder can run in artistic or high-achieving families. As an example, she cites Lord Byron and his relatives.
Jamison wrote "An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness" in part to help clinicians see what patients find helpful in therapy. J. Wesley Boyd, an Assistant Professor at the Department of Psychiatry at Tufts University's School of Medicine, wrote, "Jamison's description [of the debt she owed her psychiatrist] illustrates the importance of merely being present for our patients and not trying to soothe them with platitudes or promises of a better future."
Jamison has said she is an "exuberant" person who longs for peace and tranquility but in the end prefers "tumultuousness coupled to iron discipline" to a "stunningly boring life." In "An Unquiet Mind", she concluded:
I long ago abandoned the notion of a life without storms, or a world without dry and killing seasons. Life is too complicated, too constantly changing, to be anything but what it is. And I am, by nature, too mercurial to be anything but deeply wary of the grave unnaturalness involved in any attempt to exert too much control over essentially uncontrollable forces. There will always be propelling, disturbing elements, and they will be there until, as Lowell put it, the watch is taken from the wrist. It is, at the end of the day, the individual moments of restlessness, of bleakness, of strong persuasions and maddened enthusiasms, that inform one's life, change the nature and direction of one's work, and give final meaning and color to one's loves and friendships.
Jamison was born to Dr. Marshall Verdine Jamison (1916–2012), an officer in the Air Force, and Mary Dell Temple Jamison (1916–2007). Jamison's father, and many others in his family, had bipolar disorder.
As a result of Jamison's military background, she grew up in many different places, including Florida, Puerto Rico, California, Tokyo, and Washington, D.C.. She has two older siblings, a brother and a sister, who are three years and half a year older, respectively. Her niece is writer Leslie Jamison. Jamison's interest in science and medicine began at a young age and was fostered by her parents. She worked as a candy striper at the hospital on the Andrews Air Force Base .
Jamison moved to California during adolescence, and soon thereafter began to struggle with bipolar disorder. She continued to struggle in college at UCLA. At first she wanted to become a doctor, but because of her increasing manic episodes she decided she could not maintain the rigorous discipline needed for medical school. She then found her calling in psychology. She flourished in this field and was extremely interested in mood disorders. Despite her studies, Jamison did not realize she was bipolar until three months into her first job as a professor in UCLA's Department of Psychology. After her diagnosis, she was put on lithium (medication), a common drug used to contain moods. At times, she would refuse the medication because it impaired her motor skills, but after a greater depression she decided to continue to take it. Jamison once attempted suicide by overdosing on lithium during a severe depressive episode.
Jamison is an Episcopalian, and was married to her first husband, Alain André Moreau, an artist, during her graduate school years. She then married Dr. Richard Wyatt in 1994; they remained married until his death in 2002. Wyatt was a psychiatrist who studied schizophrenia at the National Institutes of Health. Their romance is detailed in her memoir "Nothing Was the Same".
In 2010, Jamison married Thomas Traill, a cardiology professor at Johns Hopkins. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17079 |
Karaoke
Karaoke (, ; , clipped compound of Japanese "kara" "empty" and "ōkesutora" "orchestra") is a type of dining interactive entertainment or video game developed in Japan in which an amateur singer sings along with recorded music (a music video) using a microphone. The music is normally an instrumental version of a well-known popular song. Lyrics are usually displayed on a video screen, along with a moving symbol, changing colour, or music video images, to guide the singer. In Chinese-speaking countries and regions such as mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore, a karaoke box is called a KTV. The global karaoke market has been estimated to be worth nearly $10 billion.
From 1961 to 1966, the American TV network NBC carried a karaoke-like series, "Sing Along with Mitch", featuring host Mitch Miller and a chorus, which superimposed the lyrics to their songs near the bottom of the TV screen for home audience participation. The primary difference between Karaoke and sing-along songs is the absence of the lead vocalist.
Sing-alongs (present since the beginning of singing) fundamentally changed with the introduction of new technology. In the late 1960s and into the 1970s, stored audible materials began to dominate the music recording industry and revolutionized the portability and ease of use of band and instrumental music by musicians and entertainers as the demand for entertainers increased globally. This may have been attributable to the introduction of music cassette tapes, technology that arose from the need to customize music recordings and the desire for a "handy" format that would allow fast and convenient duplication of music and thereby meet the requirements of the entertainers' lifestyles and the 'footloose' character of the entertainment industry.
The karaoke-styled machine was developed in various places in Japan. Japanese engineer Shigeichi Negishi, who ran a car audio system assembly business in Tokyo, made the first prototype in 1967. 3 years later, Toshiharu Yamashita, who worked as a singing coach sold an 8-track playback deck and kick-started the karaoke trend.
It was 1971 that a musician Daisuke Inoue, who was believed as an inventor of karaoke, devised karaoke equipment in Kobe, although the audio company Clarion was the first commercial producer of the machine due to there being no patent.
In Japan, it has long been common to provide musical entertainment at a dinner or a party. Inoue, a drummer, was frequently asked by guests in the Utagoe Kissa where he performed to provide recordings of his performances so that they could sing along. Realizing the potential for the market, he made a tape recorder-like machine that played songs for a 100-yen coin each.
Instead of giving his karaoke machines away, Inoue leased them out so that stores did not have to buy new songs on their own. Originally, it was considered a somewhat expensive fad, as it lacked the live atmosphere of a real performance and 100 yen in the 1970s was the price of two typical lunches, but it caught on as a popular kind of entertainment. Karaoke machines were initially placed in restaurants and hotel rooms; soon, new businesses called karaoke boxes, with compartmented rooms, became popular. In 2004, Daisuke Inoue was awarded the tongue-in-cheek Ig Nobel Peace Prize for inventing karaoke, "thereby providing an entirely new way for people to learn to tolerate each other."
The patent holder of the karaoke machine is Roberto del Rosario. He developed the karaoke's sing-along system in 1975.
Shortly after the development of LaserDisc Pioneer started to offer Video Karaoke machines, capable of displaying lyrics over a music video, in addition to the existing audio functionality.
Karaoke soon spread to the rest of Asia and other countries all over the world. In-home karaoke machines soon followed but lacked success in the American and Canadian markets. When creators became aware of this problem, karaoke machines were no longer being sold strictly for the purpose of karaoke but as home theater systems to enhance television watching to "movie theater like quality". Home theater systems took off, and karaoke went from being the main purpose of the stereo system to a side feature.
As more music became available for karaoke machines, more people within the industry saw karaoke as a profitable form of lounge and nightclub entertainment. It is not uncommon for some bars to have karaoke performances seven nights a week. commonly with high-end sound equipment superior to the small, stand-alone consumer versions. Dance floors and lighting effects are also becoming common sights in karaoke bars. Lyrics are often displayed on multiple television screens around the bar.
A basic karaoke machine consists of a music player, microphone inputs, a means of altering the pitch of the played music, and an audio output. Some low-end machines attempt to provide vocal suppression so that one can feed regular songs into the machine and remove the voice of the original singer; however, this is rarely effective. Most common machines are CD+G, Laser Disc, VCD or DVD players with microphone inputs and an audio mixer built in. CD+G players use a special track called subcode to encode the lyrics and pictures displayed on the screen while other formats natively display both audio and video.
Most karaoke machines have technology that electronically changes the pitch of the music so that amateur singers can choose a key that is appropriate for their vocal range, while maintaining the original tempo of the song. (Old systems which used cassettes changed the pitch by altering playback speed, but none are still on the market, and their commercial use is virtually nonexistent.)
A popular game using karaoke is to type in a random number and call up a song, which participants attempt to sing. In some machines, this game is pre-programmed and may be limited to a genre so that they cannot call up an obscure national anthem that none of the participants can sing. This game has come to be called "Kamikaze Karaoke" or "Karaoke Roulette" in some parts of the United States and Canada.
Many low-end entertainment systems have a karaoke mode that attempts to remove the vocal track from regular audio CDs, using an Out Of Phase Stereo (OOPS) technique. This is done by center channel extraction, which exploits the fact that in most stereo recordings the vocals are in the center. This means that the voice, as part of the music, has equal volume on both stereo channels and no phase difference. To get the quasi-karaoke (mono) track, the left channel of the original audio is subtracted from the right channel. The Sega Saturn also has a "mute vocals" feature that is based on the same principle and is also able to adjust the pitch of the song to match the singer's vocal range.
This crude approach results in the often-poor performance of voice removal. Common effects are hearing the reverberation effects on the voice track (due to stereo reverb on the vocals not being in the center); also, other instruments (snare/bass drum, bass guitar and solo instruments) that happen to be mixed into the center get removed, degrading this approach to hardly more than a gimmick in those devices. Recent years have seen the development of new techniques based on the Fast Fourier Transform. Although still not perfect, the results are usually much better than the old technique, because the stereo left-right comparison can be done on individual frequencies.
Early karaoke machines used 8-track cartridges (The Singing Machine) and cassette tapes, with printed lyric sheets, but technological advances replaced this with CDs, VCDs, laserdiscs and, currently, DVDs. In the late 1980s and 1990s, Pioneer Electronics dominated the international karaoke music video market, producing high quality karaoke music videos (inspired by the music videos such as those on MTV).
In 1992, Taito introduced the X2000, which fetched music via a dial-up telephone network. Its repertoire of music and graphics was limited, but its smaller size and the advantage of continuous updates saw it gradually replace traditional machines. Karaoke machines which are connected via fiber-optic links enabling them to provide instant high-quality music and video are becoming increasingly popular.
"Karaoke direct" is an Internet division established in 1997 been serving the public online since 1998. They released the first karaoke player that supports MP3+G and now the KDX2000 model supporting karaoke in DIVX Format.
The earliest karaoke-based music video game, called "Karaoke Studio", was released for the Nintendo Famicom in 1985, but its limited computing ability made for a short catalog of songs and therefore reduced replay value. As a result, karaoke games were considered little more than collector's items until they saw release in higher-capacity DVD formats.
"Karaoke Revolution", created for the PlayStation 2 by Harmonix and released by Konami in North America in 2003, is a console game in which a single player sings along with on-screen guidance and receives a score based on pitch, timing, and rhythm. The game soon spawned several follow-ups including "Karaoke Revolution Vol. 2", "Karaoke Revolution Vol. 3", "Karaoke Revolution Party Edition", "CMT Presents Karaoke Revolution: Country" and "Karaoke Revolution Presents: American Idol". While the original "Karaoke Revolution" was also eventually released for the Microsoft Xbox console in late 2004, the new online-enabled version included the ability to download additional song packs through the console's exclusive Xbox Live service.
A similar series, "SingStar", published by Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, is particularly popular in the European and Australasian markets. Other music video game titles that involve singing by the player include "Boogie" and its sequel "Boogie Superstar", "Disney Sing It", "Get On Da Mic", the "Guitar Hero" series starting with "World Tour", "", "Lips", the "Rock Band" series, "SingSong", "UltraStar", and "Xbox Music Mixer".
An Xbox Live App with the same name created by iNiS and powered by The Karaoke Channel/Stingray Karaoke was released in 12 December 2012. The app uses Unreal Engine 3.
Many VCD players in Southeast Asia have a built-in karaoke function. On stereo recordings, one speaker will play the music with the vocal track, and the other speaker will play the music without the vocal track. So, to sing karaoke, users play the music-only track through both speakers. In the past, there were only pop-song karaoke VCDs. Nowadays, different types of karaoke VCDs are available. Cantonese opera karaoke VCD is now a big hit among the elderly in Hong Kong.
In 2003, several companies started offering a karaoke service on mobile phones, using a Java MIDlet that runs with a text file containing the words and a MIDI file with the music. More usual is to contain the lyrics within the same MIDI file. Often the file extension is then changed from .mid to .kar, both are compatible with the standard for MIDI files.
Researchers have also developed karaoke games for cell phones to boost music database training. In 2006, the Interactive Audio Lab at Northwestern University released a game called Karaoke Callout for the Nokia Series 60 phone. The project has since then expanded into a web-based game and will be released soon as an iPhone application.
Karaoke is now available for the Android, iPhone and other playback devices at many internet storefronts.
Since 2003, much software has been released for hosting karaoke shows and playing karaoke songs on a personal computer. Instead of having to carry around hundreds of CD-Gs or laserdiscs, KJs can "rip" their entire libraries onto their hard drives and play the songs and lyrics from the computer.
Additionally, new software permits singers to sing and listen to one another over the Internet.
Karaoke devices in the 2000s saw a shift towards the use of hard drives to store large collections of karaoke tracks and touch screen devices that allows users to select their songs. This trend was driven by the decline cost of hard drive storage and improvement in touchscreen technology in the consumer space.
In 2010, a new concept of home karaoke system through the use of live streaming from a cloud server emerged. The earliest cloud based streaming device, KaraOK!, was released by StarHub on 14 January 2010, licensing songs from RIMMS. The use of cloud streaming allows for smaller devices with over the air updates compared to costly and bulky hard drive-based systems.
In August 2017, ROXI home music system launched in the UK, and later that year in the US, providing on-demand music streaming and a karaoke singalong feature called Sing with the Stars. ROXI matches songs in its cloud based licensed music streaming catalogue to a lyrics database to provide real time scrolling on-screen lyrics. The music system also uses a hand-held Wii style point and click controller with built-in microphone allowing users to select and sing along to thousands of songs from its catalogue.
In July 2019, YouTube channel Sing King Karaoke reached 6 million subscribers, making it the largest karaoke channel on the platform.
Taxicabs equipped with sound systems and a microphone appeared in South Korea in the 1990s.
Chinese automobile maker Geely Automobile received much press in 2003 for being the first to equip a car, their Beauty Leopard, with a karaoke machine as standard equipment. Europe's first commercial "karaokecab" which was a London TX4 taxi with a karaoke machine inside for occupants of the cab to use to sing whilst in the cab. The idea and installation were made by Richard Harfield of karaokeshop.com and was featured on Channel 4's Big Breakfast and several German TV stations featured the karaokecab. Granada TV also featured the cab, which is now in its 4th vehicle and operates in Bolton, Greater Manchester as Clint's Karaoke Cab. Karaoke is often also found as a feature in aftermarket in-car DVD players.
In 2010, karaoke taxis were available in London, England in the 'Kabeoke' fleet of private hire vehicles.
The CD+G format of a karaoke disc, which contains the lyrics on a specially encoded subcode track, has heretofore required special—and expensive—equipment to play. Commercial players have come down in price, though, and some unexpected devices (including the Sega Saturn video game console and XBMC Media Center on the first Xbox) can decode the graphics; in fact, karaoke machines, including video and sometimes recording capability, are often popular electronics items for sale in toy stores and electronics stores.
Additionally, there is software for Windows, Pocket PC, Linux, and Macintosh PCs that can decode and display karaoke song tracks, though usually these must be ripped from the CD first, and possibly compressed.
In addition to CD+G and software-based karaoke, microphone-based karaoke players enjoy popularity mainly in North America and some Asian countries such as the Philippines. Microphone-based karaoke players only need to be connected to a TV—and in some cases to a power outlet; in other cases they run on batteries. These devices often support advanced features, such as pitch correction and special sound effects. Some companies offer karaoke content for paid download to extend the song library in microphone-based karaoke systems.
CD+G, DVD, VCD and microphone-based players are most popular for home use. Due to song selection and quality of recordings, CD+G is the most popular format for English and Spanish. It is also important to note that CD+G has limited graphical capabilities, whereas VCD and DVD usually have a moving picture or video background. VCD and DVD are the most common format for Asian singers due to music availability and largely due to the moving picture/video background.
In Asia, a karaoke box is the most popular type of karaoke venue. A karaoke box is a small or medium-sized room containing karaoke equipment rented by the hour or half-hour, providing a more intimate atmosphere. Karaoke venues of this type are often dedicated businesses, some with multiple floors and a variety of amenities including food service, but hotels and business facilities sometimes provide karaoke boxes as well. In South Korea, karaoke boxes are called "norebangs". In Taiwan and China, a karaoke establishment is called a KTV.
In some traditional Chinese restaurants, there are so-called "mahjong-karaoke rooms" where the elderly play mahjong while teenagers sing karaoke. The result is fewer complaints about boredom, but more noise. Noise regulations can be an issue, especially when karaoke is brought into residential areas.
Violent reactions to karaoke singing have made headlines in Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines, with reports of killings by listeners disturbed by the singing. In the Philippines, at least half a dozen killings of people singing "My Way" caused newspapers there to label the phenomenon "My Way killings"; some bars refuse to allow the song, and some singers refrain from vocalizing it among strangers.
Prostitution has been an issue in certain karaoke boxes in Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Thailand and other parts of Southeast Asia despite being illegal in these countries. In Thailand, "karaoke girls" are brought in not only from Thailand but from neighboring countries and are sent to other parts of the world.
Asian karaoke establishments are often fronts for gentlemen's clubs, where men pay for female hosts to drink, sing, and dance with them. In Japan, such a business is called a piano bar.
A karaoke bar, restaurant, club or lounge is a bar or restaurant that provides karaoke equipment so that people can sing publicly, sometimes on a small stage. Most of these establishments allow patrons to sing for free, with the expectation that sufficient revenue will be made selling food and drink to the singers. Less commonly, the patron wishing to sing must pay a small fee for each song they sing. Both are financially beneficial for the establishment by not having to pay a professional singer or a cabaret tax which is usually applied to any entertainment of more than 1 person.
Many establishments offer karaoke on a weekly schedule, while some have shows every night. Such establishments commonly invest more in both equipment and song discs, and are often extremely popular, with an hour or more wait between a singer's opportunities to take the stage (called the "rotation").
Private karaoke rooms, similar to Asia's karaoke boxes, are commonplace in communities such as Toronto, Los Angeles, Chicago, New York City and San Francisco. Toronto's Koreatown is one example of an area where popularity is growing to the point that private karaoke rooms require reservations on the weekends.
Karaoke is very popular in Scotland with dedicated karaoke venues in most reasonably large towns. Aberdeen is home to a number of notable karaoke bars including Wagleys, The Spirit Level, Bardot's Karaoke Bar, Sing City.
Throughout much of North America, live band karaoke is also popular. With live band karaoke, singers sing with a live band instead of the prerecorded backing track.
Rock critic Rob Sheffield claims that the 1986 music video for the song "Wild Wild Life" by the Talking Heads was the first depiction of karaoke in American popular culture. The video features a variety of characters taking turns singing portions of the song to an audience at a bar.
Also popular among the international performing arts community in Europe, a group of Finnish producers organized an international karaoke competition called KWC (Karaoke World Championships). Their 2011 international karaoke competition has attracted ABC producers to help host America's karaoke competition in Las Vegas Nevada called Karaoke Battle USA. The competition is promised to select 1 male and 1 female contestant to represent the U.S. in the international arena. Largely supported by the Broadway community in Times Square, Pulse Karaoke Lounge sponsored 2011's New York state karaoke finals to select individuals representing New York in the eastern finals.
According to "The New York Times", the dozens of karaoke bars in Portland, Oregon make it not just "the capital of karaoke" in the United States, but "one of the most exciting music scenes in America."
In Taiwan, karaoke bars similar to those in Japan and South Korea are called KTVs, which stands for karaoke television. Karaoke is a highly popular form of recreation in Taiwan. The biggest KTV chains in Taiwan are Partyworld Cashbox, Holiday KTV and NewCBParty.
A noraebang (Hangul: 노래방) refers to a singing venue in South Korea where private sound-proof rooms are available for rent, equipped for singing – typically microphones, remote controls, a large video screen, couches, and mood décor such as disco lights and tambourines. The term noraebang is a Korean compound word, blending norae (Hangul: 노래, English: song) and bang (Hangul: 방, English: room). It is the regional equivalent to the Karaoke box in Japan.
Singing is an important part of social life in Korea, where people will perform, and be persuaded to perform, an impromptu song at virtually any social occasion. As such, noraebangs are popular and widespread, often identifiable by bright neon signs with musical notes or microphones.
Often the last stop after a night of alcohol-lined entertainment for youths and businesspeople alike, noraebangs are also a favorite family pastime, and many are surprisingly dry venues. People also frequent noraebangs as a form of stress relief, and some noraebangs cater to those who seek to sing alone.
Karaoke has become a pastime activity in the Philippines especially when entertaining friends at home. The 'minus-one' music on tapes during the late 1960s with prevailing songs such as the Beatles pop songs had become favorite songs. Singing contests during town festivals would attract contestants who carry with them cassette tapes with instrumental versions of their songs to use during their renditions.
Sharp Corporation produced a karaoke party system, HK-Z20, with double cassette decks, one for synchronizing/recording and one for continuous playback. This model became a popular device and had been exported to other countries.
One long-running popular device from the 1990s has been the MagicSing, a plug and play microphone that houses about 2000+ songs and with extendable song chips in it and connected directly to a TV unit. This device also provides singing scores, and later models (some now known as WOW MagicSing) have a recording feature.
Karaoke in the Philippines is also known for the My Way killings, a number of fatal disputes which arose due to the singing of the song "My Way", popularized by Frank Sinatra, in karaoke or "videoke" bars. A "The New York Times" article estimated the number of killings to be about six up to 2010. Another source estimated at least 12 between 2002 and 2012. Opinions differ over whether the possible connection is due to the coincidence that the song was simply frequently sung amid the nation's karaoke bars where violence is common or to the aggressive lyrics of the song itself.
The current best-selling karaoke in the Philippines is The Grand Videoke, released in 2013 and produced and manufactured by the same company who handles Wow Fiesta. Other karaoke brands are currently available, such as Platinum Karaoke, Megapro Plus, HDT (Hyundai Digital Technology), TJ Media, Megavision, Karavision, & among others.
In Australia, karaoke was gradually popularized in the late 1980s. A number of Filipino migrants brought with them their own 'minus-one' music from cassette music tapes and video tapes purchased mainly in the Philippines. A number of Philippine-imported karaoke units with two cassette drives were used in private households. Video TV tapes, mainly consisted of popular and contemporary songs rendered by Filipino artists, and with a mix of English and Tagalog songs were soon used. Projected lyrics on TV screens became very common as the main source of karaoke renditions. These tapes were soon replaced by CD+Gs, but a plug-n-play karaoke microphone that housed a factory built-in songchip loaded with hundreds of karaoke songs quickly became a favourite. This unit would usually be purchased in the Philippines and brought into Australia, becoming a common household item and is popularly used during gatherings.
Commercially, karaoke was first introduced into Australia in 1989 by Robin Hemmings who had seen karaoke operating in Fiji. Prior to this, karaoke was generally unknown to the broader population. Hemmings, of Adelaide, South Australia, offered systems manufactured by Pioneer which used 12in (30 cm) double-sided laser discs containing a maximum of 24 songs with accompanying video track and subtitled lyrics.
Despite some initial resistance, Adelaide hoteliers The Booze Brothers offered limited access to their hotels and the karaoke phenomenon was born. Hemmings business, Karaoke Hire Systems, operated seven machines on a casual rental basis to numerous hotels, clubs and private parties in and around Adelaide with an additional machine on snow-season lease at Jindabyne, NSW. Each system came complete with up to 24 discs containing a maximum of 576 music video tracks. In Adelaide, karaoke reached its zenith in 1991 with virtually every hotel offering at least one karaoke night per week with many having undertaken alterations to their premises with the addition of purpose built stages and sound systems. Karaoke rental suppliers had proliferated during this period and Hemmings is known to have sold his business in late 1991 as a going concern.
Karaoke's popularity in Adelaide waned from mid 1992 and was virtually extinguished by early 1993. Despite periodic attempts by hoteliers and clubs to revitalise karaoke, it has never managed to re-establish its former popularity.
In the mid-2000s, a number of karaoke bars sprouted in Sydney with karaoke boxes frequented by Japanese students and tourists and a few locals, especially on Thursday nights and weekends. A number of clubs such as RSL, League Clubs and restaurants and bars mainly feature karaoke nights to entice more customers and to entertain guests. Sunfly Karaoke is probably the major karaoke brand in Australia as well as the UK.
Karaoke is very popular in Asian countries, and many artists distribute a karaoke track at the same time the song is released. The most common form of karaoke nowadays is released in MIDI format with on-screen lyrics on a DVD background video.
In Europe and North America, karaoke tracks are almost never done by the original artist, but are re-recorded by other musicians.
South Korean firms T.J. Media and Kumyoung produce digital music content in MIDI format and manufacture computer music players for the Asian market.
Since the rise of karaoke around the world, karaoke contests have become a phenomenon of mainstream culture, giving non-professional singers opportunity to showcase their talent, win prizes, and at times, travel the world. Contest participants are usually rated 50% by customer votes and 50% by judges' votes, but this may vary, depending on the venue and the level of competition.
Karaoke World Championship is one of the most popular karaoke contests and has been around since 2003. In September 2011, Karaoke World Championships took place in Killarney, Ireland.
As of 2009, the world record for the most people singing karaoke was at Bristol Motor Speedway in the United States. Over 160,000 people began to sing Garth Brooks' song "Friends in Low Places" before the NASCAR Sharpie 500 race began.
Hungary holds the record for the longest Karaoke marathon with multiple participants for an event organized in the Honey Grill Restaurant by Gabor Dániel Szabó (REVVOX Music). It lasted for 1011 hours, 1 minute, between 20 July 2011, and 31 August 2011. Each song was over 3 minutes long and the gap between songs was no longer than 30 seconds. No song was repeated in any 2-hour period.
The record for the longest Karaoke solo marathon is held by the Italian Leonardo Polverelli, who sang 1295 songs in 101 hours, 59 minutes, and 15 seconds. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17080 |
Keykode
Keykode (also written as either KeyKode or KeyCode) is an Eastman Kodak Company advancement on edge numbers, which are letters, numbers and symbols placed at regular intervals along the edge of 35 mm and 16 mm film to allow for frame-by-frame specific identification. It was introduced in 1990.
Keykode is a variation of timecode used in the post-production process which is designed to uniquely identify film frames in a film stock.
Edge numbers (also called key numbers or footage numbers) are a series of numbers with key lettering printed along the edge of a 35 mm negative at intervals of one foot (16 frames or 64 perforations) and on a 16 mm negative at intervals of six inches (twenty frames). The numbers are placed on the negative at the time of manufacturing by one of two methods:
The edge numbers serve a number of purposes. Every key frame is numbered with a multi-digit identifier that may be referred to later. In addition, a date of manufacturing is imprinted, then the type of emulsion and the batch number. This information is transferred from the negative (visible once developed) to the positive prints. The print may be edited and handled while the original negative remains safely untouched. When the film editing is complete, the edge numbers on the final cut film correspond back to their identical frames on the original negative so that a conform edit can be made of the original negative to match the work print.
Laboratories can also imprint their own edge numbers on the processed film negative or print to identify the film for their own means. This is normally done in yellow ink. A common workflow for film editing involves edge-coding printed film simultaneously with the film's synchronized audio track, on 35mm magnetic film, so that a foot of film and its synchronized audio have identical edge numbers.
Eastman Kodak began using latent image edge numbering on their manufactured 35mm raw film stocks in 1919.
With the popularity of telecine transfers and video edits, Kodak invented a machine readable edge number that could be recorded via computer, read by the editing computer and automatically produce a "cut list" from the video edit of the film.
To do this, Kodak utilized the USS-128 barcode alongside the human-readable edge numbers. They also improved the quality and readability of the human-readable information to make it easier to identify. The Keykode consists of 12 characters in human-readable form followed by the same information in barcode form. Keykode is a form of metadata identifier for film negatives.
An example Keykode:
KU 22 9611 1802+02.3
EASTMAN 5279 167 3301 122 KD | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17083 |
Knout
A knout is a heavy scourge-like multiple whip, usually made of a series of rawhide thongs attached to a long handle, sometimes with metal wire or hooks incorporated. The English word stems from a spelling-pronunciation of a French transliteration of the Russian word кнут ("knut"), which simply means "whip".
Some claim it was a Tatar invention and was introduced into Russia in the 15th century, perhaps by Grand Duke Ivan III the Great (1462–1505). Others trace the word to Varangians and derive it from the Swedish "knutpiska", a kind of whip with "knots". Still others maintain it is of generic Germanic origin, not necessarily Scandinavian, comparing it with the German "Knute", Dutch "knoet" (both meaning knout) and with Old Norse "knutr", Anglo-Saxon "cnotta" and English "knot".
The Russian knout had different forms. One was a lash of rawhide, long, attached to a wooden handle, long. The lash ended in a metal ring, to which was attached a second lash as long, ending also in a ring, to which in turn was attached a few inches of hard leather ending in a beak-like hook. Another kind consisted of many thongs of skin plaited and interwoven with wire, ending in loose wired ends, like the cat-o-nine tails.
A variation, known as the "great knout", consisted of a handle about long, to which was fastened a flat leather thong about twice the length of the handle, terminating with a large copper or brass ring to which was affixed a strip of hide about broad at the ring, and terminating at the end of in a point. This was soaked in milk and dried in the sun to make it harder.
Knouts were used in Russia for flogging as formal corporal punishment of criminals and political offenders. The victim was tied to a post or on a triangle of wood and stripped, receiving the specified number of strokes on the back. A sentence of 100 or 120 lashes was equivalent to a death sentence. Even twenty lashes could maim, and with the specially extended Great Knout, twenty blows could kill, with death sometimes being attributed to the breaking of the spine.
The executioner was usually a criminal who had to pass through a probation and regular training, being let off his own penalties in return for his services. Peter the Great is traditionally accused of knouting his son Alexis to death; the latter was tortured by knouting to extract confessions.
Emperor Nicholas I abolished the punishment by knout in 1845, and replaced it with the "pleti", lashes with three thongs which could end in lead balls. They were later abolished throughout Russia and reserved for the penal settlements, mainly in Siberia. Prisoners transported to Siberia in the late 19th century were sometimes branded on their foreheads with irons with the letters VRNK meaning V thief, R robber, and NK punished by the knout. This branding led to the Siberian slang word "varnok", meaning either a settler or deportee.
The dreaded instrument became synonymous in Western European languages with what was seen as the tyrannical cruelty of the autocratic government of Russia, much as the "sjambok" brought to mind the apartheid government of South Africa or the bullwhip was associated with the period of slavery and Jim Crow laws in America.
The expression "under the knout" is used to designate any harsh totalitarianism, and by extension its equivalent in a private context, e.g., a grim patriarch ruling his household "with an iron rod". In Dutch, "onder de knoet houden" is commonly used for strict party discipline, e.g., eliminating actual debate when passing a law (compare the whip function in English). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17086 |
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky (;
19 September 1935)
was a Russian and Soviet rocket scientist and pioneer of the astronautic theory. Along with the French Robert Esnault-Pelterie, the German Hermann Oberth and the American Robert H. Goddard, he is considered to be one of the founding fathers of modern rocketry and astronautics. His works later inspired leading Soviet rocket engineers such as Sergei Korolev and Valentin Glushko and contributed to the success of the Soviet space program.
Tsiolkovsky spent most of his life in a log house on the outskirts of Kaluga, about southwest of Moscow. A recluse by nature, his unusual habits made him seem bizarre to his fellow townsfolk.
Tsiolkovsky was born in Izhevskoye (now in Spassky District, Ryazan Oblast), in the Russian Empire, to a middle-class family. His father, Makary Edward Erazm Ciołkowski was a Polish forester of Roman Catholic faith who emigrated to Russia; his Russian Orthodox mother was of mixed Volga Tatar and Russian origin. His father was successively a forester, teacher, and minor government official. At the age of 10, Konstantin caught scarlet fever and became hard of hearing. When he was 13, his mother died. He was not admitted to elementary schools because of his hearing problem, so he was self-taught. As a reclusive home-schooled child, he passed much of his time by reading books and became interested in mathematics and physics. As a teenager, he began to contemplate the possibility of space travel.
Tsiolkovsky spent three years attending a Moscow library where Russian cosmism proponent Nikolai Fyodorov worked. He later came to believe that colonizing space would lead to the perfection of the human species, with immortality and a carefree existence.
Additionally, inspired by the fiction of Jules Verne, Tsiolkovsky theorized many aspects of space travel and rocket propulsion. He is considered the father of spaceflight and the first person to conceive the space elevator, becoming inspired in 1895 by the newly constructed Eiffel Tower in Paris.
Despite the youth's growing knowledge of physics, his father was concerned that he would not be able to provide for himself financially as an adult and brought him back home at the age of 19 after learning that he was overworking himself and going hungry. Afterwards, Tsiolkovsky passed the teacher's exam and went to work at a school in Borovsk near Moscow. He also met and married his wife Varvara Sokolova during this time. Despite being stuck in Kaluga, a small town far from major learning centers, Tsiolkovsky managed to make scientific discoveries on his own.
The first two decades of the 20th century were marred by personal tragedy. Tsiolkovsky's son Ignaty committed suicide in 1902, and in 1908 many of his accumulated papers were lost in a flood. In 1911, his daughter Lyubov was arrested for engaging in revolutionary activities.
Tsiolkovsky stated that he developed the theory of rocketry only as a supplement to philosophical research on the subject. He wrote more than 400 works including approximately 90 published pieces on space travel and related subjects. Among his works are designs for rockets with steering thrusters, multistage boosters, space stations, airlocks for exiting a spaceship into the vacuum of space, and closed-cycle biological systems to provide food and oxygen for space colonies.
Tsiolkovsky's first scientific study dates back to 1880–1881. He wrote a paper called "Theory of Gases," in which he outlined the basis of the kinetic theory of gases, but after submitting it to the Russian Physico-Chemical Society (RPCS), he was informed that his discoveries had already been made 25 years earlier. Undaunted, he pressed ahead with his second work, "The Mechanics of the Animal Organism". It received favorable feedback, and Tsiolkovsky was made a member of the Society. Tsiolkovsky's main works after 1884 dealt with four major areas: the scientific rationale for the all-metal balloon (airship), streamlined airplanes and trains, hovercraft, and rockets for interplanetary travel.
In 1892, he was transferred to a new teaching post in Kaluga where he continued to experiment. During this period, Tsiolkovsky began working on a problem that would occupy much of his time during the coming years: an attempt to build an all-metal dirigible that could be expanded or shrunk in size.
Tsiolkovsky developed the first aerodynamics laboratory in Russia in his apartment. In 1897, he built the first Russian wind tunnel with an open test section and developed a method of experimentation using it. In 1900, with a grant from the Academy of Sciences, he made a survey using models of the simplest shapes and determined the drag coefficients of the sphere, flat plates, cylinders, cones, and other bodies. Tsiolkovsky's work in the field of aerodynamics was a source of ideas for Russian scientist Nikolay Zhukovsky, the father of modern aerodynamics and hydrodynamics. Tsiolkovsky described the airflow around bodies of different geometric shapes, but because the RPCS did not provide any financial support for this project, he was forced to pay for it largely out of his own pocket.
Tsiolkovsky studied the mechanics of lighter-than-air powered flying machines. He first proposed the idea of an all-metal dirigible and built a model of it. The first printed work on the airship was "A Controllable Metallic Balloon" (1892), in which he gave the scientific and technical rationale for the design of an airship with a metal sheath. Tsiolkovsky was not supported on the airship project, and the author was refused a grant to build the model. An appeal to the General Aviation Staff of the Russian army also had no success. In 1892, he turned to the new and unexplored field of heavier-than-air aircraft. Tsiolkovsky's idea was to build an airplane with a metal frame. In the article "An Airplane or a Birdlike (Aircraft) Flying Machine" (1894) are descriptions and drawings of a monoplane, which in its appearance and aerodynamics anticipated the design of aircraft that would be constructed 15 to 18 years later. In an Aviation Airplane, the wings have a thick profile with a rounded front edge and the fuselage is faired. But work on the airplane, as well as on the airship, did not receive recognition from the official representatives of Russian science, and Tsiolkovsky's further research had neither monetary nor moral support. In 1914, he displayed his models of all-metal dirigibles at the Aeronautics Congress in St. Petersburg but met with a lukewarm response.
Disappointed at this, Tsiolkovsky gave up on space and aeronautical problems with the onset of World War I and instead turned his attention to the problem of alleviating poverty. This occupied his time during the war years until the Russian Revolution in 1917.
Starting in 1896, Tsiolkovsky systematically studied the theory of motion of rocket apparatus. Thoughts on the use of the rocket principle in the cosmos were expressed by him as early as 1883, and a rigorous theory of rocket propulsion was developed in 1896. Tsiolkovsky derived the formula, which he called the "formula of aviation", establishing the relationship between:
After writing out this equation, Tsiolkovsky recorded the date: 10 May 1897. In the same year, the formula for the motion of a body of variable mass was published in the thesis of the Russian mathematician I. V. Meshchersky ("Dynamics of a Point of Variable Mass," I. V. Meshchersky, St. Petersburg, 1897).
His most important work, published in May 1903, was "Exploration of Outer Space by Means of Rocket Devices" (). Tsiolkovsky calculated, using the Tsiolkovsky equation, that the horizontal speed required for a minimal orbit around the Earth is 8,000 m/s (5 miles per second) and that this could be achieved by means of a multistage rocket fueled by liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen. In the article "Exploration of Outer Space by Means of Rocket Devices", it was proved for the first time that a rocket could perform space flight. In this article and its subsequent sequels (1911 and 1914), he developed some ideas of missiles and considered the use of liquid rocket engines.
The outward appearance of Tsiolkovsky's spacecraft design, published in 1903, was a basis for modern spaceship design. The design had a hull divided into three main sections. The pilot and copilot were in the first section, the second and third sections held the liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen needed to fuel the spacecraft.
However, the result of the first publication was not what Tsiolkovsky expected. No foreign scientists appreciated his research, which today is a major scientific discipline. In 1911 he published the second part of the work "Exploration of Outer Space by Means of Rocket Devices". Here Tsiolkovsky evaluated the work needed to overcome the force of gravity, determined the speed needed to propel the device into the solar system ("escape velocity"), and examined calculation of flight time. The publication of this article made a splash in the scientific world, Tsiolkovsky found many friends among his fellow scientists.
In 1926–1929, Tsiolkovsky solved the practical problem regarding the role played by rocket fuel in getting to escape velocity and leaving the Earth. He showed that the final speed of the rocket depends on the rate of gas flowing from it and on how the weight of the fuel relates to the weight of the empty rocket.
Tsiolkovsky conceived a number of ideas that have been later used in rockets. They include: gas rudders (graphite) for controlling a rocket's flight and changing the trajectory of its center of mass, the use of components of the fuel to cool the outer shell of the spacecraft (during re-entry to Earth) and the walls of the combustion chamber and nozzle, a pump system for feeding the fuel components, the optimal descent trajectory of the spacecraft while returning from space, etc. In the field of rocket propellants, Tsiolkovsky studied a large number of different oxidizers and combustible fuels and recommended specific pairings: liquid oxygen and hydrogen, and oxygen with hydrocarbons. Tsiolkovsky did much fruitful work on the creation of the theory of jet aircraft, and invented his chart Gas Turbine Engine. In 1927 he published the theory and design of a train on an air cushion. He first proposed a "bottom of the retractable body" chassis. However, space flight and the airship were the main problems to which he devoted his life. Tsiolkovsky had been developing the idea of the hovercraft since 1921, publishing a fundamental paper on it in 1927, entitled "Air Resistance and the Express Train" (). In 1929, Tsiolkovsky proposed the construction of multistage rockets in his book "Space Rocket Trains" ().
Tsiolkovsky championed the idea of the diversity of life in the universe and was the first theorist and advocate of human spaceflight.
Tsiolkovsky never built a rocket; he apparently did not expect many of his theories to ever be implemented.
Hearing problems did not prevent the scientist from having a good understanding of music, as outlined in his work "The Origin of Music and Its Essence."
Although Tsiolkovsky supported the Bolshevik Revolution, he did not particularly flourish under a communist system. Eager to promote science and technology, the new Soviet government elected him a member of the Socialist Academy in 1918. He worked as a high school mathematics teacher until retiring in 1920 at the age of 63. In 1921, he received a lifetime pension.
Only late in his lifetime was Tsiolkovsky honored for his pioneering work. In particular, his support of eugenics made him politically unpopular. However, from the mid 1920s onwards the importance of his other work was acknowledged, and he was honoured for it and the Soviet state provided financial backing for his research. He was initially popularized in Soviet Russia in 1931–1932 mainly by two writers: Yakov Perelman and Nikolai Rynin. Tsiolkovsky died in Kaluga on 19 September 1935 after undergoing an operation for stomach cancer. He bequeathed his life's work to the Soviet state.
Although many called his ideas impractical, Tsiolkovsky influenced later rocket scientists throughout Europe, like Wernher von Braun. Soviet search teams at Peenemünde found a German translation of a book by Tsiolkovsky of which "almost every page...was embellished by von Braun's comments and notes." Leading Soviet rocket-engine designer Valentin Glushko and rocket designer Sergey Korolev studied Tsiolkovsky's works as youths, and both sought to turn Tsiolkovsky's theories into reality. In particular, Korolev saw traveling to Mars as the more important priority, until in 1964 he decided to compete with the American Project Apollo for the Moon.
In 1989, Tsiolkovsky was inducted into the International Air & Space Hall of Fame at the San Diego Air & Space Museum.
Tsiolkovsky wrote a book called "The Will of the Universe. The Unknown Intelligence" in 1928 in which he propounded a philosophy of panpsychism. He believed humans would eventually colonize the Milky Way galaxy. His thought preceded the Space Age by several decades, and some of what he foresaw in his imagination has come into being since his death. Tsiolkovsky also did not believe in traditional religious cosmology, but instead (and to the chagrin of the Soviet authorities) he believed in a cosmic being that governed humans as "marionettes, mechanical puppets, machines, movie characters", thereby adhering to a mechanical view of the universe, which he believed would be controlled in the millennia to come through the power of human science and industry. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17087 |
Khornerstone
In computer performance testing, Khornerstone is a multipurpose benchmark from Workstation Labs used in various periodicals such as "UNIX Review".
The benchmark consists of 22 separate tests, including public domain components (such as Sieve and Dhrystone) as well as proprietary components. Since it contains proprietary components, the source is not free. The results of the 22 tests are normalized, producing a result measured in "Khornerstones".
The benchmark was introduced in 1986 and was commonly used until the mid-1990s. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17091 |
Kary Mullis
Kary Banks Mullis (December 28, 1944 – August 7, 2019) was an American biochemist. In recognition of his invention of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technique, he shared the 1993 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Michael Smith and was awarded the Japan Prize in the same year. His invention became a central technique in biochemistry and molecular biology, described by "The New York Times" as "highly original and significant, virtually dividing biology into the two epochs of before PCR and after PCR."
Mullis was born in Lenoir, North Carolina, near the Blue Ridge Mountains, on December 28, 1944. His family had a background in farming in this rural area. As a child, Mullis said, he was interested in observing organisms in the countryside. He grew up in Columbia, South Carolina, where he attended Dreher High School, graduating in the class of 1962. His interest in chemistry started when he learned how to chemically synthesize and build solid fuel propulsion rockets as a high school student during the 1950s.
He earned a B.S. in chemistry from the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta in 1966, during which time he married his first wife and started a business. He earned his Ph.D. in 1973 in biochemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, in J. B. Neilands' laboratory, which focused on synthesis and structure of bacterial iron transporter molecules. As a graduate student, he published a sole-author paper in "Nature" in the field of astrophysics. Following his graduation, Mullis completed postdoctoral fellowships in pediatric cardiology at the University of Kansas Medical Center (1973-1977) and pharmaceutical chemistry at the University of California, San Francisco (1977-1979).
After receiving his doctorate, Mullis briefly left science to write fiction before accepting the University of Kansas fellowship. During his postdoctoral work, he managed a bakery for two years. Mullis returned to science at the encouragement of friend Thomas White, who later helped Mullis land a position with the biotechnology company Cetus Corporation of Emeryville, California. Mullis worked as a DNA chemist at Cetus for seven years; it was there, in 1983, that Mullis invented the polymerase chain reaction. After leaving Cetus in 1986, Mullis served as director of molecular biology for Xytronyx, Inc. in San Diego for two years. While inventing a UV-sensitive ink at Xytronyx, he became skeptical of the existence of the ozone hole.
Mullis served as a consultant for multiple corporations on nucleic acid chemistry. While writing a National Institutes of Health grant progress report on the development of a human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) test for Specialty Labs, he became skeptical that HIV was the cause of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). In 1992, Mullis founded a business to sell pieces of jewelry containing the amplified DNA of deceased famous people such as Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe. Also in 1992 he founded Atomic Tags, in La Jolla, California. Atomic Tags sought to develop technology using atomic-force microscopy and bar-coded antibodies tagged with heavy metals to create highly multiplexed, parallel immunoassays.
Mullis was a member of the USA Science and Engineering Festival's Advisory Board. In 2014, he was named a distinguished researcher at the Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute in Oakland, California.
In 1983, Mullis was working for Cetus Corporation as a chemist. Late one night while driving with his girlfriend, who was also a chemist at Cetus, he had the idea to use a pair of primers to bracket the desired DNA sequence and to copy it using DNA polymerase; a technique that would allow rapid amplification of a small stretch of DNA and become a standard procedure in molecular biology laboratories. Cetus took Mullis off his usual projects to concentrate on PCR full-time. Mullis succeeded in demonstrating PCR December 16, 1983. In his Nobel Prize lecture, he remarked that the success did not make up for his girlfriend breaking up with him. "I was sagging as I walked out to my little silver Honda Civic. Neither [assistant] Fred, empty Beck's bottles, nor the sweet smell of the dawn of the age of PCR could replace Jenny. I was lonesome." He received a $10,000 bonus from Cetus for the invention.
Other Cetus scientists, including Randall Saiki and Henry Erlich, were placed on PCR projects to work on determining if PCR could amplify a specific human gene (betaglobin) from genomic DNA. Saiki generated the needed data and Erlich authored the first paper to include utilization of the technique, while Mullis was still working on a paper that would describe PCR itself. Mullis' 1985 paper with R. K. Saiki and H. A. Erlich, "Enzymatic Amplification of β-globin Genomic Sequences and Restriction Site Analysis for Diagnosis of Sickle Cell Anemia"—the polymerase chain reaction invention (PCR) -- was honored by a Citation for Chemical Breakthrough Award from the Division of History of Chemistry of the American Chemical Society in 2017.
A drawback of the technique was that the DNA polymerase in the reaction was destroyed by the high heat used at the start of each replication cycle and had to be replaced. In 1986, Saiki started to use "Thermophilus aquaticus" (Taq) DNA polymerase to amplify segments of DNA. The Taq polymerase was heat resistant and only need to be added to the reaction once, making the technique dramatically more affordable and subject to automation. This modification of Mullis' invention revolutionized biochemistry, molecular biology, genetics, medicine, and forensics.
Mullis also invented a UV-sensitive plastic that changes color in response to light.
He founded Altermune LLC in 2011 to pursue new ideas on the immune system. Mullis described the company's novel technology in a presentation:
The first proof-of-principle of this technology, re-targeting pre-existing antibodies to the surface of a pathogenic strep bacteria using an alpha-gal modified aptamer ("alphamer"), was published in 2015 in collaboration with scientists at the University of California, San Diego.
A concept similar to that of PCR had been described before Mullis' work. Nobel laureate H. Gobind Khorana and Kjell Kleppe, a Norwegian scientist, authored a paper 17 years earlier describing a process they termed "repair replication" in the "Journal of Molecular Biology". Using repair replication, Kleppe duplicated and then quadrupled a small synthetic molecule with the help of two primers and DNA polymerase. The method developed by Mullis used repeated thermal cycling, which allowed the rapid and exponential amplification of large quantities of any desired DNA sequence from an extremely complex template. Later a heat-stable DNA polymerase was incorporated into the process.
His co-workers at Cetus, who were embittered by his abrupt departure from the company,
contested that Mullis was solely responsible for the idea of using Taq polymerase in PCR. However, other scientists have written that the "full potential [of PCR] was not realized" until Mullis' work in 1983, and that Mullis' colleagues failed to see the potential of the technique when he presented it to them. As a result, some controversy surrounds the balance of credit that should be given to Mullis versus the team at Cetus. In practice, credit has accrued to both the inventor and the company (although not its individual workers) in the form of a Nobel Prize and a $10,000 Cetus bonus for Mullis and $300 million for Cetus when the company sold the patent to Roche Molecular Systems. After DuPont lost out to Roche on that sale, the company unsuccessfully disputed Mullis' patent on the alleged grounds that PCR had been previously described in 1971. Mullis and Erlich took Cetus' side in the case, and Khorana refused to testify for DuPont; the jury upheld Mullis' patent in 1991. However, in February 1999, the patent of Hoffman-La Roche (United States Patent No. 4,889,818) was found by the courts to be unenforceable, after Dr. Thomas Kunkel testified in the case "Hoffman-La Roche v. Promega Corporation" on behalf of the defendants (Promega Corporation) that "prior art" (i.e. articles on the subject of Taq polymerase published by other groups prior to the work of Gelfand and Stoffel, and their patent application regarding the purification of Taq polymerase) existed, in the form of two articles, published by Alice Chien et al. in 1976, and A. S. Kaledin et al. in 1980.
The anthropologist Paul Rabinow wrote a book on the history of the PCR method in 1996 (entitled "Making PCR") in which he discussed whether Mullis "invented" PCR or "merely" came up with the concept of it. Rabinow, a Foucault scholar interested in issues of the production of knowledge, used the topic to argue against the idea that scientific discovery is the product of individual work, writing, "Committees and science journalists like the idea of associating a unique idea with a unique person, the lone genius. PCR is thought by some to be an example of teamwork, but by others as the genius of one who was smart enough to put things together which were present to all, but overlooked. For Mullis, the light bulb went off, but for others it did not. This is consistent with the idea, that the prepared (educated) mind who is careful to observe and not overlook, is what separates the genius scientist from his many also smart scientists. The proof is in the fact that the person who has the light bulb go off never forgets the "Ah!" experience, while the others never had this photochemical reaction go off in their brains."
Mullis was quoted saying "the never-ending quest for more grants and staying with established dogmas" has hurt science. He believed that "science is being practiced by people who are dependent on being paid for what they are "going" to find out," not for what they actually produce. Mullis was described by some as an "impatient and impulsive researcher" who finds routine laboratory work boring and instead thinks about his research while driving and surfing. He came up with the idea of the polymerase chain reaction while driving along a highway.
In his 1998 humorous autobiography, Mullis expressed disagreement with the scientific evidence supporting climate change and ozone depletion, the evidence that HIV causes AIDS, and asserted his belief in astrology.
Mullis claimed climate change and the HIV/AIDS connection are due to a conspiracy of environmentalists, government agencies, and scientists attempting to preserve their careers and earn money, rather than scientific evidence.
Mullis has been criticized for his association with HIV skeptic Peter Duesberg, claiming that AIDS is an arbitrary diagnosis used when HIV antibodies are found in a patient's blood. The medical and scientific consensus is that Duesberg's hypothesis is pseudoscience, HIV having been conclusively proven to be the cause of AIDS and that global warming is occurring because of human activities. Seth Kalichman, AIDS researcher and author of "Denying AIDS", "[admits] that it seems odd to include a Nobel laureate among the who's who of AIDS pseudoscientists". Mullis also wrote the foreword to the book "What If Everything You Thought You Knew About AIDS Was Wrong?" by Christine Maggiore, an HIV-positive AIDS denialist who, along with her 3-years-old daughter, died of an AIDS-related illness. A "New York Times" article listed Mullis as one of several scientists who, after success in their area of research, go on to make unfounded, sometimes bizarre statements in other areas. An article in the "Skeptical Inquirer" described Mullis as an "AIDS denialist with scientific credentials [who] has never done any scientific research on HIV or AIDS." However, he consulted for Specialty Labs, in Santa Monica, developing a nucleic acid based HIV test. While writing a NIH grant progress report, he was unable to find a peer-reviewed reference that HIV was the cause of AIDS. Mullis published an alternative theory of AIDS in 1994. He questioned the scientific validity of the link between HIV and AIDS, leading some to label him an "AIDS denialist."
Mullis detailed his experiences synthesizing and testing various psychedelic amphetamines and a difficult trip on DET in his autobiography. In a Q&A interview published in the September 1994 issue of "California Monthly", Mullis said, "Back in the 1960s and early 1970s I took plenty of LSD. A lot of people were doing that in Berkeley back then. And I found it to be a mind-opening experience. It was certainly much more important than any courses I ever took." During a symposium held for centenarian Albert Hofmann, Hofmann said Mullis had told him that LSD had "helped him develop the polymerase chain reaction that helps amplify specific DNA sequences".
Known for his quick wit and colorful stories, Mullis enjoyed surfing. He married four times, and had a total of three children by two of his wives. At the time of his death, he had two grandchildren. He used profanities to make a point and often said, "Oh, Lord," in response to the absurdities experienced in life. Mullis reported an encounter with a "standard extraterrestrial raccoon" at his cabin in the woods of northern California around midnight one night in 1985; he denied being on psychedelic drugs at the time.
Mullis died of pneumonia on August 7, 2019 at age 74 in Newport Beach, California. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17095 |
Kinsey Reports
The Kinsey Reports are two scholarly books on human sexual behavior, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953), written by Alfred Kinsey, Wardell Pomeroy, Clyde Martin, and (for "Sexual Behavior in the Human Female") Paul Gebhard and published by W.B. Saunders. The two best-selling books were immediately controversial, both within the scientific community and the general public, because they challenged conventional beliefs about sexuality and discussed subjects that had previously been taboo. The validity of Kinsey’s methods were also called into question. Kinsey was a zoologist at Indiana University and the founder of the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction (more widely known as the Kinsey Institute).
The sociological data underlying the analysis and conclusions found in "Sexual Behavior in the Human Male" was collected from approximately 5,300 males over a fifteen year period. "Sexual Behavior in the Human Female" was based on personal interviews with approximately 6,000 women. In the latter, Kinsey analyzed data for the frequency with which women participate in various types of sexual activity and looked at how factors such as age, social-economic status and religious adherence influence sexual behavior. Comparisons are made of female and male sexual activities. Kinsey's evidence suggested that women were less sexually active than men.
Kinsey's methodology used to collect data has received criticism. It has been suggested that some data in the reports could not have been obtained without collaborations with child molesters. The Kinsey Institute denies this charge, though it acknowledges that men who have had sexual experiences with children were interviewed, with Kinsey balancing what he saw as the need for their anonymity to solicit "honest answers on such taboo subjects" against the likelihood that their crimes would continue. Additionally, concerns over the sample populations used were later addressed by the Kinsey Institute. The conclusion of the Kinsey Institute was that none of Kinsey's original estimates was significantly affected by these data sources.
More recent researchers believe that Kinsey overestimated the rate of same-sex attraction because of flaws in his sampling methods. Nonetheless, his work is considered pioneering and some of the most well known sex research of all time.
Parts of the Kinsey Reports regarding diversity in sexual orientations are frequently used to support the common estimate of 10% for homosexuality in the general population. Instead of three categories (heterosexual, bisexual and homosexual), a seven-point Kinsey scale system was used.
The reports also state that nearly 46% of the male subjects had "reacted" sexually to persons of both sexes in the course of their adult lives, and 37% had at least one homosexual experience. 11.6% of white males (ages 20–35) were given a rating of 3 (about equal heterosexual and homosexual experience/response) throughout their adult lives. The study also reported that 10% of American males surveyed were "more or less exclusively homosexual for at least three years between the ages of 16 and 55" (in the 5 to 6 range).
Seven percent of single females (ages 20–35) and four percent of previously married females (ages 20–35) were given a rating of 3 (about equal heterosexual and homosexual experience/response) on Kinsey Heterosexual-Homosexual Rating Scale for this period of their lives. 2 to 6% of females, aged 20–35, were more or less exclusively homosexual in experience/response, and 1 to 3% of unmarried females aged 20–35 were exclusively homosexual in experience/response.
Academic criticisms were made pertaining to sample selection and sample bias in the reports' methodology. This was despite the fact that Kinsey sought to work on a more 'complete' report that would have involved 100,000 interviews and that the initial 1948 publication was merely considered by him to be a sample progress report. Two main problems cited were that significant portions of the samples come from prison populations and male prostitutes, and that people who volunteer to be interviewed about taboo subject are likely to create a self-selection bias. Both undermine the usefulness of the sample in terms of determining the tendencies of the overall population. In 1948, the same year as the original publication, a committee of the American Statistical Association, including notable statisticians such as John Tukey, condemned the sampling procedure. Tukey was perhaps the most vocal critic, saying, "A random selection of three people would have been better than a group of 300 chosen by Mr. Kinsey." Psychologist Abraham Maslow stated that Kinsey did not consider "volunteer bias". The data represented only those volunteering to participate in discussion of taboo topics. Most Americans were reluctant to discuss the intimate details of their sex lives even with their spouses and close friends. Before the publication of Kinsey's reports, Maslow tested Kinsey's volunteers for bias. He concluded that Kinsey's sample was unrepresentative of the general population. In 1954, leading statisticians, including William Gemmell Cochran, Frederick Mosteller, John Tukey, and W. O. Jenkins issued for the American Statistical Association a critique of Kinsey's 1948 report on the human male, stating:
“Critics are justified in their objections that many of the most interesting and provocative statements in the [Kinsey 1948] book are not based on the data presented therein, and it is not made clear to the reader on what evidence the statements are based. Further, the conclusions drawn from data presented in the book are often stated by KPM [Kinsey, Pomeroy, and Martin] in much too bold and confident a manner. Taken cumulatively, these objections amount to saying that much of the writing in the book falls below the level of good scientific writing.”
In response, Paul Gebhard, Kinsey's close colleague, “Sexual Behavior in the Human Female" co-author, and successor as director of the Kinsey Institute for Sex Research, cleaned the Kinsey data of purported contaminants, removing, for example, all material derived from prison populations in the basic sample. In 1979, Gebhard (with Alan B. Johnson) published "The Kinsey Data: Marginal Tabulations of the 1938–1963 Interviews Conducted by the Institute for Sex Research". Their conclusion, to Gebhard's surprise he claimed, was that none of Kinsey's original estimates were significantly affected by this bias: that is, the prison population and male prostitutes had the same statistical tendency as those who willingly participated in discussion of previously taboo sexual topics. The results were summarized by historian, playwright, and gay-rights activist Martin Duberman, "Instead of Kinsey's 37% (men who had at least one homosexual experience), Gebhard and Johnson came up with 36.4%; the 10% figure (men who were "more or less exclusively homosexual for at least three years between the ages of 16 and 55"), with prison inmates excluded, came to 9.9% for white, college-educated males and 12.7% for those with less education.
More recent researchers have criticized Kinsey's sampling methods and believe that he overestimated the frequency of nonheterosexual behaviors and attractions.
Historian Peter Gay described "Sexual Behavior in the Human Male" as "methodologically far from persuasive".
Sociologist Edward Laumann stated that the Kinsey Reports were limited to the biology of sex and lacked psychological and clinical information and analysis and that this "meant that sex research did not move into the mainstream of academic credibility. People took their reputations in their hands if they attempted to pursue it." Laumann also acknowledged that "The Kinsey report was a cultural event of enormous consequence."
The Kinsey scale is used to measure a person's overall balance of heterosexuality and homosexuality, and takes into account both sexual experience and psychosexual reactions. The scale ranges from 0 to 6, with 0 being completely heterosexual and 6 completely homosexual. An additional category, X, was mentioned to describe those who had "no socio-sexual contacts or reactions," which has been cited by scholars to mean asexuality. The scale was first published in "Sexual Behavior in the Human Male" (1948) by Kinsey, Wardell Pomeroy and others, and was also prominent in the complementary work "Sexual Behavior in the Human Female" (1953). Introducing the scale, Kinsey wrote:
The scale is as follows:
The average frequency of marital sex reported by women was 2.8 times a week in the late teens, 2.2 times a week by age 30, and 1.0 times a week by age 50. Kinsey estimated that approximately 50% of all married males had some extramarital experience at some time during their married lives. Among the sample, 26% of females had extramarital sex by their forties. Between 1 in 6 and 1 in 10 females from age 26 to 50 were engaged in extramarital sex. However, Kinsey classified couples who have lived together for at least a year as "married", inflating the statistics for extra-marital sex.
12% of females and 22% of males reported having an erotic response to a sadomasochistic story.
Responses to being bitten:
Data was gathered primarily by means of subjective report interviews, conducted according to a structured questionnaire memorized by the experimenters (but not marked on the response sheet in any way). The response sheets were encoded in this way to maintain the confidentiality of the respondents, being entered on a blank grid using response symbols defined in advance. The data were later computerized for processing. All of this material, including the original researchers' notes, remains available from the Kinsey Institute to qualified researchers who demonstrate a need to view such materials. The institute also allows researchers to use statistical software in order to analyze the data.
The Kinsey Reports, which together sold three-quarters of a million copies and were translated into thirteen languages, may be considered as some of the most successful and influential scientific books of the 20th century. They were also associated with a change in the public perception of sexuality. In the 1960s, following the introduction of the first oral contraceptive, this change was to be expressed in the sexual revolution. Additionally, in 1966 Masters and Johnson would publish the first of two texts cataloguing their investigations into the physiology of sex, breaking taboos and misapprehensions similar to those Kinsey had confronted more than a decade earlier in a closely related field. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17096 |
Kendo
is a traditional Japanese martial art, which descended from swordsmanship (kenjutsu) and uses bamboo swords (shinai) and protective armour (bōgu). Today, it is widely practiced within Japan and many other nations across the world.
Kendo is an activity that combines martial arts practices and values with strenuous sport-like physical activity.
Swordsmen in Japan established schools of "kenjutsu" (the ancestor of kendo), which continued for centuries and which form the basis of kendo practice today. The formal kendo exercises known as "kata" were developed several centuries ago as "kenjutsu" practice for warriors. They are still studied today, in a modified form.
The introduction of bamboo practice swords and armour to sword training is attributed to Naganuma Shirōzaemon Kunisato during the Shotoku Era (1711–1715). Naganuma developed the use of this armor and established a training method using bamboo swords.
In addition, the inscription on the gravestone of third on , the 8th headmaster of the Kashima Shinden Jikishinkage-ryū Kenjutsu, states that his exploits included improving Japanese wooden and bamboo swords, and refining the armor by adding a metal grille to the head piece and thick cotton protective coverings to the gauntlets. Kunisato inherited the tradition from his father Heizaemon in 1708, and the two of them, until Heizaemon's death, worked hard together to improve what would become Kendo training armor.
Chiba Shusaku Narimasa, founder of the Hokushin Ittō-ryū Hyōhō (北辰一刀流兵法), introduced "gekiken" (撃剣) (full contact duels with bamboo swords and training armor) to the curriculum of tradition arts in the 1820s. Due to the large number of students of the Hokushin Ittō-ryū Hyōhō at the end of the Edo period, this contributed greatly to popularizing the use of bamboo swords and armor as a form of practice. Also there are techniques, such as Suriage-Men, Oikomi-Men etc. in modern kendo which were originally Hokushin Ittō-ryū techniques, named by Chiba Shusaku Narimasa for his school. After the Meiji Restoration in the late 1800s Sakakibara Kenkichi popularized public "gekiken" for commercial gain, but also generated an increased interest in kendo and kenjutsu as a result.
In 1876, five years after a voluntary surrender of swords, the government banned the use of swords by the surviving samurai and initiated sword hunts. Meanwhile, in an attempt to standardize the sword styles ("kenjutsu") used by policemen, Kawaji Toshiyoshi recruited swordsmen from various schools to come up with a unified swordsmanship style. This led to the rise of the "Battotai" (抜刀隊, lit. "Drawn Sword Corps"), which mainly featured sword-wielding policemen. However, it proved difficult to integrate all sword arts, which led to a compromise of ten practice moves ("kata") for police training. Difficulties of integration notwithstanding, this integration effort led to the development of kendo, which remains in use to date. In 1878, Kawaji wrote a book on swordsmanship, titled "Gekiken Saikō-ron" (Revitalizing Swordsmanship), wherein he stressed that sword styles should not disappear with modernization, considering that other countries have been fascinated with them, but should be integrated as necessary skills for the police. He draws a particular example from his experience with the Satsuma Rebellion. The "Junsa Kyōshūjo" (Patrolman's Training Institute), founded in 1879, provided a curriculum which allowed policemen to study the sword arts during their off-hours ("gekiken"). In the same year, Kawaji wrote another book on swordsmanship, titled "Kendo Saikō-ron" (Revitalizing Kendo), wherein he defended the significance of such sword art training for the police. While the institute remained active only until 1881, the police continued to support such practice.
The DNBK changed the name of the sporting form of swordsmanship, called "gekiken", (Kyūjitai: 擊劍; Shinjitai: 撃剣, "hitting sword") to "kendō" in 1920.
Kendo (along with other martial arts) was banned in Japan in 1946 by the occupying powers. This was part of "the removal and exclusion from public life of militaristic and ultra nationalistic persons" in response to the wartime militarization of martial arts instruction in Japan. The DNBK was also disbanded. Kendo was allowed to return to the curriculum in 1950 (first as and then as kendo from 1952).
The All Japan Kendo Federation (AJKF or ZNKR) was founded in 1952, immediately after Japan's independence was restored and the ban on martial arts in Japan was lifted. It was formed on the principle of kendo not as a martial art but as educational sport, and it has continued to be practiced as such to this day.
The International Kendo Federation (FIK) was founded in April 1970; it is an international federation of national and regional kendo federations and the world governing body for kendo. The FIK is a non-governmental organization, and its aim is to promote and popularize kendo, iaido and jodo.
The International Martial Arts Federation (IMAF), established in Kyoto 1952, was the first international organization after WWII to promote the development of martial arts worldwide. Today, IMAF includes kendo as one of the Japanese disciplines.
Practitioners of kendo are called , meaning "someone who practices kendo", or occasionally , meaning "swordsman". The old term of "kendoists" is sometimes used.
The "Kodansha Meibo" (a register of "dan" graded members of the All Japan Kendo Federation) shows that as of September 2007, there were 1.48 million registered "dan" graded "kendōka" in Japan. According to the survey conducted by the All Japan Kendo Federation, the number of active kendo practitioners in Japan is 477,000 in which 290,000 "dan" holders are included. From these figures, the All Japan Kendo Federation estimates that the number of "kendōka" in Japan is 1.66 million, with over 6 million practitioners worldwide, by adding the number of the registered "dan" holders and the active kendo practitioners without "dan" grade.
In 1975, the All Japan Kendo Federation (AJKF) developed then published "The Concept and Purpose of Kendo" which is reproduced below.
Kendo is a way to discipline the human character through the application of the principles of the "katana".
Kendo is practiced wearing a traditional Japanese style of clothing, and using one or, less commonly, two .
The "shinai" is meant to represent a Japanese sword (katana) and is made up of four bamboo slats, which are held together by leather fittings. A modern variation of a "shinai" with carbon fiber reinforced resin slats is also used.
"Kendōka" also use hard to practice "kata".
Kendo employs strikes involving both one edge and the tip of the "shinai" or "bokutō".
Protective armour is worn to protect specified target areas on the head, arms and body. The head is protected by a stylised helmet, called , with a to protect the face, a series of hard leather and to protect the throat, and padded to protect the side of the neck and shoulders. The forearms, wrists, and hands are protected by long, thickly padded fabric gloves called . The torso is protected by a , while the waist and groin area is protected by the , consisting of three thick vertical fabric flaps or faulds.
The clothing worn under the "bōgu" comprise a jacket ("kendogi" or "keikogi") and "hakama", a garment separated in the middle to form two wide trouser legs.
A is wrapped around the head, under the "men", to absorb perspiration and provide a base for the "men" to fit comfortably.
Kendo training is quite noisy in comparison to some other martial arts or sports. This is because "kendōka" use a shout, or , to express their fighting spirit when striking. Additionally, "kendōka" execute , an action similar to a stamp of the front foot, when making a strike.
Like some other martial arts, "kendōka" train and fight barefoot. Kendo is ideally practiced in a purpose-built "dōjō", though standard sports halls and other venues are often used. An appropriate venue has a clean and well-sprung wooden floor, suitable for "fumikomi-ashi".
Kendo techniques comprise both strikes and thrusts. Strikes are only made towards specified on the wrists, head, or body, all of which are protected by armour. The targets are "men", "sayu-men" or "yoko-men" (upper, left or right side of the "men"), the right "kote" at any time, the left "kote" when it is in a raised position, and the left or right side of the "dō". are only allowed to the throat. However, since an incorrectly performed thrust could cause serious injury to the opponent's neck, thrusting techniques in free practice and competition are often restricted to senior "dan" graded "kendōka".
Once a "kendōka" begins practice in armour, a practice session may include any or all of the following types of practice.
Techniques are divided into "shikake-waza" (to initiate a strike) and "ōji-waza" (a response to an attempted strike).
"Kendoka" who wish to use such techniques during practice or competitions, often practice each technique with a "motodachi". This is a process that requires patience. First practising slowly and then as familiarity and confidence builds, the "kendoka" and "motodachi" increase the speed to match and competition level.
These attack techniques are used to create "suki" in an opponent by initiating an attack, or strike boldly when the opponent has created a "suki". Such techniques include:
This is a technique used when one's opponent has weak "kisei" (spirit, vigour) or when they yield a "suki" under pressure. Always hold "kisei" and strike quickly.
Body and "shinai" will lose balance as the initiator strikes or when being attacked. This technique takes advantage of this to help execute a strike. A good example is "Hikibana-kote", when a strike is made to an opponent's "kote" as they feel threatened and raise their "kensen" as the initiator pushes forward.
This provides a surprise attack, by lifting the "shinai" over the initiators shoulder before striking. Here a skillful use of the "kensen" and spirited attack is crucial for effective "katsugi-waza" or luring the opponent into breaking his/her posture.
There are two types. The first is for moving to the next "waza" after a failed first strike, and the second holds the opponent's attention and posture to create the "suki" for a second strike. The former requires a continuous rhythm of correct strikes. The latter requires continuous execution of "waza", to take advantage of the opponent's "suki".
This can be used if one's opponent's "kamae" has no "suki" when the opponent tries to attack. The opponent's "shinai" is either knocked down from above or swept up from below with a resulting strike just when his/her "kamae " is broken.
This technique involves striking the opponent as they are about to strike. This is because their concentration will be on striking and their posture will have no flexibility to respond. Thus "debana-waza" is ideal. This can be to any part of the opponent's body, with valid strikes being: "debana-men", "debana-kote", and "debana-tsuki".
These counter-attack techniques are performed by executing a strike after responding or avoiding an attempted strike by the opponent. This can also be achieved by inducing the opponent to attack, then employing one of the "oji-waza".
Avoiding an attack from another, then instantly responding. Here, timing has to be correct. A response that is too slow or fast may not be effective. Therefore, close attention to an opponent's every move is required.
If struck by an opponent's "shinai", this technique sweeps up their "shinai" in a rising-slide motion, with the right ("ura") or left ("omote") side of the "shinai". Then strike in the direction of their "shinai", or at the "suki" resulting from their composure's collapse. This technique needs to be smooth. That is, don't separate the rising-slide motion and the upward-sweeping motion or it will not be successful. Valid strikes include: "men-suriage-men", "kote-suriage-men", "men-suriage-do", "kote-suriage-kote", and "tsuki-suriage-men".
This "waza" knocks an opponent's "shinai" to the right or left. This neutralises a potential strike and gives the ideal chance to strike as an opponent is off-balance. For success, an opponent's "maai" has to be correctly perceived and then one knocks down their "shinai" before their arm fully extends. Valid examples are: "do-uchiotoshi-men" and "tsuki-uchiotoshi-men".
This technique is a response. As the initiator strikes, the opponent parry's their "shinai" with the initiators. Then flip over (turn over the hands) and strike their opposite side. Valid strikes include:"men-kaeshi-men", "men-kaeshi-kote", "men-kaeshi-do", "kote-kaeshi-men", "kote-kaeshi-kote", and "do-kaeshi-men".
A scorable in a "kendo" competition ("tai-kai") is defined as an accurate strike or thrust made onto a "datotsu-bui" of the opponent's "kendo-gu" with the "shinai" making contact at its "datotsu-bu", the competitor displaying high spirits, correct posture and followed by "zanshin".
"Datotsu-bui" or point scoring targets in "kendo" are defined as:
"Datotsu-bu" of the 'shinai' is the forward, or blade side ("jin-bu") of the top third ("monouchi") of the "shinai".
, or continuation of awareness, must be present and shown throughout the execution of the strike, and the "kendōka" must be mentally and physically ready to attack again.
In competition, there are usually three . Each referee holds a red flag and a white flag in opposing hands. To award a point, a referee raises the flag corresponding to the colour of the ribbon worn by the scoring competitor. Usually at least two referees must agree for a point to be awarded. The match continues until a pronouncement of the point that has been scored.
Kendo competitions are usually a three-point match. The first competitor to score two points, therefore wins the match. If the time limit is reached and only one competitor has a point, that competitor wins.
In the case of a tie, there are several options:
The All Japan Kendo Championship is regarded as the most prestigious kendo championship. Despite it being the national championship for only Japanese kendoka, kendo practitioners all over the world consider the All Japan Kendo Championship as the championship with the highest level of competitive kendo. The World Kendo Championships have been held every three years since 1970. They are organised by the International Kendo Federation (FIK) with the support of the host nation's kendo federation. The European championship is held every year, except in those years in which there is a world championship. Kendo is also one of the martial arts in the World Combat Games.
Technical achievement in kendo is measured by advancement in grade, rank or level. The and grading system, created in 1883, is used to indicate one's proficiency in kendo. The "dan" levels are from to . There are usually six grades below first-dan, known as "kyu". The "kyu" numbering is in reverse order, with being the grade immediately below first dan, and being the lowest grade. There are no visible differences in dress between kendo grades; those below dan-level may dress the same as those above dan-level.
All candidates for examination face a panel of examiners. A larger, more qualified panel is usually assembled to assess the higher "dan" grades. Kendo examinations typically consist of "jitsugi", a demonstration of the skill of the applicants, "Nihon Kendo Kata" and a written exam. The eighth-dan kendo exam is extremely difficult, with a reported pass rate of less than 1 percent.
can be earned in addition to the above "dan" grades by "kendōka" of a defined dan grade. These are , , and . The title is affixed to the front of the "dan" grade when said, for example . The qualifications for each title are below.
Kata are fixed patterns that teach kendoka the basic elements of swordsmanship. The "kata" include fundamental techniques of attacking and counter-attacking, and have useful practical application in general kendo. There are ten . These are generally practised with . Occasionally, real swords or swords with a blunt edge, called or , may be used for display of "kata".
All are performed by two people: the , the teacher, and , the student. The "uchidachi" makes the first move or attack in each "kata". As this is a teaching role, the "uchidachi" is always the losing side, thus allowing the "shidachi" to learn and to gain confidence.
"Kata" one to seven are performed with both partners using a normal length wooden sword. "Kata" eight to ten are performed with uchidachi using a normal length weapon and shidachi using a shorter one ("kodachi").
The forms of the were finalised in 1933 based on the "Dai nihon Teikoku Kendo Kata", composed in 1912. "It is impossible to link the individual forms of "Dai nihon Teikoku Kendo Kata" to their original influences, although the genealogical reference diagram does indicate the masters of the various committees involved, and it is possible from this to determine the influences and origins of Kendo and the Kata."
In 2003, the All Japan Kendo Federation introduced , a set of basic exercises using a bokuto. This form of practice, is intended primarily for "kendōka" up to , but is very useful for all kendo students which are organised under FIK.
Kata can also be treated as competitions where players are judged upon their performance and technique.
Many national and regional organisations manage and promote kendo activities outside Japan. The major organising body is the International Kendo Federation (FIK). The FIK is a non-governmental international federation of national and regional kendo organisations. An aim of the FIK is to provide a link between Japan and the international kendo community and to promote and popularise kendo, iaido and jodo. The FIK was established in 1970 with 17 national federations. The number of affiliated and recognised organisations has increased over the years to 57 (as of May 2015). The FIK is recognised by SportAccord as a 'Full Member'. and by the World Anti-Doping Agency.
Other organisations that promote the study of Japanese martial arts, including kendo, are the Dai Nippon Butoku Kai (DNBK) and the International Martial Arts Federation (IMAF). The current DNBK has no connection to the pre-war organisation, although it shares the same goals. The International Martial Arts Federation (IMAF) was established in Kyoto in 1952 and is dedicated to the promotion and development of the martial arts worldwide, including kendo.
Kendo Jidai and Kendo Nippon offer Kendo magazines in Japanese and Kendo Jidai also offers Kendo Jidai International in English. This is the world's only English-language kendo magazine. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17098 |
Kingfisher
Kingfishers or Alcedinidae are a family of small to medium-sized, brightly colored birds in the order Coraciiformes. They have a cosmopolitan distribution, with most species found in the tropical regions of Africa, Asia, and Oceania. The family contains 114 species and is divided into three subfamilies and 19 genera. All kingfishers have large heads, long, sharp, pointed bills, short legs, and stubby tails. Most species have bright plumage with only small differences between the sexes. Most species are tropical in distribution, and a slight majority are found only in forests. They consume a wide range of prey usually caught by swooping down from a perch. While kingfishers are usually thought to live near rivers and eat fish, many species live away from water and eat small invertebrates. Like other members of their order, they nest in cavities, usually tunnels dug into the natural or artificial banks in the ground. Some kingfishers nest in arboreal termite nests. A few species, principally insular forms, are threatened with extinction. In Britain, the word "kingfisher" normally refers to the common kingfisher.
The kingfishers family Alcedinidae is in the order Coraciiformes, which also includes the motmots, bee-eaters, todies, rollers and ground-rollers. The name of the family was introduced (as Alcedia) by the French polymath Constantine Samuel Rafinesque in 1815. It is divided into three subfamilies, the tree kingfishers (Halcyoninae), the river kingfishers (Alcedininae) and the water kingfishers (Cerylinae). The name Daceloninae is sometimes used for the tree kingfisher subfamily but it was introduced by Charles Lucien Bonaparte in 1841 while Halcyoninae introduced by Nicholas Aylward Vigors in 1825 is earlier and has priority. A few taxonomists elevate the three subfamilies to family status. In spite of the word "kingfisher" in their English vernacular names, many of these birds are not specialist fish-eaters; none of the species in Halcyoninae are.
The centre of kingfisher diversity is the Australasian realm, but the group is not thought to have originated there. Instead, they originated in the Indomalayan region around 27 million years ago and invaded the Australasian realm a number of times. Fossil kingfishers have been described from Lower Eocene rocks in Wyoming and Middle Eocene rocks in Germany, around 30–40 million years ago. More recent fossil kingfishers have been described in the Miocene rocks of Australia (5–25 million years old). Several fossil birds have been erroneously ascribed to the kingfishers, including "Halcyornis", from the Lower Eocene rocks in Kent, which has also been considered a gull, but is now thought to have been a member of an extinct family.
Amongst the three subfamilies, the Alcedininae are basal to the other two subfamilies. The few species found in the Americas, all from the subfamily Cerylinae, suggest that the sparse representation in the Western Hemisphere resulted from just two original colonising events. The subfamily is a comparatively recent split from the Halcyoninae, diversifying in the Old World as recently as the Miocene or Pliocene.
The smallest species of kingfisher is the African dwarf kingfisher ("Ispidina lecontei"), which averages in length and between in weight. The largest kingfisher in Africa is the giant kingfisher ("Megaceryle maxima"), which is in length and in weight. The familiar Australian kingfisher known as the laughing kookaburra ("Dacelo novaeguineae") is the heaviest species with females reaching nearly in weight.
The plumage of most kingfishers is bright, with green and blue being the most common colours. The brightness of the colours is neither the product of iridescence (except in the American kingfishers) or pigments, but is instead caused by the structure of the feathers, which causes scattering of blue light (the Tyndall effect). In most species, no overt differences between the sexes exist; when differences occur, they are quite small (less than 10%).
The kingfishers have long, dagger-like bills. The bill is usually longer and more compressed in species that hunt fish, and shorter and more broad in species that hunt prey off the ground. The largest and most atypical bill is that of the shovel-billed kookaburra, which is used to dig through the forest floor in search of prey. They generally have short legs, although species that feed on the ground have longer tarsi. Most species have four toes, three of which are forward-pointing.
The irises of most species are dark brown. The kingfishers have excellent vision; they are capable of binocular vision and are thought in particular to have good colour vision. They have restricted movement of their eyes within the eye sockets, instead using head movements to track prey. In addition, they are capable of compensating for the refraction of water and reflection when hunting prey underwater, and are able to judge depth under water accurately. They also have nictitating membranes that cover the eyes to protect them when they hit the water; the pied kingfisher has a bony plate which slides across the eye when it hits the water.
The kingfishers have a cosmopolitan distribution, occurring throughout the world's tropical and temperate regions. They are absent from the polar regions and some of the world's driest deserts. A number of species have reached islands groups, particularly those in the south and east Pacific Ocean. The Old World tropics and Australasia are the core areas for this group. Europe and North America north of Mexico are very poorly represented, with only one common kingfisher (common kingfisher and belted kingfisher, respectively), and a couple of uncommon or very local species each: (ringed kingfisher and green kingfisher in the southwestern United States, pied kingfisher and white-throated kingfisher in southeastern Europe). The six species occurring in the Americas are four closely related green kingfishers in the genus "Chloroceryle" and two large crested kingfishers in the genus "Megaceryle". Even tropical South America has only five species plus the wintering belted kingfisher. In comparison, the African country of the Gambia has eight resident species in its area.
Individual species may have massive ranges, like the common kingfisher, which ranges from Ireland across Europe, North Africa, and Asia as far as the Solomon Islands in Australasia, or the pied kingfisher, which has a widespread distribution across Africa and Asia. Other species have much smaller ranges, particularly insular species which are endemic to single small islands. The Kofiau paradise kingfisher is restricted to the island of Kofiau off New Guinea.
Kingfishers occupy a wide range of habitats. While they are often associated with rivers and lakes, over half the world's species are found in forests and forested streams. They also occupy a wide range of other habitats. The red-backed kingfisher of Australia lives in the driest deserts, although kingfishers are absent from other dry deserts like the Sahara. Other species live high in mountains, or in open woodland, and a number of species live on tropical coral atolls. Numerous species have adapted to human-modified habitats, particularly those adapted to woodlands, and may be found in cultivated and agricultural areas, as well as parks and gardens in towns and cities.
Kingfishers feed on a wide variety of prey. They are most famous for hunting and eating fish, and some species do specialise in catching fish, but other species take crustaceans, frogs and other amphibians, annelid worms, molluscs, insects, spiders, centipedes, reptiles (including snakes), and even birds and mammals. Individual species may specialise in a few items or take a wide variety of prey, and for species with large global distributions, different populations may have different diets. Woodland and forest kingfishers take mainly insects, particularly grasshoppers, whereas the water kingfishers are more specialised in taking fish. The red-backed kingfisher has been observed hammering into the mud nests of fairy martins to feed on their nestlings. Kingfishers usually hunt from an exposed perch; when a prey item is observed, the kingfisher swoops down to snatch it, then returns to the perch. Kingfishers of all three families beat larger prey on a perch to kill the prey and to dislodge or break protective spines and bones. Having beaten the prey, it is manipulated and then swallowed. Sometimes, a pellet of bones, scales and other indigestible debris is coughed up. The shovel-billed kookaburra uses its massive, wide bill as a shovel to dig for worms in soft mud.
Kingfishers are territorial, some species defending their territories vigorously. They are generally monogamous, although cooperative breeding has been observed in some species and is quite common in others, for example the laughing kookaburra, where helpers aid the dominant breeding pair in raising the young.
Like all Coraciiformes, the kingfishers are cavity nesters as well as tree nesters, with most species nesting in holes dug in the ground. These holes are usually in earth banks on the sides of rivers, lakes or man-made ditches. Some species may nest in holes in trees, the earth clinging to the roots of an uprooted tree, or arboreal nests of termites (termitarium). These termite nests are common in forest species. The nests take the form of a small chamber at the end of a tunnel. Nest-digging duties are shared between the genders
. During the initial excavations, the bird may fly at the chosen site with considerable force, and birds have injured themselves fatally while doing this. The length of the tunnels varies by species and location; nests in termitariums are necessarily much shorter than those dug into the earth, and nests in harder substrates are shorter than those in soft soil or sand. The longest tunnels recorded are those of the giant kingfisher, which have been found to be long.
The eggs of kingfishers are invariably white. The typical clutch size varies by species; some of the very large and very small species lay as few as two eggs per clutch, whereas others may lay 10 eggs, the typical is around three to six eggs. Both sexes incubate the eggs. The offspring of the kingfisher usually stay with the parents for 3–4 months.
A number of species are considered threatened by human activities and are in danger of extinction. The majority of these are forest species with limited distribution, particularly insular species. They are threatened by habitat loss caused by forest clearance or degradation and in some cases by introduced species. The Marquesan kingfisher of French Polynesia is listed as critically endangered due to a combination of habitat loss and degradation caused by introduced cattle, and possibly due to predation by introduced species.
Kingfishers are generally shy birds, but in spite of this, they feature heavily in human culture, generally due to the large head supporting its powerful mouth, their bright plumage, or some species' interesting behavior.
For the Dusun people of Borneo, the Oriental dwarf kingfisher is considered a bad omen, and warriors who see one on the way to battle should return home. Another Bornean tribe considers the banded kingfisher an omen bird, albeit generally a good omen.
The sacred kingfisher, along with other Pacific kingfishers, was venerated by the Polynesians, who believed it had control over the seas and waves.
Modern taxonomy also refers to the winds and sea in naming kingfishers after a classical Greek myth. The first pair of the mythical-bird Halcyon (kingfishers) were created from a marriage of Alcyone and Ceyx. As gods, they lived the sacrilege of referring to themselves as Zeus and Hera. They died for this, but the other gods, in an act of compassion, made them into birds, thus restoring them to their original seaside habitat. In addition, special "halcyon days" were granted. These are the seven days on either side of the winter solstice when storms shall never again occur for them. The Halcyon birds' "days" were for caring for the winter-hatched clutch (or brood), but the phrase "Halcyon days" also refers specifically to an idyllic time in the past, or in general to a peaceful time.
Various kinds of kingfishers and human cultural artifacts are named after the couple, in reference to this metamorphosis myth:
Not all the kingfishers are named in this way. The etymology of kingfisher ("Alcedo atthis") is obscure; the term comes from "king's fisher", but why that name was applied is not known. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17100 |
Kesgrave
Kesgrave is a small town containing two large estates in the English county of Suffolk on the eastern edge of Ipswich.
The area was recorded as "Gressgrava" in the Domesday Book, by the late 15th century its name had become Kesgrave. Kesgrave remained a small agricultural settlement with just a church, inn and a few farmsteads for over 700 years.
In 1921 the population was only 103 housed in 20 dwellings. Since then great changes have taken place.
By 1988 Kesgrave covered an area of more than .
Kesgrave parish council officially adopted the title of a town in January 2000.
Kesgrave High School is a large 11-18 comprehensive co-educational school with nearly 2000 pupils. A study for Sustrans noted that 61% of the pupils cycled to the school. This is largely due to the installation of a large cycle lane through the local housing development and along the main road. The school actively encourages walking or cycling and provides bicycle storage facilities.
The five primary schools in the immediate vicinity of Kesgrave are Beacon Hill Primary School, Birchwood Primary School, Cedarwood Primary School the building of which was awarded a Civic Trust Award in 2003, Gorseland Primary School and Heath Primary School.
Kesgrave was home to a number of private day and boarding schools based at Kesgrave Hall | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17102 |
Kurt Waldheim
Kurt Josef Waldheim (; 21 December 1918 – 14 June 2007) was an Austrian politician and diplomat. Waldheim was the fourth Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1972 to 1981, and President of Austria from 1986 to 1992. While he was running for the latter office in the 1986 election, the revelation of his service in Greece and Yugoslavia, as an intelligence officer in Nazi Germany's "Wehrmacht" during World War II, raised international controversy.
Waldheim was born in Sankt Andrä-Wördern, near Vienna, on 21 December 1918. His father was a Roman Catholic school inspector of Czech origin named Watzlawick (original Czech spelling Václavík) who changed his name that year as the Habsburg monarchy collapsed. Waldheim served in the Austrian Army (1936–37) and attended the Vienna Consular Academy, where he graduated in 1939. Waldheim's father was active in the Christian Social Party. Waldheim himself was politically unaffiliated during these years at the Academy.
Three weeks after the German annexation of Austria in 1938, Waldheim applied for membership in the National Socialist German Students' League (NSDStB), a division of the Nazi Party. Shortly thereafter he became a registered member of the mounted corps of the SA.
On 19 August 1944, he married Elisabeth Ritschel in Vienna; their first daughter, Lieselotte, was born the following year. A son, Gerhard, and another daughter, Christa, followed.
In early 1941, Waldheim was drafted into the "Wehrmacht" and posted to the Eastern Front where he served as a squad leader. In December, he was wounded but returned to service in 1942. His service in the "Wehrmacht" from 1942 to 1945 was the subject of international review in 1985 and 1986. In his 1985 autobiography, he stated that he was discharged from further service at the front and, for the remainder of the war, finished his law degree at the University of Vienna, in addition to marrying in 1944. After publication, documents and witnesses came to light that revealed Waldheim’s military service continued until 1945, during which time he rose to the rank of "Oberleutnant".
Waldheim's functions within the staff of German Army Group E from 1942 until 1945, as determined by the International Commission of Historians, were:
(Italy) in Pljevlja from 22 March 1942 to July 1942.
By 1943, Waldheim was serving in the capacity of an aide-de-camp in Army Group E which was headed by General Alexander Löhr. In 1986, Waldheim said that he had served only as an interpreter and a clerk and had no knowledge either of reprisals against local Serb civilians or of massacres in neighboring provinces of Yugoslavia. He said that he had known about some of the things that had happened, and had been horrified, but could not see what else he could have done.
Much historical interest has centred on Waldheim's role in Operation Kozara in 1942. According to one post-war investigator, prisoners were routinely shot within only a few hundred metres (yards) of Waldheim's office, and away at the Jasenovac concentration camp. Waldheim later stated that "he did not know about the murder of civilians there".
Waldheim's name appears on the "Wehrmacht"s "honour list" of those responsible for the militarily successful operation. The Nazi puppet state, the Independent State of Croatia, awarded Waldheim the Medal of the Crown of King Zvonimir in silver with an oak branches cluster. Decades later, during the lobbying for his election as U.N. Secretary General, Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito, who had led anti-German forces during the war, awarded Waldheim one of the highest Yugoslav orders, not knowing of his prior military service.
Waldheim denied that he knew war crimes were taking place in Bosnia at the height of the battles between the Nazis and Tito's partisans in 1943. According to Eli Rosenbaum, in 1944, Waldheim reviewed and approved a packet of anti-Semitic propaganda leaflets to be dropped behind Soviet lines, one of which ended: "Enough of the Jewish war, kill the Jews, come over."
In 1945, Waldheim surrendered to British forces in Carinthia, at which point he said he had fled his command post within Army Group E, where he was serving with General Löhr, who was seeking a special deal with the British.
Waldheim joined the Austrian diplomatic service in 1945, after finishing his studies in law at the University of Vienna. He served as First Secretary of the Legation in Paris from 1948, and in the Ministry for Foreign Affairs in Vienna from 1951 to 1956. In 1956 he was made Ambassador to Canada, returning to the Ministry in 1960, after which he became the Permanent Representative of Austria to the United Nations in 1964. For two years beginning in 1968, he was the Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs for the Austrian People's Party, before going back as Permanent Representative to the U.N. in 1970. Shortly afterwards, he ran and was defeated in the 1971 Austrian presidential elections.
After losing the presidential election, Waldheim ran for Secretary-General of the United Nations in the 1971 selection. Waldheim was supported by the Soviet Union and led the first two rounds of voting. However, he was opposed by China, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Waldheim won an accidental victory in the third round of voting when those three permanent members failed to coordinate their vetoes and all abstained. Waldheim succeeded U Thant as United Nations Secretary-General in 1972.
As Secretary-General, Waldheim opened and addressed a number of major international conferences convened under United Nations auspices. These included the third session of the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development (Santiago, April 1972), the U.N. Conference on the Human Environment (Stockholm, June 1972), the third UN Conference on the Law of the Sea (Caracas, June 1974), the Third World Population Conference (Bucharest, August 1974) and the World Food Conference (Rome, November 1974). However, his diplomatic efforts particularly in the Middle East were overshadowed by the diplomacy of then U.S. Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger.
On 11 September 1972, Ugandan dictator Idi Amin sent a telegram to Waldheim, copies of which went to Yasser Arafat and Golda Meir. In the telegram, Amin "applauded the massacre of the Israeli Olympic athletes in Munich and said Germany was the most appropriate locale for this because it was where Hitler burned more than six million Jews." Amin also called "to expel Israel from the United Nations and to send all the Israelis to Britain, which bore the guilt for creating the Jewish state." Amidst international protest, "the UN spokesman said [in his daily press conference] it was not the secretary-general's practice to comment on telegrams sent him by heads of government. He added that the secretary-general condemned any form of racial discrimination and genocide."
After Operation Entebbe on 7 July 1976 — in which Israeli commandos freed more than 100 Israeli and Jewish passengers held captive in Entebbe Airport (Uganda's main airport) by Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and German Revolutionary Cells fighters protected by forces of dictator Idi Amin, and where all the hijackers, three hostages, and 45 Ugandan soldiers were killed — Waldheim described the raid as a "serious violation of the national sovereignty of a United Nations member state".
Waldheim ran for a second term in the 1976 UN Secretary-General selection. However, China was still opposed to Waldheim and approached several Third World countries seeking challengers. Outgoing Mexican President Luis Echeverría finally entered the race in October 1976, making Waldheim the only Secretary-General to face a contested re-selection campaign. Waldheim resoundingly defeated Echeverría in the first round of voting. China cast a single symbolic veto against Waldheim in the first round and voted for him in the second round, handing him an easy victory with 14 of 15 votes on the Security Council.
Waldheim and then-U.S. President Jimmy Carter both recorded statements for the Voyager Golden Records, which were launched into deep space on the Voyager spacecraft in 1977. He was the first Secretary-General to visit North Korea, in 1979. In 1980, Waldheim flew to Iran in an attempt to negotiate the release of the American hostages held in Tehran, but Ayatollah Khomeini refused to see him. While in Tehran, it was announced that an attempt on Waldheim's life had been foiled. Near the end of his tenure as Secretary-General, Waldheim and British popular musician Paul McCartney organized a series of concerts for the People of Kampuchea to help Cambodia recover from the damage done by Pol Pot.
Waldheim ran for an unprecedented third full term as Secretary-General in the 1981 selection. China was determined to unseat him this time and lined up a strong candidate in Salim Ahmed Salim of Tanzania. In the first round of voting, Waldheim lost to Salim by one vote. However, Salim was vetoed by the United States, while Waldheim was vetoed by China. The veto duel between China and the United States lasted a record 16 rounds. After six weeks of deadlock, Waldheim and Salim both withdrew from the race. Javier Pérez de Cuéllar of Peru won the selection and succeeded Waldheim as Secretary-General of the United Nations. The events of 1981 established a two-term limit on the office, and no Secretary-General since Waldheim has run for a third term.
Waldheim had unsuccessfully sought election as President of Austria in 1971, but his second attempt on 8 June 1986 proved successful. During his campaign for the presidency in 1985, what became known internationally as the "Waldheim affair" began. Before the presidential elections, investigative journalist Alfred Worm revealed in the Austrian weekly news magazine "Profil" that there had been several omissions about Waldheim's life between 1938 and 1945 in his recently published autobiography.
Waldheim had previously claimed to have received a medical discharge after being wounded in winter 1942. His aides at the United Nations even accused the Israeli mission of spreading rumors that he supported the Nazis. Israeli ambassador Yehuda Zvi Blum denied the charges, saying, "We don't believe Waldheim ever supported the Nazis and we never said he did. We have many differences with him, but that isn't one of them."
A short time later, beginning on 4 March 1986, the World Jewish Congress alleged that Waldheim had lied about his service in the mounted corps of the SA and had concealed his service as a special missions staff officer (Ordonnanzoffizier) for Germany's Army Group E in Yugoslavia and Greece, from 1942 to 1944, based primarily on captured German wartime records held at the United States National Archives in Washington, DC, and in other archives. The 23 March 1986 public disclosure by the World Jewish Congress that the organization had unearthed the fact that the United Nations War Crimes Commission concluded after the war that Waldheim was implicated in Nazi mass murder and should be arrested arguably transformed the Waldheim affair into the most sensational of all post-war Nazi scandals.
Waldheim called the allegations, which grew in magnitude in the ensuing months, "pure lies and malicious acts". Nevertheless, he admitted that he had known about German reprisals against partisans: "Yes, I knew. I was horrified. But what could I do? I had either to continue to serve or be executed." He said that he had never fired a shot or even seen a partisan. His former immediate superior at the time stated that Waldheim had "remained confined to a desk". Former Austrian chancellor Bruno Kreisky, of Jewish origin, denounced the actions of the World Jewish Congress as an "extraordinary infamy", adding that Austrians would not "allow the Jews abroad to ... tell us who should be our President."
Part of the reason for the controversy was Austria's refusal to address its national role in the Holocaust (many leading Nazis, including Adolf Hitler, were Austrians, and Austria became part of the Third Reich). Austria refused to pay compensation to Nazi victims, and from 1970 onwards refused to investigate Austrian citizens who were senior Nazis. Stolen Jewish art remained public property a generation after the Waldheim affair.
Because the revelations leading to the Waldheim affair came shortly before the presidential election, there has been speculation about the background of the affair.
Declassified documents from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency show that the CIA had been aware of some details of his wartime past since 1945. Information about Waldheim's wartime past was also previously published by a pro-German Austrian newspaper, "Salzburger Volksblatt", during the 1971 presidential election campaign, including the claim of an SS membership, but the matter was supposedly regarded as unimportant or even advantageous for the candidate at that time.
According to several of Waldheim's obituarists, his wartime past and the discrepancies in his autobiography, "In the Eye of the Storm", must have been known to both superpowers before he was elected UN Secretary-General, and there were rumors that the KGB had blackmailed him during his UN time (for example here and here).
In 1994, former Mossad officer Victor Ostrovsky claimed in his book "The Other Side of Deception" that Mossad doctored Waldheim's file while he was serving as Secretary-General to implicate him in Nazi crimes. These allegedly false documents were subsequently "discovered" by Benjamin Netanyahu in the UN file and triggered the "Waldheim Affair". Ostrovsky says that this was motivated by Waldheim's criticism of Israel's war in Lebanon. Controversy surrounds Ostrovsky because many of his revelations have not been sourced or otherwise confirmed, leading several critics to say that most of his work (including "The Other Side of Deception") is fictional. Ostrovsky's service in Mossad was confirmed when the Israeli government unsuccessfully attempted to stop publication of the book.
In view of the ongoing international controversy, the Austrian government decided to appoint an international committee of historians to examine Waldheim's life between 1938 and 1945. Their report found no evidence of any personal involvement in those crimes. Although Waldheim had stated that he was unaware of any crimes taking place, the committee cited evidence that Waldheim must have known about war crimes.
In response to Waldheim's denial that he knew about war crimes, Simon Wiesenthal stated that Waldheim was stationed from Thessaloniki while, over the course of several weeks, the Jewish community, which formed one-third of the population there, was sent to Auschwitz:
I could only reply what the committee of historians likewise made clear in its report: "I cannot believe you."
Wiesenthal, whose conduct in the Waldheim affair was sharply criticized by the World Jewish Congress and others, and whose "adamant defense of Waldheim" and "public, personal attacks against the WJC investigators" "ultimately tarnished his prominent global reputation," stated the committee found no evidence that Waldheim took part in any war crimes but was guilty of lying about his military record. The International Committee in February 1988 concluded that he could not stop what was going on in Yugoslavia and Greece even if he knew:
In favour of Waldheim is, that he only had very minor possibilities to act against the injustices happening. Actions against these, depending on which level the resistance occurred, were of very different importance. For a young member of the staff, who did not have any military authority on the army group level, the practical possibilities for resistance were very limited and with a high probability would not have led to any actual results. Resistance would have been limited to a formal protest or on the refusal to serve any longer in the army, which would have seemed to be a courageous act, however would have not led to any practical achievement.
On 27 April 1987, the United States Department of Justice and the United States Department of State announced that evidence amassed in an investigation conducted by the Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations (OSI) had established a prima facie case that Waldheim participated in Nazi-sponsored persecution during World War II and therefore that his entry into the United States was prohibited by federal statute. This marked the first time that a head of state had been put on an immigration watchlist. The 232-page internal Department of Justice 9 April 1987 investigative report was released in 1994 by that agency, and it is available at the agency's website. The report catalogues evidence that, the U.S. government concluded, proved that Waldheim had taken part in, among other actions: the transfer of civilian prisoners to the SS for exploitation as slave labor; the mass deportation of civilians—including Jews from Greek islands and the town of Banja Luka, Yugoslavia—to concentration and death camps; the utilization of anti-Semitic propaganda; the mistreatment and execution of Allied prisoners; and reprisal executions of hostages and other civilians. Additional allegations of participation in Nazi crimes, with citations to captured Nazi documents and other records, were leveled in a 1993 book by Eli Rosenbaum, the former U.S. federal prosecutor who had directed the World Jewish Congress investigation that led to the New York Times' initial exposure of Waldheim's hidden Nazi-era past in 1986. The authors also cited evidence that the governments of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia had covered up Waldheim's wartime past and used it to blackmail him before and during his tenure as United Nations Secretary General, and that the U.S. intelligence community had committed a major error in failing to detect the Cold War weaponization of that information by the two communist governments.
Harold H. Tittmann III, an American lawyer and author based in Europe, harshly criticized the Justice Department's OSI investigation and its report in his 2000 book, "The Waldheim Affair: Democracy Subverted". According to this author, the report was only released because of legal pressure brought by John Mapother, a retired CIA officer who had served in Austria and "had been skeptical about the existence of evidence the OSI claimed to have uncovered." Tittmann argued that OSI exceeded its statutory authority in producing the report and that it relied too heavily on material from the World Jewish Congress. Throughout, the book also strongly criticized U.S. media treatment of Waldheim. It concluded that "American reporting . . . was often biased, inaccurate, or incomplete. True, the Waldheim story was unusually complex and required much research for a proper understanding, but this complexity cannot excuse the one-sided opinions that emanated from editorial desks."
Throughout his term as President (1986–1992), Kurt Waldheim was officially deemed "persona non grata" by the United States and, officially or informally, by nearly every other nation in the world outside the Arab world.
After his term ended in 1992, Waldheim did not seek re-election. The same year, he was made an honorary member of "K.H.V. Welfia Klosterneuburg", a Roman Catholic student fraternity part of the Austrian "Cartellverband". In 1994, Pope John Paul II awarded Waldheim a knighthood in the Order of Pius IX and his wife a papal honor. He died on 14 June 2007, at the age of 88 from heart failure. On 23 June, his funeral was held at St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna, and he was buried at the Presidential Vault in the "Zentralfriedhof" ("central cemetery").
In his speech at the Cathedral, Federal President Heinz Fischer called Waldheim "a great Austrian" who had been wrongfully accused of having committed war crimes. Fischer also praised Waldheim for his efforts to solve international crises and for his contributions to world peace.
At Waldheim's own request, no foreign heads of states or governments were invited to attend his funeral except Hans-Adam II, the Prince of Liechtenstein. Also present was Luis Durnwalder, governor of the Italian province of South Tyrol. Japan and Syria were the only two countries that laid wreaths on his grave. Ban Ki-moon, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, issued a message 'voicing sadness'. In a two-page letter, published posthumously by the Austrian Press Agency the day after he died, Waldheim admitted making "mistakes" ("but these were certainly not those of a follower let alone an accomplice of a criminal regime") and asked his critics for forgiveness. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17103 |
AMD K6
The K6 microprocessor was launched by AMD in 1997. The main advantage of this particular microprocessor is that it was designed to fit into existing desktop designs for Pentium-branded CPUs. It was marketed as a product that could perform as well as its Intel Pentium II equivalent but at a significantly lower price. The K6 had a considerable impact on the PC market and presented Intel with serious competition.
The AMD K6 is a superscalar P5 Pentium-class microprocessor, manufactured by AMD, which superseded the K5.
The AMD K6 is based on the Nx686 microprocessor that NexGen was designing when it was acquired by AMD. Despite the name implying a design evolving from the K5, it is in fact a totally different design that was created by the NexGen team, including chief processor architect Greg Favor, and adapted after the AMD purchase. The K6 processor included a feedback dynamic instruction reordering mechanism, MMX instructions, and a floating-point unit (FPU). It was also made pin-compatible with Intel's Pentium, enabling it to be used in the widely available "Socket 7"-based motherboards. Like the AMD K5, Nx586, and Nx686 before it, the K6 translated x86 instructions on the fly into dynamic buffered sequences of micro-operations. A later variation of the K6 CPU, K6-2, added floating-point-based SIMD instructions, called 3DNow!.
The K6 was originally launched in April 1997, running at speeds of 166 and 200 MHz. It was followed by a 233 MHz version later in 1997. Initially, the AMD K6 processors used a Pentium II-based performance rating (PR2) to designate their speed. The PR2 rating was dropped because the rated frequency of the processor was the same as the real frequency. The release of the 266 MHz version of this chip was not until the second quarter of 1998, when AMD was able to move to the 0.25-micrometre manufacturing process. The lower voltage and higher multiplier of the K6-266 meant that it was not fully compatible with some Socket 7 motherboards, similar to the later K6-2 processors. The final iteration of the K6 design was released in May 1998, running at 300 MHz. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17104 |
KA9Q
KA9Q, also called KA9Q NOS or simply NOS, was a popular early implementation of TCP/IP and associated protocols for amateur packet radio systems and smaller personal computers connected via serial lines. It was named after the amateur radio callsign of Phil Karn, who first wrote the software for a CP/M system and then ported it to DOS on the IBM PC. As the KA9Q code was open-source, many radio amateurs modified it, so many different versions were available at the same time.
KA9Q was later maintained by Anthony Frost (callsign G8UDV) and Adam Goodfellow. It was ported to the Acorn Archimedes by Jonathan Naylor (G4KLX). Until 1995 it was the standard access software provided by British dial-up internet service provider Demon Internet.
Most modern operating systems provide a built-in implementation of TCP/IP protocol; Linux especially includes all the necessary kernel functions and support utilities for TCP/IP over amateur radio systems, as well as basic AX.25 and NET/ROM functionality. Therefore, NOS is regarded as obsolete by its original developer. It still may have its uses for embedded systems that are too small for Linux.
KA9Q is also a name for the IP-over-IP Tunneling protocol. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17106 |
HMAC
In cryptography, an HMAC (sometimes expanded as either keyed-hash message authentication code or hash-based message authentication code) is a specific type of message authentication code (MAC) involving a cryptographic hash function and a secret cryptographic key. As with any MAC, it may be used to simultaneously verify both the data integrity and the authenticity of a message.
Any cryptographic hash function, such as SHA-2 or SHA-3, may be used in the calculation of an HMAC; the resulting MAC algorithm is termed HMAC-X, where X is the hash function used (e.g. HMAC-SHA256 or HMAC-SHA3-256). The cryptographic strength of the HMAC depends upon the cryptographic strength of the underlying hash function, the size of its hash output, and the size and quality of the key.
HMAC uses two passes of hash computation. The secret key is first used to derive two keys – inner and outer. The first pass of the algorithm produces an internal hash derived from the message and the inner key. The second pass produces the final HMAC code derived from the inner hash result and the outer key. Thus the algorithm provides better immunity against length extension attacks.
An iterative hash function breaks up a message into blocks of a fixed size and iterates over them with a compression function. For example, SHA-256 operates on 512-bit blocks. The size of the output of HMAC is the same as that of the underlying hash function (e.g., 256 and 1600 bits in the case of SHA-256 and SHA-3, respectively), although it can be truncated if desired.
HMAC does not encrypt the message. Instead, the message (encrypted or not) must be sent alongside the HMAC hash. Parties with the secret key will hash the message again themselves, and if it is authentic, the received and computed hashes will match.
The definition and analysis of the HMAC construction was first published in 1996 in a paper by Mihir Bellare, Ran Canetti, and Hugo Krawczyk, and they also wrote RFC 2104 in 1997. The 1996 paper also defined a nested variant called NMAC. FIPS PUB 198 generalizes and standardizes the use of HMACs. HMAC is used within the IPsec, SSH and TLS protocols and for JSON Web Tokens.
This definition is taken from RFC 2104:
where
The following pseudocode demonstrates how HMAC may be implemented. Blocksize is 64 (bytes) when using one of the following hash functions: SHA-1, MD5, RIPEMD-128/160.
The design of the HMAC specification was motivated by the existence of attacks on more trivial mechanisms for combining a key with a hash function. For example, one might assume the same security that HMAC provides could be achieved with MAC = H("key" || "message"). However, this method suffers from a serious flaw: with most hash functions, it is easy to append data to the message without knowing the key and obtain another valid MAC ("length-extension attack"). The alternative, appending the key using MAC = H("message" || "key"), suffers from the problem that an attacker who can find a collision in the (unkeyed) hash function has a collision in the MAC (as two messages m1 and m2 yielding the same hash will provide the same start condition to the hash function before the appended key is hashed, hence the final hash will be the same). Using MAC = H("key" || "message" || "key") is better, but various security papers have suggested vulnerabilities with this approach, even when two different keys are used.
No known extension attacks have been found against the current HMAC specification which is defined as H("key" || H("key" || "message")) because the outer application of the hash function masks the intermediate result of the internal hash. The values of "ipad" and "opad" are not critical to the security of the algorithm, but were defined in such a way to have a large Hamming distance from each other and so the inner and outer keys will have fewer bits in common. The security reduction of HMAC does require them to be different in at least one bit.
The Keccak hash function, that was selected by NIST as the SHA-3 competition winner, doesn't need this nested approach and can be used to generate a MAC by simply prepending the key to the message, as it is not susceptible to length-extension attacks.
The cryptographic strength of the HMAC depends upon the size of the secret key that is used. The most common attack against HMACs is brute force to uncover the secret key. HMACs are substantially less affected by collisions than their underlying hashing algorithms alone. In particular, in 2006 Mihir Bellare proved that HMAC is a PRF under the sole assumption that the compression function is a PRF. Therefore, HMAC-MD5 does not suffer from the same weaknesses that have been found in MD5.
RFC2104 requires that "keys longer than "B" bytes are first hashed using "H"" which leads to a confusing pseudo-collision: if the key is longer than the hash block size (e.g. 64 characters for SHA-1), then codice_1 is computed as codice_2This property is sometimes raised as a possible weakness of HMAC in password-hashing scenarios: it has been demonstrated that it's possible to find a long ASCII string and a random value whose hash will be also an ASCII string, and both values will produce the same HMAC output.
In 2006, Jongsung Kim, Alex Biryukov, Bart Preneel, and Seokhie Hong showed how to distinguish HMAC with reduced versions of MD5 and SHA-1 or full versions of HAVAL, MD4, and SHA-0 from a random function or HMAC with a random function. Differential distinguishers allow an attacker to devise a forgery attack on HMAC. Furthermore, differential and rectangle distinguishers can lead to second-preimage attacks. HMAC with the full version of MD4 can be forged with this knowledge. These attacks do not contradict the security proof of HMAC, but provide insight into HMAC based on existing cryptographic hash functions.
In 2009, Xiaoyun Wang et al. presented a distinguishing attack on HMAC-MD5 without using related keys. It can distinguish an instantiation of HMAC with MD5 from an instantiation with a random function with 297 queries with probability 0.87.
In 2011 an informational RFC 6151 was published to summarize security considerations in MD5 and HMAC-MD5. For HMAC-MD5 the RFC summarizes that – although the security of the MD5 hash function itself is severely compromised – the currently known ""attacks on HMAC-MD5 do not seem to indicate a practical vulnerability when used as a message authentication code"", but it also adds that ""for a new protocol design, a ciphersuite with HMAC-MD5 should not be included"".
In May 2011, RFC 6234 was published detailing the abstract theory and source code for SHA-based HMACs.
Here are some non-empty HMAC values, assuming 8-bit ASCII or UTF-8 encoding: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17112 |
Key escrow
Key escrow (also known as a “fair” cryptosystem) is an arrangement in which the keys needed to decrypt encrypted data are held in escrow so that, under certain circumstances, an authorized third party may gain access to those keys. These third parties may include businesses, who may want access to employees' secure business-related communications, or governments, who may wish to be able to view the contents of encrypted communications (also known as "exceptional access").
The technical problem is a largely structural one. Access to protected information must be provided "only" to the intended recipient and at least one third party. The third party should be permitted access only under carefully controlled conditions, as for instance, a court order. Thus far, no system design has been shown to meet this requirement fully on a technical basis alone. All proposed systems also require correct functioning of some social linkage, as for instance the process of request for access, examination of request for 'legitimacy' (as by a court), and granting of access by technical personnel charged with access control. All such linkages / controls have serious problems from a system design security perspective. Systems in which the key may not be changed easily are rendered especially vulnerable as the accidental release of the key will result in many devices becoming totally compromised, necessitating an immediate key change or replacement of the system.
On a national level, key escrow is controversial in many countries for at least two reasons. One involves mistrust of the security of the structural escrow arrangement. Many countries have a long history of less than adequate protection of others' information by assorted organizations, public and private, even when the information is held only under an affirmative legal obligation to protect it from unauthorized access. Another is technical concerns for the additional vulnerabilities likely to be introduced by supporting key escrow operations. Thus far, no key escrow system has been designed which meets both objections and nearly all have failed to meet even one.
Key escrow is proactive, anticipating the need for access to keys; a retroactive alternative is key disclosure law, where users are required to surrender keys upon demand by law enforcement, or else face legal penalties. Key disclosure law avoids some of the technical issues and risks of key escrow systems, but also introduces new risks like loss of keys and legal issues such as involuntary self-incrimination. The ambiguous term "key recovery" is applied to both types of systems. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17114 |
Key frame
A keyframe in animation and filmmaking is a drawing that defines the starting and ending points of any smooth transition. The drawings are called "frames" because their position in time is measured in frames on a strip of film. A sequence of keyframes defines which movement the viewer will see, whereas the position of the keyframes on the film, video, or animation defines the timing of the movement. Because only two or three keyframes over the span of a second do not create the illusion of movement, the remaining frames are filled with inbetweens.
In software packages that support animation, especially 3D graphics, there are many parameters that can be changed for any one object. One example of such an object is a light (In 3D graphics, lights function similarly to real-world lights. They cause illumination, cast shadows, and create specular highlights). Lights have many parameters including light intensity, beam size, light color, and the texture cast by the light. Supposing that an animator wants the beam size to change smoothly from one value to another within a predefined period of time, that could be achieved by using keyframes. At the start of the animation, a beam size value is set. Another value is set for the end of the animation. Thus, the software program automatically interpolates the two values, creating a smooth transition.
In non-linear digital video editing, as well as in video compositing software, a keyframe is a frame used to indicate the beginning or end of a change made to a parameter. For example, a keyframe could be set to indicate the point at which audio will have faded up or down to a certain level.
In video compression, a keyframe, also known as an "intra-frame", is a frame in which a complete image is stored in the data stream. In video compression, only changes that occur from one frame to the next are stored in the data stream, in order to greatly reduce the amount of information that must be stored. This technique capitalizes on the fact that most video sources (such as a typical movie) have only small changes in the image from one frame to the next. Whenever a drastic change to the image occurs, such as when switching from one camera shot to another, or at a scene change, a keyframe must be created. The entire image for the frame must be output when the visual difference between the two frames is so great that representing the new image incrementally from the previous frame would require more data than recreating the whole image.
Because video compression only stores incremental changes between frames (except for keyframes), it is not possible to fast forward or rewind to any arbitrary spot in the video stream. That is because the data for a given frame only represents how that frame was different from the preceding one. For that reason, it is beneficial to include keyframes at arbitrary intervals while encoding video. For example, a keyframe may be output once for each 10 seconds of video, even though the video image does not change enough visually to warrant the automatic creation of the keyframe. That would allow seeking within the video stream at a minimum of 10-second intervals. The down side is that the resulting video stream will be larger in size because many keyframes are added when they are not necessary for the frame's visual representation. This drawback, however, does not produce significant compression loss when the bitrate is already set at a high value for better quality (as in the DVD MPEG-2 format). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17116 |
Kurfürstendamm
The Kurfürstendamm (; colloquially Ku'damm, ) is one of the most famous avenues in Berlin. The street takes its name from the former "Kurfürsten" (prince-electors) of Brandenburg. This very broad, long boulevard can be considered the Champs-Élysées of Berlin—lined with shops, houses, hotels and restaurants. In particular, many fashion designers have their shops there, as well as several car manufacturers' show rooms.
The avenue includes four lines of plane trees and runs for through the city. It branches off from the Breitscheidplatz, where the ruins of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church stand, and leads southwestward up to the district of Grunewald.
At the junction with Joachimstaler Straße it passes the Café Kranzler, successor of the Café des Westens, a famous venue for artists and bohémiens of the pre–World War I era. The Kurfürstendamm U-Bahn station and the Swissôtel Berlin can be found at the same junction. One block farther, near Uhlandstraße U-Bahn station, is the Kempinski hotel as well as the Theater am Kurfürstendamm, at the site of a former exhibition hall of the Berlin Secession art association.
At Adenauerplatz the boulevard reaches the district of Wilmersdorf, where it passes the Schaubühne theatre on Lehniner Platz. The more sober western or "upper" end of the Kurfürstendamm is marked by the Berlin-Halensee railway station on the Ringbahn line and the junction with the Bundesautobahn 100 "(Stadtring)" at the Rathenauplatz roundabout, featuring the long-disputed 1987 "Beton Cadillacs" sculpture by Wolf Vostell.
Luxury boutiques located on the Kurfürstendamm include Aigner, Bally, Bogner, Bottega Veneta, Brunello Cucinelli, Bucherer, Bvlgari, Burberry, Cartier, Chanel, Chopard, Dior, Dolce & Gabbana, Ermenegildo Zegna, Escada, Giorgio Armani, Gucci, Hermès, Hublot, Hugo Boss, Jil Sander, Longchamp, Louis Vuitton, Maybach, MCM, G&H Jewellers (Opening Soon), Michael Kors, Moncler, Philipp Plein, Porsche Design, Prada, Roberto Cavalli, Rolex, Saint Laurent Paris, Salvatore Ferragamo, Steiff, Tumi, Valentino, Versace, Wolford, Wunderkind, and Zilli.
Unlike the adjacent streets, the Kurfürstendamm developed out of a historic corduroy road () laid out by the Brandenburg margraves to reach the Grunewald hunting lodge, which was erected about 1542 at the behest of the Hohenzollern elector Joachim II Hector. Although the exact date of the building is unknown, an unnamed causeway leading from the Stadtschloss through the swampy area between the settlements of Charlottenburg (then called "Lietzow") and Wilmersdorf to Grunewald is already depicted in a 1685 map. The name "Churfürsten Damm" was first mentioned between 1767 and 1787.
From 1875 the former bridlepath was embellished as a boulevard with a breadth of on the personal initiative of chancellor Otto von Bismarck, who also proposed the building of the Grunewald mansions colony at its western end. In 1882, Ernst Werner von Siemens presented his Elektromote trolley bus concept at an experimental track near Halensee station. The nearby Lunapark opened in 1909, then Europe's largest amusement park, modelled on Coney Island, where boxer Max Schmeling won his first title of a German Lightheavyweight Champion in 1926. After a long period of decline the park was finally closed in 1933. Large parts are today covered by the Stadtautobahn.
In 1913 the new Marmorhaus cinema opened. A number of major film premieres were held here during the silent era.
Especially during the "Golden Twenties" the Kurfürstendamm area of the "New West" was a centre of leisure and nightlife in Berlin, an era that ended with the Great Depression and the Nazi "Machtergreifung" in 1933. The shops and businesses owned by Jewish tradespeople became the target of several pogroms, culminating in the "Reichskristallnacht" of 9 November 1938. In World War II the boulevard suffered severe damage from air raids and the Battle of Berlin.
Nevertheless, after the war rebuilding started quickly, and when Berlin was separated into East and West Berlin, the Kurfürstendamm became the leading commercial street of West Berlin in its Wirtschaftswunder days. It was therefore the site of protests and major demonstrations by the German student movement, while on 11 April 1968 spokesman Rudi Dutschke was shot in the head while leaving the office of the Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund on Kurfürstendamm No. 140.
After German reunification the Kurfürstendamm had to compete with central places like Potsdamer Platz, Friedrichstraße, and Alexanderplatz, which led to the closing of numerous cafés and cinemas. It retained the character of a flâneur and upscale shopping street as the western continuation of the Tauentzienstraße with its large department stores.
The globally unique international art project United Buddy Bears was presented in Berlin on the Kurfürstendamm during the summer of 2011. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17120 |
Kurt Schwitters
Kurt Hermann Eduard Karl Julius Schwitters (20 June 1887 – 8 January 1948) was a German artist who was born in Hanover, Germany.
Schwitters worked in several genres and media, including dadaism, constructivism, surrealism, poetry, sound, painting, sculpture, graphic design, typography, and what came to be known as installation art. He is most famous for his collages, called "Merz Pictures".
Kurt Schwitters was born on 20 June 1887 in Hanover, at Rumannstraße No.2, now: No. 8, the only child of Eduard Schwitters and his wife Henriette (née Beckemeyer). His father was (co-)proprietor of a ladies' clothes shop. The business was sold in 1898, and the family used the money to buy some properties in Hanover, which they rented out, allowing the family to live off the income for the rest of Schwitters' life in Germany. In 1893, the family moved to Waldstraße (later Waldhausenstraße) 5, future site of the "Merzbau". In 1901, Schwitters suffered his first epileptic seizure, a condition that would exempt him from military service in World War I until late in the war, when conscription was loosened.
After studying art at the Dresden Academy alongside Otto Dix and George Grosz, (although Schwitters seems to have been unaware of their work, or indeed of contemporary Dresden artists Die Brücke), 1909–1915, Schwitters returned to Hanover and started his artistic career as a post-impressionist. In 1911 he took part in his first exhibition, in Hanover. As the First World War progressed his work became darker, gradually developing a distinctive expressionist tone.
Schwitters spent the last one-and-half years of the war working as a drafter in a factory just outside Hanover. He was conscripted into the 73rd Hanoverian Regiment in March 1917, but exempted on medical grounds in June of the same year. By his own account, his time as a draftsman influenced his later work, and inspired him to depict machines as metaphors of human activity.
"In the war [at the machine factory at Wülfen] I discovered my love for the wheel and realized that machines are abstractions of the human spirit."
He married his cousin Helma Fischer on 5 October 1915. Their first son, Gerd, died within a week of birth, 9 September 1916; their second, Ernst, was born on 16 November 1918, and was to remain close to his father for the rest of his life, up to and including a shared exile in Britain together.
In 1918, his art was to change dramatically as a direct consequence of Germany's economic, political, and military collapse at the end of the First World War.
"In the war, things were in terrible turmoil. What I had learned at the academy was of no use to me and the useful new ideas were still unready... Everything had broken down and new things had to be made out of the fragments; and this is Merz. It was like a revolution within me, not as it was, but as it should have been."
Schwitters was to come into contact with Herwarth Walden after exhibiting expressionist paintings at the Hanover Secession in February 1918. He showed two "Abstraktionen" (semi-abstract expressionist landscapes) at Walden's gallery Der Sturm, in Berlin, in June 1918. This resulted in meetings with members of the Berlin Avant-garde, including Raoul Hausmann, Hannah Höch, and Hans Arp in the autumn of 1918.
"[I remember] the night he introduced himself in the Café des Westens. "I'm a painter," he said, "and I nail my pictures together." Raoul Hausmann
Whilst Schwitters still created work in an expressionist style into 1919 (and would continue to paint realist pictures up to his death in 1948), the first abstract collages, influenced in particular by recent works by Hans Arp, would appear in late 1918, which Schwitters dubbed "Merz" after a fragment of found text from the phrase "Commerz Und Privatbank" (commerce and private bank) in his work "Das Merzbild", completed in the winter of 1918–19. By the end of 1919 he had become a well-known artist, after his first one-man exhibition at Der Sturm gallery, in June 1919, and the publication, that August, of the poem "An Anna Blume" (translated as 'To Anna Flower', or 'To Eve Blossom'), a dadaist, non-sensical love poem.
As Schwitters's first overtures to Zurich and Berlin Dada made explicit mention of Merz pictures, there are no grounds for the widespread claim that he invented Merz because he was rejected by Berlin Dada.
Schwitters asked to join Berlin Dada either in late 1918 or early 1919, according to the memoirs of Raoul Hausmann. Hausmann claimed that Richard Huelsenbeck rejected the application because of Schwitters' links to Der Sturm and to Expressionism in general, which were seen by the Dadaists as hopelessly romantic and obsessed with aesthetics.
Ridiculed by Huelsenbeck as 'the Caspar David Friedrich of the Dadaist Revolution', he would reply with an absurdist short story "Franz Mullers Drahtfrühling, Ersters Kapitel: Ursachen und Beginn der grossen glorreichen Revolution in Revon" published in Der Sturm (xiii/11, 1922), which featured an innocent bystander who started a revolution 'merely by being there'.
Hausmann's anecdote about Schwitters asking to join Berlin Dada is, however, somewhat dubious, for there is well-documented evidence that Schwitters and Huelsenbeck were on amicable terms at first. When they first met in 1919, Huelsenbeck was enthusiastic about Schwitters's work and promised his assistance, while Schwitters reciprocated by finding an outlet for Huelsenbeck's Dada publications. When Huelsenbeck visited him at the end of the year, Schwitters gave him a lithograph (which he kept all his life) and though their friendship was by now strained, Huelsenbeck wrote him a conciliatory note. "You know I am well-disposed towards you. I think too that certain disagreements we have both noticed in our respective opinions should not be an impediment to our attack on the common enemy, the bourgeoisie and philistinism." It was not until mid-1920 that the two men fell out, either because of the success of Schwitters's poem "An Anna Blume" (which Huelsenbeck considered unDadaistic) or because of quarrels about Schwitters' contribution to Dadaco, a projected Dada atlas edited by Huelsenbeck. It is unlikely that Schwitters ever considered joining Berlin Dada, however, for he was under contract to Der Sturm, which offered far better long-term opportunities than Dada's quarrelsome and erratic venture. If Schwitters contacted Dadaists at this time, it was generally because he was searching for opportunities to exhibit his work.
Though not a direct participant in Berlin Dada's activities, Schwitters employed Dadaist ideas in his work, used the word itself on the cover of "An Anna Blume", and would later give Dada recitals throughout Europe on the subject with Theo van Doesburg, Tristan Tzara, Hans Arp and Raoul Hausmann. In many ways his work was more in tune with Zürich Dada's championing of performance and abstract art than Berlin Dada's agit-prop approach, and indeed examples of his work were published in the last Zürich Dada publication, "Der Zeltweg", November 1919, alongside the work of Arp and Sophie Tauber. Whilst his work was far less political than key figures in Berlin Dada, such as George Grosz and John Heartfield, he would remain close friends with various members, including Hannah Höch and Raoul Hausmann, for the rest of his career.
In 1922 Theo van Doesburg organised a series of Dada performances in the Netherlands. Various members of Dada were invited to join, but declined. Eventually the programme comprised acts and performances by Theo van Doesburg, Nelly van Doesburg as Petrò Van Doesburg, Kurt Schwitters and sometimes Vilmos Huszàr. The Dada performances took place in various cities, amongst which Amsterdam, Leiden, Utrecht and The Hague. Schwitters also performed on solo evenings, one of which took place on 13 April 1923 in Drachten, Friesland. Schwitters later on visited Drachten quite frequently, staying with a local painter, . Schwitters created several collages there, probably together with Thijs Rinsema. Their collages can sometimes hardly be distinguished from each other. From 1921 onwards there are signs of correspondence between Schwitters and an intarsia worker. From this co-operation several new works originated, where the collage technique was applied to woodwork, by incorporating several kinds of wood as a means to delineate images and letters. Thijs Rinsema also used this technique.
Merz has been called 'Psychological Collage'. Most of the works attempt to make coherent aesthetic sense of the world around Schwitters, using fragments of found objects. These fragments often make witty allusions to current events. ("Merzpicture 29a, Picture with Turning Wheel", 1920 for instance, combines a series of wheels that only turn clockwise, alluding to the general drift Rightwards across Germany after the Spartacist Uprising in January that year, whilst "Mai 191(9)", alludes to the strikes organized by the Bavarian Workers' and Soldiers' Council.) Autobiographical elements also abound; test prints of graphic designs; bus tickets; ephemera given by friends. Later collages would feature proto-pop mass media images. ("En Morn", 1947, for instance, has a print of a blonde young girl included, prefiguring the early work of Eduardo Paolozzi, whilst many works seem to have directly influenced Robert Rauschenberg, who said after seeing an exhibition of Schwitters' work at the Sidney Janis Gallery, 1959, that "I felt like he made it all just for me.")
Whilst these works were usually collages incorporating found objects, such as bus tickets, old wire and fragments of newsprint, Merz also included artists' periodicals, sculptures, sound poems and what would later be called "installations". Schwitters was to use the term Merz for the rest of the decade, but, as Isabel Schulz has noted, 'though the fundamental compositional principles of Merz remained the basis and centre of [Schwitters'] creative work [...] the term Merz disappears almost entirely from the titles of his work after 1931'.
As the political climate in Germany became more liberal and stable, Schwitters' work became less influenced by Cubism and Expressionism. He started to organize and participate in lecture tours with other members of the international avant-garde, such as Hans Arp, Raoul Hausmann and Tristan Tzara, touring Czechoslovakia, the Netherlands, and Germany with provocative evening recitals and lectures.
Schwitters published a periodical, also called "Merz", between 1923 and 1932, in which each issue was devoted to a central theme. "Merz 5" 1923, for instance, was a portfolio of prints by Hans Arp, "Merz 8/9", 1924, was edited and typeset by El Lissitsky, "Merz 14/15", 1925, was a typographical children's story entitled "The Scarecrow" by Schwitters, Kätte Steinitz and Theo van Doesburg. The last edition, "Merz 24", 1932, was a complete transcription of the final draft of the "Ursonate", with typography by Jan Tschichold.
His work in this period became increasingly Modernist in spirit, with far less overtly political context and a cleaner style, in keeping with contemporary work by Hans Arp and Piet Mondrian. His friendship around this time with El Lissitzky proved particularly influential, and "Merz" pictures in this period show the direct influence of Constructivism.
Thanks to Schwitters' lifelong patron and friend Katherine Dreier, his work was exhibited regularly in the US from 1920 onwards. In the late 1920s he became a well-known typographer; his best-known work was the catalogue for the Dammerstocksiedlung in Karlsruhe. After the demise of "Der Sturm Gallery" in 1924 he ran an advertising agency called "Merzwerbe", which held the accounts for Pelikan inks and Bahlsen biscuits, amongst others, and became the official typographer for Hanover town council between 1929 and 1934. Many of these designs, as well as test prints and proof sheets, were to crop up in contemporary Merz pictures. In a manner similar to the typographic experimentation by Herbert Bayer at the Bauhaus, and Jan Tschichold's "Die neue Typographie", Schwitters experimented with the creation of a new more phonetic alphabet in 1927. Some of his types were cast and used in his work. In the late 1920s Schwitters joined the "Deutscher Werkbund" (German Work Federation).
Alongside his collages, Schwitters also dramatically altered the interiors of a number of spaces throughout his life. The most famous was the "Merzbau", the transformation of six (or possibly more) rooms of the family house in Hanover, Waldhausenstrasse 5. This took place very gradually; work started in about 1923, the first room was finished in 1933, and Schwitters subsequently extended the Merzbau to other areas of the house until he fled to Norway in early 1937. Most of the house was let to tenants, so that the final extent of the Merzbau was less than is normally assumed. On the evidence of Schwitters' correspondence, by 1937 it had spread to two rooms of his parents' apartment on the ground floor, the adjoining balcony, the space below the balcony, one or two rooms of the attic and possibly part of the cellar. In 1943 it was destroyed in an Allied bombing raid.
Early photos show the "Merzbau" with a grotto-like surface and various columns and sculptures, possibly referring to similar pieces by Dadaists, including the "Great Plasto-Dio-Dada-Drama" by Johannes Baader, shown at the first International Dada Fair, Berlin, 1920. Work by Hannah Höch, Raoul Hausmann and Sophie Tauber, amongst others, were incorporated into the fabric of the installation. By 1933, it had been transformed into a sculptural environment, and three photos from this year show a series of angled surfaces aggressively protruding into a room painted largely in white, with a series of tableaux spread across the surfaces. In his essay 'Ich und meine Ziele' in Merz 21, Schwitters referred to the first column of his work as the "Cathedral of Erotic Misery". There is no evidence that he used this name after 1930, however. The first use of the word 'Merzbau' occurs in 1933.
Photos of the "Merzbau" were reproduced in the journal of the Paris-based group abstraction-création in 1933-34, and were exhibited in MoMA in New York in late 1936.
The Sprengel Museum in Hanover has a reconstruction of the first room of the "Merzbau".
Schwitters later created a similar environment in the garden of his house in Lysaker, near Oslo, known as the Haus am Bakken (the house on the slope). This was almost complete when Schwitters left Norway for the United Kingdom in 1940. It burnt down in 1951 and no photos survive. The last Merzbau, in Elterwater, Cumbria, England, remained incomplete on Schwitters' death in January 1948. A further environment that also served as a living space can still be seen on the island of near Molde, Norway. It is sometimes described as a fourth Merzbau, although Schwitters himself only ever referred to three. The interior has now been removed and will eventually be exhibited in the Romsdal Museum in Molde, Norway.
Schwitters composed and performed an early example of sound poetry, "Ursonate" (1922–1932; a translation of the title is "Original Sonata" or "Primeval Sonata"). The poem was influenced by Raoul Hausmann's poem "fmsbw" which Schwitters heard recited by Hausmann in Prague, 1921. Schwitters first performed the piece on 14 February 1925 at the home of Irmgard Kiepenheuer in Potsdam. He subsequently performed it regularly, both developing and extending it. He published his notations for the recital in the last Merz periodical in 1932, although he would continue to develop the piece for at least the next ten years.
As the political situation in Germany under the Nazis continued to deteriorate throughout the 1930s, Schwitters' work began to be included in the "Entartete Kunst" (Degenerate Art) touring exhibition organised by the Nazi party from 1933. He lost his contract with Hanover City Council in 1934 and examples of his work in German museums were confiscated and publicly ridiculed in 1935. By the time his close friends Christof and Luise Spengemann and their son Walter were arrested by the Gestapo in August 1936 the situation had clearly become perilous.
On 2 January 1937 Schwitters, wanted for an "interview" with the Gestapo, fled to Norway to join his son Ernst, who had already left Germany on 26 December 1936. His wife Helma decided to remain in Hanover, to manage their four properties. In the same year, his "Merz" pictures were included in the "Entartete Kunst" exhibition titled in Munich, making his return impossible.
Helma visited Schwitters in Norway for a few months each year up to the outbreak of World War II. The joint celebrations for his mother Henriette's 80th birthday and his son Ernst's engagement, held in Oslo on 2 June 1939, would be the last time the two met.
Schwitters started a second "Merzbau" while in exile in Lysaker nearby Oslo, in 1937 but abandoned it in 1940 when the Nazis invaded; this Merzbau was subsequently destroyed in a fire in 1951. His hut on the Norwegian island of Hjertøya, near Molde, is also frequently regarded as a Merzbau. For decades this building was more or less left to rot, but measures have now been taken to preserve the interior.
Following Nazi Germany's invasion of Norway, Schwitters was amongst a number of German citizens who were interned by the Norwegian authorities at in Kabelvåg on the Lofoten Islands, Following his release, Schwitters fled to Leith, Scotland with his son and daughter-in-law on the Norwegian patrol vessel between 8 and 18 June 1940. By now officially an 'enemy alien', he was moved between various internment camps in Scotland and England before arriving on 17 July 1940 in Hutchinson Camp in the Isle of Man.
The camp was situated in a collection of terraced houses around Hutchinson Square in Douglas. The camp soon comprised some 1,205 internees by end of July 1940, almost all of whom were German or Austrian. The camp was soon known as "the artist's camp", comprising as it did many artists, writers, university professors and other intellectuals. In this environment, Schwitters was popular as a character, a raconteur and as an artist.
He was soon provided studio space and took on students, many of whom would later become significant artists in their own right. He produced over 200 works during his internment, including more portraits than at any other time in his career, many of which he charged for.
He contributed at least two portraits to the second art exhibition within the camp in November 1940, and in December he contributed (in English) to the camp newsletter, "The Camp".
At least in the early days of the camp's existence, there was a shortage of art supplies which meant that the internees had to be resourceful to obtain the materials they needed: they would mix brick dust with sardine oil for paint, dig up clay when out on walks for sculpture, and rip up the lino floors to make cuttings which they then pressed through the clothes mangle to make linocut prints. Schwitters’ Merz extension of this included making sculptures in porridge:
"The room stank. A musty, sour, indescribable stink which came from three Dada sculptures which he had created from porridge, no plaster of Paris being available. The porridge had developed mildew and the statues were covered with greenish hair and bluish excrements of an unknown type of bacteria." Fred Uhlman in his memoir
Schwitters was well-liked in the camp and was a welcome distraction from the internment they were suffering. Fellow internees would later recall fondly his curious habits of sleeping under his bed and barking like a dog, as well as his regular Dadaist readings and performances. However, the epileptic condition which had not surfaced since his childhood began to recur whilst in the camp. His son attributed this to Schwitters’ depression at internment which he kept hidden from others in the camp.
For the outside world he always tried to put up a good show, but in the quietness of the room I shared with him [...], his painful disillusion was clearly revealed to me. [...] Kurt Schwitters worked with more concentration than ever during internment to stave off bitterness and hopelessness.
Schwitters applied as early as October 1940 for release (with the appeal written in English: "As artist, I can not be interned for a long time without danger for my art"), but he was refused even after his fellow internees began to be released.
"I am now the last artist here – all the others are free. But all things are equal. If I stay here, then I have plenty to occupy myself. If I am released, then I will enjoy freedom. If I manage to leave for the U.S., then I will be over there. You carry your own joy with you wherever you go." Letter to Helma Schwitters, April 1941.
Schwitters was finally released on 21 November 1941, with the help of an intervention from Alexander Dorner, Rhode Island School of Design.
After obtaining his freedom Schwitters moved to London, hoping to make good on the contacts that he had built up over his period of internment. He first moved to an attic flat at 3 St. Stephen's Crescent, Paddington. It was here that he met his future companion, Edith Thomas:
“He knocked on her door to ask how the boiler worked, and that was that. [...] She was 27 – half his age. He called her Wantee, because she was always offering tea." Gretel Hinrichsen quoted in "The Telegraph"
In London he made contact with and mixed with a range of artists, including Naum Gabo, László Moholy-Nagy and Ben Nicholson. He exhibited in a number of galleries in the city but with little success; at his first solo exhibition at The Modern Art Gallery in December 1944, forty works were displayed, priced between 15 and 40 guineas, but only one was bought.
During his years in London, the shift in Schwitters’ work continued towards an organic element that augmented the mass-produced ephemera of previous years with natural forms and muted colours. Pictures such as "Small Merzpicture With Many Parts" 1945-6, for example, used objects found on a beach, including pebbles and smooth shards of porcelain.
In August 1942 he moved with his son to 39 Westmoreland Road, Barnes, London. In October 1943 he learnt that his Merzbau in Hanover had been destroyed in allied bombing. In April 1944 he suffered his first stroke, at the age of 56, which left him temporarily paralyzed on one side of his body. His wife Helma died of cancer on 29 October 1944, although Schwitters only heard of her death in December.
Schwitters first visited the Lake District on holiday with Edith Thomas in September 1942. He moved there permanently on 26 June 1945, to 2 Gale Crescent Ambleside. However, after another stroke in February of the following year and further illness, he and Edith moved to a more easily accessible house at 4 Millans Park.
During his time in Ambleside Schwitters created a sequence of proto-pop art pictures, such as "For Käte", 1947, after the encouragement from his friend, Käte Steinitz. Having emigrated to the United States in 1936, Steinitz sent Schwitters letters describing life in the emerging consumer society, and wrapped the letters in pages of comics to give a flavour of the new world, which she encouraged Schwitters to ‘Merz’.
In March 1947, Schwitters decided to recreate the Merzbau and found a suitable location in a barn at Cylinders Farm, Elterwater, which was owned by Harry Pierce, whose portrait Schwitters had been commissioned to paint. Having been forced by a lack of other income to paint portraits and popularist landscape pictures suitable for sale to the local residents and tourists, Schwitters received notification shortly before his 60th birthday that he had been awarded a £1,000 fellowship to be transferred to him via the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in order to enable him to repair or re-create his previous Merz constructions in Germany or Norway. Instead he used it for the "Merzbarn" in Elterwater. Schwitters worked on the Merzbarn daily, travelling the five miles between his home and the barn, except for when illness kept him away. On 7 January 1948 he received the news that he had been granted British citizenship. The following day, on 8 January, Schwitters died from acute pulmonary edema and myocarditis, in Kendal Hospital.
He was buried on 10 January at St. Mary's Church, Ambleside. His grave was unmarked until 1966 when a stone was erected with the inscription "Kurt Schwitters – Creator of Merz". The stone remains as a memorial even though his body was disinterred and reburied in the Engesohde Cemetery in Hanover in 1970, the grave being marked with a marble copy of his 1929 sculpture "Die Herbstzeitlose".
One entire wall of the Merzbarn was removed to the Hatton Gallery in Newcastle for safe keeping. The shell of the barn remains in Elterwater, near Ambleside.
In 2011 the barn, but not the artwork inside it, was reconstructed in the front courtyard of the Royal Academy in London as part of its exhibition "Modern British Sculpture".
Many artists have cited Schwitters as a major influence, including Ed Ruscha, Robert Rauschenberg, Damien Hirst, Al Hansen, and Arman.
"The language of Merz now finds common acceptance and today there is scarcely an artist working with materials other than paint who does not refer to Schwitters in some way. In his bold and wide-ranging experiments he can be seen as the grandfather of Pop Art, Happenings, Concept Art, Fluxus, multimedia art and post-modernism." Gwendolyn Webster
Schwitters’ "Ja-Was?-Bild" (1920), an abstract work made of oil, paper, cardboard, fabric, wood and nails, was sold £13.9 million at Christie's London in 2014.
Schwitters' son, Ernst, largely entrusted the artistic estate of his father to Gilbert Lloyd, director of the Marlborough Gallery. However, Ernst fell victim to a crippling stroke in 1995, moving control of the estate as a whole to Kurt's grandson, Bengt Schwitters. Controversy erupted when Bengt, who has said he has "no interest in art and his grandfather's works", terminated the standing agreement between the family and the Marlborough Gallery. The Marlborough Gallery filed suit against the Schwitters estate in 1996, after confirming Ernst Schwitters' desire to have Mr. Lloyd continue to administer the estate in his will.
Professor Henrick Hanstein, an auctioneer and art expert, provided key testimony in the case, stating that Schwitters was virtually forgotten after his death in exile in England in 1948, and that the Marlborough Gallery had been vital in ensuring the artist's place in art history. The verdict, which was eventually upheld by Norway's highest court, awarded the gallery USD 2.6 million in damages.
Schwitters' visual work has now been completely catalogued in the Catalogue Raisonné. Forgeries of collages by Schwitters turn up almost weekly on eBay. Before purchasing any work supposedly by Schwitters, it is best to consult the Kurt Schwitters Archive at the Sprengel Museum in Hanover, Germany. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17121 |
Kenneth Noland
Kenneth Noland (April 10, 1924 – January 5, 2010) was an American painter. He was one of the best-known American Color Field painters, although in the 1950s he was thought of as an abstract expressionist and in the early 1960s he was thought of as a minimalist painter. Noland helped establish the Washington Color School movement. In 1977, he was honored by a major retrospective at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York that then traveled to the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. and Ohio's Toledo Museum of Art in 1978. In 2006, Noland's "Stripe Paintings" were exhibited at the Tate in London.
A son of Harry Caswell Noland (1896–1975), a pathologist, and his wife, Bessie (1897–1980), Kenneth Clifton Noland was born in Asheville, North Carolina. He had four siblings: David, Bill, Neil and Harry Jr.
Noland enlisted in the U.S. Air Force in 1942 after completing high school. A veteran of World War II, Noland took advantage of the G.I. Bill to study art at the experimental Black Mountain College in his home state of North Carolina. At Black Mountain, where two of his brothers also studied art, Noland studied with Ilya Bolotowsky, a professor who introduced him to neoplasticism and the work of Piet Mondrian. There, Noland also studied Bauhaus theory and color under Josef Albers and became interested in Paul Klee, specifically Klee's sensitivity to color.
In 1948 and 1949 Noland worked with Ossip Zadkine in Paris, and had his first exhibition of his paintings there. After returning to the U.S., he taught in Washington, D.C. at Catholic University (1951–1960) and the Institute of Contemporary Arts. In the early 1950s he met Morris Louis in D.C. while teaching night classes at the Washington Workshop Center for the Arts. He became friends with Louis, and after being introduced by Clement Greenberg to Helen Frankenthaler and seeing her new paintings at her studio in New York City in 1953, he and Louis adopted her "soak-stain" technique of allowing thinned paint to soak into unprimed canvases.
Most of Noland's paintings fall into one of four groups: circles (or targets), chevrons, stripes and shaped canvases. His preoccupation with the relationship of the image to the containing edge of the picture led him to a series of studies of concentric rings or bullseyes, commonly referred to as targets, which, like the one reproduced here called "Beginning" from 1958, used unlikely color combinations. This also led Noland away from Morris Louis in 1958. In 1964, he was included in the exhibition "Post-Painterly Abstraction" curated by Clement Greenberg, which traveled the country and helped to firmly establish Color Field painting as an important new movement in the contemporary art of the 1960s. Noland pioneered the shaped canvas, initially with a series of symmetrical and asymmetrical diamonds or chevrons. In these paintings, the edges of the canvas become as structurally important as the center. During the 1970s and 1980s his shaped canvases were highly irregular and asymmetrical. These resulted in increasingly complex structures of highly sophisticated and controlled color and surface integrity.
Instead of painting the canvas with a brush, Noland's style was to stain the canvas with color. This idea sought to remove the artist through brushstrokes. This made the piece about the art, not the artist. He emphasized spatial relationships in his work by leaving unstained, bare canvas as a contrast against the colors used throughout his paintings. Noland used simplified abstraction so the design would not detract from the use of color.
Noland also taught; the sculptor Jennie Lea Knight was among his pupils.
Noland was married to:
Noland had an affair in the 1960s with artist and socialite Mary Pinchot Meyer.
Noland died of kidney cancer at his home in Port Clyde, Maine, on January 5, 2010 at the age of 85.
Noland had his first solo exhibition at Galerie Raymond Creuze in Paris in 1948. In 1957, he had his first New York solo exhibition at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery. In 1964, Noland occupied half the American pavilion at the Venice Biennale. In 1965, his work was exhibited at the Washington Gallery of Modern Art and the Jewish Museum (New York). Noland's final solo exhibition, "Kenneth Noland Shaped Paintings 1981-82", opened on October 29, 2009 at the Leslie Feely Fine Art Gallery on E.68th St. in New York City and was scheduled to close on January 9, 2010, though the closing date was later extended to January 16. In 2010, Noland was honored with a solo presentation of his work at the Guggenheim Museum, entitled "Kenneth Noland, 1924–2010: A Tribute". In addition, his work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at a range of international institutions, including the Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City (1983); Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, Bilbao, Spain (1985); Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (2004); Tate, Liverpool (2006); and Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio (1986 and 2007). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17122 |
Karachi
Karachi (; Sindhi: ڪراچي; ALA-LC: , ) is the capital of the Pakistani province of Sindh. It is the largest city in Pakistan and seventh largest city proper in the world. Ranked as a beta-global city, the city is Pakistan's premier industrial and financial centre, with an estimated GDP of $114 billion (PPP) as of 2014. Karachi is Pakistan's most cosmopolitan city, its most linguistically, ethnically, and religiously diverse city, as well as one of Pakistan's most secular and socially liberal cities. With its location on the Arabian Sea, Karachi serves as a transport hub, and is home to Pakistan's two largest seaports, the Port of Karachi and Port Bin Qasim, as well as Pakistan's busiest airport, Jinnah International Airport.
Though the Karachi region has been inhabited for millennia, the city was founded as the fortified village of "Kolachi" in 1729. The settlement drastically increased in importance with the arrival of British East India Company in the mid 19th century. The British embarked on major works to transform the city into a major seaport, and connected it with their extensive railway network. By the time of the Partition of British India, the city was the largest in Sindh with an estimated population of 400,000. Following the independence of Pakistan, the city's population increased dramatically with the arrival of hundreds of thousands of Muslim refugees from India. The city experienced rapid economic growth following independence, attracting migrants from throughout Pakistan and South Asia. According to the 2017 census, Karachi's total population was 16,051,521 and its urban population was 14.9 million. Karachi is one of the world's fastest growing cities, and has communities representing almost every ethnic group in Pakistan. Karachi is home to more than two million Bangladeshi immigrants, a million Afghan refugees, and up to 400,000 Rohingyas from Myanmar.
Karachi is now Pakistan's premier industrial and financial centre. The city has a formal economy estimated to be worth $114 billion which is the largest in Pakistan. Karachi collects more than a third of Pakistan's tax revenue, and generates approximately 20% of Pakistan's GDP. Approximately 30% of Pakistani industrial output is from Karachi, while Karachi's ports handle approximately 95% of Pakistan's foreign trade. Approximately 90% of the multinational corporations operating in Pakistan are headquartered in Karachi. Karachi is considered to be Pakistan's fashion capital, and has hosted the annual Karachi Fashion Week since 2009.
Known as the "City of Lights" in the 1960s and 1970s for its vibrant nightlife, Karachi was beset by sharp ethnic, sectarian, and political conflict in the 1980s with the arrival of weaponry during the Soviet–Afghan War. The city had become well known for its high rates of violent crime, but recorded crimes sharply decreased following a controversial crackdown operation against criminals, the MQM political party, and Islamist militants initiated in 2013 by the Pakistan Rangers. As a result of the operation, Karachi went from being ranked the world's 6th most dangerous city for crime in 2014, to 93rd by early 2020.
Modern Karachi was reputedly founded in 1729 as the settlement of "Kolachi-jo-Goth". The new settlement is said to have been named in honour of Mai Kolachi, whose son is said to have slain a man-eating crocodile in the village after his elder brothers had already been killed by it. The name "Karachee," a shortened and corrupted version the original name "Kolachi-jo-Goth", was used for the first time in a Dutch report from 1742 about a shipwreck near the settlement.
The region around Karachi has been the site of human habitation for millennia. Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic sites have been excavated in the Mulri Hills along Karachi's northern outskirts. These earliest inhabitants are believed to have been hunter-gatherers, with ancient flint tools discovered at several sites.
The expansive Karachi region is believed to have been known to the ancient Greeks, and may have been the site of Barbarikon, an ancient seaport which was located at the nearby mouth of the Indus River. Karachi may also have been referred to as "Ramya" in ancient Greek texts.
The ancient site of Krokola, a natural harbor west of the Indus where Alexander the Great sailed his a fleet for Achaemenid Assyria, may have been located near the mouth of Karachi's Malir River, though some believe it was located near Gizri. No other natural harbor exists near the mouth of the Indus that could accommodate a large fleet. Nearchus, who commanded Alexander's naval fleet, also mentioned a hilly island by the name of Morontobara and an adjacent flat island named "Bibakta", which colonial historians identified as Karachi's Manora Point and Kiamari (or Clifton), respectively, based on Greek descriptions. Both areas were island until well into the colonial era, when silting in led to them being connected to the mainland.
In 711 CE, Muhammad bin Qasim conquered the Sindh and Indus Valley and the port of Debal, from where he launched his forces further into the Indus Valley in 712. Some have identified the port with Karachi, though some argue the location was somewhere between Karachi and the nearby city of Thatta.
Under Mirza Ghazi Beg, the Mughal administrator of Sindh, the development of coastal Sindh and the Indus River Delta was encouraged. Under his rule, fortifications in the region acted as a bulwark against Portuguese incursions into Sindh. In 1553–54, Ottoman admiral Seydi Ali Reis, mentioned a small port along the Sindh coast by the name of "Kaurashi" which may have been Karachi. The Chaukhandi tombs in Karachi's modern suburbs were built around this time between the 15th and 18th centuries.
19th century Karachi historian Seth Naomal Hotchand recorded that a small settlement of 20–25 huts existed along the Karachi Harbour that was known as "Dibro", which was situated along a pool of water known as "Kolachi-jo-Kun." In 1725, a band of Balochi settlers from Makran and Kalat had settled in the hamlet after fleeing droughts and tribal feuds.
A new settlement was built in 1729 at the site of "Dibro", which came to be known as "Kolachi-jo-Goth" ("The village of "Kolachi")." The new settlement is said to have been named in honour of Mai Kolachi, a resident of the old settlement whose son is said to have slain a man-eating crocodile. Kolachi was about 40 hectares in size, with some smaller fishing villages scattered in its vicinity. The founders of the new fortified settlement were Sindhi Baniyas, and are said to arrived from the nearby town of Kharak Bandar after the harbour there silted in 1728 after heavy rains. Kolachi was fortified, and defended with cannons imported from Muscat, Oman. Under the Talpurs, the "Rah-i-Bandar" road was built to connect the city's port to the caravan terminals. This road would eventually be further developed by the British into Bandar Road, which was renamed Muhammad Ali Jinnah Road.
The name "Karachee" was used for the first time in a Dutch document from 1742, in which a merchant ship "de Ridderkerk" is shipwrecked near the settlement. In 1770, Karachi came under the control of the Khan of Kalat, which attracted a second wave of Balochi settlers. In 1795, Karachi was annexed by the Talpurs, triggering a third wave of Balochi settlers who arrived from interior Sindh and southern Punjab. The Talpurs built the Manora Fort in 1797, which was used to protect Karachi's Harbor from al-Qasimi pirates.
In 1799 or 1800, the founder of the Talpur dynasty, Mir Fateh Ali Khan, allowed the East India Company under Nathan Crow to establish a trading post in Karachi. He was allowed to build a house for himself in Karachi at that time, but by 1802 was ordered to leave the city. The city continued to be ruled by the Talpurs until it was occupied by forces under the command of John Keane in February 1839.
The British East India Company captured Karachi on 3February 1839 after opened fire and quickly destroyed Manora Fort, which guarded Karachi Harbour at Manora Point. Karachi's population at the time was an estimated 8,000 to 14,000, and was confined to the walled city in Mithadar, with suburbs in what is now the Serai Quarter. British troops, known as the "Company Bahadur" established a camp to the east of the captured city, which became the precursor to the modern Karachi Cantonment. The British further developed the Karachi Cantonment as a military garrison to aid the British war effort in the First Anglo-Afghan War.
Sindh's capital was shifted from Hyderabad to Karachi in 1840 until 1843, when Karachi was annexed to the British Empire after Major General Charles James Napier captured the rest of Sindh following his victory against the Talpurs at the Battle of Miani. Following the 1843 annexation, the entire province was amalgamated into the Bombay Presidency for the next 93 years. A few years later in 1846, Karachi suffered a large cholera outbreak, which led to the establishment of the Karachi Cholera Board (predecessor to the city's civic government).
The city grew under the administration of its new Commissioner, Henry Bartle Edward Frere, who was appointed in 1850. Karachi was recognized for its strategic importance, prompting the British to establish the Port of Karachi in 1854. Karachi rapidly became a transportation hub for British India owing to newly built port and rail infrastructure, as well as the increase in agricultural exports from the opening of productive tracts of newly irrigated land in Punjab and interior Sindh. By 1856, the value of goods traded through Karachi reached ₤855,103, leading to the establishment of merchant offices and warehouses. The population in 1856 is estimated to have been 57,000. During the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, the 21st Native Infantry, then stationed in Karachi, mutinied and declared allegiance to rebel forces in September 1857, though the British were able to quickly defeat the rebels and reassert control over the city.
Following the Rebellion, British colonial administrators continued to develop the city's infrastructure, but continued to neglect localities like Lyari, which was home to the city's original population of Sindhi fishermen and Balochi nomads. At the outbreak of the American Civil War, Karachi's port became an important cotton-exporting port, with "Indus Steam Flotilla" and "Orient Inland Steam Navigation Company" established to transport cotton from interior Sindh to Karachi's port, and onwards to textile mills in England. With increased economic opportunities, economic migrants from several ethnicities and religions, including Anglo-British, Parsis, Marathis, and Goan Christians, among others, established themselves in Karachi, with many setting-up businesses in the new commercial district of Saddar. Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, was born in Karachi's Wazir Mansion in 1876 to such migrants from Gujarat. Public building works were undertaken at this time in Gothic and Indo-Saracenic styles, including the construction of Frere Hall in 1865 and the later Empress Market in 1889.
With the completion of the Suez Canal in 1869, Karachi's position as a major port increased even further. In 1878, the British Raj connected Karachi with the network of British India's vast railway system. In 1887, Karachi Port underwent radical improvements with connection to the railways, along with expansion and dredging of the port, and construction of a breakwater. Karachi's first synagogue was established in 1893. By 1899, Karachi had become the largest wheat-exporting port in the East. In 1901, Karachi's population was 117,000 with a further 109,000 included in the Municipal area.
Under the British, the city's municipal government was established. Known as the "Father of Modern Karachi", mayor Seth Harchandrai Vishandas led the municipal government to improve sanitary conditions in the Old City, as well as major infrastructure works in the New Town after his election in 1911. in 1914, Karachi had become the largest wheat-exporting port of the entire British Empire, after large irrigation works in interior Sindh were initiated to increase wheat and cotton yields. By 1924, the "Drigh Road Aerodrome" was established, now the Faisal Air Force Base.
Karachi's increasing importance as a cosmopolitan transportation hub lead to the influence of non-Sindhis in Sindh's administration. Half the city was born outside of Karachi by as early as 1921. Native Sindhis were upset by this influence, and so 1936, Sindh was re-established as a province separate from the Bombay Presidency with Karachi was once again made capital of Sindh. In 1941, the population of the city had risen to 387,000.
At the dawn of independence following the success of the Pakistan Movement in 1947, Karachi was Sindh's largest city with a population of over 400,000. Partition resulted in the exodus of much of the city's Hindu population, though Karachi, like most of Sindh, remained relatively peaceful compared to cities in Punjab. Riots erupted on 6January 1948, after which most of Sindh's Hindu population left for India, with assistance of the Indian government.
Karachi became the focus for the resettlement of middle-class Muslim "Muhajir" refugees who fled India, with 470,000 refugees in Karachi by May 1948, leading to a drastic alteration of the city's demography. In 1941, Muslims were 42% of Karachi's population, but by 1951 made up 96% of the city's population. The city's population had tripled between 1941 and 1951. Urdu replaced Sindhi as Karachi's most widely spoken language; Sindhi was the mother tongue of 51% of Karachi in 1941, but only 8.5% in 1951, while Urdu grew to become the mother tongue of 51% of Karachi's population. 100,000 Muhajir refugees arrived annually in Karachi until 1952.
Karachi was selected as the first capital of Pakistan, and was administered as a federal district separate from Sindh beginning in 1948, until the capital was shifted to Rawalpindi in 1958. While foreign embassies shifted away from Karachi, the city is host to numerous consulates and honorary consulates. Between 1958 and 1970, Karachi's role as capital of Sindh was ceased due to the One Unit programme enacted by President Iskander Mirza.
Karachi of the 1960s was regarded as an economic role model around the world, with Seoul, South Korea, borrowing from the city's second "Five-Year Plan". Several examples of Modernist architect were built in Karachi during this period, including the Mazar-e-Quaid mausoleum, the distinct Masjid-e-Tooba, and the Habib Bank Plaza (the tallest building in all of South Asia at the time). The city's population by 1961 had grown 369% compared to 1941. By the mid 1960s, Karachi began to attract large numbers of Pashtun and Punjabis from northern Pakistan.
The 1970s saw a construction boom funded by remittances and investments from the Gulf States, and the appearance of apartment buildings in the city. Real-estate prices soared during this period, leading to a worsening housing crisis. The period also saw labour unrest in Karachi's industrial estates beginning in 1970 that were violently repressed by the government of President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto from 1972 onwards. To appease conservative forces, Bhutto banned alcohol in Pakistan, and cracked-down of Karachi's discotheques and cabarets - leading to the closure of Karachi's once-lively nightlife. The city's art scene was further repressed during the rule of dictator General Zia-ul-Haq. Zia's Islamization policies lead the Westernized upper-middle classes of Karachi to largely withdraw from the public sphere, and instead form their own social venues that became inaccessible to the poor.
The 1980s and 1990s saw an influx of almost one million Afghan refugees into Karachi fleeing the Soviet–Afghan War; who were in turn followed in smaller numbers by refugees escaping from post-revolution Iran. At this time, Karachi was also rocked by political conflict, while crime rates drastically increased with the arrival of weaponry from the War in Afghanistan. Conflict between the MQM party, and ethnic Sindhis, Pashtuns, and Punjabis was sharp. The party and its vast network of supporters were targeted by Pakistani security forces as part of the controversial Operation Clean-up in 1992an effort to restore peace in the city that lasted until 1994. Anti-Hindu riots also broke out in Karachi in 1992 in retaliation for the demolition of the Babri Mosque in India by a group of Hindu nationalists earlier that year.
The 2010s saw another influx of hundreds of thousands of Pashtun refugees fleeing conflict in North-West Pakistan and the 2010 Pakistan floods. By this point Karachi had become widely known for its high rates of violent crime, usually in relation to criminal activity, gang-warfare, sectarian violence, and extrajudicial killings. Recorded crimes sharply decreased following a controversial crackdown operation against criminals, the MQM party, and Islamist militants initiated in 2013 by the Pakistan Rangers. As a result of the operation, Karachi went from being ranked the world's 6th most dangerous city for crime in 2014, to 93rd by early 2020.
Karachi is located on the coastline of Sindh province in southern Pakistan, along a natural harbour on the Arabian Sea. Karachi is built on a coastal plain with scattered rocky outcroppings, hills and marshlands. Mangrove forests grow in the brackish waters around the Karachi Harbour, and farther southeast towards the expansive Indus River Delta. West of Karachi city is the Cape Monze, locally known as Ras Muari, which is an area characterised by sea cliffs, rocky sandstone promontories and undeveloped beaches.
Within the city of Karachi are two small ranges: the Khasa Hills and Mulri Hills, which lie in the northwest and act as a barrier between North Nazimabad and Orangi. Karachi's hills are barren and are part of the larger Kirthar Range, and have a maximum elevation of .
Between the hills are wide coastal plains interspersed with dry river beds and water channels. Karachi has developed around the Malir River and Lyari Rivers, with the Lyari shore being the site of the settlement for "Kolachi". To the west of Karachi lies the Indus River flood plain.
Karachi has a hot desert climate (Köppen: "BWh") dominated by a long "Summer Season" while moderated by oceanic influence from the Arabian Sea. The city has low annual average precipitation levels (approx. per annum), the bulk of which occurs during the July–August monsoon season. While the summers are hot and humid, cool sea breezes typically provide relief during hot summer months, though Karachi is prone to deadly heat waves, though a text message-based early warning system is now in place which helped prevent any fatalities during an unusually strong heatwave in October 2017. The winter climate is dry and lasts between December and February. It is dry and pleasant relative to the warm hot season, which starts in March and lasts until monsoons arrive in June. Proximity to the sea maintains humidity levels at near-constant levels year-round.
The city's highest monthly rainfall, , occurred in July 1967. The city's highest rainfall in 24 hours occurred on 7August 1953, when about of rain lashed the city, resulting in major flooding.
Karachi's highest recorded temperature is which was recorded on 9May 1938, and the lowest is recorded on 21 January 1934.
The city first developed around the Karachi Harbour, and owes much of its growth to its role as a seaport at the end of the 18th century, contrasted with Pakistan's millennia-old cities such as Lahore, Multan, and Peshawar. Karachi's Mithadar neighbourhood represents the extent of "Kolachi" prior to British rule.
British Karachi was divided between the "New Town" and the "Old Town", with British investments focused primarily in the New Town. The Old Town was a largely unplanned neighbourhood which housed most of the city's indigenous residents, and had no access to sewerage systems, electricity, and water. The New Town was subdivided into residential, commercial, and military areas. Given the strategic value of the city, the British developed the Karachi Cantonment as a military garrison in the New Town to aid the British war effort in the First Anglo-Afghan War.
The city's development was largely confined to the area north of the Chinna Creek prior to independence, although the seaside area of Clifton was also developed as a posh locale under the British, and its large bungalows and estates remain some of the city's most desirable properties. The aforementioned historic areas form the oldest portions of Karachi, and contain its most important monuments and government buildings, with the I. I. Chundrigar Road being home to most of Pakistan's banks, including the Habib Bank Plaza which was Pakistan's tallest building from 1963 until the early 2000s.
Situated on a coastal plain northwest of Karachi's historic core lies the sprawling district of Orangi. North of the historic core is the largely middle-class district of Nazimabad, and upper-middle class North Nazimabad, which were developed in the 1950s. To the east of the historic core is the area known as Defence, an expansive upscale suburb developed and administered by the Pakistan Army. Karachi's coastal plains along the Arabian Sea south of Clifton were also developed much later as part of the greater Defence Housing Authority project.
Karachi's city limits also include several islands, including Baba and Bhit Islands, Oyster Rocks, and Manora, a former island which is now connected to the mainland by a thin 12-kilometre long shoal known as Sandspit. The city has been described as one divided into sections for those able to afford to live in planned localities with access to urban amenities, and those who live in unplanned communities with inadequate access to such services. Up to 60% of Karachi's residents live in such unplanned communities.
Karachi is Pakistan's financial and commercial capital. Since Pakistan's independence, Karachi has been the centre of the nation's economy, and remain's Pakistan's largest urban economy despite the economic stagnation caused by sociopolitical unrest during the late 1980s and 1990s. The city forms the centre of an economic corridor stretching from Karachi to nearby Hyderabad, and Thatta.
, Karachi had an estimated GDP (PPP) of $114 billion. , the city's gross domestic product (GDP) by purchasing power parity (PPP) was estimated at $78 billion with a projected average growth rate of 5.5 percent. Karachi contributes the bulk of Sindh's gross domestic product. and accounts for approximately 20% of the total GDP of Pakistan. The city has a large informal economy which is not typically reflected in GDP estimates. The informal economy may constitute up to 36% of Pakistan's total economy, versus 22% of India's economy, and 13% of the Chinese economy. The informal sector employs up to 70% of the city's workforce. In 2018 The Global Metro Monitor Report ranked Karachi's economy as the best performing metropolitan economy in Pakistan.
Today along with Pakistan's continued economic expansion Karachi is now ranked third in the world for consumer expenditure growth with its market anticipated to increase by 6.6% in real terms in 2018 It is also ranked among the top cities in the world by anticipated increase of number of households (1.3 million households) with annual income above $20,000 dollars measured at PPP exchange rates by year 2025. The Global FDI Intelligence Report 2017/2018 published by Financial Times ranks Karachi amongst the top 10 Asia pacific cities of the future for FDI strategy.
Most of Pakistan's public and private banks are headquartered on Karachi's I. I. Chundrigar Road, which is known as "Pakistan's Wall Street", with a large percentage of the cashflow in the Pakistani economy taking place on I. I. Chundrigar Road. Most major foreign multinational corporations operating in Pakistan have their headquarters in Karachi. Karachi is also home to the Pakistan Stock Exchange, which was rated as Asia's best performing stock market in 2015 on the heels of Pakistan's upgrade to emerging-market status by MSCI.
Karachi has been the pioneer in cable networking in Pakistan with the most sophisticated of the cable networks of any city of Pakistan,
and has seen an expansion of information and communications technology and electronic media. The city has become a software outsourcing hub for Pakistan. Several independent television and radio stations are based in Karachi, including Business Plus, AAJ News, Geo TV, KTN, Sindh TV, CNBC Pakistan, TV ONE, Express TV, ARY Digital, Indus Television Network, Samaa TV, Abb Takk News, Bol TV, and Dawn News, as well as several local stations.
Industry contributes a large portion of Karachi's economy, with the city home to several of Pakistan's largest companies dealing in textiles, cement, steel, heavy machinery, chemicals, and food products. The city is home to approximately 30 percent of Pakistan's manufacturing sector, and produces approximately 42 percent of Pakistan's value added in large scale manufacturing. At least 4500 industrial units form Karachi's formal industrial economy. Karachi's informal manufacturing sector employs far more people than the formal sector, though proxy data suggest that the capital employed and value added from such informal enterprises is far smaller than that of formal sector enterprises. An estimated 63% of the Karachi's workforce is employed in trade and manufacturing.
Karachi Export Processing Zone, SITE, Korangi, Northern Bypass Industrial Zone, Bin Qasim and North Karachi serve as large industrial estates in Karachi. The Karachi Expo Centre also complements Karachi's industrial economy by hosting regional and international exhibitions.
As home to Pakistan's largest ports and a large portion of its manufacturing base, Karachi contributes a large share of Pakistan's collected tax revenue. As most of Pakistan's large multinational corporations are based in Karachi, income taxes are paid in the city even though income may be generated from other parts of the country. As home to the country's two largest ports, Pakistani customs officials collect the bulk of federal duty and tariffs at Karachi's ports, even if those imports are destined for one of Pakistan's other provinces. Approximately 25% of Pakistan's national revenue is "generated" in Karachi.
According to the Federal Board of Revenue's 2006–2007 year book, tax and customs units in Karachi were responsible for 46.75% of direct taxes, 33.65% of federal excise tax, and 23.38% of domestic sales tax. Karachi accounts for 75.14% of customs duty and 79% of sales tax on imports, and collects 53.38% of the total collections of the Federal Board of Revenue, of which 53.33% are customs duty and sales tax on imports.
Karachi is the most linguistically, ethnically, and religiously diverse city in Pakistan. The city is a melting pot of ethno-linguistic groups from throughout Pakistan, as well as migrants from other parts of Asia. The city's inhabitants are referred to by the demonym "Karachiite". The 2017 census numerated Karachi's population to be 14,910,352, having grown 2.49% per year since the 1998 census, which had listed Karachi's population at approximately 9.3 million. The city's inhabitants are referred to by the demonym "Karachiite" in English, and "Karāchīwālā" in Urdu.
At the end of the 19th century, Karachi had an estimated population of 105,000. By the dawn of Pakistan's independence in 1947, the city had an estimated population of 400,000. The city's population grew dramatically with the arrival of hundreds of thousands of Muslim refugees from the newly independent Republic of India. Rapid economic growth following independence attracted further migrants from throughout Pakistan and South Asia. The 2017 census numerated Karachi's population to be 14,910,352, having grown 2.49% per year since the 1998 census, which had listed Karachi's population at approximately 9.3 million.
Lower than expected population figures from the census suggest that Karachi's poor infrastructure, law and order situation, and weakened economy relative to other parts of Pakistan made the city less attractive to in-migration than previously thought. The figure is disputed by all the major political parties in Sindh. Karachi's population grew by 59.8% since the 1998 census to 14.9 million, while Lahore city grew 75.3%though Karachi's census district had not been altered by the provincial government since 1998, while Lahore's had been expanded by Punjab's government, leading to some of Karachi's growth to have occurred outside the city's census boundaries. Karachi's population had grown at a rate of 3.49% between the 1981 and 1998 census, leading many analysts to estimate Karachi's 2017 population to be approximately 18 million by extrapolating a continued annual growth rate of 3.49%. Some had expected that the city's population to be between 22 and 30 million, which would require an annual growth rate accelerating to between 4.6% and 6.33%.
Political parties in the province have suggested the city's population has been underestimated in a deliberate attempt to undermine the political power of the city and province. Senator Taj Haider from the PPP claimed he had official documents revealing the city's population to be 25.6 million in 2013, while the Sindh Bureau of Statistics, part of by the PPP-led provincial administration, estimated Karachi's 2016 population to be 19.1 million.
The oldest portions of modern Karachi reflect the ethnic composition of the first settlement, with Balochis and Sindhis continuing to make up a large portion of the Lyari neighbourhood, though many of the residents are relatively recent migrants. Following Partition, large numbers of Hindus left Pakistan for the newly-independent Dominion of India (later the Republic of India), while a larger percentage of Muslim migrant and refugees from India settled in Karachi. The city grew 150% during the ten period between 1941 and 1951 with the new arrivals from India, who made up 57% of Karachi's population in 1951. The city is now considered a melting pot of Pakistan, and is the country's most diverse city.
In 2011, an estimated 2.5 million foreign migrants lived in the city, mostly from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, and Sri Lanka.
Much of Karachi's citizenry descend from Urdu-speaking migrants and refugees from North India who became known by the Arabic term for "Migrant": Muhajir. The first Muhajirs of Karachi arrived in 1946 in the aftermath of the Great Calcutta Killings and subsequent 1946 Bihar riots. The city's wealthy Hindus opposed the resettlement of refugees near their homes, and so many refugees were accommodated in the older and more congested parts of Karachi. The city witnessed a large influx of Muhajirs following Partition, who were drawn to the port city and newly designated federal capital for its white-collar job opportunities. Muhajirs continued to migrate to Pakistan throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, with Karachi remaining the primary destination of Indian Muslim migrants throughout those decades. The Muhajir Urdu-speaking community in the 2017 census forms slightly less than 45% of the city's population. Muhajirs form the bulk of Karachi's middle class. Muhajirs are regarded as the city's most secular community, while other minorities such as Christians and Hindus increasingly regard themselves as part of the Muhajir community.
Karachi is home to a wide array of non-Urdu speaking Muslim peoples from what is now the Republic of India. The city has a sizable community of Gujarati, Marathi, Konkani-speaking refugees. Karachi is also home to a several-thousand member strong community of Malabari Muslims from Kerala in South India. These ethno-linguistic groups are being assimilated in the Urdu-speaking community.
During the period of rapid economic growth in the 1960s, large numbers Pashtuns from the NWFP migrated to Karachi with Afghan Pashtun refugees settling in Karachi during the 80's. By some estimates, Karachi is home to the world's largest urban Pashtun population, with more Pashtun citizens than the FATA. While generally considered to be one of Karachi's most conservative communities, Pashtuns in Karachi generally vote for the secular Awami National Party rather than religious parties. Pashtuns from Afghanistan are regarded as the most conservative community. Pashtuns from Pakistan's Swat Valley, in contrast, are generally seen as more liberal in social outlook. The Pashtun community forms the bulk of manual labourers and transporters.
Migrants from Punjab began settling in Karachi in large numbers in the 1960s, and now make up an estimated 14% of Karachi's population. The community forms the bulk of the city's police force, and also form a large portion of Karachi's entrepreneurial classes and direct a larger portion of Karachi's service-sector economy. The bulk of Karachi's Christian community, which makes up 2.5% of the city's population, is Punjabi.
Despite being the capital of Sindh province, only 6–8% of the city is Sindhi. Sindhis form much of the municipal and provincial bureaucracy. 4% of Karachi's population speaks Balochi as its mother tongue, though most Baloch speakers are of Sheedi heritagea community that traces its roots to Africa.
Following the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971 and independence of Bangladesh, thousands of Urdu-speaking Biharis arrived in the city, preferring to remain Pakistani rather than live in the newly-independent country. Large numbers of Bengalis also migrated from Bangladesh to Karachi during periods of economic growth in the 1980s and 1990s. Karachi is now home to an estimated 2.5 to 3million ethnic Bengalis living in Pakistan. Rohingya refugees from Myanmar, who speak a dialect of Bengali and are sometimes regarded as Bengalis, also live in the city. Karachi is home to an estimated 400,000 Rohingya residents. Large scale Rohingya migration to Karachi made Karachi one of the largest population centres of Rohingyas in the world outside of Myanmar.
Central Asian migrants from Uzbekistan and Kyrghyzstan have also settled in the city. Domestic workers from the Philippines are employed in Karachi's posh locales, while many of the city's teachers hail from Sri Lanka. Expatriates from China began migrating to Karachi in the 1940s, to work as dentists, chefs and shoemakers, while many of their decedents continue to live in Pakistan. The city is also home to a small number of British and American expatriates.
During World War II, about 3,000 Polish refugees from the Soviet Union, with some Polish families who chose to remain in the city after Partition. Post-Partition Karachi also once had a sizable refugee community from post-revolutionary Iran.
Karachi is one of Pakistan's most religiously diverse cities. "Karachiites" adhere to numerous sects and sub-sects of Islam, as well as Protestant Christianity, and community of Goan Catholics. The city also is home to large numbers of Hindus, and a small community of Zoroastrians. According to Nichola Khan Karachi is also the world's largest Muslim city.
Prior to Pakistan's independence in 1947, the population of the city was estimated to be 50% Muslim, 40% Hindu, with the remaining 10% primarily Christians (both British and native), with a small numbers of Jews. Following the independence of Pakistan, much of Karachi's Sindhi Hindu population left for India while Muslim refugees from India in turn settled in the city. The city continued to attract migrants from throughout Pakistan, who were overwhelmingly Muslim, and city's population nearly doubled again in the 1950s. As a result of continued migration, over 96.5% of the city currently is estimated to be Muslim.
Karachi is overwhelmingly Muslim, though the city is one of Pakistan's most secular cities. Approximately 85% of Karachi's Muslims are Sunnis, while 15% are Shi'ites. Sunnis primarily follow the Hanafi school of jurisprudence, with Sufism influencing religious practices by encouraging reverence for Sufi saints such as Abdullah Shah Ghazi and Mewa Shah. Shi'ites are predominantly Twelver, with a significant Ismaili minority which is further subdivided into Nizaris, Mustaalis, Dawoodi Bohras, and Sulaymanis.
Approximately 2.5% of Karachi's population is Christian. The city's Christian community is primarily composed of Punjabi Christians, who converted from Sikhism to Christianity during the British Raj. Karachi has a community of Goan Catholics who are typically better-educated and more affluent than their Punjabi co-religionists. They established the posh Cincinnatus Town in Garden East as a Goan enclave. The Goan community dates from 1820 and has a population estimated to be 12,000–15,000 strong. Karachi is served by its own archdiocese, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Karachi.
While most of the city's Hindu population left "en masse" for India following Pakistan's independence, Karachi still has a large Hindu community with an estimated population of 250,000 based on 2013 data, with several active temples in central Karachi. The Hindu community is split into a more affluent Sindhi Hindu and small Punjabi Hindu group that forms part of Karachi's educated middle class, while poorer Hindus of Rajasthani and Marwari descent form the other part and typically serve as menial and day laborers. Wealthier Hindus live primarily in Clifton and Saddar, while poorer ones live and have temples in Narayanpura and Lyari. Many streets in central Karachi still retain Hindu names, especially in Mithadar, Aram Bagh (formerly Ram Bagh), and Saddar.
Karachi's affluent and influential Parsis have lived in the region in the 12th century, though the modern community dates from the mid 19th century when they served as military contractors and commissariat agents to the British. Further waves of Parsi immigrants from Persia settled in the city in the late 19th century. The population of Parsis in Karachi and throughout South Asia is in continuous decline due to low birth-rates and migration to Western countries. According to Framji Minwalla approximately 1,092 Parsis left in Pakistan.
Karachi has the largest number of Urdu speakers in Pakistan. As per the 1998 census, the linguistic breakdown of Karachi Division is:
The category of "others" includes Gujarati, Dawoodi Bohra, Memon, Marwari, Dari, Brahui, Makrani, Hazara, Khowar, Gilgiti, Burushaski, Balti, Arabic, Farsi and Bengali. The number of Sindhi speakers in Karachi is growing as many are moving from rural areas to the city.
Karachi is served by a road network estimated to be approximately in length, serving approximately 3.1 million vehicles per day.
Karachi is served by three "Signal-Free Corridors" which are designed as urban express roads to permit traffic to transverse large distances without the need to stop at intersections and stop lights. The first opened in 2007 and connects Shah Faisal Town in eastern Karachi to the industrial-estates in SITE Town away. The second corridor connects Surjani Town with Shahrah-e-Faisal over a 19-kilometre span, while the third stretch and connects Karachi's urban centre to the Gulistan-e-Johar suburb. A fourth corridor that will link Karachi's centre to Karachi's Malir Town is currently under construction.
Karachi is the terminus of the M-9 motorway, which connects Karachi to Hyderabad. The road is a part of a much larger motorway network under construction as part of the expansive China Pakistan Economic Corridor. From Hyderabad, motorways have been built, or are being constructed, to provide high-speed road access to the northern Pakistani cities of Peshawar and Mansehra to the north of Karachi.
Karachi is also the terminus of the N-5 National Highway which connects the city to the historic medieval capital of Sindh, Thatta. It offers further connections to northern Pakistan and the Afghan border near Torkham, as well as the N-25 National Highway which connects the port city to the Afghan border near Quetta.
Within the city of Karachi, the Lyari Expressway is a controlled-access highway along the Lyari River in Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan. Lyari Expressway's north-bound and south-bound sections are both complete and open for traffic. This toll highway is designed to relieve congestion in the city of Karachi. To the north of Karachi lies the Karachi Northern Bypass (M10), which starts near the junction of the M9. It then continues north for a few kilometres before turning west, where it intersects the N25.
Karachi is linked by rail to the rest of the country by Pakistan Railways. The Karachi City Station and Karachi Cantonment Railway Station are the city's two major railway stations. The city has an international rail link, the Thar Express which links Karachi Cantonment Station with Bhagat Ki Kothi station in Jodhpur, India.
The railway system also handles freight linking Karachi port to destinations up-country in northern Pakistan. The city is the terminus for the Main Line-1 Railway which connects Karachi to Peshawar. Pakistan's rail network, including the Main Line-1 Railway is being upgraded as part of the China Pakistan Economic Corridor, allowing trains to depart Karachi and travel on Pakistani railways at an average speed of versus the average speed currently possible on existing track.
Karachi's public transport infrastructure is inadequate and constrained by low levels of investment. Karachi is not currently served by any municipal public transit, and is instead serviced primarily by the private and informal sector.
The Pakistani Government is developing the Karachi Metrobus project, which is a multi-line bus rapid transit system currently under construction. The Metrobus project was inaugurated by then-Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on 25 February 2016. Sharif said the "project will be more beautiful than Lahore Metro Bus". The projects initial launch date was February 2017, but due to the slow pace of work, it is not yet operational.
The Metrobus project has also been criticized for not being accessible by wheelchair-bound individuals
Karachi was once served by the Karachi Circular Railway that was started in 1969 and closed in 1999.. A tramway service was started in 1884 in Karachi but was closed in 1975 because of some reasons. While the Japanese Government has expressed willingness to help fund the refurbishment of the Karachi Circular Railway, the project has not been finalized. In March 2020, Minister of Railways Sheikh Rasheed Ahmed said that the Karachi Circular Railway "will be operationalized in six months" in collaboration with the government of Sindh. In the budget of fiscal year 2020–21, Rs1,500 million has been allocated for the revival of Karachi Circular Railway.
Karachi's Jinnah International Airport is the busiest airport of Pakistan with a total of 7.2 million passengers in 2018. The current terminal structure was built in 1992, and is divided into international and domestic sections. Karachi's airport serves as a hub for the flag carrier, Pakistan International Airlines (PIA), as well as for Air Indus, Serene Air and airblue. The airport offers non-stop flights to destinations throughout East Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, the Persian Gulf States, Europe and North America.
The largest shipping ports in Pakistan are the Port of Karachi and the nearby Port Qasim, the former being the oldest port of Pakistan. Port Qasim is located east of the Port of Karachi on the Indus River estuary. These ports handle 95% of Pakistan's trade cargo to and from foreign ports. These seaports have modern facilities which include bulk handling, containers and oil terminals.
Karachi has a fragmented system of civic government. The urban area is divided into six District Municipal Corporations: Karachi East, Karachi West, Karachi Central, Karachi South, Malir, Korangi. Each district is further divided into between 22 and 42 Union Committees. Each Union Committee is represented by seven elected representatives, four of whom can be general candidates of any background; the other three seats are reserved for women, religious minorities, and a union representative or peasant farmer.
Karachi's urban area also includes six cantonments, which are administered directly by the Pakistani military, and include some of Karachi's most desirable real-estate.
Key civic bodies, such as the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board and KBCA (Karachi Building Control Authority), among others, are under the direct control of the Government of Sindh. Additionally, Karachi's city-planning authority for undeveloped land, the Karachi Development Authority, is under control of the government, while two new city-planning authorities, the Lyari Development Authority and Malir Development Authority were revived by the Pakistan Peoples Party government in 2011allegedly to patronize their electoral allies and voting banks.
In response to a cholera epidemic in 1846, the Karachi Conservancy Board was organized by British administrators to control its spread. The board became the Karachi Municipal Commission in 1852, and the Karachi Municipal Committee the following year. The City of Karachi Municipal Act of 1933 transformed the city administration into the Karachi Municipal Corporation with a mayor, a deputy mayor and 57 councillors. In 1976, the body became the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation.
During the 1900s, Karachi saw its major beautification project under the mayoralty of Harchandrai Vishandas. New roads, parks, residential, and recreational areas were developed as part of this project. In 1948, the Federal Capital Territory of Pakistan was created, comprising approximately of Karachi and surrounding areas, but this was merged into the province of West Pakistan in 1961. In 1996, the metropolitan area was divided into five districts, each with its own municipal corporation.
In 2001, during the rule of General Pervez Musharraf, five districts of Karachi were merged to form the city district of Karachi, with a three-tier structure. The two most local tiers are composed of 18 towns, and 178 union councils. Each tier focused on elected councils with some common members to provide "vertical linkage" within the federation.
Naimatullah Khan was the first Nazim of Karachi during the Union Council period, while Shafiq-Ur-Rehman Paracha was the first district co-ordination officer of Karachi. Syed Mustafa Kamal was elected City Nazim of Karachi to succeed Naimatullah Khan in 2005 elections, and Nasreen Jalil was elected as the City Naib Nazim.
Each Union Council had thirteen members elected from specified electorates: four men and two women elected directly by the general population; two men and two women elected by peasants and workers; one member for minority communities; two members are elected jointly as the Union Mayor ("Nazim") and Deputy Union Mayor ("Naib Nazim"). Each council included up to three council secretaries and a number of other civil servants. The Union Council system was dismantled in 2011.
In July 2011, city district government of Karachi was reverted its original constituent units known as District Municipal Corporations (DMC). The five original DMCs are: Karachi East, Karachi West, Karachi Central, Karachi South and Malir. In November 2013, a sixth DMC, Korangi District was carved out from District East.
The committees for each district devise and enforce land-use and zoning regulations within their district. Each committee also manages water supply, sewage, and roads (except for 28 main arteries, which are managed by the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation). Street lighting, traffic planning, markets regulations, and signage are also under the control of the DMCs. Each DMC are also maintains its own municipal record archive, and devises its own local budget.
Municipal Administration of Karachi is also run by the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC), which is responsible for the development and maintenance of main arteries, bridges, drains, several hospitals, beaches, solid waste management, as well as some parks, and the city's firefighting services. The Karachi mayor since 2016 is Waseem Akhtar, with Arshad Hassan serving as Deputy Mayor; both serve as part of the KMC. The Metropolitan Commissioner of the KMC is Dr. Syed Saif-ur-Rehman.
The position of Commissioner of Karachi was created, with Iftikhar Ali Shallwani serving this role. There are six military cantonments, which are administered by the Pakistani Army, and are some of Karachi's most upscale neighbourhoods.
The Karachi Development Authority (KDA), along with the Lyari Development Authority (LDA) and Malir Development Authority (MDA), is responsible for the development of most undeveloped land around Karachi. KDA came into existence in 1957 with the task of managing land around Karachi, while the LDA and MDA were formed in 1993 and 1994, respectively. KDA under the control of Karachi's local government and mayor in 2001, while the LDA and MDA were abolished. KDA was later placed under direct control of the Government of Sindh in 2011. The LDA and MDA were also revived by the Pakistan Peoples Party government at the time, allegedly to patronize their electoral allies and voting banks. City-planning in Karachi, therefore, is not locally directed but is instead controlled at the provincial level.
Each District Municipal Corporation regulate land-use in developed areas, while the Sindh Building Control Authority ensures that building construction is in accordance with building & town planning regulations. Cantonment areas, and the Defence Housing Authority are administered and planned by the military.
Municipal water supplies are managed by the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board (KW&SB), which supplies 640 million gallons daily (MGD) to the city (excluding the city's steel mills and Port Qasim), of which 440 MGD are filtered/treated. Most of the supply comes from the Indus River, and 90 MGD from the Hub Dam. Karachi's water supply is transported to the city through a complex network of canals, conduits, and siphons, with the aid of pumping and filtration stations. 76% of Karachi households have access to piped water , with private water tankers supplying much of the water required in informal settlements. 18% of residents in a 2015 survey rated their water supply as "bad" or "very bad", while 44% expressed concern at the stability of water supply. By 2015, an estimated 30,000 people were dying due to water-borne diseases annually.
The K-IV water project is under development at a cost of $876 million. It is expected to supply 650 million gallons daily of potable water to the city, the first phase 260 million gallons upon completion.
98% of Karachi's households are connected to the city's underground public sewerage system, largely operated by the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board (KW&SB). The KW&SB operates 150 pumping stations, 25 bulk reservoirs, over 10,000 kilometres of pipes, and 250,000 manholes. The city generates approximately 472 million gallons daily (MGD) of sewage, of which 417 MGD are discharged without treatment. KW&SB has the optimum capacity to treat up to 150 MGD of sewage, but uses only about 50 MGD of this capacity. Three treatment plants are available, in SITE Town, Mehmoodabad, and Mauripur. 72% reported in 2015 that Karachi's drainage system overflows or backs up, the highest percentage of all major Pakistani cities. Parts of the city's drainage system overflow on average 2–7 times per month, flooding some city streets.
Households in Orangi self-organized to set-up their own sewerage system under the Orangi Pilot Project, a community service organization founded in 1980. 90% of Orangi streets are now connected to a sewer system built by local residents under the Orangi Pilot Project. Residents of individual streets bear the cost of sewerage pipes, and provide volunteer labour to lay the pipe. Residents also maintain the sewer pipes, while the city municipal administration has built several primary and secondary pipes for the network. As a result of OPP, 96% of Orangi residents have access to a latrine.
The Sindh Solid Waste Management Board (SSWMB) is responsible for the collection and disposal of solid waste, not only in Karachi but throughout the whole province. Karachi has the highest percentage of residents in Pakistan who report that their streets are never cleaned42% of residents in Karachi report their streets are never cleaned, compared to 10% of residents in Lahore. Only 17% of Karachi residents reporting daily street cleaning, compared to 45%
in Lahore. 69% of Karachi residents rely on private garbage collection services, with only 15% relying on municipal garbage collection services. 57% of Karachi residents in a 2015 survey reported that the state of their neighbourhood's cleanliness was either "bad" or "very bad". compared to 35% in Lahore, and 16% in Multan.
Karachi's primary education system is divided into five levels: primary (grades one through five); middle (grades six through eight); high (grades nine and ten, leading to the Secondary School Certificate); intermediate (grades eleven and twelve, leading to a Higher Secondary School Certificate); and university programs leading to graduate and advanced degrees. Karachi has both public and private educational institutions. Most educational institutions are gender-based, from primary to university level alongside the co education institutions.
Several of Karachi's schools, such as St Patrick's High School, St Joseph's Convent School and St Paul's English High School, are operated by Christian churches, and among Pakistan's most prestigious schools.
Karachi is home to several major public universities. Karachi's first public university's date from the British colonial era. The Sindh Madressatul Islam founded in 1885, was granted university status in 2012. Establishment of the Sindh Madressatul Islam was followed by the establishment of the D. J. Sindh Government Science College in 1887, and the institution was granted university status in 2014. The Nadirshaw Edulji Dinshaw University of Engineering and Technology (NED), was founded in 1921, and is Pakistan's oldest institution of higher learning. The Dow University of Health Sciences was established in 1945, and is now one of Pakistan's top medical research institutions.
The University of Karachi, founded in 1951, is Pakistan's largest university with a student population of 24,000. The Institute of Business Administration (IBA), founded in 1955, is the oldest business school outside of North America and Europe, and was set up with technical support from the Wharton School and the University of Southern California. The Dawood University of Engineering and Technology, which opened in 1962, offers degree programmes in petroleum, gas, chemical, and industrial engineering. The Pakistan Navy Engineering College (PNEC), operated by the Pakistan Navy, is associated with the National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST) in Islamabad.
Karachi is also home to numerous private universities. The Aga Khan University, founded in 1983, is Karachi's oldest private educational institution, and is one of Pakistan's most prestigious medical schools. The Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture was founded in 1989, and offers degree programmes in arts and architectural fields. Hamdard University is the largest private university in Pakistan with faculties including Eastern Medicine, Medical, Engineering, Pharmacy, and Law. The National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences (NUCES-FAST), one of Pakistan's top universities in computer education, operates two campuses in Karachi. Bahria University (BU) founded in 2000, is one of the major general institutions of Pakistan with their campuses in Karachi, Islamabad and Lahore offers degree programs in Management Sciences, Electrical Engineering, Computer Science and Psychology. Sir Syed University of Engineering and Technology (SSUET) offers degree programmes in biomedical, electronics, telecom and computer engineering. Karachi Institute of Economics & Technology (KIET) has two campuses in Karachi. The Shaheed Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto Institute of Science and Technology (SZABIST), founded in 1995 by former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, operates a campus in Karachi.
Karachi is a centre of research in biomedicine with at least 30 public hospitals, 80 registered private hospitals and 12 recognized medical colleges, including the Indus Hospital, Lady Dufferin Hospital, Karachi Institute of Heart Diseases, National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases, Civil Hospital, Combined Military Hospital, PNS Rahat, PNS Shifa, Aga Khan University Hospital, Liaquat National Hospital, Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre, Holy Family Hospital and Ziauddin Hospital. In 1995, Ziauddin Hospital was the site of Pakistan's first bone marrow transplant.
Karachi municipal authorities in October 2017 launched a new early warning system that alerted city residents to a forecasted heatwave. Previous heatwaves had routinely claimed lives in the city, but implementation of the warning system was credited for no reported heat-related fatalities.
Karachi is home to Pakistan and South Asia's largest shopping mall, Lucky One Mall which hosts more than two hundred stores. According to TripAdvisor the city is also home to Pakistan's favorite shopping mall, Dolmen Mall, Clifton which was also featured on CNN and the country's favorite entertainment complex, Port Grand. In 2019 the city is expected to add another mega mall/entertainment complex at Bahria Icon Tower Clifton, Pakistan's tallest skyscraper.
Karachi is home to several of Pakistan's most important museums. The National Museum of Pakistan and Mohatta Palace display artwork, while the city also has several private art galleries. The city is also home to the Pakistan Airforce Museum and Pakistan Maritime Museum are also located in the city. Wazir Mansion, the birthplace of Pakistan's founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah has also been preserved as a museum open to the public.
Karachi is home to some of Pakistan's important cultural institutions. The National Academy of Performing Arts, located in the former Hindu Gymkhana, offers diploma courses in performing arts including classical music and contemporary theatre. Karachi is home to groups such as Thespianz Theater, a professional youth-based, non-profit performing arts group, which works on theatre and arts activities in Pakistan.
Though Lahore is considered to be home of Pakistan's film industry, Karachi is home to Kara Film Festival annually showcases independent Pakistani and international films and documentaries.
Cinema
Bambino Cinema,
Capri Cinema,
Cinepax Cinema,
Mega Multiplex Cinema – Millennium Mall,
Nueplex Cinemas,
Atrium Mall.
The All Pakistan Music Conference, linked to the 45-year-old similar institution in Lahore, has been holding its annual music festival since its inception in 2004. The National Arts Council ("Koocha-e-Saqafat") has musical performances and mushaira.
Karachi is a tourist destination for domestic and international tourists. Tourist attractions near Karachi city include:
Museums: Museums located in Karachi include the National Museum of Pakistan, Pakistan Air Force Museum, and Pakistan Maritime Museum.
Parks: Parks located in Karachi include Bagh Ibne Qasim, Boat Basin Park, Mazar-e-Quaid, Karachi Zoo, Hill Park, Safari Park, Bagh-e-Jinnah, PAF Museum Park and Maritime Museum Park.
Sometimes stated to be amongst the world's most dangerous cities, the extent of violent crime in Karachi is not as significant in magnitude as compared to other cities. According to the Numbeo Crime Index 2014, Karachi was the 6th most dangerous city in the world. By the middle of 2016, Karachi's rank had dropped to 31 following the launch of anti-crime operations. By 2018, Karachi's ranking has dropped to 50. In mid 2019, Karachi's ranking fell to 71, ranking it safer than regional cities such as Delhi (65th place) and Dhaka (34th place), but was still higher than Mumbai (172nd place) and Lahore (201st place).
The city's large population results in high numbers of homicides with a moderate homicide rate. Karachi's homicide rates are lower than many Latin American cities, and in 2015 was 12.5 per 100,000lower than the homicide rate of several American cities such as New Orleans and St. Louis. The homicide rates in some Latin American cities such as Caracas, Venezuela and Acapulco, Mexico are in excess of 100 per 100,000 residents, many times greater than Karachi's homicide rate. In 2016, the number of murders in Karachi had dropped to 471, which had dropped further to 381 in 2017.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Karachi was rocked by political conflict while crime rates drastically increased with the arrival of weaponry from the War in Afghanistan. Several of Karachi's criminal mafias became powerful during a period in the 1990s described as "the rule of the mafias." Major mafias active in the city included land mafia, water tanker mafia, transport mafia and a sand and gravel mafia. Karachi's highest death rates occurred in the mid 1990s when Karachi was much smaller. In 1995, 1,742 killings were recorded, when the city had over five million fewer residents.
Karachi had become widely known for its high rates of violent crime, but rates sharply decreased following a controversial crackdown operation against criminals, the MQM party, and Islamist militants initiated in 2013 by the Pakistan Rangers. In 2015, 1,040 Karachiites were killed in either acts of terror or other crimean almost 50% decrease from the 2,023 killed in 2014, and an almost 70% decrease from the 3,251 recorded killed in 2013the highest ever recorded number in Karachi history. Despite a sharp decrease in violent crime, street crime remains high.
With 650 homicides in 2015, Karachi's homicide rate decreased by 75% compared to 2013. In 2017, the number of homicides had dropped further to 381. Extortion crimes decreased by 80% between 2013 and 2015, while kidnappings decreased by 90% during the same period. By 2016, the city registered a total of 21 cases of kidnap for ransom. Terrorist incidents dropped by 98% between 2012 and 2017, according to Pakistan's Interior Ministry. As a result of the Karachi's improved security environment, real-estate prices in Karachi rose sharply in 2015, with a rise in business for upmarket restaurants and cafés.
Insufficient affordable housing infrastructure to absorb growth has resulted in the city's diverse migrant populations being largely confined to ethnically homogenous neighbourhoods. The 1970s saw major labour struggles in Karachi's industrial estates. Violence originated in the city's university campuses, and spread into the city. Conflict was especially sharp between MQM party and ethnic Sindhis, Pashtuns, and Punjabis. The party and its vast network of supporters were targeted by Pakistani security forces as part of the controversial Operation Clean-up in 1992, as part of an effort to restore peace in the city that lasted until 1994.
Urban planning and service delivery have not kept pace with Karachi's growth, resulting in the city's low ranking on livability rankings. The city has no cohesive transportation policy, and no official public transit system, though up to 1,000 new cars are added daily to the city's congested streets.
Unable to provide housing to large numbers of refugees shortly after independence, Karachi's authorities first issued "slips" to refugees beginning in 1950 –
which allowed refugees to settle on any vacant land. Such informal settlements are known as "katchi abadis", and now approximately half the city's residents live in these unplanned communities.
Karachi has a collection of buildings and structures of varied architectural styles. The downtown districts of Saddar and Clifton contain early 20th-century architecture, ranging in style from the neo-classical KPT building to the Sindh High Court Building. Karachi acquired its first neo-Gothic or Indo-Gothic buildings when Frere Hall, Empress Market and St. Patrick's Cathedral were completed. The Mock Tudor architectural style was introduced in the Karachi Gymkhana and the Boat Club. Neo-Renaissance architecture was popular in the 19th century and was the architectural style for St. Joseph's Convent (1870) and the Sind Club (1883). The classical style made a comeback in the late 19th century, as seen in Lady Dufferin Hospital (1898) and the Cantt. Railway Station. While Italianate buildings remained popular, an eclectic blend termed Indo-Saracenic or Anglo-Mughal began to emerge in some locations.
The local mercantile community began acquiring impressive structures. Zaibunnisa Street in the Saddar area (known as Elphinstone Street in British days) is an example where the mercantile groups adopted the Italianate and Indo-Saracenic style to demonstrate their familiarity with Western culture and their own. The Hindu Gymkhana (1925) and Mohatta Palace are examples of Mughal revival buildings. The Sindh Wildlife Conservation Building, located in Saddar, served as a Freemasonic Lodge until it was taken over by the government. There are talks of it being taken away from this custody and being renovated and the Lodge being preserved with its original woodwork and ornate wooden staircase.
Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture is one of the prime examples of Architectural conservation and restoration where an entire Nusserwanjee building from Kharadar area of Karachi has been relocated to Clifton for adaptive reuse in an art school. The procedure involved the careful removal of each piece of timber and stone, stacked temporarily, loaded on the trucks for transportation to the Clifton site, unloaded and re-arranged according to a given layout, stone by stone, piece by piece, and completed within three months.
Architecturally distinctive, even eccentric, buildings have sprung up throughout Karachi. Notable example of contemporary architecture include the Pakistan State Oil Headquarters building. The city has examples of modern Islamic architecture, including the Aga Khan University hospital, Masjid e Tooba, Faran Mosque, Bait-ul Mukarram Mosque, Quaid's Mausoleum, and the Textile Institute of Pakistan. One of the unique cultural elements of Karachi is that the residences, which are two- or three-story townhouses, are built with the front yard protected by a high brick wall. I. I. Chundrigar Road features a range of extremely tall buildings. The most prominent examples include the Habib Bank Plaza, PRC Towers and the MCB Tower which is the tallest skyscraper in Pakistan.
When it comes to sports Karachi has a distinction, because some sources cite that it was in 1877 at Karachi in (British) India, where the first attempt was made to form a set of rules of badminton and likely place is said to Frere Hall.
Cricket's history in Pakistan predates the creation of the country in 1947. The first ever international cricket match in Karachi was held on 22 November 1935 between Sindh and Australian cricket teams. The match was seen by 5,000 Karachiites. Karachi is also the place that innovated tape ball, a safer and more affordable alternative to cricket.
The inaugural first-class match at the National Stadium was played between Pakistan and India on 26 February 1955 and since then Pakistani national cricket team has won 20 of the 41 Test matches played at the National Stadium. The first One Day International at the National Stadium was against the West Indies on 21 November 1980, with the match going to the last ball.
The national team has been less successful in such limited-overs matches at the ground, including a five-year stint between 1996 and 2001, when they failed to win any matches. The city has been host to a number of domestic cricket teams including Karachi, Karachi Blues, Karachi Greens, and Karachi Whites. The National Stadium hosted two group matches (Pakistan v. South Africa on 29 February and Pakistan v. England on 3March), and a quarter-final match (South Africa v. West Indies on 11 March) during the 1996 Cricket World Cup.
The city has hosted seven editions of the National Games of Pakistan, most recently in 2007.
In 2005, the city hosted the SAFF Championship at this ground, as well as the Geo Super Football League 2007, which attracted capacity crowds during the games. The popularity of golf is increasing, with clubs in Karachi like Dreamworld Resort, Hotel & Golf Club, Arabian Sea Country Club, DA Country & Golf Club. The city has facilities for field hockey (the Hockey Club of Pakistan, UBL Hockey Ground), boxing (KPT Sports Complex), squash (Jahangir Khan Squash Complex), and polo. There are marinas and boating clubs. National Bank of Pakistan Sports Complex is First-class cricket venue and Multi-purpose sports facility in Karachi, | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17123 |
Kerguelen Islands
The Kerguelen Islands ( or ; in French commonly ' but officially ', ), also known as the Desolation Islands ("" in French), are a group of islands in the Antarctic constituting one of the two exposed parts of the Kerguelen Plateau, a large igneous province mostly submerged by the southern Indian Ocean. They are among the most isolated places on Earth, located more than from Madagascar, the nearest permanently populated location. The islands, along with Adélie Land, the Crozet Islands, Amsterdam and Saint Paul Islands, and France's Scattered Islands in the Indian Ocean, are part of the French Southern and Antarctic Lands and are administered as a separate district.
The main island, Grande Terre, is in area, about three quarters of the size of Corsica, and is surrounded by a further 300 smaller islands and islets, forming an archipelago of . The climate is harsh and chilly with frequent high winds throughout the year. The surrounding seas are generally rough and they remain ice-free year-round. There are no indigenous inhabitants, but France maintains a permanent presence of 45 to 100 soldiers, scientists, engineers, and researchers. There are no airports on the islands, so all travel to and from the outside world is conducted by ship.
Before being officially discovered in 1772 the Kergeuelen Islands appear as the "Ile de Nachtegal" on Philippe Buache's 1754 map entitled "Carte des Terres Australes comprises entre le Tropique du Capricorne et le Pôle Antarctique où se voyent les nouvelles découvertes faites en 1739 au Sud du Cap de Bonne Esperance" ('Map of the Southern Lands contained between the Tropic of Capricorn and the Antarctic Pole, where the new discoveries made in 1739 to the south of the Cape of Good Hope may be seen'). It is possible this early name was after Abel Tasman's ship "De Zeeuwsche Nachtegaal". On the Buache map, "Ile de Nachtegal" is located at 43°S, 72°E, about 6 degrees north and 2 degrees east of the accepted location of Grande Terre.
The islands were officially discovered by the French navigator Yves-Joseph de Kerguelen-Trémarec on 12 February 1772. The next day, Charles de Boisguehenneuc landed and claimed the island for the French crown. Yves de Kerguelen organised a second expedition in 1773 and arrived at the ""baie de l'Oiseau"" by December of the same year. On 6 January 1774 he commanded his lieutenant, Henri Pascal de Rochegude, to leave a message notifying any passers-by of the two passages and of the French claim to the islands. Thereafter, a number of expeditions briefly visited the islands, including the third voyage of Captain James Cook in December 1776. Cook verified and confirmed the passage of de Kerguelen by discovering and annotating the message left by the French navigator.
Soon after its discovery, the archipelago was regularly visited by whalers and sealers (mostly British, American, and Norwegian) who hunted the resident populations of whales and seals to the point of near extinction, including fur seals in the 18th century and elephant seals in the 19th century. The sealing era lasted from 1781 to 1922 during which time 284 sealing visits are recorded, nine of which ended when the vessel was wrecked. Modern industrial sealing, associated with whaling stations, occurred intermittently between 1908 and 1956. Since the end of the whaling and sealing era, most of the islands' species have been able to increase their population again. Relics of the sealing period include try pots, hut ruins, graves and inscriptions.
In 1800, spent eight months sealing and whaling around the islands. During this time Captain Robert Rhodes, her master, prepared a chart of the islands. That vessel returned to London in April 1801 with 450 tons of sea elephant oil.
In 1825, the British sealer John Nunn and three crew members from "Favourite" were shipwrecked on Kerguelen until they were rescued in 1827 by Captain Alexander Distant during his hunting campaign.
The islands were not completely surveyed until the Ross expedition of 1840.
The Australian James Kerguelen Robinson (1859–1914) was the first human born south of the Antarctic Convergence, on board the sealing ship "Offley" in Gulf of Morbihan (Royal Sound then), Kerguelen Island on 11 March 1859.
In 1874–1875, British, German, and U.S. expeditions visited Kerguelen to observe the transit of Venus. For the 1874 transit, George Biddell Airy of the Royal Observatory of the UK organised and equipped five expeditions to different parts of the world. Three of these were sent to the Kerguelen Islands and led by Stephen Joseph Perry, who set up his main observation station at Observatory Bay and two auxiliary stations, one at Thumb Peak led by Sommerville Goodridge, and the second at Supply Bay led by Cyril Corbet. Observatory Bay was also used by the German Antarctic Expedition led by Erich Dagobert von Drygalski in 1902–03. In January 2007, an archaeological excavation of this site was carried out.
In 1877 the French started a coal mining operation, but soon abandoned it.
In 1892, due to German operations in the area, France sent the aviso "Eure", under Commander Lieutard, to reassert its claim over the Kerguelen Islands, the islands of Amsterdam and St Paul, and the Crozet archipelago. In 1924, it was decided to administer these territories (in addition to that portion of Antarctica claimed by France and known as Adélie Land) from Madagascar; as with all Antarctic territorial claims, France's possession on the continent is held in abeyance until a new international treaty is ratified that defines each claimant's rights and obligations.
The German auxiliary cruiser called at Kerguelen during December 1940. During their stay the crew performed maintenance and replenished their water supplies. This ship's first fatality of the war occurred when a sailor, Bernhard Herrmann, fell while painting the funnel. He is buried in what is sometimes referred to as "the Southern-most German war grave" of World War II.
Kerguelen has been continually occupied since 1950 by scientific research teams, with a population of 50 to 100 frequently present. There is also a French satellite tracking station.
Until 1955, the Kerguelen Islands were administratively part of the French Colony of Madagascar and Dependencies. That same year, they collectively became known as ' (French Southern and Antarctic Lands) and were administratively part of the French '. In 2004 they were permanently transformed into their own entity (keeping the same name) but having inherited another group of five very remote tropical islands, "", which are also ruled by France and are dispersed widely throughout the southern Indian Ocean.
The main island of the archipelago is called "". It measures east to west and north to south.
Port-aux-Français, a scientific base, is along the eastern shore of the Gulf of Morbihan on La Grande Terre. Facilities there include scientific-research buildings, a satellite tracking station, dormitories, a hospital, a library, a gymnasium, a pub, and the chapel of Notre-Dame des Vents.
The highest point is Mont Ross in the Gallieni Massif, which rises along the southern coast of the island and has an elevation of . The Cook Ice Cap (), France's largest glacier with an area of about , lies on the west-central part of the island. Overall, the glaciers of the Kerguelen Islands cover just over . Grande Terre has also numerous bays, inlets, fjords, and coves, as well as several peninsulas and promontories. The most important ones are listed below:
There are also a number of notable localities, all on La Grande Terre (see also the main map):
From 1968 to 1981, a site just east of Port-aux-Français was a launching site for sounding rockets, some for French (Dragon rockets), American (Arcas) or French-Soviet (Eridans) surveys, but at the end mainly for a Soviet program (M-100).
The following is a list of the most important adjacent islands:
Principal activities on the Kerguelen Islands focus on scientific research, mostly earth sciences and biology.
The former sounding rocket range to the east of Port-aux-Français is currently the site of a SuperDARN radar.
Since 1992, the French Centre National d'Études Spatiales (CNES) has operated a satellite and rocket tracking station, located east of Port-aux-Français. CNES needed a tracking station in the Southern Hemisphere, and the French government required that it be located on French territory, rather than in a populated, but foreign, place like Australia or New Zealand.
Agricultural activities were limited until 2007 to raising sheep (about 3,500 Bizet sheep, a breed that is rare in mainland France) on Longue Island for consumption by the occupants of the base, as well as small quantities of vegetables in a greenhouse within the immediate vicinity of the main French base. There are also feral rabbits and sheep that can be hunted, as well as wild birds.
There are also five fishing boats and vessels, owned by fishermen on Réunion Island (a "department" of France about to the north) who are licensed to fish within the archipelago's exclusive economic zone.
The Kerguelen islands form an emerged part of the submerged Kerguelen Plateau, which has a total area nearing . The plateau was built by volcanic eruptions associated with the Kerguelen hotspot, and now lies on the Antarctic plate.
The major part of the volcanic formations visible on the islands is characteristic of an effusive volcanism, which caused a trap rock formation to start emerging above the level of the ocean 35 million years ago. The accumulation is of a considerable amount; basalt flows, each with a thickness of three to ten metres, stacked on top of each other, sometimes up to a depth of . This form of volcanism creates a monumental relief shaped as stairs of pyramids.
Other forms of volcanism are present locally, such as the strombolian volcano Mont Ross, and the volcano-plutonic complex on the Rallier du Baty peninsula. Various veins and extrusions of lava such as trachytes, trachyphonolites, and phonolites are common all over the islands.
No eruptive activity has been recorded in historic times, but some fumaroles are still active in the south-west of Grande-Terre island.
A few lignite strata, trapped in basalt flows, reveal fossilised araucarian fragments, dated at about 14 million years of age.
Glaciation caused the depression and tipping phenomena which created the gulfs at the north and east of the archipelago. Erosion caused by the glacial and fluvial activity carved out the valleys and fjords; erosion also created conglomerate detrital complexes, and the plain of the Courbet Peninsula.
The islands are part of a submerged microcontinent called the Kerguelen sub-continent. The microcontinent emerged substantially above sea level for three periods between 100 million years ago and 20 million years ago. The so-called Kerguelen sub-continent may have had tropical flora and fauna about 50 million years ago. The Kerguelen sub-continent finally sank 20 million years ago and is now below sea level. Kerguelen's sedimentary rocks are similar to ones found in Australia and India, indicating they were all once connected. Scientists hope that studying the Kerguelen sub-continent will help them discover how Australia, India, and Antarctica broke apart.
Kerguelen's climate is oceanic, cold, and extremely windswept. Under the Köppen climate classification, Kerguelen's climate is considered to be an "ET" or tundra climate, which is technically a form of polar climate, as the average temperature in the warmest month is below . Comparable climates include the Aleutian Islands, Campbell Island (New Zealand), Falkland Islands, Iceland, northern Kamchatka Peninsula, Labrador, and Wollaston Islands.
All climate readings come from the Port-aux-Français base, which has one of the more favourable climates in Kerguelen because of its proximity to the coast and its location in a gulf sheltered from the wind.
The average annual temperature is with an annual range of around . The warmest months of the year include January and February, with average temperatures between . The coldest month of the year is August with an average temperature of . Annual high temperatures rarely surpass , while temperatures in winter have never been recorded below at sea level.
Kerguelen receives frequent precipitation, with snow throughout the year as well as rain. Port-aux-Français receives a modest amount of precipitation ( per year) compared to the west coast which receives an estimated three times as much precipitation per year.
The mountains are frequently covered in snow but can thaw very quickly in rain. Over the course of several decades, many permanent glaciers have shown signs of retreat, with some smaller ones having disappeared completely.
The west coast receives almost continuous wind at an average speed of because the islands are between the Roaring Forties and the Furious Fifties. Wind speeds of are common and can even reach .
Waves up to high are common, but there are many sheltered places where ships can dock.
The islands are part of the Southern Indian Ocean Islands tundra ecoregion that includes several subantarctic islands. Plant life is mainly limited to grasses, mosses, and lichens, although the islands are also known for the indigenous, edible Kerguelen cabbage, a good source of vitamin C to mariners. The main indigenous animals are insects along with large populations of ocean-going seabirds, seals, and penguins.
The wildlife is particularly vulnerable to introduced species; one particular problem has been cats. The main island is the home of a well-established feral cat population, descended from ships' cats. They survive on sea birds and the feral rabbits that were introduced to the islands. There are also populations of wild sheep ("Ovis orientalis orientalis") and reindeer.
In the 1950s and 1960s, French geologist Edgar Albert de la Rue began to introduce several species of salmonids. Of the seven species introduced, only brook trout and brown trout survived to establish wild populations.
The islands appear in a number of fictional works. The title character in Edgar Allan Poe's 1838 novel, "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket", visits the islands. French writer Jules Verne's 1897 novel "An Antarctic Mystery" offers a follow up to Poe's book, and revisits the Kerguelen Islands. The 1874 short story "The Tachypomp" by Edward Page Mitchell tells of a hole through the center of the Earth with one end in the United States and the other in "Kerguellen's Land" (which is roughly antipodal to the United States and Canada). The 1880 collection "Songs from the Mountains" by the Australian poet Henry Kendall contains the poem "Beyond Kerguelen". In Rudyard Kipling's poem "McAndrew's Hymn" – about a ship's engineer – there are the lines: "Fra' Cape Town east to Wellington – ye need an engineer.
Fail there – ye've time to weld your shaft – ay, eat it, ere ye're spoke,
Or make Kerguelen under sail – three jiggers burned wi' smoke!"
Henry De Vere Stacpoole set his 1919 novel "The Beach of Dreams" on the islands. The Kerguelen Islands were the setting for a post-Second World War confrontation between W. E. Johns's recurring hero, Biggles, and the crew of a gold bullion-bearing German U-boat, in the 1948 novel "Biggles' Second Case". The fifth book in Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey–Maturin series, published in 1978, is entitled "Desolation Island".
French author Jean-Paul Kauffmann produced a non-fiction account of his 1991 journey to the islands, titled "The Arch of Kerguelen: Voyage to the Islands of Desolation".
The islands serve as a main location in the 1998 novel "Kilo Class" by Patrick Robinson.
In 2000 British journalist and former Conservative MP Matthew Parris spent four months on Kerguelen, staying with the researchers at Port-aux-Français. A series of articles were published in "The Times" in which Parris charted his visit, and a documentary "To The Ends of Earth: Dreaming on Desolation Island" was produced for UK television, which aired on Channel 4.
The islands inspired the 2008 song "The Loneliest Place on the Map" by singer Al Stewart.
Kerguelen and island-based research facilities are an important part of Craig A. Falconer's 2015 science fiction novel "Not Alone" and its sequel "Not Alone: Second Contact". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17125 |
Kelsey Grammer
Allen Kelsey Grammer (born February 21, 1955) is an American actor, comedian, singer, producer, director, writer and activist, best known for his two-decade-long portrayal of psychiatrist Dr. Frasier Crane on the NBC sitcoms "Cheers" and "Frasier". He is also known for his performance in the political drama series "Boss" for which he won a Golden Globe Award, and the period drama series "The Last Tycoon". He is also known for his voice work in "The Simpsons", "Anastasia" (1997) and "Toy Story 2" (1999). He has also appeared in various television shows such as "30 Rock", "Modern Family", and "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt".
Grammer is also known for his work in theatre, acting alongside Christopher Plummer and James Earl Jones in "Macbeth", and "Othello" on Broadway. In 1983, he starred alongside Mandy Patinkin in Stephen Sondheim's "Sunday in the Park with George" at Playwrights Horizons, Off-Broadway. He has also starred in productions of "" playing the title character, and "My Fair Lady" as Professor Henry Higgins. In 2010 he received his first Tony Award nomination for his performance in "La Cage aux Folles". In 2016, Grammer won a Tony Award as a producer of "The Color Purple". In 2019, Grammer starred as Don Quixote in a production of "Man of La Mancha" at the London Coliseum. Throughout his career in television Grammer has won five Primetime Emmy Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, one Daytime Emmy Award and one Tony Award; additionally, he has also worked as a television producer, director, and writer.
Allen Kelsey Grammer was born on February 21, 1955, in Saint Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, the son of Sally (née Cranmer; 1928–2008), a singer and actress, and Frank Allen Grammer, Jr. (d. 1968), a musician and owner of a coffee shop and a bar and grill called Greer's Place. He had one younger sister, Karen.
Grammer's personal life has been surrounded by family tragedies. He was raised by his mother and maternal grandparents in New Jersey. The family later relocated to Pompano Beach, Florida, and shortly afterwards, Kelsey's grandfather died of cancer when he was twelve years old. In 1968, his father was murdered in a home invasion. In 1975, his sister was kidnapped, raped, and murdered in Colorado Springs. In 1980, his two half-brothers died in a scuba diving accident. During an interview with the Cayman Compass in 2019, Grammer described himself as "a Caribbean kid" who "was born in St. Thomas, USVI, and I have been back and forth a lot, gone to the Bahamas a lot, St. John and the Virgin Islands and the BVI."
Grammer attended Pine Crest School, a private preparatory school in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. It was there that he first began to sing and perform on stage. From the age of 16, with his mother's approval, he began to smoke a pipe. Grammer won a scholarship to the Juilliard School. He was a member of Group 6 from 1973 to 1975. Due to his sister's murder, Grammer failed to attend classes and was eventually expelled.
After leaving Juilliard, Grammer had a three-year internship with the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego in the late 1970s before a stint in 1980 at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He made his Broadway debut in 1981 as "Lennox" in "Macbeth", taking the lead role when Philip Anglim withdrew after receiving negative reviews. Grammer then played Michael Cassio in a Broadway revival of "Othello", with James Earl Jones and Christopher Plummer. In 1983 he performed in the demo of the Stephen Sondheim–James Lapine production "Sunday in the Park with George", starring Mandy Patinkin. In 2000, Grammer again played "Macbeth" on Broadway, in a production that closed after only 10 days.
On April 18, 2010, Grammer made his Broadway musical debut playing the role of Georges in a revival of the Jerry Herman/Harvey Fierstein musical "La Cage aux Folles" at the Longacre Theatre. Grammer starred alongside Douglas Hodge for which they both were nominated for Tony Awards for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical. Grammer was described by critics as "equally fine", "delivering an assured and charming leading turn".
In March 2015, Grammer originated the roles of Charles Frohman and Captain Hook in the Broadway premiere of the musical "Finding Neverland" continuing with the roles through June 28, 2015. He returned to the stage from January 19 to April 3, 2016. Most recently he made an appearance in the West End production of "Big Fish". In 2016, Grammer won a Tony Award as a producer of "The Color Purple". In 2019, Grammer starred as Don Quixote in a production of "Man of La Mancha" at the London Coliseum.
In 1984, Grammer first appeared as Dr. Frasier Crane in the NBC sitcom "Cheers". Grammer's former Juilliard classmate and Broadway co-star Mandy Patinkin suggested Grammer to the New York casting director, and he got what was supposed to be a six-episode job, but ended up as a regular cast member. "Cheers" was created by James Burrows and aired on NBC from September 30, 1982, to May 20, 1993. The show was set in a bar named Cheers in Boston, Massachusetts, where a group of locals meet to drink, relax, and socialize. The character of Frasier first appeared in season 3 and continued to appear until the final season in May 1993, when the show ended.
In September 1993 the character became the center of the spin-off "Frasier" which became one of the most successful spin-offs in television history. In addition to starring, he also directed more than 30 episodes, especially during the second half of the series, and sang the closing theme "Tossed Salads and Scrambled Eggs." "Frasier" was nominated for and won many awards during its 11-year run, concluding in May 2004. In the show Frasier has moved from Boston to Seattle and work as a radio psychiatrist alongside his producer Roz (Peri Gilpin). The show also starred David Hyde Pierce as Niles, Frasier's brother, and John Mahoney as the father, Martin Crane. Jane Leeves plays his fathers health care worker Daphne Moon. The show was a critical hit, and received the most Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Comedy Series. The record has never been broken with "Modern Family" tying the record. Grammer himself received 11 consecutive Primetime Emmy Award nominations for his role in "Frasier", winning four times, tying him with Carroll O'Connor, Michael J. Fox and Jim Parsons for the most wins for Primetime Emmy Award for Best Actor in a Comedy Series.
In 2001, he negotiated a $700,000-per-episode salary for "Frasier". The series lasted 11 seasons running from 1993 to 2004. His 20-year run playing Dr. Frasier Crane ties a length set by James Arness in playing Marshal Matt Dillon on "Gunsmoke" from 1955 to 1975 but was surpassed by Richard Belzer in playing Det. John Munch on "" and "" since 1993. Frasier Crane also had a crossover appearance in 1993 "Wings" episode "Planes, Trains, & Visiting Cranes".
The show featured a variety of guest stars from "Cheers" including Ted Danson, Shelley Long, Woody Harrelson, Rhea Perlman, George Wendt and John Ratzenberger. Bebe Neuwirth appears in a recurring role throughout the series as Frasier's ex-wife Lilith. Other guest stars include Laura Linney, James Earl Jones, Nathan Lane, Patrick Stewart, Derek Jacobi, Michael Keaton, Laurie Metcalf, Jean Smart and Eva Marie Saint. One of "Frasier" 's in-jokes was its use of celebrities as guest stars who were put through on Frasier's radio program as callers seeking advice.
In 2005, Grammer returned to television. He produced and appeared in an American adaptation of the British show "The Sketch Show", which aired on Fox. The main cast consisted of Malcolm Barrett, Kaitlin Olson, Mary Lynn Rajskub and Paul F. Tompkins, as well as Lee Mack from the British version of the show. Grammer appeared in only short opening and closing segments in each episode. Many of the sketches from the British version were re-created, such as the "California Dreamin'", "English Course", and "Sign Language" sketches. Only six episodes of the show were made, and it was cancelled after only four of them had aired.
In 2007, Grammer starred with Patricia Heaton in the American sitcom "Back to You", which Fox cancelled after its first season. His next attempt, ABC's "Hank", fared even worse. It was cancelled after only five episodes had aired. Grammer later commented, "Honestly, it just wasn't very funny."
In 2011 and 2012, Grammer found temporary success in the Starz drama series "Boss" as a fictional mayor of Chicago in the mold of Richard J. Daley which premiered in October 2011. It was his first dramatic TV series. At the 2012 Golden Globe Awards Kelsey Grammer won the award for Best Actor in a Television Series Drama for his role on "Boss". The show ran for 18 episodes over two seasons.
In 2010–2012, Grammer guest starred as a comical version of himself in three episodes of the NBC show "30 Rock" alongside Jane Krakowski and Jack McBrayer.
In 2014 Grammer returned to sitcom television in "Partners" with comedian Martin Lawrence. The Lionsgate-produced show was written and executive produced by Robert L. Boyett and Robert Horn, known for writing hit shows like "Family Matters", "Living Single", "Full House", "Designing Women", and "Perfect Strangers". Despite this the show was cancelled after its first season.
Grammer has had parts in films such as "Down Periscope" (1996), "Anastasia" (1997), "Toy Story 2" (1999), "A Christmas Carol" (2004), "" (2006), "Swing Vote" (2008), "Fame" (2009), "The Expendables 3" (2014), "" (2014), "Best of Enemies" (2015), the National Geographic TV film "Killing Jesus" (2015) (in which he both played a role and narrated), and the Netflix film "Like Father" with Kristen Bell (2019).
Grammer has provided the voice of Sideshow Bob on "The Simpsons", winning an Emmy Award for his work in the episode "The Italian Bob", his fifth Emmy win. He has appeared in eighteen episodes from the show's inception in 1989 through 2015's "Treehouse of Horror XXVI". Grammer supplied his voice for many other projects, including Pixar's Golden Globe Award-winning "Toy Story 2" (1999), 20th Century Fox's critically acclaimed animated movie "Anastasia", as well as "Barbie of Swan Lake", "Bartok the Magnificent", the title character in the short-lived animated series "Gary the Rat", "Disney's Teacher's Pet", the Mickey Mouse short "Runaway Brain" and the narrator of "Mickey Mouse – Once Upon a Christmas".
Grammer's voice has been featured in many commercials. One of the earliest was a 1998 commercial for Honey Nut Cheerios, where he voices the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood. Since 2006, Grammer has provided the voice for television commercials advertising Hyundai. In 2008, Grammer reprised his role of Dr. Frasier Crane in a commercial for Dr Pepper ("Frasier" and "Cheers" co-star Bebe Neuwirth also reprised her role as Lilith Sternin in the same commercial, albeit in voice only).
In 2015 Grammer and John Lithgow lent their voices to the critically acclaimed documentary "Best of Enemies" as William F. Buckley and Gore Vidal, respectively.
The documentary surrounds the events around the televised debates between intellectuals Vidal and Buckley during the 1968 United States presidential election. The film premiered at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival and was shortlisted for the Academy Award for Best Documentary but did not make the final cut.
Director
Producer
His production company, Grammnet Productions, produces the CW sitcoms "Girlfriends" and "The Game" (now on BET), the NBC drama "Medium", and many other projects.
Grammer won a number of Emmys, Screen Actors Guild Award, and Golden Globes for his work on "Frasier". He was the first American actor ever to be nominated for multiple Emmy awards for portraying the same character on three different television shows ("Cheers", "Frasier", and "Wings"). In 2010, Grammer received his first Tony Award nomination for Best Actor in a Musical for his acclaimed performance in "La Cage Aux Folles" opposite Douglas Hodge. In 2016, he received his second Tony Award nomination and first win for Best Revival of a Musical as a producer for "The Color Purple." On May 22, 2001, he was presented with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for television. In 1999 he received a nomination from Directors Guild of America award for directing the episode "Frasier". At the Golden Globes, he has received nine nominations winning three times.
Grammer has been married four times and has seven children and one grandchild . His first marriage to dance instructor Doreen Alderman lasted from 1982 to 1990, although they were separated for the last six years of that period. They have one daughter, actress Spencer Grammer (born October 9, 1983). Through Spencer, Grammer has one grandson, Spencer's son Emmett Emmanual Hesketh (born October 10, 2011).
After his divorce from Alderman, Grammer had a daughter, Kandace Greer Grammer ("Greer Grammer"; born February 15, 1992), with hair and makeup stylist Barrie Buckner. Greer was a cast member on MTV's show "Awkward."
His second marriage, to Leigh-Anne Csuhany in September 1992, lasted one year. Grammer filed for an annulment when Csuhany was three months pregnant and evicted her from their home. The pregnancy ended in a miscarriage. Grammer claimed she was abusive and fired a gun at him.
In 1994, he met 28-year-old Tammi Baliszewski, also known as Tammi Alexander, at a bar in Manhattan Beach, California. In December 1994, they appeared together on the cover of "People" magazine, announcing their engagement and Grammer's substance abuse problems.
In August 1997, Grammer married his third wife, dancer and model Camille Donatacci. They met on a blind date in 1996. They have a daughter, born October 2001, and a son, born August 2004, both born to a surrogate mother. During their marriage, several of Grammer and Donatacci's homes were featured in magazines, including ones in Malibu, California (February 2001, "InStyle"), Maui (May 2004, "InStyle"), Long Island, New York (April 2008, "InStyle"), Bachelor Gulch, Colorado ("Architectural Digest)", and Bel Air, Los Angeles ("Architectural Digest"). In New York City, they lived at 15 Central Park West. It was announced on July 1, 2010, that Grammer had filed for divorce, citing irreconcilable differences. Grammer and Donatacci's divorce was finalized on February 10, 2011.
On August 12, 2010, Grammer announced that he was going to be a father for the fifth time with girlfriend Kayte Walsh, an English flight attendant 25 years his junior, daughter of former soccer player Alan Walsh. However, in October, Grammer announced that Walsh had miscarried six weeks earlier. The couple announced their engagement in December 2010, and married at The Plaza Hotel in New York City on February 25, 2011, two weeks after the finalization of Grammer's third divorce. Grammer and Walsh have a daughter, born July 2012, and two sons, born July 2014 and November 2016.
Murder of Karen Grammer
On July 1, 1975, Freddie Glenn, Michael Corbett, and one other man abducted, raped, and murdered Grammer's younger sister, 18-year-old Karen Grammer. Grammer, then 20, identified her body. He and his sister had been close, and he was devastated by her death; his later bouts of alcoholism and drug addiction were fueled in part by guilt and depression. In a 2012 interview with Oprah Winfrey, Grammer said he would be willing to forgive the perpetrators if they would take responsibility for the crime, but that they all continued to say they were innocent. In the same interview, Grammer expressed his loss of faith for a few years after Karen's death. He subsequently forgave Glenn in a 2014 parole hearing after being convinced of Glenn's contrition, but refused to support his release, saying that it would "be a betrayal of my sister's life". He named his daughter Spencer Karen Grammer in part for his sister. Karen Grammer's murder and the investigation by the Colorado Springs Police Department was the subject of the episode "Animal Nature" of the Investigation Discovery series "Homicide Hunter".
Grammer is a supporter of the Republican Party. In 2019, he called Washington politicians a "bunch of clowns". He has expressed an interest in some day running for United States Congress, Mayor of New York City, and the presidency. Grammer was a guest at President George W. Bush's first inauguration. Grammer endorsed Rudy Giuliani in the 2008 presidential primary and later campaigned for John McCain in the general election. Grammer promoted RightNetwork, a conservative start-up American television network. He endorsed Michele Bachmann for the Republican nomination for president in 2012. After Mitt Romney won the nomination, Grammer endorsed him. He supported Ben Carson's candidacy for the Republican Presidential nomination in 2016, although he endorsed Donald Trump when the latter was selected.
Although Grammer endorses the Tea Party movement on economic issues such as small government and lower taxes, he is supportive of same-sex marriage, stating "I think marriage is up to two people who love each other".
While a "New York" magazine profile published in 2010 described him as pro-choice, Grammer in 2015 posted an Instagram photo of himself with his wife Kayte wearing a T-shirt by the pro-life group Abort73. "City A.M." described Grammer as "one of Hollywood's best-known Republicans, a rare spark of red in a blue sea of Democrats".
In a 2016 interview with "The Guardian", Grammer stated that the person he admired most was Vladimir Putin "Because he is so comfortably who he is."
Grammer has a history of alcoholism. In 1988, Grammer was charged for drunk driving and cocaine possession and sentenced to 30 days in jail. In August 1990, Grammer was charged again for cocaine possession and was sentenced to three years' probation, fined $500, and required to perform 300 hours of community service. In January 1991, Grammer was given an additional two years' probation for violating his original probation through additional cocaine use. In September 1996, he crashed his Dodge Viper while intoxicated, and subsequently checked into the Betty Ford Center (an alcohol rehabilitation clinic) for 30 days. The cast and producers of both "Frasier" and "Cheers" held interventions to attempt to help him. Grammer's personal problems affected his work; co-star Bebe Neuwirth and writer Ken Levine cited delays with rehearsals and filming due to his erratic behavior. Writer Dan O'Shannon recalled, however, that
Grammer credits his religion for helping him through with his struggles with alcohol and drug use, as well as his personal tragedies.
On May 31, 2008, while paddleboarding with his then-wife Camille in Hawaii, Grammer experienced a heart attack. Their personal assistant, Scott MacLean was essential in saving his life. Grammer was discharged on June 4, 2008, and was said to be "resting comfortably" at his Hawaiian residence. Seven weeks after the attack, Grammer told "Entertainment Tonight" that, although at the time his spokesman described the attack as mild, it was in fact more severe, almost leading to his death, as his heart had stopped. Grammer thought Fox's decision to cancel his TV sitcom "Back to You" contributed to his health problems, stating that "It was a very stressful time for me, and a surprise that it was cancelled. But you know, everything that doesn't kill us—which it almost did—makes us stronger!"
In 1995, Grammer was accused of sleeping with his child's underage babysitter. A grand jury chose not to indict the actor saying, "The young woman's delay of more than a year in pressing charges against Mr. Grammer made it difficult to support her claim" according to the County Prosecutor Nicholas L. Bissell Jr. Grammer released a statement saying, "I have said from the outset that there was no basis for the allegations".
In 1996, Grammer's ex-girlfriend, Cerlette Lamme, sued him for defamation of character and invasion of privacy over content he included in his autobiography "So Far". In 1998, Grammer filed a lawsuit against Internet Entertainment Group (IEG), which Grammer claimed had stolen from his home a videotape of him sleeping with a woman. IEG countersued Grammer, denying it was in possession of such a tape, and Grammer's suit was eventually dropped. IEG President Seth Warshavsky later said, "We have been presented with another Kelsey Grammer tape. But we have no plans to air it. We are still evaluating it at this time." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17130 |
Kemerovo
Kemerovo () is an industrial city and the administrative center of Kemerovo Oblast, Russia, located at the confluence of the Iskitim and Tom Rivers, in the major coal mining region of the Kuznetsk Basin. Its population was 532,981 in the 2010 Census; 484,754 in the 2002 Census; 520,263 in the 1989 Census.
It was previously known as "Shcheglovsk" (until March 27, 1932).
Kemerovo is an amalgamation of, and successor to, several older Russian settlements. A waypoint named Verkhotomsky "ostrog" was established nearby in 1657 on a road from Tomsk to Kuznetsk fortress. In 1701, the settlement of Shcheglovsk was founded on the left bank of the Tom; soon it became a village. By 1859, seven villages existed where modern Kemerovo is now: Shcheglovka (or Ust-Iskitimskoye), Kemerovo (named in 1734), Yevseyevo, Krasny Yar, Kur-Iskitim (Pleshki), Davydovo (Ishanovo), and Borovaya. In 1721, coal was discovered in the area. The first coal mines were established in 1907, later a chemical plant was established in 1916. By 1917, the population of Shcheglovo had grown to around 4,000 people.
The area's further development was boosted by the construction of a railway between Yurga and Kolchugino (now Leninsk-Kuznetsky) with a connection between Topki and Shcheglovo. Shcheglovo was granted town status on May 9, 1918, which is now considered to be the date of Kemerovo's founding; and was later known as Shcheglovsk. The town became the central location for the Kuzbass Autonomous Industrial Colony which was established there in 1921. 650 workers from 20 different countries settled there and set up what became the Kemerovo Coke Chemical Plant. Some of their descendants visited the modern factory in 2011. On May 27, 1932, Shcheglovsk was renamed Kemerovo and became the administrative center of Kemerovo Oblast in 1943. In March 2018, 60 people were killed when a fire broke out in a shopping mall in the town.
Kemerovo is the administrative center of the oblast and, within the framework of administrative divisions, it also serves as the administrative center of Kemerovsky District, even though it is not a part of it. As an administrative division, it is incorporated separately as Kemerovo City Under Oblast Jurisdiction—an administrative unit with a status equal to that of the districts. As a municipal division, Kemerovo City Under Oblast Jurisdiction is incorporated as Kemerovsky Urban Okrug.
The industrialization of Kemerovo was driven and underpinned by coal mining and by the heavy industry based on the availability of coal. It remains an important industrial city, built up during the Soviet period, with important steel, aluminum and machinery based manufacturing plants along with chemical, fertilizer, and other manufacturing industries. Since the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the city's industries have experienced a severe decline, creating high levels of unemployment. Major companies based in the city include Siberian Business Union.
Kemerovo is linked to western Russia by a branch of the Trans-Siberian Railway and has the Kemerovo Railway station.
The city is served by Kemerovo International Airport.
Local public transport is provided by buses, trolleybuses and trams.
Six higher education institutions are located in Kemerovo: Kemerovo State University, Kuzbass State Technical University, Kemerovo Institute of Food Industry (University), Kemerovo State Medical Academy, Kemerovo State Institute of Culture, Kemerovo Agricultural Institute and Kuzbass Economy and Justice Institute.
The public interest for bandy is widespread in Russia. 26,000 watched the opening game of the 2011–12 Russian Bandy League when local club Kuzbass played against Dynamo Moscow and Kuzbass is among the very best in the Russian Bandy League. The 2007 Bandy World Championship was held in the city. Female bandy only exists in a few places in Russia. Now Kemerovo is about to start it up. Moscow already had two multi-use indoor arenas where bandy can be played. Kemerovo got the first one in Russia specifically built for bandy (today also Khabarovsk and Ulyanovsk have it). Kuzbass plays the matches in the league at Khimik Stadium because of the big public interest. That arena has a capacity of 32000. As it also is equipped with artificial ice, Kemerovo has the best infrastructure for developing bandy in Russia.
Since 2013 there has been a "bandy on boots" tournament for national diasporas living in Kuzbass.
Kemerovo's position gives it a humid continental climate (Köppen "Dfb") with average temperatures varying from in January to in July and relatively low precipitation of around annually.
Kemerovo is twinned with: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17131 |
Channels of the Hawaiian Islands
In an archipelago like the Hawaiian Islands the water between islands is typically called a "channel" or "passage". Described here are the channels between the islands of Hawaiʻi, arranged from southeast to northwest.
The ʻAlenuihāhā separates the island of Hawaiʻi and the island of Maui. The maximum depth of this channel is , and the channel is 30 miles wide. There is a significant wind funnel effect in the channel, which is subject to scientific investigations. ʻAlenuihāhā means "great billows smashing."
The ʻAlalākeiki Channel separates the islands of Kahoʻolawe and Maui, at a distance of 7 miles. ʻAlalākeiki means "crying baby."
The Kealaikahiki Channel is the channel between Lānaʻi and Kahoʻolawe. It literally means "the road to Tahiti"; if one takes a bearing off of Kealaikahiki Point on Kahoʻolawe while in the channel and heads directly straight, one arrives, more or less, in Tahiti. In practice, however, Polynesian navigators probably did not quite ply a straight route to Tahiti. The channel is 17 miles wide.
The ʻAuʻau Channel is one of the most protected areas of ocean in the Hawaiian Islands, lying between Lānaʻi and Maui. The channel is also protected by Molokaʻi to the north, and Kahoʻolawe to the south. The depth of the channel reaches , and its width is . ʻAuʻau channel is a whale-watching center in the Hawaiian Islands. Humpback whales migrate approximately 3,500 miles (5600 km) from Alaskan waters each autumn and spend the northern hemisphere winter months in the protected waters of the channel.
ʻAuʻau translates to "to take a bath" referring to its calm bath-like conditions.
The middle of the ʻAuʻau channel off Lahaina is known as the Lahaina Roads. Once filled with whalers when Lahaina was a capital for that industry, Lahaina Roads were later adopted as an alternate anchorage for the main U.S. Pacific Fleet based at Pearl Harbor. In the planning for the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese had hoped that the Pacific Fleet still utilized Lahaina as an anchorage as ships sunk in the deep water there would have been unrecoverable. However, Lahaina was not utilized, and the bulk of the fleet remained moored in Pearl Harbor. The Roads are still a common moorage for oceangoing cruise ships and naval vessels of many flags, including the U.S., whose crews enjoy liberty on the island.
The Pailolo Channel separates the islands of Molokaʻi and Maui. Although the channel is only about at its shortest point, it is one of the windiest and roughest in the Hawaiian Islands.
The name is probably a contraction of pai (lift) and oloolo (shifting).
The Kalohi Channel is the stretch of water separating Lānaʻi and Molokaʻi. Depth of water in this channel is about and width is . This is one of the less treacherous channels between islands in the archipelago, although strong winds and choppy sea conditions are frequent. Kalolohia beach on the Lānaʻi coast is also known as "Shipwreck Beach" because of a wreck on the reef there. Kalohi means "the slowness."
The Kaiwi Channel (also known as the Molokai Channel) separates the islands of Oʻahu and Molokaʻi, and is wide. Maximum depth is . "Ka Iwi" means "the bone". There are annual paddleboarding and outrigger canoe paddling contests which traverse this channel.
Swimming the channel is one of the 7 challenges in the Oceans Seven open water swimming series.
The Kaʻieʻie Waho Channel, also called the Kauai Channel, separates the islands of Kauaʻi and Oʻahu, at a distance of . Kaʻieʻie Waho means "Outer Kaʻieʻie," named after the ʻieʻie vine ("Freycinetia arborea"). The maximum depth of the channel is over 11000 feet.
The Kaulakahi Channel separates the islands of Niʻihau and Kauaʻi. It is wide. Kaulakahi translates to "the single flame (streak of color)."
The Kumukahi Channel separates the islands of Niʻihau and Lehua. Kumukahi means "first beginning."
The Hoʻomoʻa Channel separates the islands of Lehua and Nihoa. Hoʻomoʻa means "to cook."
The Hawaiʻiloa Channel to the northwest of the islands of Nihoa. Named after Hawaiʻiloa, hero of an ancient Hawaiian legend about the settling of the Hawaiian Islands. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17133 |
Katal
The katal (symbol: kat) is the unit of catalytic activity in the International System of Units (SI). It is a derived SI unit for quantifying the catalytic activity of enzymes (that is, measuring the enzymatic activity level in enzyme catalysis) and other catalysts.
The General Conference on Weights and Measures and other international organizations recommend use of the katal. It replaces the non-SI enzyme unit of catalytic activity. The enzyme unit is still more commonly used than the katal, especially in biochemistry.
The katal is not used to express the rate of a reaction; that is expressed in units of concentration per second, as moles per liter per second. Rather, the katal is used to express catalytic activity, which is a property of the catalyst.
The katal is invariant of the measurement procedure, but the measured numerical value is not; the value depends on the experimental conditions. Therefore, to define the quantity of a catalyst in katals, the rate of conversion of a defined chemical reaction is specified as moles reacted per second. One katal of trypsin, for example, is that amount of trypsin which breaks one mole of peptide bonds in one second under specified conditions.
The name "katal" has been used for decades, and the unit became an official SI unit in 1999. The name comes from the Ancient Greek κατάλυσις ("katalysis"), meaning "dissolution"; the word "catalysis" itself is a Latinized form of the Greek word. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17140 |
Koala
The koala or, inaccurately, koala bear ("Phascolarctos cinereus") is an arboreal herbivorous marsupial native to Australia. It is the only extant representative of the family Phascolarctidae and its closest living relatives are the wombats, which are members of the family Vombatidae. The koala is found in coastal areas of the mainland's eastern and southern regions, inhabiting Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, and South Australia. It is easily recognisable by its stout, tailless body and large head with round, fluffy ears and large, spoon-shaped nose. The koala has a body length of and weighs . Fur colour ranges from silver grey to chocolate brown. Koalas from the northern populations are typically smaller and lighter in colour than their counterparts further south. These populations possibly are separate subspecies, but this is disputed.
Koalas typically inhabit open eucalypt woodlands, and the leaves of these trees make up most of their diet. Because this eucalypt diet has limited nutritional and caloric content, koalas are largely sedentary and sleep up to 20 hours a day. They are asocial animals, and bonding exists only between mothers and dependent offspring. Adult males communicate with loud bellows that intimidate rivals and attract mates. Males mark their presence with secretions from scent glands located on their chests. Being marsupials, koalas give birth to underdeveloped young that crawl into their mothers' pouches, where they stay for the first six to seven months of their lives. These young koalas, known as joeys, are fully weaned around a year old. Koalas have few natural predators and parasites, but are threatened by various pathogens, such as Chlamydiaceae bacteria and the koala retrovirus.
Koalas were hunted by Indigenous Australians and depicted in myths and cave art for millennia. The first recorded encounter between a European and a koala was in 1798, and an image of the animal was published in 1810 by naturalist George Perry. Botanist Robert Brown wrote the first detailed scientific description of the koala in 1814, although his work remained unpublished for 180 years. Popular artist John Gould illustrated and described the koala, introducing the species to the general British public. Further details about the animal's biology were revealed in the 19th century by several English scientists. Because of its distinctive appearance, the koala is recognised worldwide as a symbol of Australia. Koalas are listed as Vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. The animal was hunted heavily in the early 20th century for its fur, and large-scale cullings in Queensland resulted in a public outcry that initiated a movement to protect the species. Sanctuaries were established, and translocation efforts moved to new regions koalas whose habitat had become fragmented or reduced. Among the many threats to their existence are habitat destruction caused by agriculture, urbanisation, droughts and associated bushfires, some related to climate change. Increased habitat loss may also increase risks from vehicle traffic, dog attacks, pesticides in waterways, and increased food competition.
The word koala comes from the Dharug "gula", meaning "no water". It was at one time thought, since the animals were not observed to come down from trees often, that they were able to survive without drinking. The leaves of the eucalyptus tree have a high water content, so the koala does not need to drink often. But the notion that they do not need to drink water at all was shown to be a myth. Although the vowel 'u' was originally written in the English orthography as "oo" (in spellings such as "coola" or "koolah"), it was changed to "oa", possibly in error. Because of the koala's supposed resemblance to a bear, it was often miscalled the koala bear, particularly by early settlers. The generic name, "Phascolarctos", is derived from the Greek words "phaskolos" "pouch" and "arktos" "bear". The specific name, "cinereus", is Latin for "ash coloured".
The koala was given its generic name "Phascolarctos" in 1816 by French zoologist Henri Marie Ducrotay de Blainville, who would not give it a specific name until further review. In 1819, German zoologist Georg August Goldfuss gave it the binomial "Lipurus cinereus". Because "Phascolarctos" was published first, according to the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, it has priority as the official name of the genus. French naturalist Anselme Gaëtan Desmarest proposed the name "Phascolarctos fuscus" in 1820, suggesting that the brown-coloured versions were a different species than the grey ones. Other names suggested by European authors included "Marodactylus cinereus" by Goldfuss in 1820, "P. flindersii" by René Primevère Lesson in 1827, and "P. koala" by John Edward Gray in 1827.
The koala is classified with wombats (family Vombatidae) and several extinct families (including marsupial tapirs, marsupial lions and giant wombats) in the suborder Vombatiformes within the order Diprotodontia. The Vombatiformes are a sister group to a clade that includes macropods (kangaroos and wallabies) and possums. The ancestors of vombatiforms were likely arboreal, and the koala's lineage was possibly the first to branch off around 40 million years ago during the Eocene.
The modern koala is the only extant member of Phascolarctidae, a family that once included several genera and species. During the Oligocene and Miocene, koalas lived in rainforests and had less specialised diets. Some species, such as the Riversleigh rainforest koala ("Nimiokoala greystanesi") and some species of "Perikoala", were around the same size as the modern koala, while others, such as species of "Litokoala", were one-half to two-thirds its size. Like the modern species, prehistoric koalas had well developed ear structures which suggests that long-distance vocalising and sedentism developed early. During the Miocene, the Australian continent began drying out, leading to the decline of rainforests and the spread of open "Eucalyptus" woodlands. The genus "Phascolarctos" split from "Litokoala" in the late Miocene and had several adaptations that allowed it to live on a specialised eucalyptus diet: a shifting of the palate towards the front of the skull; larger molars and premolars; smaller pterygoid fossa; and a larger gap between the molar and the incisor teeth.
During the Pliocene and Pleistocene, when Australia experienced changes in climate and vegetation, koala species grew larger. "P. cinereus" may have emerged as a dwarf form of the giant koala ("P. stirtoni"). The reduction in the size of large mammals has been seen as a common phenomenon worldwide during the late Pleistocene, and several Australian mammals, such as the agile wallaby, are traditionally believed to have resulted from this dwarfing. A 2008 study questions this hypothesis, noting that "P. cinereus" and "P. stirtoni" were sympatric during the middle to late Pleistocene, and possibly as early as the Pliocene. The fossil record of the modern koala extends back at least to the middle Pleistocene.
Traditionally, three distinct subspecies have been recognised: the Queensland koala ("P. c. adustus", Thomas 1923), the New South Wales koala ("P. c. cinereus", Goldfuss 1817), and the Victorian koala ("P. c. victor", Troughton 1935). These forms are distinguished by pelage colour and thickness, body size, and skull shape. The Queensland koala is the smallest of the three, with shorter, silver fur and a shorter skull. The Victorian koala is the largest, with shaggier, brown fur and a wider skull. The boundaries of these variations are based on state borders, and their status as subspecies is disputed. A 1999 genetic study suggests that the variations represent differentiated populations with limited gene flow between them, and that the three subspecies comprise a single evolutionarily significant unit. Other studies have found that koala populations have high levels of inbreeding and low genetic variation. Such low genetic diversity may have been a characteristic of koala populations since the late Pleistocene. Rivers and roads have been shown to limit gene flow and contribute to the genetic differentiation of southeast Queensland populations. In April 2013, scientists from the Australian Museum and Queensland University of Technology announced they had fully sequenced the koala genome.
The koala is a stocky animal with a large head and vestigial or non-existent tail. It has a body length of and a weight of , making it among the largest arboreal marsupials. Koalas from Victoria are twice as heavy as those from Queensland. The species is sexually dimorphic, with males 50% larger than females. Males are further distinguished from females by their more curved noses and the presence of chest glands, which are visible as hairless patches. As in most marsupials, the male koala has a bifurcated penis, and the female has two lateral vaginas and two separate uteri. The male's penile sheath contains naturally occurring bacteria that play an important role in fertilisation. The female's pouch opening is tightened by a sphincter that keeps the young from falling out.
The pelage of the koala is thicker and longer on the back, and shorter on the belly. The ears have thick fur on both the inside and outside. The back fur colour varies from light grey to chocolate brown. The belly fur is whitish; on the rump it is dappled whitish, and darker at the back. The koala has the most effective insulating back fur of any marsupial and is highly resilient to wind and rain, while the belly fur can reflect solar radiation. The koala's curved, sharp claws are well adapted for climbing trees. The large forepaws have two opposable digits (the first and second, which are opposable to the other three) that allow them to grasp small branches. On the hindpaws, the second and third digits are fused, a typical condition for members of the Diprotodontia, and the attached claws (which are still separate) are used for grooming. As in humans and other primates, koalas have friction ridges on their paws. The animal has a sturdy skeleton and a short, muscular upper body with proportionately long upper limbs that contribute to its climbing and grasping abilities. Additional climbing strength is achieved with thigh muscles that attach to the shinbone lower than other animals. The koala has a cartilaginous pad at the end of the spine that may make it more comfortable when it perches in the fork of a tree.
The koala has one of the smallest brains in proportion to body weight of any mammal, being 60% smaller than that of a typical diprotodont, weighing only on average. The brain's surface is fairly smooth, typical for a "primitive" animal. It occupies only 61% of the cranial cavity and is pressed against the inside surface by cerebrospinal fluid. The function of this relatively large amount of fluid is not known, although one possibility is that it acts as a shock absorber, cushioning the brain if the animal falls from a tree. The koala's small brain size may be an adaptation to the energy restrictions imposed by its diet, which is insufficient to sustain a larger brain. Because of its small brain, the koala has a limited ability to perform complex, unfamiliar behaviours. For example, when presented with plucked leaves on a flat surface, the animal cannot adapt to the change in its normal feeding routine and will not eat the leaves. The koala's olfactory senses are normal, and it is known to sniff the oils of individual branchlets to assess their edibility. Its nose is fairly large and covered in leathery skin. Its round ears provide it with good hearing, and it has a well-developed middle ear. A koala's vision is not well developed, and its relatively small eyes are unusual among marsupials in that the pupils have vertical slits. Koalas make use of a novel vocal organ to produce low-pitched sounds (see social spacing, below). Unlike typical mammalian vocal cords, which are folds in the larynx, these organs are placed in the velum (soft palate) and are called velar vocal cords.
The koala has several adaptations for its eucalypt diet, which is of low nutritive value, of high toxicity, and high in dietary fibre. The animal's dentition consists of the incisors and cheek teeth (a single premolar and four molars on each jaw), which are separated by a large gap (a characteristic feature of herbivorous mammals). The incisors are used for grasping leaves, which are then passed to the premolars to be snipped at the petiole before being passed to the highly cusped molars, where they are shredded into small pieces. Koalas may also store food in their cheek pouches before it is ready to be chewed. The partially worn molars of middle-aged koalas are optimal for breaking the leaves into small particles, resulting in more efficient stomach digestion and nutrient absorption in the small intestine, which digests the eucalyptus leaves to provide most of the animal's energy. A koala sometimes regurgitates the food into the mouth to be chewed a second time.
Unlike kangaroos and eucalyptus-eating possums, koalas are hindgut fermenters, and their digestive retention can last for up to 100 hours in the wild, or up to 200 hours in captivity. This is made possible by the extraordinary length of their caecum— long and in diameter—the largest proportionally of any animal. Koalas can select which food particles to retain for longer fermentation and which to pass through. Large particles typically pass through more quickly, as they would take more time to digest. While the hindgut is proportionally larger in the koala than in other herbivores, only 10% of the animal's energy is obtained from fermentation. Since the koala gains a low amount of energy from its diet, its metabolic rate is half that of a typical mammal, although this can vary between seasons and sexes. They are able to digest the toxins present in eucalyptus leaves due to their production of cytochrome P450, which breaks down these poisons in the liver. The koala conserves water by passing relatively dry faecal pellets high in undigested fibre, and by storing water in the caecum.
The koala's geographic range covers roughly , and 30 ecoregions. It extends throughout eastern and southeastern Australia, encompassing northeastern, central and southeastern Queensland, eastern New South Wales, Victoria, and southeastern South Australia. The koala was introduced near Adelaide and on several islands, including Kangaroo Island and French Island. The population on Magnetic Island represents the northern limit of its range. Fossil evidence shows that the koala's range stretched as far west as southwestern Western Australia during the late Pleistocene. They were likely driven to extinction in these areas by environmental changes and hunting by Indigenous Australians.
In Queensland, koalas are unevenly distributed and uncommon except in the southeast, where they are numerous. In New South Wales, they are abundant only in Pilliga, while in Victoria they are common nearly everywhere. In South Australia, koalas were extirpated by 1920 and subsequently reintroduced. Koalas can be found in habitats ranging from relatively open forests to woodlands, and in climates ranging from tropical to cool temperate. In semi-arid climates, they prefer riparian habitats, where nearby streams and creeks provide refuge during times of drought and extreme heat.
Koalas are herbivorous, and while most of their diet consists of eucalypt leaves, they can be found in trees of other genera, such as "Acacia", "Allocasuarina", "Callitris", "Leptospermum", and "Melaleuca". Though the foliage of over 600 species of "Eucalyptus" is available, the koala shows a strong preference for around 30. They tend to choose species that have a high protein content and low proportions of fibre and lignin. The most favoured species are "Eucalyptus microcorys", "E. tereticornis", and "E. camaldulensis", which, on average, make up more than 20% of their diet. Despite its reputation as a fussy eater, the koala is more generalist than some other marsupial species, such as the greater glider. Since eucalypt leaves have a high water content, the koala does not need to drink often; its daily water turnover rate ranges from 71 to 91 ml/kg of body weight. Although females can meet their water requirements from eating leaves, larger males require additional water found on the ground or in tree hollows. When feeding, a koala holds onto a branch with hindpaws and one forepaw while the other forepaw grasps foliage. Small koalas can move close to the end of a branch, but larger ones stay near the thicker bases. Koalas consume up to of leaves a day, spread over four to six feeding sessions. Despite their adaptations to a low-energy lifestyle, they have meagre fat reserves and need to feed often.
Because they get so little energy from their diet, koalas must limit their energy use and sleep or rest 20 hours a day; They are predominantly active at night and spend most of their waking hours feeding. They typically eat and sleep in the same tree, possibly for as long as a day. On very hot days, a koala may climb down to the coolest part of the tree which is cooler than the surrounding air. The koala hugs the tree to lose heat without panting. On warm days, a koala may rest with its back against a branch or lie on its stomach or back with its limbs dangling. During cold, wet periods, it curls itself into a tight ball to conserve energy. On windy days, a koala finds a lower, thicker branch on which to rest. While it spends most of the time in the tree, the animal descends to the ground to move to another tree, walking on all fours. The koala usually grooms itself with its hindpaws, but sometimes uses its forepaws or mouth.
Koalas are asocial animals and spend just 15 minutes a day on social behaviours. In Victoria, home ranges are small and have extensive overlap, while in central Queensland they are larger and overlap less. Koala society appears to consist of "residents" and "transients", the former being mostly adult females and the latter males. Resident males appear to be territorial and dominate others with their larger body size. Alpha males tend to establish their territories close to breeding females, while younger males are subordinate until they mature and reach full size. Adult males occasionally venture outside their home ranges; when they do so, dominant ones retain their status. When a male enters a new tree, he marks it by rubbing his chest gland against the trunk or a branch; males have occasionally been observed to dribble urine on the trunk. This scent-marking behaviour probably serves as communication, and individuals are known to sniff the base of a tree before climbing. Scent marking is common during aggressive encounters. Chest gland secretions are complex chemical mixtures—about 40 compounds were identified in one analysis—that vary in composition and concentration with the season and the age of the individual.
Adult males communicate with loud bellows—low pitched sounds that consist of snore-like inhalations and resonant exhalations that sound like growls. These sounds are thought to be generated by unique vocal organs found in koalas. Because of their low frequency, these bellows can travel far through air and vegetation. Koalas may bellow at any time of the year, particularly during the breeding season, when it serves to attract females and possibly intimidate other males. They also bellow to advertise their presence to their neighbours when they enter a new tree. These sounds signal the male's actual body size, as well as exaggerate it; females pay more attention to bellows that originate from larger males. Female koalas bellow, though more softly, in addition to making snarls, wails, and screams. These calls are produced when in distress and when making defensive threats. Young koalas squeak when in distress. As they get older, the squeak develops into a "squawk" produced both when in distress and to show aggression. When another individual climbs over it, a koala makes a low grunt with its mouth closed. Koalas make numerous facial expressions. When snarling, wailing, or squawking, the animal curls the upper lip and points its ears forward. During screams, the lips retract and the ears are drawn back. Females bring their lips forward and raise their ears when agitated.
Agonistic behaviour typically consists of squabbles between individuals climbing over or passing each other. This occasionally involves biting. Males that are strangers may wrestle, chase, and bite each other. In extreme situations, a male may try to displace a smaller rival from a tree. This involves the larger aggressor climbing up and attempting to corner the victim, which tries either to rush past him and climb down or to move to the end of a branch. The aggressor attacks by grasping the target by the shoulders and repeatedly biting him. Once the weaker individual is driven away, the victor bellows and marks the tree. Pregnant and lactating females are particularly aggressive and attack individuals that come too close. In general, however, koalas tend to avoid energy-wasting aggressive behaviour.
Koalas are seasonal breeders, and births take place from the middle of spring through the summer to early autumn, from October to May. Females in oestrus tend to hold their heads further back than usual and commonly display tremors and spasms. However, males do not appear to recognise these signs, and have been observed to mount non-oestrous females. Because of his much larger size, a male can usually force himself on a female, mounting her from behind, and in extreme cases, the male may pull the female out of the tree. A female may scream and vigorously fight off her suitors, but will submit to one that is dominant or is more familiar. The bellows and screams that accompany matings can attract other males to the scene, obliging the incumbent to delay mating and fight off the intruders. These fights may allow the female to assess which is dominant. Older males usually have accumulated scratches, scars, and cuts on the exposed parts of their noses and on their eyelids.
The koala's gestation period lasts 33–35 days, and a female gives birth to a single joey (although twins occur on occasion). As with all marsupials, the young are born while at the embryonic stage, weighing only . However, they have relatively well-developed lips, forelimbs, and shoulders, as well as functioning respiratory, digestive, and urinary systems. The joey crawls into its mother's pouch to continue the rest of its development. Unlike most other marsupials, the koala does not clean her pouch.
A female koala has two teats; the joey attaches itself to one of them and suckles for the rest of its pouch life. The koala has one of the lowest milk energy production rates in relation to body size of any mammal. The female makes up for this by lactating for as long as 12 months. At seven weeks of age, the joey's head grows longer and becomes proportionally large, pigmentation begins to develop, and its sex can be determined (the scrotum appears in males and the pouch begins to develop in females). At 13 weeks, the joey weighs around and its head has doubled in size. The eyes begin to open and fine fur grows on the forehead, nape, shoulders, and arms. At 26 weeks, the fully furred animal resembles an adult, and begins to poke its head out of the pouch.
As the young koala approaches six months, the mother begins to prepare it for its eucalyptus diet by predigesting the leaves, producing a faecal pap that the joey eats from her cloaca. The pap is quite different in composition from regular faeces, resembling instead the contents of the caecum, which has a high concentration of bacteria. Eaten for about a month, the pap provides a supplementary source of protein at a transition time from a milk to a leaf diet. The joey fully emerges from the pouch for the first time at six or seven months of age, when it weighs . It explores its new surroundings cautiously, clinging to its mother for support. By nine months, it weighs over and develops its adult fur colour. Having permanently left the pouch, it rides on its mother's back for transportation, learning to climb by grasping branches. Gradually, it spends more time away from its mother, and at 12 months it is fully weaned, weighing around . When the mother becomes pregnant again, her bond with her previous offspring is permanently severed. Newly weaned young are encouraged to disperse by their mothers' aggressive behaviour towards them.
Females become sexually mature at about three years of age and can then become pregnant; in comparison, males reach sexual maturity when they are about four years old, although they can produce sperm as early as two years. While the chest glands can be functional as early as 18 months of age, males do not begin scent-marking behaviours until they reach sexual maturity. Because the offspring have a long dependent period, female koalas usually breed in alternate years. Favourable environmental factors, such as a plentiful supply of high-quality food trees, allow them to reproduce every year.
Koalas may live from 13 to 18 years in the wild. While female koalas usually live this long, males may die sooner because of their more hazardous lives. Koalas usually survive falls from trees and immediately climb back up, but injuries and deaths from falls do occur, particularly in inexperienced young and fighting males. Around six years of age, the koala's chewing teeth begin to wear down and their chewing efficiency decreases. Eventually, the cusps disappear completely and the animal will die of starvation.
Koalas have few predators; dingos and large pythons may prey on them; birds of prey (such as powerful owls and wedge-tailed eagles) are threats to young. Koalas are generally not subject to external parasites, other than ticks in coastal areas. Koalas may also suffer mange from the mite "Sarcoptes scabiei", and skin ulcers from the bacterium "Mycobacterium ulcerans", but neither is common. Internal parasites are few and largely harmless. These include the tapeworm "Bertiella obesa", commonly found in the intestine, and the nematodes "Marsupostrongylus longilarvatus" and "Durikainema phascolarcti", which are infrequently found in the lungs. In a three-year study of almost 600 koalas admitted to the Australian Zoo Wildlife Hospital in Queensland, 73.8% of the animals were infected with at least one species of the parasitic protozoal genus "Trypanosoma", the most common of which was "T. irwini".
Koalas can be subject to pathogens such as Chlamydiaceae bacteria, which can cause keratoconjunctivitis, urinary tract infection, and reproductive tract infection. Such infections are widespread on the mainland, but absent in some island populations. The koala retrovirus (KoRV) may cause koala immune deficiency syndrome (KIDS) which is similar to AIDS in humans. Prevalence of KoRV in koala populations suggests a trend spreading from the north to the south of Australia. Northern populations are completely infected, while some southern populations (including Kangaroo Island) are free.
The animals are vulnerable to bushfires due to their slow movements and the flammability of eucalypt trees. The koala instinctively seeks refuge in the higher branches, where it is vulnerable to intense heat and flames. Bushfires also fragment the animal's habitat, which restricts their movement and leads to population decline and loss of genetic diversity. Dehydration and overheating can also prove fatal. Consequently, the koala is vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Models of climate change in Australia predict warmer and drier climates, suggesting that the koala's range will shrink in the east and south to more mesic habitats. Droughts also affect the koala's well-being. For example, a severe drought in 1980 caused many "Eucalyptus" trees to lose their leaves. Subsequently, 63% of the population in southwestern Queensland died, especially young animals that were excluded from prime feeding sites by older, dominant koalas, and recovery of the population was slow. Later, this population declined from an estimated mean population of 59,000 in 1995 to 11,600 in 2009, a reduction attributed largely to hotter and drier conditions resulting from droughts in most years between 2002 and 2007.
According to Australian health minister Sussan Ley, the 2019–20 Australian bushfire season, and especially fires in NSW, resulted in the death of up to 8,400 koalas (30% of the local population) on New South Wales's mid-north coast. A local veterinarian estimated as many as 30,000 may have died in the Kangaroo Island fires, out of an estimated population of 50,000.
Another predicted negative outcome of climate change is the effect of elevations in atmospheric levels on the koala's food supply: increases in cause "Eucalyptus" trees to reduce protein and increase tannin concentrations in their leaves, reducing the quality of the food source.
The first written reference of the koala was recorded by John Price, servant of John Hunter, the Governor of New South Wales. Price encountered the "cullawine" on 26 January 1798, during an expedition to the Blue Mountains, although his account was not published until nearly a century later in "Historical Records of Australia". In 1802, French-born explorer Francis Louis Barrallier encountered the animal when his two Aboriginal guides, returning from a hunt, brought back two koala feet they were intending to eat. Barrallier preserved the appendages and sent them and his notes to Hunter's successor, Philip Gidley King, who forwarded them to Joseph Banks. Similar to Price, Barrallier's notes were not published until 1897. Reports of the first capture of a live "koolah" appeared in "The Sydney Gazette" in August 1803. Within a few weeks Flinders' astronomer, James Inman, purchased a specimen pair for live shipment to Joseph Banks in England. They were described as 'somewhat larger than the Waumbut (Wombat)'. These encounters helped provide the impetus for King to commission the artist John Lewin to paint watercolours of the animal. Lewin painted three pictures, one of which was subsequently made into a print that was reproduced in Georges Cuvier's "Le Règne Animal (The Animal Kingdom)" (first published in 1817) and several European works on natural history.
Botanist Robert Brown was the first to write a detailed scientific description of the koala in 1803, based on a female specimen captured near what is now Mount Kembla in the Illawarra region of New South Wales. Austrian botanical illustrator Ferdinand Bauer drew the animal's skull, throat, feet, and paws. Brown's work remained unpublished and largely unnoticed, however, as his field books and notes remained in his possession until his death, when they were bequeathed to the British Museum (Natural History) in London. They were not identified until 1994, while Bauer's koala watercolours were not published until 1989. British surgeon Everard Home included details of the koala based on eyewitness accounts of William Paterson, who had befriended Brown and Bauer during their stay in New South Wales. Home, who in 1808 published his report in the journal "Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society", gave the animal the scientific name "Didelphis coola".
The first published image of the koala appeared in George Perry's (1810) natural history work "Arcana". Perry called it the "New Holland Sloth" on account of its perceived similarities to the Central and South American tree-living mammals of genus "Bradypus". His disdain for the koala, evident in his description of the animal, was typical of the prevailing early 19th-century British attitude about the primitiveness and oddity of Australian fauna: "... the eye is placed like that of the Sloth, very close to the mouth and nose, which gives it a clumsy awkward appearance, and void of elegance in the combination ... they have little either in their character or appearance to interest the Naturalist or Philosopher. As Nature however provides nothing in vain, we may suppose that even these torpid, senseless creatures are wisely intended to fill up one of the great links of the chain of animated nature ...".
Naturalist and popular artist John Gould illustrated and described the koala in his three-volume work "The Mammals of Australia" (1845–63) and introduced the species, as well as other members of Australia's little-known faunal community, to the general British public. Comparative anatomist Richard Owen, in a series of publications on the physiology and anatomy of Australian mammals, presented a paper on the anatomy of the koala to the Zoological Society of London. In this widely cited publication, he provided the first careful description of its internal anatomy, and noted its general structural similarity to the wombat. English naturalist George Robert Waterhouse, curator of the Zoological Society of London, was the first to correctly classify the koala as a marsupial in the 1840s. He identified similarities between it and its fossil relatives "Diprotodon" and "Nototherium", which had been discovered just a few years before. Similarly, Gerard Krefft, curator of the Australian Museum in Sydney, noted evolutionary mechanisms at work when comparing the koala to its ancestral relatives in his 1871 "The Mammals of Australia".
The first living koala in Britain arrived in 1881, purchased by the Zoological Society of London. As related by prosecutor to the society, William Alexander Forbes, the animal suffered an accidental demise when the heavy lid of a washstand fell on it and it was unable to free itself. Forbes used the opportunity to dissect the fresh female specimen, thus was able to provide explicit anatomical details on the female reproductive system, the brain, and the liver—parts not previously described by Owen, who had access only to preserved specimens. Scottish embryologist William Caldwell—well known in scientific circles for determining the reproductive mechanism of the platypus—described the uterine development of the koala in 1884, and used the new information to convincingly place the koala and the monotremes into an evolutionary time frame.
Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester, visited the Koala Park Sanctuary in Sydney in 1934 and was "intensely interested in the bears". His photograph, with Noel Burnet, the founder of the park, and a koala, appeared in "The Sydney Morning Herald". After World War II, when tourism to Australia increased and the animals were exported to zoos overseas, the koala's international popularity rose. Several political leaders and members of royal families had their pictures taken with koalas, including Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Harry, Crown Prince Naruhito, Crown Princess Masako, Pope John Paul II, US President Bill Clinton, Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev, South African President Nelson Mandela, Prime Minister Tony Abbott, and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The koala is well known worldwide and is a major draw for Australian zoos and wildlife parks. It has been featured in advertisements, games, cartoons, and as soft toys. It benefited the national tourism industry by over an estimated billion Australian dollars in 1998, a figure that has since grown. In 1997, half of visitors to Australia, especially those from Korea, Japan, and Taiwan, sought out zoos and wildlife parks; about 75% of European and Japanese tourists placed the koala at the top of their list of animals to see. According to biologist Stephen Jackson: "If you were to take a straw poll of the animal most closely associated with Australia, it's a fair bet that the koala would come out marginally in front of the kangaroo". Factors that contribute to the koala's enduring popularity include its childlike body proportions and Teddy bear-like face.
The koala is featured in the Dreamtime stories and mythology of Indigenous Australians. The Tharawal people believed that the animal helped row the boat that brought them to the continent. Another myth tells of how a tribe killed a koala and used its long intestines to create a bridge for people from other parts of the world. This narrative highlights the koala's status as a game animal and the length of its intestines. Several stories tell of how the koala lost its tail. In one, a kangaroo cuts it off to punish the koala for being lazy and greedy. Tribes in both Queensland and Victoria regarded the koala as a wise animal and sought its advice. Bidjara-speaking people credited the koala for turning barren lands into lush forests. The animal is also depicted in rock carvings, though not as much as some other species.
Early European settlers in Australia considered the koala to be a prowling sloth-like animal with a "fierce and menacing look". At the beginning of the 20th century, the koala's reputation took a more positive turn, largely due to its growing popularity and depiction in several widely circulated children's stories. It is featured in Ethel Pedley's 1899 book "Dot and the Kangaroo", in which it is portrayed as the "funny native bear". Artist Norman Lindsay depicted a more anthropomorphic koala in "The Bulletin" cartoons, starting in 1904. This character also appeared as Bunyip Bluegum in Lindsay's 1918 book "The Magic Pudding". Perhaps the most famous fictional koala is Blinky Bill. Created by Dorothy Wall in 1933, the character appeared in several books and has been the subject of films, TV series, merchandise, and a 1986 environmental song by John Williamson. The first Australian stamp featuring a koala was issued by the Commonwealth in 1930. A television ad campaign for Australia's national airline Qantas, starting in 1967 and running for several decades, featured a live koala (voiced by Howard Morris), who complained that too many tourists were coming to Australia and concluded "I hate Qantas". The series has been ranked among the greatest commercials of all time.
The song "Ode to a Koala Bear" appears on the B-side of the 1983 Paul McCartney/Michael Jackson duet single "Say Say Say". A koala is the main character in Hanna-Barbera's "The Kwicky Koala Show" and Nippon Animation's "Noozles", both of which were animated cartoons of the early 1980s. Food products shaped like the koala include the Caramello Koala chocolate bar and the bite-sized cookie snack Koala's March. Dadswells Bridge in Victoria features a tourist complex shaped like a giant koala, and the Queensland Reds rugby team has a koala as its mascot. The Platinum Koala coin features the animal on the reverse and Elizabeth II on the obverse.
The drop bear is an imaginary creature in contemporary Australian folklore featuring a predatory, carnivorous version of the koala. This hoax animal is commonly spoken about in tall tales designed to scare tourists. While koalas are typically docile herbivores, drop bears are described as unusually large and vicious marsupials that inhabit treetops and attack unsuspecting people (or other prey) that walk beneath them by dropping onto their heads from above.
While the koala was previously classified as Least Concern on the Red List, it was uplisted to Vulnerable in 2016. Australian policy makers declined a 2009 proposal to include the koala in the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999. In 2012, the Australian government listed koala populations in Queensland and New South Wales as Vulnerable, because of a 40% population decline in the former and a 33% decline in the latter. A 2017 WWF report found a 53% decline per generation in Queensland, and a 26% decline in New South Wales. Populations in Victoria and South Australia appear to be abundant; however, the Australian Koala Foundation argues that the exclusion of Victorian populations from protective measures is based on a misconception that the total koala population is 200,000, whereas they believe it is probably less than 100,000.
Koalas were hunted for food by Aboriginals. A common technique used to capture the animals was to attach a loop of ropey bark to the end of a long, thin pole, so as to form a noose. This would be used to snare an animal high in a tree, beyond the reach of a climbing hunter; an animal brought down this way would then be killed with a stone hand axe or hunting stick (waddy). According to the customs of some tribes, it was considered taboo to skin the animal, while other tribes thought the animal's head had a special status, and saved them for burial.
The koala was heavily hunted by European settlers in the early 20th century, largely for its thick, soft fur. More than two million pelts are estimated to have left Australia by 1924. Pelts were in demand for use in rugs, coat linings, muffs, and as trimming on women's garments. Extensive cullings occurred in Queensland in 1915, 1917, and again in 1919, when over one million koalas were killed with guns, poisons, and nooses. The public outcry over these cullings was probably the first wide-scale environmental issue that rallied Australians. Novelist and social critic Vance Palmer, writing in a letter to "The Courier-Mail", expressed the popular sentiment: "The shooting of our harmless and lovable native bear is nothing less than barbarous ... No one has ever accused him of spoiling the farmer's wheat, eating the squatter's grass, or even the spreading of the prickly pear. There is no social vice that can be put down to his account ... He affords no sport to the gun-man ... And he has been almost blotted out already from some areas."
Despite the growing movement to protect native species, the poverty brought about by the drought of 1926–28 led to the killing of another 600,000 koalas during a one-month open season in August 1927. In 1934, Frederick Lewis, the Chief Inspector of Game in Victoria, said that the once-abundant animal had been brought to near extinction in that state, suggesting that only 500–1000 remained.
The first successful efforts at conserving the species were initiated by the establishment of Brisbane's Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary and Sydney's Koala Park Sanctuary in the 1920s and 1930s. The owner of the latter park, Noel Burnet, became the first to successfully breed koalas and earned a reputation as the foremost contemporary authority on the marsupial. In 1934, David Fleay, curator of Australian mammals at the Melbourne Zoo, established the first Australian faunal enclosure at an Australian zoo, and featured the koala. This arrangement allowed him to undertake a detailed study of its diet in captivity. Fleay later continued his conservation efforts at Healesville Sanctuary and the David Fleay Wildlife Park.
Since 1870, koalas have been introduced to several coastal and offshore islands, including Kangaroo Island and French Island. Their numbers have significantly increased, and since the islands are not large enough to sustain such high koala numbers, overbrowsing has become a problem. In the 1920s, Lewis initiated a program of large-scale relocation and rehabilitation programs to transfer koalas whose habitat had become fragmented or reduced to new regions, with the intent of eventually returning them to their former range. For example, in 1930–31, 165 koalas were translocated to Quail Island. After a period of population growth, and subsequent overbrowsing of gum trees on the island, about 1,300 animals were released into mainland areas in 1944. The practice of translocating koalas became commonplace; Victorian State manager Peter Menkorst estimated that from 1923 to 2006, about 25,000 animals were translocated to more than 250 release sites across Victoria. Since the 1990s, government agencies have tried to control their numbers by culling, but public and international outcry has forced the use of translocation and sterilisation, instead.
One of the biggest anthropogenic threats to the koala is habitat destruction and fragmentation. In coastal areas, the main cause of this is urbanisation, while in rural areas, habitat is cleared for agriculture. Native forest trees are also taken down to be made into wood products. In 2000, Australia ranked fifth in the world by deforestation rates, having cleared . The distribution of the koala has shrunk by more than 50% since European arrival, largely due to fragmentation of habitat in Queensland. The koala's "vulnerable" status in Queensland and New South Wales means that developers in these states must consider the impacts on this species when making building applications. In addition, koalas live in many protected areas.
While urbanisation can pose a threat to koala populations, the animals can survive in urban areas provided enough trees are present. Urban populations have distinct vulnerabilities: collisions with vehicles and attacks by domestic dogs kill about 4,000 animals every year. Injured koalas are often taken to wildlife hospitals and rehabilitation centres. In a 30-year retrospective study performed at a New South Wales koala rehabilitation centre, trauma (usually resulting from a motor vehicle accident or dog attack) was found to be the most frequent cause of admission, followed by symptoms of "Chlamydia" infection. Wildlife caretakers are issued special permits, but must release the animals back into the wild when they are either well enough or, in the case of joeys, old enough. As with most native animals, the koala cannot legally be kept as a pet in Australia or anywhere else.
One virtually unknown risk to koalas is that of water in the lungs (aspiration pneumonia), which can happen when drinking water from a bottle, as seen in numerous viral videos of well-meaning, but uninformed, people giving thirsty koalas water bottles to drink. The safer way to provide a koala drinking water is via a bowl, cup, helmet or hat from which the koala can lap up the water it needs.
Koala populations and habitat were impacted by the 2020 bushfires. In June 2020, a New South Wales parliamentary committee released a report stating that koalas could be extirpated from the state by 2050. Recommendations included establishing national parks on the George's River and Mid-North coast. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17143 |
Killer micro
A killer micro is a microprocessor-based machine that infringes on mini, mainframe, or supercomputer performance turf. It originally referred to the replacement of vector supercomputers built with bipolar technology by Massively Parallel Processors (MPP) assembled from a larger number of lower performing microprocessors. These systems faced initial skepticism, based on the assumption that applications do not have significant parallelism, because of Amdahl's law, but the success of early systems such as nCUBE and the fast progress in microprocessor performance following Moore's law led to a fast replacement.
Taken from the title of Eugene Brooks' (of Lawrence Livermore Lab) talk "Attack of the Killer Micros" at Supercomputing 1990. This title was probably chosen after the "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes" cult film. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17147 |
Killer poke
In computer jargon, a killer poke is a method of inducing physical hardware damage on a machine or its peripherals by the insertion of invalid values, via, for example, BASIC's POKE command, into a memory-mapped control register. The term is typically used to describe a family of fairly well known tricks that can overload the analog electronics in the CRT monitors of computers lacking hardware sanity checking (notable examples being the IBM Portable and Commodore PET.)
The PET-specific killer poke is connected to the architecture of that machine's video rasterizer circuits. In early PETs, writing a certain value to the memory address of a certain I/O register (codice_1) made the machine able to display text on the screen much faster. When the PET range was revamped with updated hardware, it was discovered that performing the old trick on the new hardware led to strange behavior by the new video chip, which could possibly damage the PET's integrated CRT monitor.
The Commodore 64 had an optional external 5-1/4" floppy drive. The Commodore 1541 contained a 6502 microprocessor which was used to run Commodore DOS and also to manage the drive mechanism. The drives stored data on 40 tracks (#0–39), and the stepper motor could be manually controlled through BASIC by PRINT#-ing "MEMORY-WRITE" commands to the drive (which correspond to the POKE command of BASIC, but write to the drive's internal memory and I/O registers, not those of the computer itself). If the drive was at either end of its range (track 0 or track 39) and it was commanded to continue moving, there was no software or firmware method to prevent drive damage. Continued "knocking" of the drive head against the stop would throw the mechanism out of alignment. The problem was exacerbated by copy protection techniques that used non-standard disk formats with unusual track counts. The Commodore 1571 had an optical head stop instead of a mechanical one.
The TRS-80 Model III had the ability to switch between a 32-character-wide display and a 64-character display. Doing so actuated a relay in the video hardware, accomplished by writing to a specific memory-mapped control register. Programs that repeatedly switched between 32- and 64-character modes at high speed (either on purpose or accidentally) could permanently damage the video hardware. While this is not a single "killer poke", it demonstrates a software failure mode that could permanently damage the hardware.
The TRS-80 Color Computer, IBM PC, IBM PCjr, Nascom, MSX, Amstrad CPC, and BBC Micro from Acorn Computers all contained a built-in relay for controlling an external tape recorder. Toggling the motor control relay in a tight loop would reduce the relay's longevity.
The floppy drive of the Commodore Amiga personal computer could be made to produce noises of various pitches by making the drive heads move back and forth. A program existed which could play El Cóndor Pasa, more or less correctly, on the Amiga's floppy drive. As some sounds relied on the head assembly hitting the stop, this gradually sent the head out of alignment.
Certain models of LG CD-ROM drives with specific firmware used an abnormal command for "update firmware": the "clear buffer" command usually used on CD-RW drives. Linux uses this command to tell the difference between CD-ROM and CD-RW drives. Most CD-ROM drives dependably return an error for the unsupported CD-RW command, but the faulty drives interpreted it as "update firmware", causing them to stop working (or, in casual parlance, to be "bricked").
Systemd mounts variables used by Unified Extensible Firmware Interface on Linux system's sysfs as writable by the root user of a system. As a result, it is possible for the root user of a system to completely brick a system with a non-conforming UEFI implementation (specifically some MSi laptops) by using the codice_2 command to delete the codice_3 directory, or recursively delete the root directory.
The Game Boy's LCD screen can be turned off by game software. Doing so outside of the vertical blanking interval can allegedly damage the hardware. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17148 |
Kill file
A kill file (also killfile, bozo bin or twit list) is a file used by some Usenet reading programs to discard articles matching some unwanted patterns of subject, author, or other header lines. Adding a person or subject to one's kill file means that person or topic will be ignored by one's newsreader in the future. By extension, the term may be used for a decision to ignore the person or subject in other media.
Kill files were first implemented in Larry Wall's rn. Sometimes more than one kill file will be used. Some newsreader programs also allow the user to specify a time period to keep an author in the kill file.
Newer newsreader software like Gnus often provides a more advanced form of filter known as a score file, which can use multiple rules to determine which articles are shown. Web-based forums usually have a similar feature called an "ignore list", which hides any posts by a specific user.
Jerry Pournelle wrote in 1986 of his wish for improvements to an offline reader for the Byte Information Exchange online service: "What I really need, though, is a program that will ... sort through the messages, assigning some to a priority file and others to the bit bucket depending on subject matter and origin".
In William Gibson's novel "Idoru", the virtual community Hak Nam is built around an "inverted killfile" and is modeled on Kowloon Walled City. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17149 |
Kilobit
The kilobit is a multiple of the unit bit for digital information or computer storage. The prefix "kilo-" (symbol k) is defined in the International System of Units (SI) as a multiplier of 103 (1 thousand), and therefore,
The kilobit has the unit symbol kbit or kb.
Using the common byte size of 8 bits, 1 kbit is equal to 125 bytes.
The kilobit is commonly used in the expression of data rates of digital communication circuits as kilobits per second (kbit/s or kb/s), or abbreviated as "kbps", as in, for example, "a 56 kbps PSTN circuit", or "a 512 kbit/s broadband Internet connection".
The unit symbol kb (lowercase 'b') is typographically similar to the international standard unit symbol for the kilobyte, i.e. kB (upper case 'B'). The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) recommends the symbol bit instead of b. The prefix "kilo-" is often used in fields of computer science and information technology with a meaning of multiplication by 1024 instead of 1000, contrary to international standards, in conjunction with the base unit byte and bit, in which case it is to be written as "Ki-", with a capital letter K, e.g., 1 Kibit = 1024 bits. The decimal SI definition, 1 kbit/s = 1000 bit/s, is used uniformly in the context of telecommunication transmission speeds.
The kilobit is closely related to the much less used kibibit, a unit multiple derived from the binary prefix "kibi-" (symbol Ki) of the same order of magnitude, which is equal to = 1024 bits, or approximately 2% larger than the kilobit. Despite the definitions of these new prefixes, meant for binary-based quantities of storage by international standards organizations, memory semiconductor chips are still marketed using the metric prefix names to designate binary multiples. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17152 |
Kit Carson
Christopher Houston Carson (December 24, 1809 – May 23, 1868), better known as Kit Carson, was an American frontiersman. He was a fur trapper, wilderness guide, Indian agent, and U.S. Army officer. He became a frontier legend in his own lifetime via biographies and news articles, and exaggerated versions of his exploits were the subject of dime novels. His understated nature belied confirmed reports of his fearlessness, combat skills, tenacity, and profound effect on the westward expansion of the United States. Although very famous for much of his life, historians in later years have written that Kit Carson did not like, want, or even fully understand the celebrity he experienced during his life.
Carson left home in rural Missouri at age 16 to become a mountain man and trapper in the West. In the 1830s, he accompanied Ewing Young on an expedition to Mexican California and joined fur-trapping expeditions into the Rocky Mountains. He lived among and married into the Arapaho and Cheyenne tribes.
In the 1840s, Carson was hired as a guide by John C. Frémont. Frémont's expeditions covered much of California, Oregon, and the Great Basin area. Frémont mapped and wrote reports and commentaries on the Oregon Trail to assist and encourage westward-bound pioneers, and Carson achieved national fame through those accounts. Under Frémont's command, Carson participated in the conquest of Mexican California at the beginning of the Mexican–American War. Later in the war, Carson was a scout and courier, celebrated for his rescue mission after the Battle of San Pasqual and for his coast-to-coast journey from California to Washington, D.C. to deliver news of the conflict in California to the government. In the 1850s, he was appointed as the Indian agent to the Ute Indians and the Jicarilla Apaches.
During the American Civil War, Carson led a regiment of mostly Hispanic volunteers from New Mexico on the side of the Union at the Battle of Valverde in 1862. When the Confederate threat was eliminated in New Mexico, Carson led forces to suppress the Navajo, Mescalero Apache, Kiowa, and Comanche tribes by destroying their food sources. He was brevetted a Brigadier General and took command of Fort Garland, Colorado. He was there only briefly, as poor health forced him to retire from military life.
Carson was married three times and had ten children. He died at Fort Lyon, Colorado of an aortic aneurysm on May 23, 1868. He is buried in Taos, New Mexico next to his third wife Josefa.
Christopher Houston Carson was born on Christmas Eve, 1809 at the Home of Capt. Christopher Houston, Hunting Creek, North Carolina. His parents were Lindsay Carson and his second wife, Rebecca Robinson. Lindsay had five children by his first wife Lucy Bradley, and ten more children by Rebecca. The Christmas Eve occasion of Christopher "Kit" Houston Carson birth was an interesting experience. Capt. Christopher Houston and his family had a family tradition to celebrate Christmas by annually having a party at their fashionable home in (Hunting Creek) Houstonville. In addition to their own family, the Houstons would always invite friends and close neighbors. It was to this occasion that Lindsay and Rebecca Carson were invited. Lindsay's wife, Rebecca was expecting the imminent birth of their sixth child. Early in the evening, the hostess, Mrs. Sarah Houston noticed that Rebecca Carson seemed to be in some distress and knowing of her expectant child, Mrs. Houston took Rebecca upstairs where she could be in a more comforting environment and attended by a helpful attendant, a woman who was an African-American slave. It was not long until the sound of a new pair of strong lungs sounded out the alarm, a new child had been born to Lindsay and Rebecca Carson. The new mother and father decided quickly their son should be named Christopher Houston Carson after Capt. Christopher Houston, and because of his small size, to give him the nick-name, "Kit". Lindsay Carson had a Scots-Irish Presbyterian background. He was a farmer, a cabin builder, and a veteran of the American Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. He fought Indians on the American frontier, losing two fingers on his left hand in a battle with the Fox and Sauk Indians.
The Carson family moved to Boone's Lick, Howard County, Missouri, when Kit was about one year old. The family settled on a tract of land owned by the sons of Daniel Boone, who had purchased the land from the Spanish. The Boone and Carson families became good friends, working and socializing together, and intermarrying. Lindsay's oldest son William married Boone's grand-niece, Millie Boone, in 1810. Their daughter Adaline became Kit's favorite playmate.
Missouri was then the frontier of American expansionism west; cabins were "forted" with tall stockade fences to defend against Indian attacks. As men worked in the fields, sentries were posted with weapons, to protect the farmers. These men were ready to kill any Indian who attacked.< Carson wrote in his "Memoirs": "For two or three years after our arrival, we had to remain forted and it was necessary to have men stationed at the extremities of the fields for the protection of those that were laboring.
In 1818 Lindsay Carson died instantly when a tree limb fell on him while he was clearing a field. Kit was about eight years old. Despite being penniless, his mother took care of her children alone for four years. She then married Joseph Martin, a widower with several children. Kit was a young teenager at the time and did not get along with his stepfather. The decision was made to apprentice him to David Workman, a saddler in Franklin, Missouri. Kit wrote in his "Memoirs" that Workman was "a good man, and I often recall the kind treatment I received."
Franklin was situated at the eastern end of the Santa Fe Trail, which had opened two years earlier. Many of the customers at the saddle shop were trappers and traders, from whom Carson heard stirring tales of the West. Carson found work in the saddlery not to his taste: he once stated "the business did not suit me, and I concluded to leave".
In August 1826, against his mother's wishes, Kit ran away from his apprenticeship. He went west with a caravan of fur trappers, tending their livestock. They made their trek over the Santa Fe Trail to Santa Fe, the capital of Santa Fe de Nuevo México, reaching their destination in November 1826. Kit settled in Taos.
Carson lived with Mathew Kinkead, a trapper and explorer who had served with Carson's older brothers during the War of 1812. Carson was mentored by Kinkead in learning the skills of a trapper, while learning the necessary languages for trade. Eventually he became fluent in Spanish and several Indian languages.
Workman put an advertisement in a local newspaper back in Missouri. He wrote that he would give a one cent reward to anyone who brought the boy back to Franklin. No one claimed the reward. It was a bit of a joke, but Carson was free. The advertisement featured the first printed description of Carson: "Christopher Carson, a boy about 16 years old, small of his age, but thick set; light hair, ran away from the subscriber, living in Franklin, Howard county, Missouri, to whom he had been bound to learn the saddler's trade."
Between 1827 and 1829, Carson worked as cook, translator, and wagon driver in the southwest. He also worked at a copper mine near the Gila River in southwestern New Mexico. In later life, Carson never mentioned any women from his youth. There are only three specific women mentioned in his writing: Josefa Jaramillo, his third and last wife; a comrade's mother in Washington, DC; and Mrs. Ann White, a victim of Indian atrocities.
At the age of nineteen, Carson began his career as a mountain man. He traveled through many parts of the American West with famous mountain men like Jim Bridger and Old Bill Williams. He spent the winter of 1828–1829 as a cook for Ewing Young in Taos. He joined Young's trapping expedition of 1829. The leadership of Young and the experience of the venture are credited with shaping Carson's early life in the mountains.
During August 1829 the party went into Apache country along the Gila River. The expedition was attacked, being Carson's first experience of combat. Young's party continued on into Alta California trapping and trading in California from Sacramento in the north to Los Angeles in the south, returning to Taos, New Mexico in April 1830 after trapping along the Colorado River.
Carson joined a wagon train rescue party after entering Taos, and although the perpetrators had fled the scene of atrocities Young had the opportunity to witness Carson's horsemanship and courage. Carson joined another expedition led by Thomas Fitzpatrick and William Levin in 1831. Fitzpatrick, Levin and his trappers went north to the central Rocky Mountains. Carson would hunt and trap in the West for about ten years. He was known as a reliable man and a good fighter.
Life for Carson as a mountain man was not easy. After collecting beavers from traps, he had to hold onto them for months at a time until the annual Rocky Mountain Rendezvous, held in remote areas of the West like the banks of the Green River in Wyoming. With the money received for the pelts, necessities of an independent life including fish hooks, flour and tobacco were procured. As there was little to no medical access in the varied regions he worked in, Carson had to dress his wounds and nurse himself. Conflict with particular Indians sometimes occurred. Carson's primary clothing at the time was in deer skins that had stiffened after being left outdoors for a time. This suit offered some protection against particular weapons employed by Indians.
Grizzly bears were one of the mountain man's greatest enemies. A particular incident involving the animals happened to Carson in 1834 as he was hunting an elk alone. Two bears crossed paths with him and quickly chased him up a tree. One of the bears tried to make him fall by shaking the tree, but was not successful and eventually went away. Carson returned to his camp as fast as he could. He wrote in his "Memoirs" that: "[The bear] finally concluded to leave, of which I was heartily pleased, never having been so scared in my life."
The last rendezvous was held in 1840. At that time, the fur trade began to drop off. Fashionable men in London, Paris, and New York wanted silk hats instead of beaver hats. In addition, beaver populations across North America were declining rapidly from over-exploitation. Carson knew it was time to find other work. He wrote in his "Memoirs" that "Beaver was getting scarce, it became necessary to try our hand at something else."
In 1841, he was hired at Bent's Fort in Colorado, at the largest building on the Santa Fe Trail. Hundreds of people worked or lived there. Carson hunted buffalo, antelope, deer, and other animals to feed these people. He was paid one dollar a day. He returned to Bent's Fort several times during his life to again provide meat for the fort's residents.
Carson was nineteen when he set off with Ewing Young's expedition to the Rocky Mountains in 1829. In addition to furs and the company of free-spirited, rugged mountain men, Carson sought action and adventure. He found what he was looking for in killing and scalping Indians. Carson probably killed and took the scalp of his first Indian when he was nineteen years old, during Ewing Young's expedition.
Carson's "Memoirs" are replete with stories about hostile Indian encounters with the memoirist. In January 1833, for example, warriors of the Crow tribe stole nine horses from Carson's camp. Carson and two other men sprayed the Crow camp with gunfire, killing almost every Crow. Carson wrote in his "Memoirs": "During our pursuit for the lost animals, we suffered considerably but, the success of having recovered our horses and sending many a redskin to his long home, our sufferings were soon forgotten."
Carson viewed the Blackfoot nation as a hostile tribe, believing they posed the greatest threat to his livelihood, safety, and life. He hated the Blackfeet, and killed them at every opportunity. Historian David Roberts has written: "It was taken for granted that the Blackfeet were bad Indians; to shoot them whenever he could was a mountain man's instinct and duty."
Carson had several encounters with the Blackfeet. His last battle with the Blackfeet took place in spring 1838. He was traveling with about one hundred mountain men led by Jim Bridger. In Montana territory, the group found a teepee with three Indian corpses inside. These three had died of smallpox. Bridger wanted to move on, but Carson and the other young men wanted to kill the Blackfeet.
They found the Blackfoot village and killed ten Blackfeet warriors. The Blackfeet found some safety in a pile of rocks but were driven away. It is not known how many Blackfeet died in this incident. Historian David Roberts writes: "[I]f anything like pity filled Carson's breast as, in his twenty-ninth year, he beheld the ravaged camp of the Blackfeet, he did not bother to remember it." Carson wrote in his "Memoirs" that this battle was "the prettiest fight I ever saw."
Carson's notions about Indians softened over the years. He found himself more and more in their company as he grew older and his attitude towards them became more respectful and humane. He urged the government to set aside lands called reservations for their use. As an Indian agent, he saw to it that those under his watch were treated with honesty, fairness, and clothed and fed properly. Historian David Roberts believes his first marriage to an Arapaho woman named Singing Grass "softened the stern and pragmatic mountaineer's opportunism."
In April 1842, Carson went back to his childhood home in Missouri to put his daughter Adaline in the care of relatives. On the return trip, Carson met John C. Frémont aboard a steamboat on the Missouri River. Frémont was a United States Army officer in the Corps of Topographical Engineers. He was about to lead an expedition into the West. After a brief conversation, Frémont hired Carson as a guide at $100 a month. It was the best-paying job of Carson's life. Frémont wrote, "I was pleased with him and his manner of address at this first meeting. He was a man of medium height, broad-shouldered, and deep-chested, with a clear steady blue eye and frank speech and address; quiet and unassuming."
In 1842, Carson guided Frémont across the Oregon Trail to South Pass, Wyoming. This was their first expedition into the West together. The purpose of this expedition was to map and describe the Oregon Trail as far as South Pass. A guidebook, maps, and other paraphernalia would be printed for westward-bound migrants and settlers. After the five-month, trouble-free mission was accomplished, Frémont wrote his government reports. These reports made Carson's name known across the United States, and spurred a migration of settlers westward to Oregon via the Oregon Trail.
In 1843, Carson agreed to join Frémont's second expedition. He guided Frémont across part of the Oregon Trail to the Columbia River in Oregon. The purpose of the expedition was to map and describe the Oregon Trail from South Pass, Wyoming to the Columbia River. They also side-tripped to Great Salt Lake in Utah, using a rubber raft to navigate the waters. On the way to California, the party suffered from bad weather in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, but were saved by Carson's good judgement and his skills as a guide. They found American settlers who fed them. The expedition then headed to California. This was illegal and dangerous because California was Mexican territory. The Mexican government ordered Frémont to leave. Frémont finally went back to Washington, D.C. The government liked his reports, but ignored his illegal trip into Mexico. Frémont was made a captain. The newspapers nicknamed him "The Pathfinder".
During this expedition, Frémont trekked into the Mojave Desert. His party met a Mexican man and boy. The two told Carson that Native Americans had ambushed their party of travelers. The male travelers were killed; the women travelers were staked to the ground, sexually mutilated, and killed. The murderers then stole the Mexicans' thirty horses. Carson and a mountain man friend named Alexis Godey went after the murderers. They took two days to find them. They rushed into their camp, killing and scalping two of the murderers. The stolen horses were recovered and returned to the Mexican man and boy. This deed brought Carson even greater fame. It confirmed his status as a western hero in the eyes of the American people.
In 1845, Carson guided Frémont on their third and last expedition. They went to California and Oregon. Frémont made scientific plans, but the expedition appeared to be political in nature. Frémont may have been working under secret government orders. President Polk wanted the province of Alta California for the United States. Once in California, Frémont started to rouse the American settlers into a patriotic fervor. The Mexican government ordered him to leave. Frémont went north to Oregon, though not before instigating the Sacramento River massacre, in which at least 150 Indians were killed in an unprovoked attack. The party moved up along the Sacramento River, continuing to kill Indians as they went, then camped near Klamath Lake. Messages from Washington, DC made it clear that President Polk wanted California.
At Klamath Lake in southern Oregon, Frémont's party was hit in a revenge attack by 15–20 Indians on the night of May 9, 1846. Two or three men in camp were killed. The attackers fled after a brief struggle. Carson was angry that his friends had been killed. He took an axe and avenged the death of his friends by chopping away at a dead Indian's face. Frémont wrote, "He knocked his head to pieces."
In retaliation for the attack, a few days later Frémont's party massacred a village of Klamath people along the Williamson River in the Klamath Lake massacre. The entire village was razed and at least 14 men, women and children were killed. There was no evidence that the village in question had anything to do with the previous attack.
In June 1846, Frémont and Carson both participated in a California uprising against Mexico called the Bear Flag Revolt. Mexico ordered all Americans to leave California. American settlers in California wanted to be free of the Mexican government and declared California an independent republic. The American rebels found courage to oppose Mexico because they had Frémont—who had written an oath of allegiance—and his troops behind them. Frémont and his men were able to give some protection to the Americans. He ordered Carson to execute an old Mexican man named José de los Reyes Berreyesa and his two adult nephews, who had been captured when they stepped ashore at San Francisco Bay, to prevent them from notifying Mexico about the uprising.
Frémont worked hard to win California for the United States, for a time fashioning himself as its military governor, until being replaced by General Kearney, who out-ranked him. Carson took military records to the Secretary of War in Washington, DC. Frémont wrote, "This was a service of great trust and honor ... and great danger also." In 1847 and 1848, Carson made two quick trips to Washington, DC with messages and reports. In 1848, he took news of the California Gold Strike to the nation's capitol.
In July 1853, Carson was in northern Nevada, with 7,000 sheep from Santa Fe. He was taking them to settlers in northern California, and southern Oregon. Carson had with him six "Spaniards" (possibly Basques) to herd the sheep.
Carson's fame spread throughout the United States with government reports, dime novels, newspaper accounts, and word of mouth. The dime novels celebrated Carson's adventures, but were usually colored with exaggeration. A factual biography was attempted by DeWitt C. Peters in 1859, but has been criticized for inaccuracies and exaggerations. Carson became the hero of juvenile fiction not just in the United States, but also published in French, German, Portuguese, Gujarati, Hindi, Singhalese, Arabic and Japanese.
The first story about Carson's adventures was printed in 1847. It was called "An Adventure of Kit Carson: A Tale of the Sacramento". It was printed in "Holden's Dollar Magazine". Other stories were also printed, such as "Kit Carson: The Prince of the Goldhunters" and "The Prairie Flower". Writers thought Carson the perfect mountain man and Indian fighter. His exciting adventures were printed in the story "Kiowa Charley, The White Mustanger; or, Rocky Mountain Kit's Last Scalp Hunt". In this story, an older Kit is said to have "ridden into Sioux camps unattended and alone, had ridden out again, but with the scalps of their greatest warriors at his belt."
In 1849, Carson guided soldiers on the trail of Mrs. Ann White, her baby daughter and "negro servant," who had been captured by Jicarilla Apaches and Utes. The commanding officer, Captain William Grier of the 1st Cavalry Regiment, ignored Carson's advice about an immediate rescue attempt after catching the Jicarillas unaware, but after a shot was fired, the order was given to attack, by which time the Jicarillas had started to flee. As Carson describes it in his autobiography: "In about 200 yards, pursuing the Indians, the body of Mrs. White was found, perfectly warm, had not been killed more than five minutes - shot through the heart by an arrow... I am certain that if the Indians had been charged immediately on our arrival she would have been saved." Her child and servant were taken away by the fleeing Jicarillas and killed shortly after the attack, according to a 1850 report by James S. Calhoun, the Superintendent of Indian Affairs in New Mexico.
A soldier in the rescue party wrote: "Mrs. White was a frail, delicate, and very beautiful woman, but having undergone such usage as she suffered nothing but a wreck remained; it was literally covered with blows and scratches. Her countenance even after death indicated a hopeless creature. Over her corpse, we swore vengeance upon her persecutors."
Carson discovered a book about himself in the Apache camp. This was the first time that he found himself in print. He was the hero of adventure stories. He was sorry for the rest of his life that Mrs. White had been killed. He wrote in his "Memoirs": "In camp was found a book, the first of the kind I had ever seen, in which I was made a great hero, slaying Indians by the hundreds ... I have often thought that Mrs. White read the same ... [and prayed] for my appearance that she might be saved."
In 1856, Carson told his life story to someone who wrote it down. This book is called "Memoirs". The manuscript was lost when taken East to find a professional writer who would work it into a book. Washington Irving was asked, but declined. The lost manuscript was found in a trunk in Paris in 1905. It was later printed. The first biography of Carson was written by DeWitt C. Peters in 1859. The book was called "Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself". When the book was read to Carson he said, "Peters laid it on a leetle too thick."
Lasting from 1846 to 1848, the Mexican–American War was an armed conflict between the United States and Mexico. At war's end, Mexico was forced to sell the territories of Alta California and New Mexico to the United States under The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
One of Carson's best known adventures took place during this war. In December 1846, Carson was ordered by General Stephen W. Kearny to guide him and his troops from Socorro, New Mexico to San Diego, California. Mexican soldiers attacked Kearny and his men near the village of San Pasqual, California.
Kearny was outnumbered. He knew he could not win; he ordered his men to take cover on a small hill. On the night of December 8, Carson, a naval lieutenant, Edward Fitzgerald Beale and an Indian scout left Kearny to bring reinforcements from San Diego, away. Carson and the lieutenant removed their shoes because they made too much noise, and walked barefoot through the desert. Carson wrote in his "Memoirs": "Finally got through, but had the misfortune to lose our shoes. Had to travel over a country covered with prickly pear and rocks, barefoot."
By December 10, Kearny believed reinforcements would not arrive. He planned to break through the Mexican lines the next morning, but 200 mounted American soldiers arrived in San Pasqual late that night. They swept the area, driving the Mexicans away. Kearny was in San Diego on December 12.
In April 1861, the American Civil War broke out. Carson left his job as an Indian agent and joined the Union Army as a lieutenant. He led the 1st New Mexico Volunteer Infantry and trained the new men. In October 1861, he was made a colonel. The Volunteers fought the Confederate forces in the Battle of Valverde in New Mexico, in February 1862. The Confederates won this battle but were later defeated in June and retreated to Texas.
Once the Confederates were driven from New Mexico, Carson's commander Major General James Henry Carleton turned his attention to the Native Americans. Author and historian Edwin Sabin writes that this officer had a "psychopathic hatred of the Apaches". Carleton led his forces deep into the Mescalero Apache territory. The Mescaleros were tired of fighting and put themselves under Carson's protection. Carleton put these Apaches on a remote and lonely reservation on the Pecos River.
Carson disliked the Apaches as well. He wrote in a report that the Jicarilla Apaches "were truly the most degraded and troublesome Indians we have in our department ... [W]e daily witness them in a state of intoxication in our plaza." Carson half-heartedly supported Carleton's plans. He was tired and had suffered an injury two years before that gave him great trouble. He resigned from the Army in February 1863. Carleton refused to accept the resignation because he wanted Carson to lead a campaign against the Navajo.
Carleton had chosen a bleak site on the Pecos River for his reservation, which was called Bosque Redondo (Round Grove). He chose this site for the Apaches and Navajos because it was far from white settlements. He also wanted these Apaches and Navajo to act as a buffer for any aggressive acts committed upon the white settlements from Kiowas and Comanches to the east of Bosque Redondo. He thought as well that the remoteness and desolation of the reservation would discourage white settlement.
The Mescalero Apaches walked to the reservation. By March 1863, four hundred Apaches had settled around nearby Fort Sumner. Others had fled west to join fugitive bands of Apaches. By middle summer, many of these people were planting crops and doing other farm work.
On July 7, Carson, with little heart for the Navajo roundup, started the campaign against the tribe. His orders were almost the same as those for the Apache roundup: he was to shoot all males on sight and take the women and children captives. No peace treaties were to be made until all the Navajo were on the reservation.
Carson searched far and wide for the Navajo. He found their homes, fields, animals, and orchards, but the Navajo were experts at disappearing quickly and hiding in their vast lands. The roundup proved frustrating for Carson. He was in his 50s, tired, and ill. By autumn 1863, Carson started to burn the Navajo homes and fields and remove their animals from the area. The Navajo would starve if this destruction continued. One hundred eighty-eight Navajo surrendered and were sent to Bosque Redondo. Life at the Bosque had turned grim; murders took place. The Apaches and Navajos fought. The water in the Pecos contained minerals that gave people cramps and stomach aches. Residents had to walk to find firewood.
Carson wanted to take a winter break from the campaign. Major General Carleton refused, ordering him to invade the Canyon de Chelly, where many Navajos had taken refuge. Historian David Roberts writes, "Carson's sweep through the Canyon de Chelly in the winter of 1863–1864 would prove to be the decisive action in the Campaign."
The Canyon de Chelly was a sacred place for the Navajo. They believed that it would now be their strongest sanctuary. Three hundred Navajo took refuge on the canyon rim at a place called Fortress Rock. They resisted Carson's invasion by building rope ladders and bridges, lowering water pots into a stream, and keeping quiet and out of sight. These three hundred Navajo survived the invasion. In January 1864, Carson swept through the Canyon with his forces including Capt. Albert Pfeiffer. The thousands of peach trees in the canyon were cut down. Few Navajo were killed or captured. Carson's invasion, however, proved to the Navajo that the United States could invade their territory at any time. Many Navajo surrendered at Fort Defiance, Arizona.
By March 1864, there were 3,000 refugees at Fort Canby. An additional 5,000 arrived in the camp. They were suffering from the intense cold and hunger. Carson asked for supplies to feed and clothe them. Carson forced the thousands of Navajo to walk to Bosque Redondo. Many died along the way. Stragglers in the rear were shot and killed. In Navajo history, this horrific trek is known as Long Walk of the Navajo. By 1866, reports indicated that Bosque Redondo was a complete failure, and Major General Carleton was fired. Congress started investigations. In 1868, a treaty was signed, and the Navajo were allowed to return to their homeland. Bosque Redondo was closed.
On November 25, 1864, Carson led his forces against the southwestern tribes at the First Battle of Adobe Walls in the Texas panhandle. Adobe Walls was an abandoned trading post blown up by its inhabitants to prevent a take-over by hostile Indians. Combatants at the First Battle were the United States Army and Indian scouts against Kiowas, Comanches, and Plains Apaches. It was one of the largest engagements fought on the Great Plains.
The battle was the result of General Carleton's belief that Indians were responsible for the continuing attacks on settlers along the Santa Fe Trail. He wanted to punish them and brought in Carson to do the job. With most of the Army engaged elsewhere during the American Civil War, the protection the settlers sought was almost nonexistent. Carson led 260 cavalry, 75 infantry, and 72 Ute and Jicarilla Apache Army scouts. In addition, he had two mountain howitzers.
On the morning of November 25, Carson discovered and attacked a Kiowa village of 176 lodges. After destroying this village, he moved forward to Adobe Walls. Carson found other Comanche villages in the area, and realized he would face a very large force of Native Americans. A Captain Pettis estimated that 1,200 to 1,400 Comanche and Kiowa began to assemble. That number would swell, according to some accounts, to an implausible 3,000. Four to five hours of battle ensued. When Carson ran low on ammunition and howitzer shells, he ordered his men to retreat to a nearby Kiowa village. There they burned the village and many fine buffalo robes. His Indian scouts killed and mutilated four elderly and weak Kiowas.
First Adobe Walls, located northeast of Stinnett in Hutchinson County, Texas, was Carson’s last military engagement. It ended in victory for the Comanche-Kiowa alliance that allowed them to dominate the Llano Estacado for another eight years. The encounter could have resulted in a massacre worse than Custer's Last Stand in Montana Territory twelve years thereafter. Three of Carson's men died; twenty-one were wounded. More than one hundred warriors lost their lives, and two hundred were wounded.
The retreat to New Mexico then began with few deaths among Carson's men. General Carleton wrote to Carson: "This brilliant affair adds another green leaf to the laurel wreath which you have so nobly won in the service of your country."
In 1847, the future General William Tecumseh Sherman met Kit Carson in Monterey, California. Sherman wrote: "His fame was then at its height, ... and I was very anxious to see a man who had achieved such feats of daring among the wild animals of the Rocky Mountains, and still wilder Indians of the plains ... I cannot express my surprise at beholding such a small, stoop-shouldered man, with reddish hair, freckled face, soft blue eyes, and nothing to indicate extraordinary courage or daring. He spoke but little and answered questions in monosyllables."
Colonel Edward W. Wynkoop wrote: "Kit Carson was five feet five and one half-inches tall, weighed about 140 pounds, of nervy, iron temperament, squarely built, slightly bow-legged, and those members apparently too short for his body. But, his head and face made up for all the imperfections of the rest of his person. His head was large and well-shaped with yellow straight hair, worn long, falling on his shoulders. His face was fair and smooth as a woman's with high cheekbones, straight nose, a mouth with a firm, but somewhat sad expression, a keen, deep-set but beautiful, mild blue eye, which could become terrible under some circumstances, and like the warning of the rattlesnake, gave notice of attack. Though quick-sighted, he was slow and soft of speech, and posed great natural modesty."
Lieutenant George Douglas Brewerton made one coast-to-coast dispatch-carrying trip to Washington, D.C. with Carson. Brewerton wrote: "The Kit Carson of my "imagination" was over six feet high — a sort of modern Hercules in his build — with an enormous beard, and a voice like a roused lion ... The real Kit Carson I found to be a plain, simple ... man; rather below the medium height, with brown, curling hair, little or no beard, and a voice as soft and gentle as a woman's. In fact, the hero of a hundred desperate encounters, whose life had been mostly spent amid wilderness, where the white man is almost unknown, was one of Dame Nature's gentleman ..."
Carson joined Freemasonry in the Santa Fe Territory of New Mexico, petitioning in Montezuma Lodge No. 101. He was initiated an Entered Apprentice on April 22, 1854, passed to the degree of Fellowcraft June 17, 1854, and raised to the sublime degree of Master Mason December 26, 1854, just two days after his forty-fifth birthday. Kit, together with several other Freemasons in Taos, petitioned to charter Bent Lodge No. 204 (now Bent Lodge # 42) from the Grand Lodge of Missouri AF&AM, a request which was granted on June 1, 1860, with Kit elected Junior Warden of the lodge.
The Masonic fraternity continued to serve him and his family, well after his death. In 1908, the Grand Lodge of New Mexico erected a wrought iron fence around his family burial plot. The following year, the Grand Lodge challenged Bent Lodge to purchase and preserve Kit's home. More than a century later, the Kit Carson Home & Museum is still managed by the lodge.
Carson was married three times. His first two wives were Native American. His third wife was Mexican. Carson was the father of ten children. He never wrote about his first two marriages in his "Memoirs". He may have thought he would be known as a "squaw man". Such men were not welcomed by polite society.
In 1836, Carson met an Arapaho woman named Waanibe (Singing Grass, or Grass Singing) at a mountain man rendezvous held along the Green River in Wyoming. Singing Grass was a lovely young woman, and many mountain men were in love with her. Carson was forced to fight a duel with a French trapper named Chouinard for Waanibe's hand in marriage. Carson won, but he had a very narrow escape. The French trapper's bullet singed his hair. The duel was one of the best known stories about Carson in the 19th century.
Carson married Singing Grass. She tended to his needs, and went with him on his trapping trips. They had a daughter named Adaline (or Adeline). Singing Grass died after giving birth to Carson's second daughter, circa 1841. His second child did not live long: In 1843, in Taos, New Mexico, she fell into a boiling kettle of soap and subsequently died.
Carson's life as a mountain man was too hard for a little girl so he took Adaline to live with his sister Mary Ann Carson Rubey in St. Louis, Missouri. Adaline was taught in a school for girls called a seminary. Carson brought her West when she was a teenager. She married and divorced a George Stilts of St. Louis, Missouri. In 1858, she went to the California goldfields. Adaline died in 1860 or after 1862, probably in Mono County, California.
In 1841, Carson married a Cheyenne woman named Making-Out-Road. They were together only a short time. Making-Out-Road divorced him in the way of her people by putting Adaline and all of Carson's property outside their tent. Making-Out-Road left Carson to travel with her people through the west.
About 1842, Carson met Josefa Jaramillo. She was the daughter of a wealthy and prominent Mexican couple living in Taos. In order to marry her, Carson left the Presbyterian Church for the Catholic Church. He married 14 year-old Josefa on February 6, 1843. They had eight children.
Carson was illiterate. He was embarrassed by this, and tried to hide it. In 1856, he dictated his "Memoirs" to another and stated then:
"I was a young boy in the school house when the cry came, Injuns! I jumped to my rifle and threw down my spelling book, and thar it lies."
Carson enjoyed having other people read to him, and preferred the poetry of George Gordon, Lord Byron. Carson thought Sir Walter Scott's long poem, "The Lady of the Lake" was "the finest expression of outdoor life." Carson eventually learned to write "C. Carson", but it was very difficult for him. He made his mark on official papers, and this mark was then witnessed by a clerk or other official.
When the Civil War ended, and the Indian Wars campaigns were in a lull, Carson was appointed brevet brigadier general (dated March 13, 1865) and appointed commandant of Ft. Garland, Colorado, in the heart of Ute country. Carson had many Ute friends in the area and assisted in government relations.
After being mustered out of the Army, Carson took up ranching, settling at Boggsville in Bent County. In 1868, at the urging of Washington and the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Carson journeyed to Washington, D.C., where he escorted several Ute Chiefs to meet with the President of the United States to plead for assistance to their tribe.
Soon after his return, his wife Josefa died from complications after giving birth to their eighth child. Her death was a crushing blow to Carson. He died a month later at age 58 on May 23, 1868, in the presence of Dr. Tilton and his friend Thomas Boggs in the surgeon's quarters at Fort Lyon, Colorado. His last words were "Goodbye, friends. "Adios, compadres"." The cause of his death was abdominal aortic aneurysm. His resting place is Taos, New Mexico.
Carson's home in Taos, New Mexico is today a museum called the Kit Carson Home and Museum. A monument was raised in the plaza at Santa Fe by the New Mexico Grand Army. In Denver, a statue of a mounted Kit Carson can be found atop the Mac Monnies Pioneer Monument. Another equestrian statue can be seen in Trinidad, Colorado. Carson National Forest in New Mexico was named for him, as well as a county and a town in Colorado. A river in Nevada is named for Carson as well as the state's capital, Carson City. Fort Carson, Colorado, an army post near Colorado Springs, was named after him during World War II by popular vote of the men training there. Kit Carson Park in Escondido, California is named for him.
Carson has been widely depicted in film and television series. In 1966, the actor Phillip Pine played Carson with Michael Pate as fellow Fremont scout Frenchy Godey in the episode "Samaritans, Mountain Style" of the syndicated series, "Death Valley Days", hosted by Robert Taylor. In the story line, Carson and Godey stop to help a settler in dire straits.
In the 1960s and 1970s, Carson came under the scrutiny of contemporary historians, and ideas regarding his historical legacy began to change. Earlier accounts portrayed Carson as an American hero, but in scholarship of this period he became an arch-villain in the military campaigns against the Indians. In 1992, for example, a young professor at Colorado College was successful in demanding that a period photograph of Carson be removed from the ROTC office. In 1992, a tourist told a journalist at the Carson home in Taos, "I will not go into the home of that racist, genocidal killer." In the 1970s, a Navajo at a trading post said, "No one here will talk about Kit Carson. He was a butcher." In 1993, a symposium was organized to air various views on Carson, but the Navajo spokespeople refused to attend.
Over time, historical analysis of Carson shifted again. David Roberts writes, "Carson's trajectory, over three and a half decades, from thoughtless killer of Apaches and Blackfeet to defender and champion of the Utes, marks him out as one of the few frontiersmen whose change of heart toward the Indians, born not of missionary theory but of first hand experience, can serve as an exemplar for the more enlightened policies that sporadically gained the day in the twentieth century."
Harry Carey played Carson in the 1936 film "Sutter's Gold".
Jon Hall played Carson in the 1940 Western film "Kit Carson".
Bill Williams played Carson in the TV mini-series 1951–1955 "The Adventures of Kit Carson".
Rip Torn played Carson in the 1986 miniseries "Dream West".
Carson was the inspiration for a same-named character in the popular Italian comic book series "Tex Willer".
Carson is a supporting character in Willa Cather's novel, "Death Comes for the Archbishop".
Carson's contributions to western history have been reexamined by historians, journalists and Indian activists since the 1960s. In 1968, Carson biographer Harvey L. Carter stated:
Historian Hampton Sides said that Carson believed the Native Americans needed reservations as a way of physically separating and shielding them from white hostility and white culture. He is said to have viewed the raids on white settlements as driven by desperation, "committed from absolute necessity when in a starving condition." Indian hunting grounds were disappearing as waves of white settlers filled the region.
In 2014 there was a petition to rename Kit Carson Park in Taos, NM Red Willow Park. Despite the support of the Taos Pueblo and the residents of Taos Valley the park was not renamed and still bears the Kit Carson moniker. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17154 |
Kipper
A kipper is a whole herring, a small, oily fish, that has been split in a butterfly fashion from tail to head along the dorsal ridge, gutted, salted or pickled, and cold-smoked over smouldering woodchips (typically oak).
In Britain, Ireland and some regions of North America, kippers are most commonly consumed for breakfast. In Great Britain, kippers, along with other preserved smoked or salted fish such as the bloater and buckling, were also once commonly enjoyed as a high tea or supper treat, most popularly with inland and urban working-class populations before World War II.
The English philologist and ethnographer Walter William Skeat derives the word from the Old English "kippian", to spawn. The word has various possible parallels, such as Icelandic "kippa" which means "to pull, snatch" and the Germanic word "kippen" which means "to tilt, to incline". Similarly, the Middle English "kipe" denotes a basket used to catch fish. Another theory traces the word kipper to the "kip", or small beak, that male salmon develop during the breeding season.
As a verb, "kippering" ("to kipper") means to preserve by rubbing with salt or other spices before drying in the open air or in smoke.
Originally applied to the preservation of surplus fish (particularly those known as "kips," harvested during spawning runs), "kippering" has come to mean the preservation of any fish, poultry, beef or other meat in like manner. The process is usually enhanced by cleaning, filleting, butterflying or slicing the food to expose maximum surface area to the drying and preservative agents.
Although the exact origin of the kipper is unknown, this processes of slitting, gutting, and smoke-curing fish is well documented. According to Mark Kurlansky, "Smoked foods almost always carry with them legends about their having been created by accident—usually the peasant hung the food too close to the fire, and then, imagine his surprise the next morning when …". For instance Thomas Nashe wrote in 1599 about a fisherman from Lothingland in the Great Yarmouth area who discovered smoking herring by accident. Another story of the accidental invention of kipper is set in 1843, with John Woodger of Seahouses in Northumberland, when fish for processing was left overnight in a room with a smoking stove. These stories and others are known to be untrue because the word "kipper" long predates this. Smoking and salting of fish—in particular of spawning salmon and herring—which are caught in large numbers in a short time and can be made suitable for edible storage by this practice predates 19th-century Britain and indeed written history, probably going back as long as humans have been using salt to preserve food.
A kipper is also sometimes referred to as a "red herring", although particularly strong curing is required to produce a truly red kipper.
The term appears in a mid-13th century poem by the Anglo-Norman poet Walter of Bibbesworth, "He eteþ no ffyssh But heryng red." Samuel Pepys used it in his diary entry of 28 February 1660 "Up in the morning, and had some red herrings to our breakfast, while my boot-heel was a-mending, by the same token the boy left the hole as big as it was before."
The dyeing of kippers was introduced as an economy measure in the First World War by avoiding the need for the long smoking processes. This allowed the kippers to be sold quickly, easily and for a substantially greater profit. Kippers were originally dyed using a coal tar dye called brown FK (the FK is an abbreviation of "for kippers"), kipper brown or kipper dye. Today, kippers are usually brine dyed using a natural annatto dye, giving the fish a deeper orange/yellow colour. European Community legislation limits the acceptable daily intake (ADI) of Brown FK to 0.15 mg/kg. Not all fish caught are suitable for the dyeing process, with mature fish more readily sought, because the density of their flesh improves the absorption of the dye. An "orange kipper" is a kipper that has been dyed orange.
Kippers from the Isle of Man and some Scottish producers are not dyed: The smoking time is extended in the traditional manner.
"Cold-smoked" fish that have not been salted for preservation must be cooked before being eaten safely (they can be boiled, fried, grilled, jugged or roasted, for instance). "Kipper snacks" (see below) are precooked and may be eaten without further preparation. In general, oily fish are preferred for smoking as the heat is evenly dispersed by the oil, and the flesh resists flaking apart like drier species.
In the United Kingdom, kippers are often served for breakfast, and much less often at lunch or dinner. In the United States, where kippers are much less commonly eaten than in the UK, they are almost always sold as either canned "kipper snacks" or in jars found in the refrigerated foods section.
Kippers produced in the Isle of Man are exported around the world. Thousands are produced annually in the town of Peel, where two kipper houses, Moore's Kipper Yard (founded 1882) and Devereau and Son (founded 1884), smoke and export herring.
Mallaig, once the busiest herring port in Europe, is famous for its traditionally smoked kippers, as well as Stornoway kippers and Loch Fyne kippers. The harbour village of Craster in Northumberland is famed for Craster kippers, which are prepared in a local smokehouse, sold in the village shop and exported around the world.
Connors Brothers Limited, of Black's Harbour, New Brunswick, Canada, is one of the world's largest producers of sardines and herring. Their "kippered snacks", are smoked and salted, undyed.
The Manx word for kipper is , literally "red herring"; the Irish term is "scadán dearg" with the same meaning.
"Kipper time" is the season in which fishing for salmon is forbidden in Great Britain, originally the period 3 May to 6 January, in the River Thames by an Act of Parliament. "Kipper season" refers (particularly among fairground workers, market workers, taxi drivers and the like) to any lean period in trade, particularly the first three or four months of the year.
The sailors of the Royal Canadian Navy use the term "kippers" as a slang for members of the Royal Navy.
The term "kippering" is used in slang to mean being immersed in a room filled with cigarette or other tobacco smoke.
In recent years "Kipper" has become a nickname for a member of the British political party UKIP.
In the children's books "The Railway Series", and in the television show "Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends", The Flying Kipper is a nickname for a fast fish train usually pulled by Henry the Green Engine. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17156 |
Kipsigis people
The Kipsigis ("spelt phonetically proper as Kipsigiis"")", also known as Lumbwa; are a SouthEastern Nilotic people who live in Kenya and Tanzania and are an ethnic tribe who alongside other Highland Nilote tribes of the African Great Lakes Region make up the Kalenjin ethnic group. They live in close relation and association with the Nandi. They are structurally heterogeneous with an amalgamation of 'ortinwek' (genealogical organisations analogous to clans) from Nandi, Okieik, Maasai, Kisii, Luo and aboriginal ethnicities of Kenya. The Kipsigis people speak the Kipsigis language; Nilotic language which falls under the Nandi-Markweta cluster of the Kalenjin languages.
In the mid 19th century AD, the Kipsigis were eponymised as Lumbwa ("a name derived from Ameru peoples for a community that was associated with Sirikwa culture)". By the 20th century, the term was used to identify the Kipsigis but with also a connotation to identify the Wakuavi Maasai of Tanzania. Other insignificant names include: "Kipsikis, Ilparakuyo, Baraguyu, Kwavi," and "Iloikop."
The Kipsigis together with other linguistically and culturally related tribes now identify as Kalenjin, an identity they have been collectively using since 1950s. The Kipsigis tribe in census and other statistics are the most populous compared to their akin tribes of Kalenjin; conservative estimates point at the Kipsigis being 31.76% against cumulative population of Kalenjin in Kenya, Uganda and South-Sudan while within Kenya, the Kipsigis account for about 63% of Kalenjin and occupy the largest geographic zones..
The Kipsigis are explicitly and unapologetically the most sophisticated and modernised ethnic tribe among the Kalenjin confederation. Notably, the Kipsigis are the pioneering and leading cultural ambassadors of Kalenjin especially through music i.e. "Emily Chepjumba track" is formulated as the Kalenjin anthem in pop culture. Perhaps even among the Nilotic peoples, the Kipsigis succeed or precede the Luo in terms of westernised cultural dynamics and modernity. One other distinguishing characteristic of the Kipsigis in contrast to other Kalenjin is their pioneering role and a dynamic communal state of being early adopters.
The Kipsigis people live predominantly in a region politically known as "South Rift Region" and includes Bomet County: (Sotik, Chepalungu, Bomet East, Bomet Central and Konoin constituencies) and Kericho County: (Kipkelion East, Kipkelion West, Ainamoi, Bureti, Belgut and Sigowet-Soin constituencies). In Nakuru County, the Kipsigis live in Kuresoi North, Kuresoi South, Njoro, Molo, Subukia and Rongai constituencies.In Laikipia County, a few populations of Kipsigis live in Laikipia West Constituency. In Narok County, the Kipsigis live in: Narok West Constituency, Emurua Dikirr constituecy and Narok South Constituency. In Tanzania, the Kipsigis live in Tarime and Mwanza.
The traditional occupations of the Kipsigis included: Semi-pastoral herding, military expeditions and farming cereal (millet). Living on the Western Highlands at an altitude of 1500 to 2000 m, the Kipsigis now also grow maize, wheat, pyrethrum and tea.
The eponymous name 'Kipsigis' can be translated as 'prolific' or 'the ones who bear many children' where "'Kip"' is the masculine name prefix and "'sigiis"' implying the process of giving birth. An initiated male is referred to as Kipsigisiindet, although it can also refer to a woman of Kipsigis ethnicity. A woman of Kipsigis ethnicity is referred to as Chepsigiisiindet. A group of people of Kisigiis ethnicity are referred to as Kipsigisiek.
In academia, the 'Kipsigis' word or eponym has inspired the nomenclature of an extinct genus of East African antelope from the middle Miocene (Kipsigicerus). Other academic terms associated with the Kipsigis include: Acraea sotikensis and Sotik lion (Panthera leo melanochaita).
According to the Swahili traders and alien visitors, the Kipsigis would have seemed as part of the Nandi as were all the other Kalenjin tribes and in this accord, Kalenjin was referred to as Nandi-Speaking communities.
Lumbwa connotation being used to identify the Kipsigis can be attributed to an encounter by Meru ancestors of a people who spoke a proto-kalenjin language. This community would most probably be the Tugen community of Kalenjin which used to occupy a region between South of Lake Turkana and Southeast toward mount Kenya. However, after the rise of Maasai and their expeditions that followed, the Lumbwa community was displaced from mount Kenya and as later researchers tried to look for the Lumbwa community, geography and similarities would lead them to believe the Kipsigis were the Lumbwa.
The Lumbwa term among the elderly Kipsigis as of today is revered and supposed not to be mentioned supposedly because it is associated with the Lumbwa treaty with the British and also perhaps because it doesn't have a literal or historical meaning to the Kipsigis.
There are no publicised or extensive documentation on the genetic studies carried on ethnic Kipsigis individuals. Based on their Nilotic origins from South Sudan and Ethiopia, it is expected that future studies will paint a Kipsigis relationship with Nandi, Maasai, Datooga and Ogiek as well as several other Nilotic-speaking people of Sudan and South Sudan.
The Kipsigis people are part of a confederation of Southeastern Nilotic ethnic tribes inhibiting the highlands of East Afrca in the African Great Lakes Region known as Kalenjin. The Kalenjin include: Kipsigis, Nandi,Elgeiyo-Keiyo, Tugen, Okiek, Marakwet, Sengwer, Sabaot, Terik, Pokot and Sebei. The confederation come about as Maliri people from Ethiopia and South Sudan migrated into Uganda and Kenya, thus interacting with the Maasai, Iraqw (who are examined to be reminiscent to Sengwer) and aboriginal inhabitants of the Great Lakes including Okiek and Oropom.
The Kalenjin speak archaic languages with each tribe having its own variations but can communicate and understand each other. The Kipsigis use nomenclature similar to all the other tribes except the Marakwet whose names of persons have been inverted gender-wise; this is said to be probably because of a genocide that may have targeted males or females of the Marakwet. Theism is similar across Kalenjin and it is examined to have radiated from the Kibasisek clan originally from Marakwet. The Kibasisek clan found across most or all the Kalenjin spread the worship of the sun (Asiisian Religion). However, further examinations find the Maliri Kalenjin (Pokot and Sebei) to have faceted in former Kalenjin religion (Tororutian Religion).
Heritage is almost uniform across Kalenjin but with circumcision absent in some tribes. Kalenjin can traditionally marry from within Kalenjin as if it were within each individuals tribe. Clans may be found across the various tribes and thus, for instance, the Kipsigis and the Nandi are particularly intricate thus making both seem as a single identity even to date. Culture is similar and cultural dynamics cut across all Kalenjin. Systems of administration were similar across Kalenjin but Nandi and Kipsigis later borrowed the Laibon kingly post from the Maasai and christened it as Orkoiyot in Nandi and Oorgoiiyoot in Kipsigis.
The Kipsigis was initially a single group and identity with the Nandi until 1800 when the Nandi community was separated by a wedge of Uas Nkishu Maasai in Kipchorian River (River Nyando); the resulting community south of Nandi hills (Kipkelion) became Kipsgis.
The Nandi account is that the ancestors of Nandi migrated from Mount Elgon under the leadership of Kakipoch. It is observed from the Nandi oral traditions that Lumbwa clansjoined them later thus implying that the Nandi adopted groups of people probably perhaps either the Sirikwa (from Sebei, it connotes Oropom people but among Kipsigis and Nandi, Sirikwa can mean the Iraqw), Datooga or Tugen; the later is the most probable as original Kipsigis clans such as Kipasisek are found among the Tugen people. "(Tugen people are thought to be the community that was encountered by Ameru people (Lumbwa) and are thought to have lived in association with Afro-Asiatic peoples and thus introduced them to the Nandi and the Kipsigis)." The Nandi portray and illustrate though their 'ortinwek' formations, peculiarities and oral traditions that the Kipsigis and Nandi before and during migration to Uasin Ngishu was made up clans from a people they call Elgon who are interchangeable for Siger, Lumbwa (explicitly), Elgeyo and later on, Lo-'sekelae Maasai who are interchangeable for Siger peoples.
To draw a reference frame, the Maliri people originally from Omo Valley in Ethiopia immigrated into Kenya and Uganda, breaking into groups in the following order: Merile and Pokotozek. Merile reverted to Southern Ethiopia. Pokotozek moved to a region between Mount Cherangany and Mount Moroto and then to Lake Baringo thus disturbing a community called Oropom (an aboriginal and indigenous community to the region)who thus dispersed in various directions (Turkwel excursion, Uasin Ngishu excursion which was likely adopted to the Maasai and Oropom,- an excursion which shrunk to a region they had already been occupying around Chemorongit hills and South of Mount Moroto hills). Pokotozek went on to defeat Lloikop Maasai at Baringo and thus Pokotozek broke into two, a community called Chok or the Suk who occupied Baringo while another branch moved west and called itself Sebei. The Chok or Suk are then known to have transformed from being farmers into pastoralists and as the two factions developed, Chok consumed Suk and the new confederation became known as Pokot. Neighbouring the Maliri descendant groups were the Lumbwa (although this community could have been confused for other groups such as Siger/Sengwer), Sekker/Siger/Sengwer and Karamojong. It is imperative to note that the Sebei came to call Oropom, Sirikwa. Kipsigis and the Nandi can very possibly be Sebei faction that moved to Uasin Ngishu, Iinteracted with peoples including Sirikwa (who could be Oropom or Datooga) and Chemwal (who interchangeably with Sirikwa could most probably be Iraqw or Datooga) and from here, they grew to occupy the regions they occupy today.
"Linguistically, the Kipsigis language is closely related to Nandi, Keiyo (Keyo, Elgeyo), South Tugen (Tuken), and Cherangany. This thus implies a common culture bed for these communities. Thus, while Pokot and Sebei are directly descendants of Maliri, the Kipsigis, Nandi, Elgeiyo and Southern factions of Tugen may have a common ancestry."
More than any of the other sections, the Nandi and Kipsigis, in response to Maasai expansion, borrowed from the Maasai some of the traits that would distinguish them from other Kalenjin: large-scale economic dependence on herding, military organisation and aggressive cattle raiding, as well as centralised religious-political leadership. The family that established the office of Orkoiyot (warlord/diviner) among both the Nandi and Kipsigis were migrants from northern Chemwal regions. By the mid-nineteenth century, both the Nandi and Kipsigis were expanding at the expense of the Maasai. For instance, Kwavi Maasai were fought and driven away from Narok to Sang'alo by three major sub groups of the Maasai (Siria, Moi Tanik and Mburu) assisted by Kipsigis in the late 1600s, thus some found refuge among the Luhya people under the subtribe of Khayo were they facet the sub-tribe as the clan of Bakhabi.
Sirikwa is a term originally coined by the Sebei people for Oropom who settled in Uganda and Western Kenya. The term is used by Kipsigis to refer to a people whose region they succeeded and were associated with Sirikwa culture. The Sirikwa to the Kipsigis would be what the Nandi called the Chemwal people. The Chemwal according to the Nandi are the ancestors of the Sengwer faction of Pokot. All these point at the Iraqw peoples of Tanzania.
The Kipsigis are sometimes referred to as Parakuyo and/or Kwavi in curated articles and records. This points to the inadequate research on the extent and expanse of the Kipsigis community and their influence. The Kipsigis compared to other plain Nilotes and highland Nilotes of Kenya are the most progressively advancing and westernising community. In earlier times, the Kipsigis had attires similar to Maasai and even shared certain dialects but notably, the Kipsigis time to time had to shave their hair. The Kipsigis also did not braid their hair or dye them with ochre. The fact that some Maasai regions have Kipsigis/Kutiit/Kalenjin names thus implies that the Kipsigis community during the Maasai expansion era may have been ejected to Tanzania. It is plausible that the Parakuyo or Kwavi of Tanzania are facets of Kipsigis community or a lost Kalenjin tribe.
The Kipsigis eponym is not understood in terms of origin but the literal meaning can sound derogative, although the Kipsigis themselves use it prestigiously and posteriously. The first collective population of the Kipsigis was located in Belgut, Kericho. The first circumcision was observed in Londiani, implying an eastward projection that resulted with a cultural interaction most probably with the Afro-Asiatic Iraqw who were known to the Kipsigis as Sirikwa rather than by other Kalenjin because for instance, the Nandi do not allow in the Kipsigis into their customs unless their clan belong among the Nandi or if a Kipsigis woman is married to Nandi man, she undergoes compartmentalised and secretive custom. Later projections spread south largely to Bureti.
Emet ab Kipsigis was largely established by furious disciplined armies, diviners and leaders. The structures of society and system of governance were similar to those of other Kalenjin as they were copy-pasted from the Nandi.
Whilst academia and archaeology find the Sirikwa as a pastoral neolithic period of the Kalenjin, among the Kipsigis, they mention living with a group of people they refer as Sirikwa. The Sirkwa are said to have dug up circular parameters where they kept their cattle and made huts on top of the parameters. It is also said that the Sirikwa had a thing about red ants, their appearance made them migrate as it was a bad omen for them. It is also told that the Sirikwa migrated southward toward Tanzania. The Iraqw of Tanzania actually do confirm to be the Sirikwa who interacted with the Kalenjin before migrating to Tanzania. The Sirgoik clan of the Kipsigis are thought to be adopted group of Iraqw families.
The Kipsigis did not practice or allow for adoption within members of their own tribe. Instead, foreigners, especially prisoners of war, were the only type of individuals to be adopted. Raids were not designed to capture and adopt foreign people but it was a subject of the outcome of raids as to whether the besieged would concede defeat and ask for mercy, thus they would be brought to Kipsigis land and made to undergo immigration procedures and process of customs relating to adoption called Luleet or ko-luleet.
Patterns derived from cultural history led Kipsigis to adopt Kisii and Maasai peoples. This could be because the Maasai were seen as a preferable genetic pool for the Kipsigis as they had many cattle like the Kipsigis and with a heritage similar to Kalenjin while the Kisii were seen as industrious and likely facet the Kipsigis community in terms of agriculture and farming.
As a unified identity, the Kipsigis and the Nandi had not begun circumcising their males; that's until they were separated and the Nandi were introduced to circumcision by Cheragany people and thus they called themselves Chemwal for a period before they obtained the Nandi eponym. The Kipsigis about the same timeline were introduced to circumcision in Londiani hill top in Londiani (Also called Tulwaap Kipsigis- Mount of the Kipsigis, Tulwaap Monyiis- Mount of the penis, Tulwaap Lagook- Children's mountain or Tulwaap Ng'etiik- Mount of the uninitiated boys). It is not clearly mentioned who introduced it to the Kipsigis but it is plausible that either Lumbwa people or Cherangany people are the ones who did so.
Female initiation seems analogous to male initiation with most features and customs reflecting, being exactly the same or complementing features and customs performed to the males. Females initiation included surgical modification of female genitalia, seclusion and apparent segments like the one for boys. The main aim of female initiation was to turn girls into virile women. Virginity was a treasured aspect and a girl who was still a virgin during circumcision was accorded a special status by being let to 'sit in the ceremonial chair'. The distinct after mart of the female initiation was marriage.
It is however unclear when the first female circumcision took place and who introduced it to the Kipsigis.
The Kipsigis observe a monotheistic version of Asisian religion where once some Kalenjin can have various deities and a major deity as Asis and/or Tororot, the Kipsigis instead have Asis as the supreme God and the other gods as attributes of Asis. This religion however may have had minor interjections to a former Tororutian religion of the northern sections of Kalenjin. Theism was accompanied with no need for proof.
The "Asisian" religion is based on the sun "- 'Asista'," and thus 'Asis' is an animated and personified instance of the sun. Previous translations state that "Asis" means the 'dazzling one' but 'to dazzle' is coined by the term lili. "Asis" has nine attributes/names including: Asis – "Sunny," Cheptalel – "She who can be white;" Thought of God with human nature. This attribute is coined by a legend which includes the sacrificing of girl which resulted in answer of rain after a severe drought. Cheptalel is the protagonist in the legend; Chepopkooiyo – "She from halo;" "Kooiyo" is derived from halo usually around the sun on a humid day. A halo around the sun was an important omen among the Kalenjin during war. By observing appearance of a halo before going to war, the Kalenjin would decided whether to go or not go to war. Chepopkooiyo thus implies the God of war; Chepomirchiio – "she who leads war." It literally means the one who leads wars, or the god of hosts. He/she protects and leads armies. Chepkeelyen Sogool – "she with nine legs;" Nine is devine to the Kalenjin, it symbolises infinity. It also has a meaning of nine rays of the sun as it rises which relates to a Maasai attribute of god called 'Isyet' with the same meaning. Chemalus – "She who never loses/she who is wise." It can literally mean she who has a high intelligence quotient, never loses a riddle, always correct, never defeated. He/she is invoked in legal proceeds. Chebokimabai – "She who dries millet." This attribute invokes a prayer for warm and sunny climate to dry harvest of millet. Weerit Neoo – "The eldest son;" Cheboo – "She who is big/large." Chepkochor – "She who rises (especially to do with the sun rising)". Tororot – "The lifted, the promoted."
This was the common places of worship among the Kipsigis. The currently known and remembered shrines include: Kapkoros in Bomet, Kapkoros in Chepkechei, Tulwab Kipsgis (Londiani Intersection) and Tulwab Bureti.
The Kipsigis consider
This is a family altar positioned to the east of the house as one exited through the main door (the Nandi and Keiyo call it Korosyoot). It was continuously maintained and replenished by the initiated members of the household in a process called "Kisoop mabwaiita"- "to heal/ give life to the altar". It is an erected structure composing of branches and vines of trees of sacred importance and purpose to the Kipsigis. The table below tabulates all the vines and branches used in construction of the alter.
The Kalenjin people are highly spiritual. Their value systems and morals are instilled throughout their lives though social norms and cultural practices that emphasise the need for respect their elders, honour to the ancestors and reverence to Assis. The Kipsigis nation holds that certain people in high spiritual regard as their prayers and solicitations to Assis would be more readily accepted. The Kipsigis sense of morality also dictates that the most virtuous amongst the community should intercede on behalf of the nation.
The spiritual leaders of the Kipsigis nation are the Orgoik who are members of the revered clan of the Talai. These anointed priests oversee the nation of the Kipsigis and intercede to God on the behalf of all the people of the world.
The Kipsigis nation also recognises certain priestly Clans, who though not at the level of the Orgoik, are considered intercessors for the community especially at the sub-nation level ie during the auspicious occasions such as the graduation of initiates, bumper harvest of crops, celebration of marriages and such other significant family occasions. These priests did not go to war as the actions in war are considered an abomination which would sully the soul of any person partaking in it. The idea was therefore to keep these priests holy and pure so that they may continue to serve the nation and the community.
The Elders of the Kipsigis nation are highly respected and always acknowledged. Elders who have lived honourably, through they contributions to the community and the manner in which they have managed their affairs, particularly their families and Clans. These Elders are looked upon to always lead the community on all occasions including during spiritual intercessions to God, Assis.
Women are seen as acceptable beings to God as they bear no or less sins compared to men and thus their prayers would be readily answered compared to a prayer by a man. This is the reason why women are the ones who pray for their families in their homestead alter - Kaapkooros.
The Kipsigis by the turn of 20th century had not mythologised a centralised source of evil i.e. Satan; it was believed that evil was the premise of individuals who were influenced by jealousy or evil spirits. When the missionaries of AIM and Catholic Church reached Kipsigis, the Christian character, Satan was translated as Ooiindet which originally means ancestors to the Kalenjin; Setaniiaat however, a term used to refer to Satan colloquially is a borrowed word from The Bible and not related in any way to the word Seetaanik, material implements of the Oorgoiyoot smeared or effected on a knobkerry of military Captains (Kiptaayiiat).
Society and culture among the Kipsigis was a direct product of its heritage. This thus means the culture of the Kipsigis was stifled and stringent, hardly changing. The Kipsigis have a circular view of life. They were a superstitious as well as a spiritual community. They considered all life as sacred. They believed that the natural world is all connected and that a good deed never goes unnoticed. Similarly bad deeds lead to consequences in various forms. This view ensures that all members of the community act in a morally upright manner.
A male was given four set of names. First two after birth: the first based on time, place or weather of the time of birth, usually proceeded by a 'Kip' prefix; and a second being an attribute of a reincarnated ancestor. A third name was a borrowed name from a local hero. A fourth name was given to males after initiation which is based on the first name of the father where if the father was Kiprotich, the son would be called Arap Rotich. Naming of the females followed a similar process.
The Kipsigis language falls under Kuutiit cluster (Nandi-Marakwet languages). It however differs from the other languages in the cluster by the following features:
Phonetically proper spelling as pronounced by the Kipigiis affect some of the assumed words by the other Kalenjin such as: aap for ab, araap for arap, Asiis for Asis, laagok for lagok, poiyoot for boiyot among others.
Perhaps even up to date, most if not all of the oral traditions, usually narrated by a grandmother at her hut to a group of children, usually her grandchildren; are of and about a creature known as Chemosi. It has been adopted in the Western World as the Nandi Bear. It is often but not always portrayed as a carnivorous beast with the ability to speak the Kipsigis or Kalenjin language. The structure of the traditions usually begin with unruly kids who disobey the instruction of their elder siblings, parents or community members, then are lost in a forest where then, the Nandi Bear finds them, takes them to their residence, asks them to perform some musical or performed arts then roast or cook them before they are eaten but usually, the relatives and friends of the abducted arrive just in time to save them before being roasted or cooked.
Among the Nandi, Nandi bear is called Chemosit, Kerit, Kododoelo, Ngoloko or Duba.
In Chepsongwor, there is said to have been a dragon or an enormous reptile named Lulu which shone light at night that could be seen miles away (or at least its eggs). About 1930s, it is reported that the big-game hunters did adventure into the dragon's cave and acquire the dragon or its eggs as bounty.
There is also local speculation about a creature called Dingonek. This is a fearsome looking water creature which has features including armadillo-like leopard patterned hippo size back, head looking like a leopard's but with two large protruding fangs among other features. It was reported by the Lumbwa/Kipsigis and the Wadoko/Agiek to be seen in River Maggori. The creature was recorded to have been seen by Edgar Beecher Bronson.
Perhaps also more prevalent is what is called Mur-ngetunyit; this literally meaning "'a darkened or blackened lion beast"'. The description are sketchy and perhaps misleading where certain beasts, probably the cheetah, could be mistaken for the beast. The name however implies it could possibly be the black panther. It is usually also inclined by some elderly men as an accompanying tale that this beast, the "Mur-ngetuniyit" or perhaps the Cheetah or leopard have a form of magic; that it usually goes for the phallus by springing at high speeds and clutches at the head, usually of a man and if the victim survives, his recovery will include a symptom of weird if not wizardry insects usually beetles coming out of the inflicted wounds.
1. (One): Agenge: It has no significance
2. (Two): Aeng: It is a good number. It symbolises marriage and is a reciprocal/multiple of the masculine number (four).
3. (Three):Somok: It is a feminine number and a feminine symbol. It was also the maximum number of acquittal for offences, the fourth resulted in death by execution.
4. (Four): Ang'wan: Four is a masculine and military number.
5. (Five): Muut: It is associated with biology and physiology i.e., five fingers on hands and feet.
6. (Six): Lo: It is a neutral number
7. (Seven): Tisaap: It is associated with the seven age sets.
8. (Eight): Sisit: It has no significance
9. (Nine): "Sogool:" It is a divine number. It is also a complete number (it is the largest one's value)
10. (Ten): Taman: It is not significant as it is a round off figure i.e. 9+1
Kiptaman ak Sogol literally means "ten and nine" but it means "a thousand and one times (___ * 1001)"; although Bogol means and equals a hundred, Bogolai means or implies "Thanks a million."
The Milky Way is known as "Poit'ap kechei" (literally "sea of stars"), the morning star – Tapoiyot, the midnight star – Kokeliet, and Orion's Belt – Kakipsomok. The Milky Way was traditionally perceived as a great lake in which children are bathing and playing. However, there are indications that there was an awareness of the movement of the stars. For instance, the is called the Okiek's star – Kipokiot, because it was by its appearance, in times past, that the wives of the Okiek knew that their husbands were shortly to return home. Further, there are indications that this movement of stars was sometimes linked to earthly concerns. Here, it was by the appearance or non-appearance of the Pleiades – Koremerik, that the Nandi knew whether or not to expect a good or a bad harvest. Sometimes superstitions were held regarding certain events. A halo – ormarichet, was traditionally said to represent a cattle stockade. At least as of the early 20th century, a break occurring on the east side was considered to be unlucky while one on the west side was seen to be lucky. A comet – cheptapisiet or kipsaruriet was at the same time regarded as the precursor of a great misfortune.
The Kipsigis would tell their location in respect to the rising place of the sun (east) and plotting the four cardinal points descriptively by their position in relation to the east. The Kipsigis are also said to have been able the navigate at night by plotting the appearance of various constellations of the stars.
The Kipsigis call a month 'Arawet', which is also the term for our satellite, the moon. A year is called 'Kenyit' which can be derived from the phrase 'Ki-nyit' meaning 'to accomplish, to fill in'. A year was marked by the order of months and more importantly by ceremonial and religious celebration of the yearly harvest which was held at the various Kapkoros (Shrines). This event being analogous to a practice observed by most of the other Africans has inspired the Kwanza festivities celebrated by predominantly by people of African descent in the United States. Kenyit started in February. It had two seasons known as "olto" (pl. "oltosiek") and was divided into twelve months, "arawet" (pl. "arawek"). In place of a decade is the order of "Ibinda" which is usually between 10 and 17 years. In place of a century is the completion of the age set which takes between 100 and 120 years.
The first season of the year, olt-ap-iwot (iwotet), was the wet season and ran from March to August. The dry season, olt-ap-keme (kemeut), ran from September to February.
The kipsunde and kipsunde oieng harvest ceremonies were held in September and October respectively to mark the change in Seasons.
Whereas the Kipsigis call a month 'arawet' -'moon', the observation of a month is seen to follow a construct based on climate and crop harvests thus implying an earlier construct that was based on astronomy (basing on observations of the moon satellite).
The traditional Kipsigis housing plan is a product of the Kipsigis/Kalenjin heritage and the cultural transitions of the Kalenjin.
To begin with, the immediate household consisted of grass-thatched huts with conical roofs which sometimes had a pointy pole at the top (to imply if the homestead had a father/husband still alive); and the walls were made of mesh of vertical wood poles and horizontal branches and then filled with a sludge of wet soil, which after it dries, white clay is used as decoration and sometimes, red ochre. For the floor, women make a sludge of cow-dung and clay soil and spread it on the floor evenly.
The homestead huts included the main hut, a hut for unwed initiated men and boys (bachelors among the Kipsigis are explicitly guys who have passed about 40 and are still single, unwed initiated youth instead are not regarded as bachelors), a makeshift hut for initiated women (occasionally). An enclosure for cattle to stay at during the night called Kaaptich which is/was adjusted to Kaaptuguut, a small house for men who guarded the flocks and herds.
The main hut consisted of two sections: Koima, the left side of the house where women and children stayed and the Injor, the right side of the hut where the initiated men stayed and also with the goats and sheep.
Kipsigis people traditionally had the staple food being "Kipsiongik"- a thick hand blended paste of millet flour (sometimes mixed with sorghum flour) cooked in a pot with water. Kipsiongik was complemented prominently with goat's meat or cow's meat. It was a taboo to eat meat and drink milk in the same meal time. Milk was usually drunk unboiled as it was a taboo to boil milk. Prominently, the Kipsigis alao processed sour milk in a gourd (colloqually: 'Sotet') by first, cleaning the gourd then secondly sooting with charred stick of the 'itet' shrub plant which has an aromatic flavour and reduces the sour taste of sour milk; third, milk is filled into the gourd and left three to ten days to brew. Milk or sour milk would preferably be mixed with bull's blood. A sheep's tail was notably eaten during tilling of land and it was primarily designated for kids. The tongue and the testicles of a cow or a goat was reserved to the most elderly men in the family. The usual and prominent herder was offered the colon of the slaughtered animal and the herder usually roasted and ate it on the slaughter place. The liver was designated to women.
In the morning, the Kipsigis made and took millet porridge, children would take it with left over Kipsiongik (mokoryet) while the older teens and adults would take it with the snack of 'Morik'. Packed meals were carried by men (notably raw millet and perhaps sometimes, a small gourd with milk).
Masagisyeet was a societal food inadequacy mitigation/feeding programme targeted at children. A hungry child would go to a cross-road with a 'kissyet'-a woven plate/bowl, undress the hide garment and place on it Sereetyoot (Kikuyu grass, "Pennisetum clandestinum") and then would hide in a nearby bush (this saved the respective family of the child from embarrassment). Women passing by the cross-roads often with a basket of food would then naturally recognise the coded message and place some portions of food in the child's bowl. After the child noticed that food had been donated, he/she would pick the food and return to his/her duties. Apparently, if a disadvantaged family had a child who was ready for circumcision and seclusion but could not provide food, the father would take a goat or a sheep and tie it to the homestead of a well-off family, this meant and lead to an unnegotiable plea for provision of food from the later party.
Kipsigis people being a superstitious group were always on the look out to identify patterns and abnormalities in various aspects of life and environment and the interpretation of the same subsequently led them to decide on what to do. These various practices were common in Kalenjin cultures as it was part of their heritage. They are similar in context and practice to the Ancient Roman's Augury and Haruspex.
The Kipsigis observed and conceived that magic and witchcraft was not part of their culture. It was also believed that it had no origin among the Kipsigis or the rest of Kalenjin. Religion and magic or witchcraft according to the Kipsigis and perhaps the whole of Kalenjin were separate thematic subject matters seen as unrelated (Asiisian religion being seen as original to Kalenjin and magic or witchcraft being alien).
The Kipsigis had a relaxed attitude to dress codes for children and thus tribal nudism among the uncircumcised youth was common. An initiated Kipsigis, especially a woman had very strict code of dressing that where right from neck down to the knee had to be clothed (usually with a hide garment). Men however were supposed to wear a garment that would conceal their groins and rears. Both men and women would adorn themselves with earrings, necklaces, bangles and bells. Shukas for men started becoming a common item of attire for men replacing the hides when the missionaries arrived in Kipsigis' land.
Boy children among the Kipsigis were thought of as 'children of Kipsigis' and not part of Kipsigis until they had been initiated. Their roles may have included part of looking after cattle, hunting and gathering but were mainly known to engage in play, adult mock practices and apprenticeship.
Girl children among the Kipsigis were thought of as 'children of Kipsigis' and not part of Kipsigis until they had been initiated. Their roles major included assistance with homestead duties. They would also engage in play and apprenticeship.
Initiated men had the main role of protecting the community as derived from the word 'Muren' for man meaning 'defender'. They can be divided into two:
They were the younger generation of initiated men whose ibinda had just had the latest Saget ab eito custom. Their major task was acquiring catlle from rustling expeditions for bride price and wealth. They also made up a majority of the procession ranks of the Kipsigis military but did not make military decisions.
They were the older generations whose ibinwek had passed duties in Saget ab eito custom to the younger men. Their major role was defence and their secondary roles included leadership, guidance/counseling and decision making.
They were expected to be married of and become mothers. Some would continue with the careers they had apprenticed for as diviners, healers, seers or witch doctors.
The Kipsigis had individuals with binary identity by way of naming where a boy could obtain a name and identity of a female ancestor or a girl, an identity and a name of a male ancestor but at the same time, have respective masculine or feminine names according to their gender and thus their identities, although mixed were normal in both respects. There was also a context of individuals who took up the opposite gender identity especially in the context of initiation (Kamuratanet). A transgender man is known as chemenjo. A transgender woman is called chepkwony or chepotipiik. It is to be noted that transgender individuals did not receive surgical modification associated with gender transition but rather came to take up their identity and roles especially during initiation.
Initiation among the Kipsigis was done from childhood through adolescence and sometimes into early adulthood. It was an analogue for today's preliminary education. Its ultimate goal was to prepare the community's youth to become hardworking, resilient and responsible adults. It also secondarily served as a means of initiating per se, children into a community of secrecy, respect and behaviour of ranks and commitment to non-disclosure agreement and military-like adherence to ideals of the Kipsigis ethnicity. Another major aspect of initiation was the communal tolerance to pain and hardships.
The rites were faceted at birth, kamuratenet (circumcision and seclusion) and finally, marriage.
Age groups were patriarchal groupings of men according to the groups and time of initiation. A group of male individuals initiated together in the same seclusion home (a makeshift home for young male adults called "Menjo") would call themselves "Baghuleh" and became closer and bonded than blood brothers. The group's males initiated the same year or a year before or after the other called themselves "Botuum". Women inherited the age group of their husbands. Girls and boys did not have an age set.
Kipsigis have cyclical age setting, each usually offsetting not less than 15 years. It can be viewed as a mechanism of tracking the age expectancy of the community. In order, a new age set can never be called in while an old person of the same age set is still alive; not even one. The sets are:
As with some other ceremonies, so with marriages, some details and customs varied from clan to clan but the basic customs were uniform and same across the Kipsigis community and among all the clans. At least eight separate ceremonies entailed marriage including:
In the event that a wife may have engaged in extra-marital sex and subsequently become pregnant out of wedlock, she would have been sent to her parents and bitter words exchanged, sometimes violence ensued. As an outcome, the husband could forgive her. To allow the couple to settle back with their lives, the wife's family would have to pay the husband a heifer under a custom called Keeturum Saandet.
There was an honorary ceremony called Katunisyeet-aap Tororyeet (which translates to marriage for might) held for a couple and their children when they had lived together peacefully and harmoniously for a long time. It involved in-law members of both sides and it was held in the home of the wife if the wife's parents were still alive or at one of the husband's age group men.
Divorce was practised primarily if any party was suspected or caught practising black magic ("banisyeet"). A wife could also be divorced if she was known to have committed adultery (a man would not be accused of adultery; extramarital sex for men was common and was not seen as an offence unless they had had sex with a married woman which was a big no!-no! for the Kipsigis).
Among the Kipsigis, there is a mixed explanation of what death and funeral entailed. An important event before or after death was 'Kerar-geet' event which involved the delivery of an oral will by the dying individual and the proceeding interpretation of it by the kin of the dead person after his/her death.
All Kipsigis agree that funerals were not a rite of passage (tuum), but rather just that- death ("me-et" or "meet"). Proceeding the death of a person however, there are two explanations:
It is argued by some Kipsigis that Laying was done to individuals who died before marrying or having children or who had a low status in the society while burials were done for rich or well defined and prestigious people.*Poore: This was a ritual among the Kipsigis where if there had been lack of births over a period of time, the elderly in the affected commune would pray for death as it was believed this would invoke birth of new members of the society.
Em or emet, was the highest recognised geographic division among the Kipsigis. It spans a geopolitical region demarcated as being a jurisdiction of the Kipsigis entitled to ultimate sovereignty (but shared and entitled to the Nandi as well). This unit was identifiable as a political institution but the main work of civil control and administration was done by the "kokwotinwek" (plural of "kokwet"). Linguistic evidence indicates that this form of societal organisation dates back to their Southern Nilotic heritage. It is believed that the Southern Nilotes of two thousand years ago cooperated in loose supra-clan groupings, called *e:m. It was a prestigious factor and symbol of unity, peace and prosperity.
Operational in Nandi, the Orkoiyot institution was communed to Kipsigis in 1890, after the ousting and assassination of Kimnyole Arap Turgat. Kimnyole sent his three sons (Kipchomber arap Koilege, Arap Boisyo and Arap Buigut) to Kipsigis who immediately began to establish a Kipsigis confederation, each of them establishing kingly homesteads with servants, messengers and reception parlors.
The office of the Oorgoiiyoot was dissolved after the Lumbwa Treaty.
"Kokwet" was the most significant political and judicial unit among the Kipsigis. The governing body of each kokwet was its "kok" (village council). Kokwet denotes a geographic cluster of settlement similar in concept to a village. It was established once there was a settlement pattern group of families. Such settlements were initiated by a few pioneer groups who usually were derived from men of the same genealogical organisation (oret) or age group from the same seclusion home or initiation year (botuumisyek).
K"ok" elders were the local authority for allocating land for cultivation; they were the body to whom the ordinary member of the tribe would look for a decision in a dispute or problem which defied solution by direct agreement between the parties.
The office of the village elders was native to the Kipsigis and the elders. It consisted of retired army officers who were usually old, rich and with a reputation of wisdom in passing judgement. Their sittings were usually leisurely in the afternoon over a large pot of Nubian gin. With regard to administration and justice, a plaintiff or messengers would convey their aggrievances or messages to the elders and thus, a congregation was called on a date. Such a congregation depending on the nature could be all inclusive of the immediate community or it could only be attended by men.
The Kipsigis observed an unwritten constitution enveloped in the Kipsigis/Kalenjin heritage under moral codes. They were narrated and explained from childhood all through life. Significantly though, they were also sang to initiates in the seclusion homes. The implicit constitution made provisions for theism, identity, expectations of various groups, management of resources, environmental provisions and moral standards
The nandi are a closely related community to the Kipsigis as they both once had a single identity. They always work together and communal decisions made in either community affect the other.
Before annexation of the Kenyan land by the British (before the 1890s), the Nandi bordered the Kipsigis along River Nyando ("'Oino-ap Kipchorian' – River Kipchorian") to the north while the Kipsigis lived south of the River and prominently in Belgut only to expand within a century to what is known today as South Rift and even more extensions that had earlier on be marked and mapped by Captain ... (Kipleltiondo).
Kosobo means the land of or 'of appertaining to' the Kosobek, (Abagusii). Kosobek means an instance of a distinctive populous group of people known for being medicine men. Kamama means literally 'maternal uncle' or effectively, collective family of maternal uncle's family and household including the uncle.
These terms are used to implicate the Abagusii people of Western Kenya known to the Kipsigis for the love-hate relationship between the two communities. The Kamama attribute is thought to be a connotation developed by Abagusii adoptees while Kosobo or Kosobek being a friendly but distant eponym could be the original term of Kipsigis for Abagusii.
The Kipsigis held a mythology that Asis granted them absolute ownership over cattle of all the other communities and thus, conducted cattle rustling expeditions against its neighbours (except the Nandi). Abagusii were the main target of these expeditions alongside Luo and Maasai.
In the past, the most recalled event is the failed battle of Mogori where warriors of the ageset of Kaplelach were 'wiped out' at River Migori by an alliance of Abagusii, Maa and Abakusu warriors.
During various droughts that resulted in absolute food insecurity, young Kipsigis children were barter traded for cereal and other foodstuff to the Abagusii.
There was also a practice of intermarriages between the two communities.
Kipsigis clans are exclusively a Nandi system of patriachiarchal kinship that the Kipsigis naturally took up.
The ancestors, notably the patriarch Kakipoch, immigrated the Nandi-Kipsigis population to Uasin Ngishu county. Formulation of the clan system is thought to have come about due to interaction with Lumbwa people or perhaps Tugen people. The purpose of creating clans as it seems was to prevent marriages between individuals who share a patriarchal relationship to the third generation (marriages being mainly heterosexual but with a lesbian marriage in context). Clans also projected various professionalism and probably adopted identities where for instance, certain clans were exclusively priests, others were exclusively smiths, others exclusively hunters and gathers while others had other particular peculiarities. With the breakage of Nandi-Kipsigis unity, the Kipsigis took up the Kipsigis identity, while the Nandi took up the Chemwal identity only later to acquire Nandi eponym from the Swahili traders and the Kipsigis assuming Lumbwa eponym from scholars and British imperialists.
Since, the Kipsigis went on to adopt many clans mostly from Abagusii to the effect that residents of Bomet town and its environs are exclusively Abugusii adoptees.
The totems are personified and animated identities based on mammals and birds including: lion (Ng'etundo), buffalo (Zoet), snake (Ndaret/Komut-get), hyena (Kimagetiet), baboon (MÖseet), Crested Cranes (Kong'onyot), hare (Kiplekweet), Dik-Dik (Cheptirgikyet) and the dog/coyote/kayote (Ng'okto).
This was the responsibility and role of initiated men. There were various posts delegated to this men by custom including: those who should protect women and children at home, spies ("Yotiik", "Seegeik" and "Sogooldaiik"), the generals (Kiptayat/Kiptaiinik)and the procession ranks ("Ng'anymetyeet", "Pirtiich", "Oldimdo/Lumweet" and "Kipeelbany"). Each soldier in their various posts had a division among four including "Ngetunyo, Kebeni/Kebeny" and some other two. There were yearly mock up practice for warring called "Kaambageet".
The Kipsigis armies were not exclusive but all inclusive. Their response time was instantaneous but each individual assumed regular roles in the community which earned a reputation of being insurmountable.
The arms of the fighting men usually consisted of a spear, shield, sword and club. By the late 19th century, up to four kinds of spears, representing various eras and areas were in use. In Nandi, the eren-gatiat, of the Sirkwa era was still in use though only by old men. It had a short and small leaf-shaped blade with a long socketed shank and a long butt. Two types of the Maasai era spear, known as ngotit, were also in use. Those of the eastern, northern and southern counties had long narrow blades with long iron butt, short socket and short shaft. Those of the central county (emgwen) had short broad blades with short iron butts. In the western counties, a spear that had a particularly small head, a long shaft and no butt was in use, it was known as ndirit. The pastoral Pokot carried two Maasai era spears, known as ngotwa while the agricultural sections armed themselves with a sword, known as chok.
Archery was also very much a prominent skill practised among the Kipsigis for purposes ranging from agriculture to defence and security. There were an array of arrows for various specialties such as for shooting a bull for blood, hunting arrows and defensive arrows meant either as a deterrent by causing mortal wounds or others meant to get stuck in the victim while others were poisoned and thus each of the arrow types were used depending on the occasion.
Soongoolyet, an ostrich feather was a prominent headgear for the Kipsigis.
This was a ceremony performed for the passing out of the old generation of soldiers and the entering in of the incoming generation of soldiers. It was associated with seclusion among the parties taking part in bushes for 24 hours, initiates would sleep in the attic ("tabuut") or outside in the forest or bushes. The ceremony was completed by sacrificing a white ox and the involved parties would wear rings made from the ox' hide called "Tamokiet" (if the omens read from the ox's intestines were good ). This event is likened to the pass out ceremonies of police and the army.
A night before a military expedition, a prayer was made under a ceremony called Isset-app Murenik where god was explicitly NOT to be referred to as Asis but exclusively, Chebomirchio. This ceremony would sometimes be skipped especially when the armies were retaliating on an attack.
Hunting and gathering (Logeet) seem to also be a prominent part of culture among the Kipsigis although there is an indication that it was the culture of Ogiek Kipsigis. It included hunting various animals and birds and collection of mushrooms (Bobeek), wild honey (Kulumbenik) and honey (Kuumiik). These were the activities of men (especially the hunting part), women and children (especially the gathering part).
The system of habitation was semi-permanent and the region of settlement was abundant of grazing grass, water and salts. This made the Kipsigis lead a miniaturised version of pastoralism, only moving when there were droughts, or when there were migration for reasons such as adventure or antagonistic reasons as disputes or omens.
Kipsigis people practised farming. They used to farm and grow finger millet and sorghum. Black night shade and spider plant made up the diet of the Kipsigis implying that it was also farmed. Farming was an all gender and age activity; everyone participated in clearing, tilling and land preparation, men were the experts of planting, weeding was more of female work and harvest was all-inclusive, festive and religious event.
By the early 20th century, there were a number of smiths (kitongik) in Nandi who spoke both Nandi and Maasai. The smiths gave the following account of their arrival. "After they had lost all their cattle from various causes, the Uasin Gishu Maasai quitted their homes and split up in different directions. Some of those who wandered into Nandi were hospitably received by Arap Sutek who was the only smith in Nandi at the time.
Kipsigis people in earlier times used people and stone tools to process grain for various uses. The known tools were 'koitap-bai', meaning 'stone of millet' which was simple two stones used to grind grain by hand. Later times, the Kipsigis came to adopt a milling technology that used water peddle to motor a contraption of larger milling stones.
Nubian gin as a legacy liquor was very popular and reserved for elders only. It was also very important and used in various customs. Production of Nubian gin followed the production of cereal processing.
The Kipsigis used to rear their livestock occasionally with salts usually obtained from rocks or by having their livestock water at a stream with hard salty water usually discovered by observing red-brown slimy scum on rocks around the water body.
Pregnant women would occasionally chew Ng'eenda but the Kipsigis did not join the missing link to obtain salts for their meals. In place of salts, the Kipsigis would apply roof soot, especially on preserved meat for a salty aromatic effect.
The Kipsigis did not mint their money but there is context of usage of cowrie shells among other forms of currency. Notably between the Kipsigis and Abagusii was barter trade that mainly included the exchange of agricultural produce for children or cattle.
Plants were prominent in the culture and heritage of the Kipsigis. Most importantly, plants were sacred to the Kipsigis and used some specific plants to construct an alter; explicitly, an alter was exclusively made from plants. Plants were also used as medical resources and the knowledge of the various plants was treasured and kept from one generation to the next.
The earlier Kipsigis population occupied what would be today's Kipkelion East and Kipkelion West constituencies. In oral traditions, the Kipsigis consider Belgut their first populous settlement. Much of Kericho and southward was occupied by Maasai people, Bureti and portions of Belgut were occupied by Abagusii and Western portions of Belgut were occupied by the Luo people. The Kipsigis began as just a small group of Nandi people who settled in an area North of River Chemosit (Itare River) and an area South of Kipchorian River (River Nyando); and expanded within 80 years to a century to an expanse larger than today's Kipsigis' regions.
The prosperity and expansion of the Kipsigis population and jurisdiction was remarkable. They had thwarted Kisii people out of Kericho and driven them South to Southern portions of Bureti. They had also attritioned the Maasai claim to Kericho and drove them towards Chemosit River and then made a treaty to expand their territories South respectively. There was then sudden catastrophes including famine, starvation, rinderpest disease and the disastrous annihilation of the men of Kaplelach age set in a failed battle, the battle of Maagoori. For sometimes thus, the Kipsigis community was in the brink of collapse but it is observed that the community swiftly adopted raft measures including the relaxation rules on sociosexuality and aggressive adoption of Maasai, Luo and Abagusii.
The Kaplelach ageset of between 1870 and to their annihilation in about 1890 are majorly portrayed as a generation who had issues of systematic indiscipline in war who had grown invincible and believed they would thrash any opponents. They are infamously narrated to have instigated horrid and painful ordeals on the neighbouring communities. One such example is found in oral traditions of how the legion of Kaplelach armies raided a community of Maasai people and killed everyone in the affected locality, then went on to cut the ears of Maasai women so that they would get hold of the beautiful ornaments; they also cut their feet and hands to remove bells and other ornaments and left them to be eaten by crocodiles in River Amalo.
Their next target was the Abagusii community. They banded their armies together and began preparing to raid. The new difference from other generations was that the Kaplelach wanted to eject Abagusii and kill anyone in site while the other generations usually would just instead run stealth stock theft that ensured the besieged remained with some cattle to milk. They then defied warnings of diviners and the rebuke of the elders and ventured to Abagusii land. In a covert plan and in retaliation, the Maasai had intelligence of the plans of the Kipsigis armies, they martialed an overnight vigilante of Maasai, Kuria and Abagusii guerrilla warriors in River Maagoori (River Migori) and here, the stealth vigilantes cornered the Kipsigis legion and slaughtered them one by one; the major element being surprise and confusion. Out of the legion, only a bunch survived the holocaust by survival tricks or the occasional one or two left alive to narrate the ordeal to the Kipsigis people.
Menya was a member of the Kapkaon clan. He is the great-grandfather to Johanna Ngeno. He is a legend among the Kipsigis people. He mitigated a treaty with the Maasai that resulted in peaceful migration of Maasai from Kaplong in Sotik all through to Trans-Mara and Narok.
The Kipsigis had wizards who would heal and treat or read omens or foresee or bless. Such individuals included "chepsogeiyot"- a seer and healer; and "Motirenik"- Masters of culture and ceremonies and "Tisiik"- Priests. Orgoik seems to be alien to Kipsigis and with an origin in Nandi. In Kipsigis an Orgoiyot is any member of the Talai clan while in Nandi, it has a meaning of collective or paramount leader with paranormal powers.
Talai clansmen were adopted to the Nandi from Segelai Maasai who actually were also adopted by the Maasai from the Marakwet faction known as Sengwer who also happen to be adopted from Sirikwa (Iraqw).
The orgoik have an origin among the Maasai and are known to them as Laibon. They came to the Nandi and established themselves in Nandi but a predominant family of the Talai in Nandi, the Turgat family had three sons sent to Kipsigis: Arap Koilege, Arap Boisyo and Arap Buiygut. These three are the brothers to Koitalel arap Samoei. Initially, their benefactor was Arap Kiroisi- the father to Mugenik.
The three brothers would later on about 1903 be deported to Kikuyuland while their siblings and immediate families consisting of about 700 individuals were banished to Gwassi in Homa Bay County and stayed there excommunicated between 1934 and 1962. They were later on resettled in Kablilo, Sigowet-Soin, Kiptere, Ainamoi, Belgut and some few in Emgwen.
Among the Kipsigis, there is speculative talk that implicates Daniel Arap Moi and Jomo Kenyatta as having relations with the Orgoik.
He lived in Cheriri in Kiptere before he was imprisoned by the British and sent to Rusinga island of Kisumu. He was instrumental in dispersing Luo people from Kiptere to Sondu. Among the Kipsigis, and perhaps among all the other Kalenjin, Arap Koilege is believed to have blessed Kenyatta Jomo and handed to him his attire which included a hide, a belt colloquially called 'Kenyatet', a head gear among others after which, Koilege asked Kenyatta to visit a leader of the Maasai who was a Laibon. The attire was worn by Jomo very many ceremonial times when he was the president of Kenya.
Chebochock was the son to Kimyole Arap Turgat. After Kimyole was ousted and assassinated by the Nandi, Chebochok and his two brothers found refuge among the Kipsigis people while Koitalel Arap Samoei found refuge among the Tugen people. Chebochock Kiptonui arap Boisio settled in Londiani. He established himself a kingly estate. He empowered and commandeered Kipsigis armies to acquire land towards Laikipia.
He is reported or speculated to have fathered a boy to a widow who used to herd cattle, she was known as Wambui. The boy is reported to have been named Johnstone Peter Kamau. She then moved to a farm in Nyeri where she married Muigai but who later divorced her because of issues associated with cuckoldry.
In 1913, Chebochok Kiptonui Arap Boiso and his two brothers were banished to Fort Hall and Nyeri. Coincidentally, Wambui was assigned the role to look after the three brothers by the Europeans.
He was the cousin to Koitalel arap Samoei and lived in village called Sotik to where Sotik town is currently situated.
He gave prophecies that the Kipsigis still hold in great anticipation and record. These prophecies were even recorded by Rafael Kipchambai arap Tabaitui and is usually played by Kass FM on occasion. The prophecies include:
Other Prophecies Accounts include:
The Catholic Church had its sentinel at Kericho to where Kenya's second-largest diocese is located in Kericho. The Catholic Church is perhaps one of the most aggressively accepted denominations among the Kipsigis because of their relaxed attitude of culture and the romanticised preservation of Kalenjin mythologies plus Christianisation of Kalenjin traditional religion where aspects of religion and the Kipsigis manner of worship was taken up and accepted. For instance, a Catholic church parish is colloquially called 'Kapkoros'.
One notable priest nicknamed Chemasus by the Kipsigis is most famous for converting Kipsigis into Christianity by indoctrination that it is allowed to drink alcohol (Nubian gin in this case) but in moderacy and that Asis is the same as Yahweh thus in the Catholic parishes in Kipsigis, it is not wrong to call the Israel/Christian God Cheptalel or Asis or any other attributes of Asis.
Africa Inland Mission established their first centres in Cheptenye in Belgut (a church and a rescue/education centre for girls/young woman rescued from female genital mutilation and initiation) and in Tenwek in Bomet. The group later broke into Africa Gospel Church'and Africa Inland Church, with the latter establishing themselves mostly among the Nandi and in Litein. Africa Gospel Church became the de facto Christian denomination especially in Belgut and in Bomet. Africa Inland Mission took a more reformatory approach where converts had to completely disassociate with traditional religion and traditional life; male adult converts were baptised with only one wives of their choice while the others would not. Unlike the Catholic church, Asiisian religion was expressly not be faceted to Christianity.
As a result of neglect of heritage, the culture of the Kipsigis became quickly westernised. The Kipsigis have since become the most westernised as compared to other Kalenjin and other nilotes.
The Kipsigis especially of Cheptenye in Sosiot and Tenwek in Bomet had been coerced by the British through the Africa Inland Mission to give up Orgoik in exchange for scholarships and a peace treaty with British. This was easily arrived at with the leadership of Tenkwek AIM clergy, who led the propaganda against the Orgoik. The christian missionaries employed extensive deceit to paint the Kipsigis spiritual leaders (Orgoik) as evil so that they could also get a better foothold on the beliefs of the Kipsigis. The christian missionaries misrepresented that the few converts that they had converted to christianity represented the Kipsigis nation. Part of this propaganda was to associate the Orgoik with the failures and disasters that had faced the Kipsigis including the failed battle of Mogori.
The British then prepared the Lumbwa Treaty and subsequently arrested all the Orgoik and their families and put them in Kericho cells. The British facilitated the few Kipsigis, who had been blackmailed and deceived to convert their religion, met at Kipkelion town, then called Lumbwa, and deliberated a treaty in the form and make of Kipsigis traditions under a custom called Muuma or Mummiat. It is detailed that the British promised together with this few Kipsigis to collaborate and not harm each other then they went on to savour a dog in two parts and each party buried their half.
The British then exiled the spiritual leaders of the Kipsigis to Russinga Island in Kisumu. This atrocity against the Kipsigis nation has never been redeemed to date.
In their anger, it is said that the Orgoik cursed the Kipsigis and the Nandi (Mee Kipsigis ne-ki mee tereet, ko me Nandi ne-ki mee Sotet: May the Kipsigiss die the manner of broken pot and may the Nandi die the manner of a broken calabash)
For some time after the Nandi resistance, the Uganda protectorate was marketed in the western nations as a wild get-away destination for Big-Game enthusiasts. The Kipsigis' land strategically had the forested Sotik plains which wild life roamed freely. The Kipsigis people at the time being called 'Lumbwa' had its warriors become porters to assist big-game hunters to kill various animals.
Theodore Roosevelt recorded using the 405 Whinchester ammunition as the effective 'cure' against the ferocious Sotik lion.
He was a paramount Kipsigis chief appointed by the British. This way, the Kipsigis were ruled indirectly by the British. He was appointed to the Queens's 1961 Birthday Honours.
He was appointed to the Queen's 1960 Birthday Honours.
A number of factors taking place in the early 1920s led to what has come to be termed the Nandi Protest or Uprisings of 1923. It was the first expression of organised resistance by the Nandi since the wars of 1905–06.
Primary contributing factors were the land alienation of 1920 and a steep increase in taxation, taxation tripled between 1909 and 1920 and because of a change in collection date, two taxes were collected in 1921. The Kipsigis and Nandi refused to pay and this amount was deferred to 1922. Further, due to fears of a spread of rinderpest following an outbreak, a stock quarantine was imposed on the Nandi Reserve between 1921 and 1923. The Nandi, prevented from selling stock outside the Reserve, had no cash, and taxes had to go unpaid. Normally, grain shortages in Nandi were met by selling stock and buying grain. The quarantine made this impossible. The labour conscription that took place under the Northey Circulars only added to the bitterness against the colonial government.
All these things contributed to a buildup of antagonism and unrest toward the government between 1920 and 1923. In 1923, the "saget ab eito" (sacrifice of the ox), a historically significant ceremony where leadership of the community was transferred between generations, was to take place. This ceremony had always been followed by an increased rate of cattle raiding as the now formally recognised warrior age-set sought to prove its prowess. The approach to a saget ab eito thus witnessed expressions of military fervour and for the ceremony all Nandi males would gather in one place.
Alarmed at the prospect and as there was also organised protest among the Kikuyu and Luo at that time, the colonial government came to believe that the Orkoiyot was planning to use the occasion of the Saget ab eito of 1923 as a cover under which to gather forces for a massive military uprising. On 16 October 1923, several days before the scheduled date for the saget ab eito, the Orkoiyot Barsirian Arap Manyei and four other elders were arrested and deported to Meru. Permission to hold the ceremony was withdrawn and it did not take place, nor has it ever taken place since. The Orkoiyot Barsirian Arap Manyei would spend the next forty years in political detention, becoming Kenya's, and possibly Africa's, longest-serving political prisoner.
The Kipsigis were oblivious to think about independence; they thought there was no might that would de-legitimise imperial rule for they (British) had killed Koitalel arap Samoei. Independence, therefore, was a magical and surprising outcome for the Kipsigis.
In 1963 however, the Kipsigis obtained loans which facilitated them to buy the white settlement schemes. 1000 Kenya shillings was equivalent to 40 acres of land.
In 1964, Kipsigis were living to the reaches of Borabu (in Abagusii land where the settlement schemes were located) adjacent to present Kericho county but Jomo Kenyatta, Daniel Arap Moi, Taita Towett" (his protagonistic role in this agreement has been argued by some Kipsigis that it was because his origin is among tha Abagusii people- his clan is Zoigoek meaning they were adopted from Abagusii)", Prof. Lawrence Sagini and the then Rift Valley province Provincial Commissioner, Simeon Nyachae agreed to move the Nyanza border to the currently known former Nyanza-Rift-valley border. The then Chepalungu (currently Sotik and Chepalungu constituencies) MP, Barmalel campaigned against this move (probably because he was a member of Talaai clan and the shift of boundary would alter his clans legacy)
By this timeline, Kericho, Lumbwa/Kipkelion, Sosiot and Sotik were the centre points of the whole of Kipsigis.
In the 1960s, there was significant emigration of the Kipsigis in their known territory to Mwanza and Tarime in Tanzania because at the time, Tanzania's Ujamaa communist system was a popular alternative to the Kenyan capitalist system. The reports of a Kalenjin group in Tanzania called Datooga may have also enticed the Kipsigis to commune and contact the lost tribe. The findings thus far is that the Datooga share certain customs with the Kalenjin but their interaction with the Abakusu has transformed some of their ways. It is noted that in Tanzania, the immigrants were frequently affected by Malaria and as a result, subsequent deaths and information on the same in 'Emet ab Kipsigis' led to an eventual pause to the emigration.
After the Lumbwa treaty, the Kipsigis exercised a shift into Christianity and almost abandoned their culture. This took place in association with the Catholic Church which had its grounds in Kericho Town and Kaplong; Africa Inland Church which had its ground in Litein and Africa Gospel Church which had its grounds in Cheptenye, Sosiot – currently Cheptenye Boys' High School and Cheptenye AGC church and also in Tenwek, Bomet.
The Kipsigis have ceased naming their children by ancestral reincarnation because missionaries led them to believe it was an evil practice. Birth time naming still continue and as such, boys and girls are still named by the ""Kip-"" and ""Chep-"" names which usually makes up their second name. Girls and young women have ceased to be initiated or circumcised which subsequently, has led to the loss of ""Tab-"" naming. Boys and young men still circumcise and initiate and thus the ""Arap-"" naming system has been retained albeit the fact that the Kenyan Registra bodies all only for 25 characters of which the "Arap" title would lead to an excess, hence they only use cerfix to "Arap" naming system. The later version of Arap naming makes up the surname for initiated men and boys. The first names for the Kipsigis are the secular and gospel names traded from western cultures though the missionaries and pop-culture.
Currently among its youth, the Kipsigis are exercising a shift to pop culture. This is evident in the shift to initiation ceremonies held in conjunction with the various churches called "banda en tililindo" against the traditional "Kipgaa". It is also evident in the robust gospel and secular music scene unlike any in Kalenjin.
Of the many customs that Kipsigis kept and performed, the current most prominent are the circumcision and initiation of boys and marriage by elopement and thus the current Kipsigis are nothing like their ancestors. To make it worse, the Kipsigis have a high-level of security and departmentalisation of information and knowledge on their customs thus leading to constant misinterpretation and attrition of their culture.
The Kipsigis view "happiness" as a lack of negative experiences, indicating a quiet and calm state. This convention under the culture and positive psychology studies when contrasted to other indigenous communities of the gives researchers an obstacle in obtaining a qualitative or quantitative measure of happiness.
Contemporary Kalenjin music has long been influenced by the Kipsigis leading to Kericho's perception as a cultural innovation center in Kenya and effectively in the Great-Lakes Region of Africa. The secular music scene is the pioneering and perhaps the most decorative and celebrated in Kipsigis and effectively in Kalenjin.
A song "Chemirocha III" collected by ethnomusicologist Hugh Tracey in 1950 from the Kipsigis tribe was written in honour of Jimmie Rodgers. The song's title is an approximation of the musician's name. According to legend, tribe members were exposed to Rodgers' music through British soldiers during World War II. Impressed by his yodelling, they envisioned Rodgers as "a faun, half-man and half-antelope."
The following musicians are credited for contributing tremendously to the culture preservation, cultural dynamism and communal identity:
Other Popular Kipsigis musicians include: Lillian Rotich, Mike Rotich, Maggy Cheruiyot, Josphat Koech Karanja, Cyrus Koech and Paul Kiprono Langat. Some of the secular music artistes include: Morris, Charles Chepkwony, , Chebaibai, Ben Bii, Naswa, 2nd Junior Kotestes, Cyrus, Brownny Star and Rhino Superstar. Notable stars who have passed on include: Junior Kotestes and Weldon Cheruiyot (Kenene).
Kimursi, an actor in the 1950 Technicolor adventure film: King Solomon's Mines, is credited as being of Kipsigis ethnicity. In the cast, he takes on the role of Khiva
In the 1980s, some of the first reports of HIV were reported in Kenya in Mombasa and in the decades that followed, the virus has infected many people and killed many too. 1% of the Kenyan population is believed to be infected as of 2020. The Kipsigis people have emphasised male circumcision as a precautionary measure of reducing HIV transmissions. The Kipsigis also like many other Kenyan communities have become educated on the matter; stigma has reduced by a big margin and only limited to isolated events. The infected individuals are being actively monitored by health institutions and adhere to ARV medication.
The rural Kipsigis communities stereotypically take tea several times a day and preferably at very hot temperatures (about 72-degree Celsius). They also celebrate sour milk known colloquially as Mursiik and usually take it with vegetables and a thick paste of cooked maize/millet flour known colloquially as Kimyeet and Ugali in Swahili. Mursiik, in particular, has been highlighted by Tenwek Hospital to cause throat cancer especially in Bomet. Another thesis put forward by a district hospital in Busia, Western Kenya, points out that not only that caffeine is carcinogenic but at the intervals and volume of consumption plus the preferable temperatures of beverages such as tea and coffee are dangerous combination of risk factors causing the increasingly communal cases of various cancers and throat cancer in particular.
Although the reports and research put forward highlights caffeine beverages and sour milk, it is also imperative to consider that a significant demographic of the Kipsigis population are popular with indigenous Nubian gin brew and also with recognised alcoholic brands and thus this combination plus the popularity of hot beverages, caffeine beverages and Mursiik could also be a risk factor to consider.
In the 2009 Kenya census, the Kipsigis population was 1,916,000 individuals; this made them the most populous tribe of Kalenjin confederation throughout the Great Lakes Region. In the 2019 Kenya census, the Kipsigis were 1, 932,000. This figure implies a plateauing phase of population growth. It is believed that this is because polygamy had been abolished until 2018; also that the Kenyan economy is slowing and life is becoming expensive due to Uhuru Kenyatta's government look east policy and extravagant borrowing.
Bomet County is believed to have the highest life expectancy in Kenya. Mzee Barnabas Kiptanui Arap Rob who is believed to have been born in 1879 was mystified as to have achieved longevity. He died in 2017 aged 133.
Kipsigis community today has a diaspora presence predominantly in United States of America, United Kingdom, Australia, France, UAE, Tanzania and South Sudan. A majority of the diaspora of Kipsigis origin are educated and well-qualified, usually with well-paying jobs. It is observed that like most other Kenyan diaspora, the Kipsigis diaspora have a positive attitude toward Kenya and more so on the Emet ab Kipsigis.
Together with other Kalenjin elite diaspora, there is an organisation called 'Kwaneet' which usually operates a televised or teleconferenced programs on Kass media group.
Notable Kipsigis athletes (deceased, alive, retired and active) include:
The Kipsigis are not usually known to excel or even participate in soccer but Nicholas Kipkirui (Harambee Stars player contracted to Gor Mahia), Dominic Kiprono (contracted to Zoo Kericho F.C) and Isaac Kipyegon (contracted to Zoo Kericho F.C) are changing this stereotype.
The Kipsigis community is a rich political arena. Bomet County has been selected by a University based in Nairobi as a jurisdiction in which its Political Science department actively monitors. The Kipsigis present themselves in a united political front but Bomet County has been observed to promote quality politics. Radio stations such as Kass fm, Chamgei fm and Kitwek fm play a very important political role by way of hosting leaders and holding thematic political discussions.
The Kipsigis aspire to present Kenya a president. In part, some Kipsigis estimate anonymously that they have done so since Jomo Kenyatta (whom the Kipsigis sometimes refer to as "Kipkemo") is alleged to be the biological son to Chebochok Kiptonui arap Boisio. During Daniel Moi's regime, the Kipsigis had Dr. Taaitta Towett who was being groomed by Daniel Toroitich arap Moi to become his successor but he later defected onto a leftist front and thus Daniel Moi engaged Towett in politics of attrition. Daniel Moi thus began grooming Professor Jonathan Kimetet arap Ngeno. Professor Jonathan was faced with opposition by culturalists who sidelined him as a man who had been initiated through Kimuutaat, a derogative term for the initiations held in conjunction with churches. William Kipchirchir Samoei arap Ruto whose origin and ethnicity is Kipsigis from the Komosi clan in Sigowet-Soin, is currently set to contend for the presidency in 2022.
The Kipsigis believe that they have supernatural impediment to their aspiration. This including the curses made by Oorgooiik as they were banished by British government, Christian AIM and Catholic churches and Kipsigis community followed by Lumbwa Treaty. Another superstitious impediment is believed to be the lost Kaplelach age-set who were decimated in River Maggori (River Migori) and thus there is an interest to demarcate a memorial cemetery for the killed soldiers. Apparently, there is a belief, too, that the remains of Oorgooiik in Nyeri and Meru should be returned to Kipsigis.
Dr. William Kipchirchir Samoei araap Ruto (Komosii clan): William Ruto is from the Kipsigis ethnicity but largely misunderstood and/or mistaken to be of Nandi ethnicity. The ability of a Nandi tribesperson to be elected a leader in Kipsigis and vice versa highlights the unity and coperation between Kipsigis and Nandi who still see each other as the diaspora of the other and as close kin even compared to other Kalenjin. Other geopolitically (Kipsigis-Nandi) inverted leaders include Tamason Barmalel from Nandi elected MP in Chepalungu and Isaack Ruto elected MP for Chepalungu and Governor for Bomet county.
William Ruto was the Member of Parliament for Eldoret North Constituency, Cabinet Minister for Education and Cabinet Minister for Agriculture. He is the incumbent Deputy President of Kenya. He has been serving in this docate since his first term between 2013 and 2017 and currently in his second term which began in 2018 and will wend in 2022. He has been deputising the 4th president of Kenya, Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta. William Ruto has since 2017 openly hinted and since declared to contend Kenya's 2022 presidential post.
In 2017, a consortium from the Kipsigis community organised by Professor Paul Kiprono Chepkwony and lead by Karim Ahmad Khan sought redress for human rights violations committed by the British government during the colonial period. The plaintiffs were more than 100,000 ethnic Kipsigis victims and the members of Talai Clan
The Talai clansmen returned or continued to peacefully live with Kipsigis people after independence. After the sinister campaign of AIM and Catholic church the Talai clansmen were sidelined and hated but today, they exist peacefully with the Kipsigis and take upon the identity of the Kipsigis equally like any other clansmen. Notably, the residents of Chepalungu constituency (today's Sotik and Chepalungu constituencies) voted in Tamason Barmalel, the grandson of Koitalel Arap Samoei, as their MP between 1969 and 1974.
Apparently, allocations of land made by the Kenyan Government under Taaita Towet and Daniel arap Moi to the Talai clansmen has been reported to be grabbed and commercialised by corrupt agents and thus, those living in Kericho live in wanting situations and poverty.
The Kipsigis are known to be welcoming and hospitable but with a reputation to raise alarm and mobilise militant ranks in a short response time possible if attacked. Traditionally, they used to raid Abagusii, Maasai and Luo for cattle and for adoption of entire families or villages.
In recent history, the Kipsigis have ceased to instigate cattle rustling (or people rustling!) as it has become an outdated and illegal practice. It is however observed that cattle rustling still occurs especially in Sotik where organised goons between Abagusii and Kipsigis delinquents operate systematic cattle theft. This thus creates a negative attitude among the Abagusii toward the Kipsigis and thus build up tensions that explode in conflicts most probably during post-elections. The government is also known to favour the Abagusii by giving them policing agents such as Anti-stock theft and General Service Units who arbitrarily and punitively beat up the residents of Sotik (while the real answer could most possibly be found by intensifying intelligence operations to nab the organised goons).
After independence and with the Kalenjin consciousness, the Kipsigis along with other highland nilotes have political unity that which is the target of political dynasties.
Most notably is the Mau forest government residence program that was perpetuated by Mwai Kibaki's government under the ministry of lands which saw many Kipsigis acquire land in Mau forest only for them to be forcefully evicted by the same government in 2008 and by Uhuru Kenyatta's government in 2018/2019. The evictions were violent, inconsiderate and uncompensated.
After a comprehensive risk assessment of social, economic and political factors that increase the likelihood of genocide in Kenya, the Sentinel Project's May 2011 report identified several risk factors including; a low degree of democracy, isolation from the international community, high levels of military expenditure, severe government discrimination or active repression of native groups, socioeconomic deprivation combined with group-based inequality and a legacy of intergroup hatred among other risk factors.
In 1991, multi-party democracy was a contentious issue as Kikuyu people had been angered by Moi's regime and associated aggressively authoritarian rule. The Kikuyu associated Kipsigis to Daniel Moi and then demonised them as retrogressive and enemies of democracy. The Kikuyu primarily supported Kenneth Matiba and in retaliation, the Kipsigis supported Daniel Moi.
The buildup of tension and hate resulted in pre-election ethnicity-based violence of 1992 where in Kipkelion constituencies, the Kipsigis torched houses of non-Kipsigis (excluding Nandi and other Kalenjin). This affected majorly the Kikuyu and Kisii people plus also Luo people. 5,000 people were killed and another 75,000 displaced in the Rift Valley Province, with the town of Molo being an epicenter of the violence. The conflict was primarily between the Kalenjin and Kikuyu communities with Land ownership cited as one of key reasons for the conflict. The Kisii in Kipkelion fled to Nyanza, where they found refuge among their kin. As a result, the Kisii people bordering Bureti, Sotik and Narok West constituencies retaliated against the Kipsigis. This resulted in skirmishes in the region; primarily associated with groups of fighters from both ethnicities holding sentinel.
In effect, Kipkelion for some few years was void of Kikuyu and Kisii people. After the elections, Moi won and in turn, the Kipsigis were at ease and the violence stopped.
While violence recorded in Sotik-Borabu and the rest of Kenya was during the post-election period, an area called Kagasiik in Sotik constituency along the Rift Valley-Nyanza boundary had already been experiencing skirmishes as early as August 2007.
The primary root for violence (post election) was the belief that the 2007 presidential elections had been rigged in favour of Mwai Kibaki and against Raila Omolo Odinga who the Kipsigis were rooting for. Strategically in 2007, Raila was receiving support from Kalenjin, Luo, Maasai and the Coastal-North Eastern peoples; it was the cutting edge support with a multitude of support and thus the results coming in favour of Kibaki was simply not possible. The results of the said elections are questionable to date.
The Kisii people were rooting for Mwai Kibaki. This led to tensions in the Nyaza-Rift boundary regions and in Nakuru county where the Kipsigis border or live with Kikuyu people. Immediately on 27 December 2007, skirmishes ensued in the said regions. Towns recorded ethnic cleansing war, barricading of roads with alight tyres and logs. The police were reluctant to stop the violence and in some instances, they are reported to have taken part in the violence.
In the Rift Valley – Nyanza boundary, groups armed with crude weapons had taken sentinel on both sides and were involved in confrontation and running battles. The sentinel groups on the Kisii side were reported to have martialled Chingororo vigilante who had mastered archery skills.
The Maasai and the Kipsigis have historically and traditionally antagonised each other right from and a period earlier than the Maasai era. This usually manufested as cattle raids, eventual battles and the subsequent southward thwarting and ejection of the Maasai. After Kenya's independence, there have been periodic tensions between the Maasai and the Kipsigis which have backgrounds in history and traditions and fuelled by political incitement especially during the elections period. Politicians have been said to fuel the clashes with their remarks, both in public forums and on social media. In 2018 for instance, Narok County Senator Ledama Olekina, part of the Maasai community, has been criticised for remarks about the evictions.
In 2018 particularly, the Uhuru government under the Minister of Lands evicted a section of the Mau Complex settlers who are mainly of Kipsigis ethnicity. The evictions were particularly forceful, inconsiderate, inhuman and without compensation. A major section of the Maasai leaders supported the evictions and are said or known to have committed hate speech. In the wake of the polarisation, the Maasai are reported to have attacked Kipsigis evictees and in retaliation, Kipsigis men in Narok and Bomet counties retaliated. The battles implored the use of crude or/and traditional weaponry including nuts (a nut used to fit to a screw fitted onto a wooden handle about a foot and a half long), spears, bows and arrows, swords and torches (or at least, petrol/gasoline and lighters).
Following the 2018 evictions and Maasai-Kipsigis clashes, several human-rights defenders came together to file a paper in protest of the human-rights violations committed by the Kenyan government in evicting people from the forests; it said in part, ""The actions of the Government of Kenya in forcibly evicting tens of thousands of people from forests violates a range of human rights, which are contained in international instruments to which Kenya is a State Party."" Kenyan lawyer Leonard Sigey Bett filed a petition with the International Criminal Court at The Hague in the Netherlands challenging the evictions. It is however imperative to note that Environmental conservation groups generally support the eviction of people from the forest, but only if the exercise is done amicably and humanely.
It is observed that among the Kipsigis, knowledge is measured binomially where to be thought of as knowledgeable, "ng’om", one has to display the application of the corresponding knowledge.
Dr. Taaitta Araap Toweett was a Kipsigis elite and political leader. He was awarded scholarship by the Kipsigis County Council in 1955 to the South Devon Technical College, Torquay, to study for a diploma in public and social administration. He obtained a B.A. (1956) and B.A. (Hons) 1959 from the University of South Africa. On his return from Britain in 1957, he was appointed Community Development Officer for Nandi District, the first African CDO to be recruited locally in Kenya. During this period was the editor of the Kipsigis vernacular magazine "Ngalek Ap Kipsigisiek", published quarterly. He was one of the eight original Africans elected to the Legislative Council in 1958 as Member for the Southern Area, a constituency comprising mainly Kipsigis and Maasai Districts. He formed Kalenjin Political Alliance Party that later on got into an alliance with KADU. He served on the Dairy Board and played a crucial role in the foundation of the co-operative movement nationally. In 1960, 1962, 1963 he attended the Lancaster House Conferences held in London to draft Kenya's Constitution, paving the way for complete self-rule. Before Kenya's independence, He was appointed Assistant Minister for Agriculture (1960), Minister of Labour and Housing in 1961 and Minister of Lands, Surveys and Town Planning in 1962. After Kenya's Independence, he was appointed Minister for Education in 1969, Minister for Housing and Social Services in 1974, Minister for Education in 1976. He was also elected President of the 19th General Assembly of UNESCO (1976–78). In 1977, he finished his PhD thesis on "A Study of Kalenjin Linguistics". In 1980, he was appointed as the chairperson of Kenya Literature Bereau. In 1983–1985, he served as the Charperson, Kenya Airways after which he was appointed the chairperson, Kenya Seed Company. He also served as a Director of the Kenya Times newspaper and went on to edit and publish his own newspaper, Voice of Rift Valley between 1997 and 2000.
Professor Jonathan Kimetet Araap Ngeno was a Kipsigis elite who was sponsored by African Inland Church from Litein to study in the United States. He was invited back to Kenya and reintegrated by Daniel arap Moi to achieve political attrition over Dr. Taaitta Toweett. He was appointed to Ministerial positions and was elected the Fourth Speaker of the Parliament of Kenya succeeding coincidentally his "baghuleita" (a male agemate who was initiated in the same seclusion home), Moses Kiprono arap Keino.
In the 1990s, Professor Davy Kiprotich Koech by then the Director of Kenya Medical Research Institute and Dr. Arthur O. Obel, the Chief Research Officer published in two medical journals the initial results of the newfound drug "Kemron" that was perceived from the preliminary study of 10 patients to cure AIDS. The drug was introduced in a public ceremony presided by Kenya's former President, Daniel Toroitch Arap Moi and the work of the new wonder drug discovered was hailed as a major step against HIV/AIDS.Kemron was the trade name for a low-dose of alpha interferon, manufactured form of a natural body chemical in a tablet form that dissolves in the mouth. Clinical trials of Kemron funded by WHO in five African Countries did not find any health benefits reported by Kemri Scientists. Thereafter, WHO in a press release in its Headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland termed Kemron as an experimental drug of unproven benefit for HIV/AIDS treatment. The American National Institute of Health concluded that no one had been able to duplicate the effects claimed by scientists behind Kemron drug. In 1998 Prof. Davy Koech led the Commission of Inquiry into the Education System of Kenya. Hosted by Kenya Broadcasting Cooperation (KBC) in 2019, Prof. Koech cited bad peer review on his experimental drug and that he was currently overseeing reexamination of the Kemron drug and further research in China.
Professor Richard Kiprono Mibey has discovered more than 120 species of fungi, made major input to the discovery of environmentally friendly fungi for bio-control of the obnoxious water hyacinth weed in Lake Victoria has contributed to the preservation of rare and highly specialised micro-fungi of Kenyan plants.
Professor Paul Kiprono Chepkwony, the incumbent governor of Kericho County has declared in a Kenyan comedy show, Churchill Show (hosted in Tea Hotel Kericho in 2018) a lengthy list pending and granted patents on various fields of Biochemistry.
Professor Moses King'eno Rugut is a Kenyan Research Scientist and the current C.E.O the National Commission for Science, Technology and Innovation. He sits in the board of National Quality Control Laboratory, Kenya Agricultural & Livestock Research Organization, ccommittee member on Drug Registration at Pharmacy & Poisons Board since 1999 and National Museums of Kenya.He also served as the Director General of the defunct KARI that was de-gazetted and was preceded by a newly established state agency KALRO and as Deputy Secretary at the Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Technology before being appointed the chief executive officer, National Commission for Science, Technology and Innovation. He was awarded Head of State's Commendations in the year 2008 for his distinguished service to the nation and subsequently awarded with the Order of the Grand Warrior, OGW in the year 2016 Prof. Moses Rugut has authered, co-authered or authered publications alongside other authors. Some of these publications include: Seroepidemiological survey of Taenia saginata cysticercosis in Kenya; Diagnosis of Taenia saginata cysticercosis in Kenyan cattle by antibody and antigen ELISA; Anthelmintic resistance amongst sheep and goats in Kenya and "Epidemiology and control of ruminant helminths in the Kericho Highlands of Kenya."
Gladys Chepkirui Ngetich is a Kenyan engineer from Kipsigis tribe, and a Rhodes scholar pursuing a doctorate degree in aerospace engineering at the University of Oxford, in the United Kingdom. She is the recipient of the Tanenbaum Fellowship and the Babaroa Excellence Award. In 2018, Ngetich was credited with a patent in collaboration with Rolls-Royce Plc. Her research work has been in "BBC Science" and the "Oxford Science Blog and Medium". She received the ASME IGTI Young Engineer Turbo Expo Participation Award, for her paper at the 2018 Annual American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) conference. In September 2018, "Business Daily Africa" named Ngitech among its "Top 40 Under 40 Women in Kenya in 2018". In 2019 she started investigating sustainable space science using a Schmidt Science Fellowship. Ngetich is the co-founder of the ILUU, a Nairobi-based non-profit that aims to inspire girls and women.
Emet ab Kipsigis hosts the main campuses of University of Kabianga, Kenya Highlands Evangelical University and Bomet University. It also hosts Kericho Teachers' College.
Primary schools within emet ab Kipsigis with a long history often bear names of cultural value. Boarding secondary/ high schools in the southern Rift region have co-ed dormitories named after heroes, heroines and/or legends. Such eponyms for co-ed dormitories include: Menya or Kisiara or Menya Kisiara, Techog or Tejog and Moi. In universities and colleges, similar to secondary schools, co-ed dormitories can bear the same names but significantly and more recently, social co-ed organisations of the Kipsigis are seen to emerge in all universities in Kenya with a context of Kalenjin unity.
Kipsigis people of Kenya use Safaricom, Airtel, Telkom and Faiba connection to access GSM, WCDMA, LTE and fibre-optic service provision from Jamii Telkom's Faiba. About 8 in 10 adults among the Kipsigis own a phone of some sort. Radio is still quite popular with radio stations dedicated to the Kipsigis including Chamgei FM, Kitwek FM. About 1 in 20 Kipsigis households have a satellite TV from startimes, Zuku, DStv, Bamba TV and GoTV. They also have access to postal services by posta kenya.
In Kenya, the Kipsigis are stereotypically known for mother tongue interference when speaking Swahili and thus, comedians in Kenya get punchlines by just speaking Swahili like the Kipsigis. The Kipsigis are primarily thought to prefer teaching, military and policing careers. Among the Kipsigis, the Bomet Kipsigis are thought to be taking up allotments in varsity placement thus in many Kenyan varsities, there is a considerable co-ed organisations of Bomet students who are characterised by browned teeth and flocking to Christian Union societies. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17157 |
Knife
A knife (plural knives; possibly from Old Norse " knifr" ("blade")) is a tool with a cutting edge or blade often attached to a handle or hilt. One of the earliest tools used by mankind, knives appeared at least two-and-a-half million years ago, as evidenced by the Oldowan tools. Originally made of wood, bone, and stone (such as flint and obsidian), over the centuries, in step with improvements in both metallurgy and manufacturing, knife blades have been made from copper, bronze, iron, steel, ceramic, and titanium. Most modern knives have either fixed or folding blades; blade patterns and styles vary by maker and country of origin.
Knives can serve various purposes. Hunters use a hunting knife, soldiers use the combat knife, scouts, campers, and hikers carry a pocket knife; there are kitchen knives for preparing foods (the chef's knife, the paring knife, bread knife, cleaver), table knives (butter knives and steak knives), weapons (daggers or switchblades), knives for throwing or juggling, and knives for religious ceremony or display (the kirpan).
A modern knife consists of:
The blade edge can be plain or serrated, or a combination of both. Single-edged knives may have a "reverse edge" or "false edge" occupying a section of the spine. These edges are usually serrated and are used to further enhance function.
The handle, used to grip and manipulate the blade safely, may include a "tang", a portion of the blade that extends into the handle. Knives are made with partial tangs (extending part way into the handle, known as "stick tangs") or full tangs (extending the full length of the handle, often visible on top and bottom). The handle may include a bolster, a piece of heavy material (usually metal) situated at the front or rear of the handle. The bolster, as its name suggests, is used to mechanically strengthen the knife.
Knife blades can be manufactured from a variety of materials, each of which has advantages and disadvantages. Carbon steel, an alloy of iron and carbon, can be very sharp. It holds its edge well, and remains easy to sharpen, but is vulnerable to rust and stains. Stainless steel is an alloy of iron, chromium, possibly nickel, and molybdenum, with only a small amount of carbon. It is not able to take quite as sharp an edge as carbon steel, but is highly resistant to corrosion. High carbon stainless steel is stainless steel with a higher amount of carbon, intended to incorporate the better attributes of carbon steel and stainless steel. High carbon stainless steel blades do not discolor or stain, and maintain a sharp edge. Laminated blades use multiple metals to create a layered sandwich, combining the attributes of both. For example, a harder, more brittle steel may be sandwiched between an outer layer of softer, tougher, stainless steel to reduce vulnerability to corrosion. In this case, however, the part most affected by corrosion, the edge, is still vulnerable. Damascus steel is a form of pattern welding with similarities to laminate construction. Layers of different steel types are welded together, but then the stock is manipulated to create patterns in the steel.
Titanium is a metal that has a better strength-to-weight ratio, is more wear resistant, and more flexible than steel. Although less hard and unable to take as sharp an edge, carbides in the titanium alloy allow them to be heat-treated to a sufficient hardness. Ceramic blades are hard, brittle, and lightweight: they may maintain a sharp edge for years with no maintenance at all, but are as fragile as glass and will break if dropped on a hard surface. They are immune to common corrosion, and can only be sharpened on silicon carbide sandpaper and some grinding wheels. Plastic blades are not especially sharp and typically serrated. They are often disposable.
Steel blades are commonly shaped by forging or stock removal. Forged blades are made by heating a single piece of steel, then shaping the metal while hot using a hammer or press. Stock removal blades are shaped by grinding and removing metal. With both methods, after shaping, the steel must be heat treated. This involves heating the steel above its critical point, then quenching the blade to harden it. After hardening, the blade is tempered to remove stresses and make the blade tougher. Mass manufactured kitchen cutlery uses both the forging and stock removal processes. Forging tends to be reserved for manufacturers' more expensive product lines, and can often be distinguished from stock removal product lines by the presence of an integral bolster, though integral bolsters can be crafted through either shaping method.
Knives are sharpened in various ways. Flat ground blades have a profile that tapers from the thick spine to the sharp edge in a straight or convex line. Seen in cross section, the blade would form a long, thin triangle, or where the taper does not extend to the back of the blade, a long thin rectangle with one peaked side. Hollow ground blades have concave, beveled edges. The resulting blade has a thinner edge, so it may have better cutting ability for shallow cuts, but it is lighter and less durable than flat ground blades and will tend to bind in deep cuts. Serrated blade knives have a wavy, scalloped or saw-like blade. Serrated blades are more well suited for tasks that require aggressive 'sawing' motions, whereas plain edge blades are better suited for tasks that require push-through cuts (e.g., shaving, chopping, slicing).
Many knives have holes in the blade for various uses. Holes are commonly drilled in blades to reduce friction while cutting, increase single-handed usability of pocket knives, and, for butchers' knives, allow hanging out of the way when not in use.
A fixed blade knife, sometimes called a sheath knife, does not fold or slide, and is typically stronger due to the tang, the extension of the blade into the handle, and lack of moving parts.
A folding knife connects the blade to the handle through a pivot, allowing the blade to fold into the handle. To prevent injury to the knife user through the blade accidentally closing on the user's hand, folding knives typically have a locking mechanism. Different locking mechanisms are favored by various individuals for reasons such as perceived strength (lock safety), legality, and ease of use.
Popular locking mechanisms include:
Another prominent feature on many folding knives is the opening mechanism. Traditional pocket knives and Swiss Army knives commonly employ the nail nick, while modern folding knives more often use a stud, hole, disk, or "flipper" located on the blade, all which have the benefit of allowing the user to open the knife with one hand.
The "wave" feature is another prominent design, which uses a part of the blade that protrudes outward to catch on one's pocket as it is drawn, thus opening the blade; this was patented by Ernest Emerson and is not only used on many of the Emerson knives, but also on knives produced by several other manufacturers, notably Spyderco and Cold Steel.
"Automatic" or "switchblade" knives open using the stored energy from a spring that is released when the user presses a button or lever or other actuator built into the handle of the knife. Automatic knives are severely restricted by law in the UK and most American states.
Increasingly common are "assisted opening" knives which use springs to propel the blade once the user has moved it past a certain angle. These differ from automatic or switchblade knives in that the blade is not released by means of a button or catch on the handle; rather, the blade itself is the actuator. Most assisted openers use flippers as their opening mechanism. Assisted opening knives can be as fast or faster than automatic knives to deploy.
In the lock back, as in many folding knives, a stop pin acting on the top (or behind) the blade prevents it from rotating clockwise. A hook on the tang of the blade engages with a hook on the rocker bar which prevents the blade rotating counter-clockwise. The rocker bar is held in position by a torsion bar. To release the knife the rocker bar is pushed downwards as indicated and pivots around the rocker pin, lifting the hook and freeing the blade.
When negative pressure (pushing down on the spine) is applied to the blade all the stress is transferred from the hook on the blade's tang to the hook on rocker bar and thence to the small rocker pin. Excessive stress can shear one or both of these hooks rendering the knife effectively useless. Knife company Cold Steel uses a variant of the lock back called the Tri-Ad Lock which introduces a pin in front of the rocker bar to relieve stress on the rocker pin, has an elongated hole around the rocker pin to allow the mechanism to wear over time without losing strength and angles the hooks so that the faces no longer meet vertically.
The bolt in the bolt lock is a rectangle of metal that is constrained to slide only back and forward. When the knife is open a spring biases the bolt to the forward position where it rests above the tang of the blade preventing the blade from closing. Small knobs extend through the handle of the knife on both sides allowing the user to slide the bolt backwards freeing the knife to close. The Axis Lock used by knife maker Benchmade is functionally identical to the bolt lock except that it uses a cylinder rather than a rectangle to trap the blade. The Arc Lock by knife maker SOG is similar to the Axis Lock except the cylinder follows a curved path rather than a straight path.
In the liner lock, an "L"-shaped split in the liner allows part of the liner to move sideways from its resting position against the handle to the centre of the knife where it rests against the flat end of the tang. To disengage, this leaf spring is pushed so it again rests flush against the handle allowing the knife to rotate. A frame lock is functionally identical but instead of using a thin liner inside the handle material uses a thicker piece of metal as the handle and the same split in it allows a section of the frame to press against the tang.
A sliding knife is a knife that can be opened by sliding the knife blade out the front of the handle. One method of opening is where the blade exits out the front of the handle point-first and then is locked into place (an example of this is the gravity knife). Another form is an OTF (out-the-front) switchblade, which only requires the push of a button or spring to cause the blade to slide out of the handle and lock into place. To retract the blade back into the handle, a release lever or button, usually the same control as to open, is pressed. A very common form of sliding knife is the sliding utility knife (commonly known as a stanley knife or boxcutter).
The handles of knives can be made from a number of different materials, each of which has advantages and disadvantages. Handles are produced in a wide variety of shapes and styles. Handles are often textured to enhance grip.
More exotic materials usually only seen on art or ceremonial knives include: Stone, bone, mammoth tooth, mammoth ivory, oosik (walrus penis bone), walrus tusk, antler (often called stag in a knife context), sheep horn, buffalo horn, teeth, and mop (mother of pearl or "pearl"). Many materials have been employed in knife handles.
Handles may be adapted to accommodate the needs of people with disabilities. For example, knife handles may be made thicker or with more cushioning for people with arthritis in their hands. A non-slip handle accommodates people with palmar hyperhidrosis.
As a weapon, the knife is universally adopted as an essential tool. It is the essential element of a knife fight. For example:
A primary aspect of the knife as a tool includes dining, used either in food preparation or as cutlery. Examples of this include:
As a utility tool the knife can take many forms, including:
The knife plays a significant role in some cultures through ritual and superstition, as the knife was an essential tool for survival since early man. Knife symbols can be found in various cultures to symbolize all stages of life; for example, a knife placed under the bed while giving birth is said to ease the pain, or, stuck into the headboard of a cradle, to protect the baby; knives were included in some Anglo-Saxon burial rites, so the dead would not be defenseless in the next world. The knife plays an important role in some initiation rites, and many cultures perform rituals with a variety of knives, including the ceremonial sacrifices of animals. Samurai warriors, as part of bushido, could perform ritual suicide, or seppuku, with a tantō, a common Japanese knife. An athame, a ceremonial knife, is used in Wicca and derived forms of neopagan witchcraft.
In Greece, a black-handled knife placed under the pillow is used to keep away nightmares. As early as 1646 reference is made to a superstition of laying a knife across another piece of cutlery being a sign of witchcraft. A common belief is that if a knife is given as a gift, the relationship of the giver and recipient will be severed. Something such as a small coin, dove or a valuable item is exchanged for the gift, rendering "payment."
Knives are typically restricted by law, although restrictions vary greatly by country or state and type of knife. For example, some laws prohibit carrying knives in public while other laws prohibit private ownership of certain knives, such as switchblades. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17160 |
Kalahari Desert
The Kalahari Desert is a large semi-arid sandy savannah in Southern Africa extending for , covering much of Botswana, parts of Namibia and regions of South Africa.
It is not to be confused with the Angolan, Namibian and South African Namib coastal desert, whose name is of Khoekhoegowab origin and means "vast place".
"Kalahari" is derived from the Tswana word "Kgala", meaning "the great thirst", or "Kgalagadi", meaning "a waterless place"; the Kalahari has vast areas covered by red sand without any permanent surface water.
Drainage of the desert is by dry valleys, seasonally inundated pans and the large salt pans of the Makgadikgadi Pan in Botswana and Etosha Pan in Namibia. The only permanent river, the Okavango, flows into a delta in the northwest, forming marshes that are rich in wildlife. Ancient dry riverbeds—called omuramba—traverse the central northern reaches of the Kalahari and provide standing pools of water during the rainy season.
A semi-desert, with huge tracts of excellent grazing after good rains, the Kalahari supports more animals and plants than a true desert, such as the Namib Desert to the west. There are small amounts of rainfall and the summer temperature is very high. The driest areas usually receive of rain per year, and the wettest just a little over . The surrounding Kalahari Basin covers over extending farther into Botswana, Namibia and South Africa, and encroaching into parts of Angola, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
Numerous pans exist within the Kalahari, including the Groot-vloer Pan and Verneukpan where evidence of a wetter climate exists in the form of former contouring for capturing of water. This and other pans, as well as river bottoms, were written about extensively at Sciforums by an article by Walter Wagner regarding the extensive formerly wet areas of the Kalahari. The Kalahari is extensive and extends farther north where abandoned extensive roadways also exist.
North and east, approximately where the dry forests, savannahs and salt lakes prevail, the climate is sub-humid rather than semi-arid. South and west, where the vegetation is predominantly xeric savanna or even a semi-desert, the climate is "Kalaharian" semi-arid. The Kalaharian climate is subtropical (average annual temperature greater than or equal to 18 °C, at peaks reaching 40 °C and above, with mean monthly temperature of the coldest month strictly below 18 °C), and is semi-arid with the dry season during the "cold" season, the coldest six months of the year. It is the southern tropical equivalent of the Sahelian climate with the wet season during summer. The altitude has been adduced as the explanation why the Kalaharian climate is not tropical; its altitude ranges from 600 to 1600 meters (and generally from 800 to 1200 meters), resulting in a cooler climate than that of the Sahel or Sahara. For example, winter frost is common from June to August, something rarely seen in the warmer Sahelian regions. For the same reason, summer temperatures certainly can be very hot, but not in comparison to regions of low altitude in the Sahel or Sahara, where some stations record average temperatures of the warmest month around 38 °C, whereas the average temperature of the warmest month in any region in the Kalahari never exceeds 29 °C, though daily temperatures occasionally reach up to close to (44.8 °C at Twee Rivieren Rest Camp in 2012).
The dry season lasts eight months or more, and the wet season typically from less than one month to four months, depending on location. The southwestern Kalahari is the driest area, in particular a small region located towards the west-southwest of Tsaraxaibis (Southeast of Namibia). The average annual rainfall ranging from around 110 mm (close to aridity) to more than 500 mm in some areas of the north and east. During summer time in all regions rainfall may go with heavy thunderstorms. In the driest and sunniest parts of the Kalahari, over 4,000 hours of sunshine are recorded annually on average.
In the Kalahari, there are two main mechanisms of atmospheric circulation, dominated by the Kalahari High anticyclone:
There are huge subterranean water reserves beneath parts of the Kalahari; the Dragon's Breath Cave, for example, is the largest documented non-subglacial underground lake on the planet. Such reserves may be in part the residues of ancient lakes; the Kalahari Desert was once a much wetter place. The ancient Lake Makgadikgadi dominated the area, covering the Makgadikgadi Pan and surrounding areas, but it drained or dried out some 10,000 years ago. It may have once covered as much as . In ancient times, there was sufficient moisture for farming, with dikes and dams collecting the water. These are now filled with sediment, breached, or no longer in use, though they can be readily seen via Google Earth.
The Kalahari has had a complex climatic history over the past million or so years, in line with major global changes. Changes in the last 250,000 years have been reconstructed from various data sources, and provide evidence of both former extensive lakes and periods drier than now. During the latter the area of the Kalahari has expanded to include parts of western Zimbabwe, Zambia and Angola.
Due to its low aridity, the Kalahari supports a variety of flora. The native flora includes acacia trees and many other herbs and grasses. The kiwano fruit, also known as the horned melon, melano, African horned cucumber, jelly melon, or hedged gourd, is endemic to a region in the Kalahari Desert (specific region unknown).
Even where the Kalahari "desert" is dry enough to qualify as a desert in the sense of having low precipitation, it is not strictly speaking a desert because it has too dense a ground cover. The main region that lacks ground cover is in the southwest Kalahari (southeast of Namibia, northwest of South Africa and southwest of Botswana) in the south of the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park. For instance in the ZF Mgcawu District Municipality of South Africa, total vegetation cover may be as low as 30.72% on non-protected (from cattle grazing) farmlands south of Twee Rivieren Rest Camp and 37.74% in the protected (from cattle grazing) South African side of the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park: these southernmost Kalahari xeric savanna areas are truly semi-deserts. However, in all the remaining Kalahari, except on salt pans during the dry season, the vegetation cover can be clearly denser, up to almost 100% in some limited areas.
In an area of about 600,000 km2 in the south and west of the Kalahari, the vegetation is mainly xeric savanna. This area is the ecoregion identified by World Wide Fund for Nature as Kalahari xeric savanna AT1309. Typical savanna grasses include "Schmidtia", "Stipagrostis", "Aristida", and "Eragrostis"; these are interspersed with trees such as camelthorn ("Acacia erioloba"), grey camelthorn ("Acacia haematoxylon"), shepherd’s tree ("Boscia albitrunca"), blackthorn ("Acacia mellifera"), and silver cluster-leaf ("Terminalia sericea").
In certain areas where the climate is drier, it becomes a true semi-desert with ground not entirely covered by vegetation: "open" as opposed to "closed" vegetation. Examples include the north of the ZF Mgcawu District Municipality, itself in the north of South Africa, and the Keetmanshoop Rural in the southeast of Namibia. In the north and east, there are dry forests covering an area of over 300,000 km2 in which Rhodesian teak and several species of acacia are prominent. These regions are termed Kalahari Acacia-Baikiaea woodlands AT0709.
Outside the Kalahari "desert", but in the Kalahari basin, a halophytic vegetation to the north is adapted to pans, lakes that are completely dry during the dry season, and maybe for years during droughts, such as in Etosha (Etosha Pan halophytics AT0902) and Makgadikgadi (Zambezian halophytics AT0908).
A totally different vegetation is adapted to the perennial fresh water of the Okavango Delta, an ecoregion termed Zambezian flooded grasslands AT0907.
The Kalahari is home to many migratory birds and animals. Previously havens for wild animals from elephants to giraffes, and for predators such as lions and cheetahs, the riverbeds are now mostly grazing spots, though leopards and cheetahs can still be found. The area is now heavily grazed and cattle fences restrict the movement of wildlife. Among deserts of the Southern Hemisphere, the Kalahari most closely resembles some Australian deserts in its latitude and its mode of formation. The Kalahari Desert came into existence approximately sixty million years ago along with the formation of the African continent.
Although there are few endemic species, a wide variety of species are found in the region, including large predators such as the lion ("Panthera leo"), cheetah ("Acinonyx jubatus"), leopard ("Panthera pardus"), spotted hyena ("Crocuta crocuta"), brown hyena ("Hyaena brunnea"), and Cape wild dog ("Lycaon pictus pictus"). Birds of prey include the secretary bird ("Sagittarius serpentarius"), martial eagle ("Polemaetus bellicosus") and other eagles, the giant eagle owl ("Bubo lacteus") and other owls, falcons, goshawks, kestrels, and kites. Other animals include wildebeest, springbok and other antelopes, porcupines ("Hystrix africaeaustralis") and ostriches ("Struthio camelus").
Some of the areas within the Kalahari are seasonal wetlands, such as the Makgadikgadi Pans of Botswana. This area, for example, supports numerous halophilic species, and in the rainy season, tens of thousands of flamingos visit these pans.
The biggest threat to wildlife are the fences erected to manage herds of grazing cattle, a practice which also removes the plant cover of the savanna itself. Cattle ranchers will also poison or hunt down predators from the rangeland, particularly targeting jackals and wild dogs.
The following protected areas were established in the Kalahari:
The San people have lived in the Kalahari for 20,000 years as hunter-gatherers. They hunt wild game with bows and poison arrows and gather edible plants, such as berries, melons and nuts, as well as insects. The San get most of their water requirements from plant roots and desert melons found on or under the desert floor. They often store water in the blown-out shells of ostrich eggs. The San live in huts built from local materials—the frame is made of branches, and the roof is thatched with long grass. Most of their hunting and gathering techniques replicate our pre-historic tribes. Their mythology includes legends of a god Chikara, protecting them from starvation and death by sacrificing his own life by being hunted in the form of a deer and other wild game they hunt for food. Bux is the enemy of Chikara and is in the form of snakes which are found in considerable numbers in the Kalahari desert region. Bantu-speaking Tswana, Kgalagadi, and Herero and a small number of European settlers also live in the Kalahari desert. The city of Windhoek is situated in the Kalahari Basin.
In 1996, De Beers evaluated the potential of diamond mining at Gope. In 1997, the eviction of the San and Bakgalagadi tribes in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve from their land began.
In 2006, a Botswana High Court ruled in favor of the San and Bakgalagadi tribes in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, claiming their eviction from the reserve was unlawful. The Government of Botswana granted a permit to De Beers' Gem Diamonds/Gope Exploration Company (Pty) Ltd. to conduct mining activities within the reserve.
Botswana
Namibia
South Africa | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17165 |
Katanga Province
Katanga was one of the eleven provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo between 1966 and 2015, when it was split into the Tanganyika, Haut-Lomami, Lualaba and Haut-Katanga provinces. Between 1971 and 1997 (during the rule of Mobutu Sese Seko when Congo was known as Zaïre), its official name was Shaba Province.
Katanga's area encompassed . Farming and ranching are carried out on the Katanga Plateau. The eastern part of the province is considered to be a rich mining region, which supplies cobalt, copper, tin, radium, uranium, and diamonds. The region's former capital, Lubumbashi, is the second-largest city in the Congo.
Copper mining in Katanga dates back over 1,000 years, and mines in the region were producing standard-sized ingots of copper for international transport by the end of the 10th century CE.
In the 1890s, the province was beleaguered from the south by Cecil Rhodes' Northern Rhodesia, and from the north by the Belgian Congo, the personal possession of King Leopold II of Belgium. Msiri, the King of Katanga, held out against both, but eventually Katanga was subsumed by the Belgian Congo.
After 1900, the Societe Generale de Belgique practically controlled all of the mining in the province through Union Minière du Haut Katanga (UMHK). This included uranium, radium, copper, cobalt, zinc, cadmium, germanium, manganese, silver, gold, and tin.
In 1915, a deposit of pitchblende and other uranium minerals of a higher grade than had ever been found before anywhere in the world and higher than any found since were discovered at Shinkolobwe. The discovery was kept secret by UMHK. After World War I ended a factory was built at Olen; the secrecy was lifted at the end of 1922 with the announcement of the production of the first gram of radium from the pitchblende. By the start of World War II, the mining companies "constituted a state within the Belgian Congo". The Shinkolobwe mine near Jadotville (now Likasi) was at the centre of the Manhattan Project.
In 1960, after the Democratic Republic of the Congo (then called Republic of the Congo) gained independence from Belgium, the UMHK, Moise Tshombe and Godefroid Munongo supported the secession of Katanga province from the Congo. This was supported by Belgium but opposed by the Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba. This led to the assassination of Lumumba and the Katanga Crisis (or "Congo Crisis"), which lasted from 1960 to 1965. The breakaway State of Katanga existed from 1960 to 1963.
In 2005, the new constitution specified that Katanga was to be split up into separately administered provinces.
Militias such as Mai Mai Kata Katanga led by Gédéon Kyungu Mutanga fought for Katanga to secede, and his group briefly took over the provincial capital Lubumbashi in 2013.
In 2015, Katanga Province was split into the constitutional provinces of Tanganyika, Haut-Lomami, Lualaba, and Haut-Katanga.
Copper mining is an important part of the economy of Katanga province. Cobalt mining by individual contractors is also prevalent. A number of reasons have been advanced for the failure of the vast mineral wealth of the province to increase the overall standard of living. The local provincial budget was US$440 million in 2011.
Lubumbashi, the mining capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, is a hub for many of the country's biggest mining companies. The Democratic Republic of Congo produces "more than 3 percent of the world’s copper and half its cobalt, most of which comes from Katanga".
Major mining concessions include Tilwezembe and Kalukundi.
The province formed the Congolese border with Angola and Zambia. The province also bordered Tanzania – although Katanga province and Tanzania did not share a land border – but the border was within Lake Tanganyika. Katanga has a wet and dry season. Rainfall is about .
The University of Lubumbashi, located in the northern part of Lubumbashi city, is the largest university in the province and one of the largest in the country. A number of other university-level institutions exist in Lubumbashi, some public, some private: Institut Supérieur de Statistique, Institut Supérieur Pédagogique, Institut Supérieur des Études Sociales, Institut Supérieur de Commerce, Institut Supérieur des Techniques Médicales (all state-run), Université Protestante de Lubumbashi (Korean Presbyterian), Institut Supérieur Maria Malkia (Catholic), Institut Supérieur de Développement Mgr Mulolwa (Catholique), Theologicum St François de Sales (Salesian seminary), Institut Supérieur de Théologie Évangélique de Lubumbashi (Pentecostal/Anglican/Brethren), etc. Université Méthodiste au Katanga, the oldest private university-level institution in the province, is located at Mulungwishi (between Likasi and Kolwezi) but organizes its Masters in Leadership courses in Lubumbashi. The University of Kamina, the University of Kolwezi and the University of Likasi are former branches of the University of Lubumbashi, which continues to have branches in some locations such as Kalemie.
TESOL, the English Language School of Lubumbashi, is a secondary school that serves the expatriate community. It was founded in 1987 on the grounds of the French School, Lycée Français Blaise Pascal, which suspended operations in 1991 with a new French School starting in 2009.
In Lubumbashi, French, Belgian, and Greek schools are sponsored by the respective embassies.
The Jason Sendwe Hospital is the largest hospital in the province, located in Lubumbashi. The Afia (Don Bosco) and Vie & Santé hospitals are among the best-equipped and staffed. The University of Lubumbashi maintains a small teaching hospital in the center of Lubumbashi.
Katanga province has the highest rate of infant mortality in the world, with 184 of 1000 babies born expected to die before the age of five.
The Congo Railway provides Katanga Province with limited railway service centered on Lubumbashi. Reliability is limited. Lubumbashi International Airport is located northeast of Lubumbashi. In April 2014, a train derailment killed 63 people.
Katanga province is served by television broadcasts. Radio-Télévision nationale Congolaise (RTNC) has a transmitter in Lubumbashi that re-transmits the signal from Kinshasa. In 2005, new television broadcasts by Radio Mwangaza began in Lubumbashi. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17166 |
Kathmandu
Kathmandu (; , ) is the capital and largest city of Nepal, with a population of around 2.5 million. Also known as the city of temples, with one of the oldest pagoda design, known with Pashupatinath Temple, the city stands at an elevation of approximately above sea level in the bowl-shaped Kathmandu valley in central Nepal. The valley is historically called the "Nepal Mandala" and has been the home of Newar people, a cosmopolitan urban civilization in the Himalayas foothills. The city was the royal capital of the Kingdom of Nepal and hosts palaces, mansions and gardens of the Nepalese aristocracy. It has been home to the headquarters of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) since 1985. Today, it is the seat of government of the Nepalese republic, established in 2008, and is part of the Bagmati Pradesh.
Kathmandu is and has been for many years the centre of Nepal's history, art, culture, and economy. It has a multi-ethnic population within a Hindu and Buddhist majority. Religious and cultural festivities form a major part of the lives of people residing in Kathmandu.
Tourism is an important part of the economy. In 2013, Kathmandu was ranked third among the top ten upcoming travel destinations in the world by TripAdvisor, and ranked first in Asia. The city is considered the gateway to the Nepalese Himalayas and home to several world heritage sites: Durbar Square, Swayambhunath, Boudhanath and Pashupatinath. Kathmandu valley is growing at 4 percent per year according to World Bank in 2010, making it one of the fastest-growing metropolitan areas in South Asia, and the first region in Nepal to face the unprecedented challenges of rapid urbanization and modernization at a metropolitan scale.
Historic areas of Kathmandu were severely damaged by a 7.8 magnitude earthquake in April 2015. Some of the buildings have been restored and some remain in the process of reconstruction.
Indigenous Newari term for Kathmandu valley is "Yei". The Nepali name "Kathmandu" comes from Kasthamandap, which stood in Durbar Square. In Sanskrit, "Kastha" () means "Wood" and "Maṇḍapa" () means "Pavilion". This public pavilion, also known as "Maru Satta" in Newar language, was rebuilt in 1596 by Biseth in the period of King Laxmi Narsingh Malla. The three-story structure was made entirely of wood and used no iron nails nor supports. According to legends, all the timber used to build the pagoda was obtained from a single tree. The structure collapsed during a major earthquake in April 2015.
The colophons of ancient manuscripts, dated as late as the 20th century, refer to Kathmandu as "Kāṣṭhamaṇḍap Mahānagar" in Nepal Mandala. Mahānagar means "great city". The city is called "Kāṣṭhamaṇḍap" in a vow that Buddhist priests still recite to this day. Thus, Kathmandu is also known as Kāṣṭhamaṇḍap. During medieval times, the city was sometimes called Kāntipur (कान्तिपुर). This name is derived from two Sanskrit words – "Kānti" and "pur". "Kānti" is a word that stands for "beauty" and is mostly associated with light and "pur" means place, thus giving it the meaning, "City of light".
Among the indigenous Newar people, Kathmandu is known as "Yeṃ Deśa" (येँ देश), and Patan and Bhaktapur are known as "Yala Deśa" (यल देश) and "Khwopa Deśa" (ख्वप देश). "Yen" is the shorter form of "Yambu" (यम्बु), which originally referred to the northern half of Kathmandu. The older northern settlements were referred to as Yambi while the southern settlement was known as Yangala.
The spelling "Katmandu" was often used in older English-language text. More recently, however, the spelling "Kathmandu" has become more common in English.
Archaeological excavations in parts of Kathmandu have found evidence of ancient civilizations. The oldest of these findings is a statue, found in Maligaon, that was dated at 185 AD. The excavation of Dhando Chaitya uncovered a brick with an inscription in Brahmi script. Archaeologists believe it is two thousand years old. Stone inscriptions are a ubiquitous element at heritage sites and are key sources for the history of Nepal.
The earliest Western reference to Kathmandu appears in an account of Jesuit Fathers Johann Grueber and Albert d'Orville. In 1661, they passed through Nepal on their way from Tibet to India, and reported that they reached "Cadmendu", the capital of Nepal kingdom.
The ancient history of Kathmandu is described in its traditional myths and legends. According to Swayambhu Purana, present-day Kathmandu was once a huge and deep lake named "Nagdaha", as it was full of snakes. The lake was cut drained by Bodhisatwa Manjusri with his sword, and the water was evacuated out from there. He then established a city called Manjupattan, and made Dharmakar the ruler of the valley land. After some time, a demon named Banasur closed the outlet, and the valley again turned into a lake. Then lord Krishna came to Nepal, killed Banasur, and again drained out the water. He brought some Gopals along with him and made Bhuktaman the king of Nepal.
Kotirudra Samhita of Shiva Purana, Chapter 11, shloka 18 refers to the place as Nayapala city, which was famous for its Pashupati Shivalinga. The name Nepal probably originates from this city Nayapala.
Very few historical record exists of the period before medieval Licchavis rulers. According to Gopalraj Vansawali, a genealogy of Nepali monarchy, the rulers of Kathmandu Valley before the Licchavis were Gopalas, Mahispalas, Aabhirs, Kirants, and Somavanshi. The Kirata dynasty was established by Yalamber. During the Kirata era, a settlement called Yambu existed in the northern half of old Kathmandu. In some of the Sino-Tibetan languages, Kathmandu is still called Yambu. Another smaller settlement called Yengal was present in the southern half of old Kathmandu, near Manjupattan. During the reign of the seventh Kirata ruler, Jitedasti, Buddhist monks entered Kathmandu valley and established a forest monastery at Sankhu.
The Licchavis from the Indo-Gangetic plain migrated north and defeated the Kiratas, establishing the Licchavi dynasty, circa 400 AD. During this era, following the genocide of Shakyas in Lumbini by Virudhaka, the survivors migrated north and entered the forest monastery lora masquerading as Koliyas. From Sankhu, they migrated to Yambu and Yengal (Lanjagwal and Manjupattan) and established the first permanent Buddhist monasteries of Kathmandu. This created the basis of Newar Buddhism, which is the only surviving Sanskrit-based Buddhist tradition in the world. With their migration, Yambu was called Koligram and Yengal was called Dakshin Koligram during most of the Licchavi era.
Eventually, the Licchavi ruler Gunakamadeva merged Koligram and Dakshin Koligram, founding the city of Kathmandu. The city was designed in the shape of "Chandrahrasa", the sword of Manjushri. The city was surrounded by eight barracks guarded by Ajimas. One of these barracks is still in use at Bhadrakali (in front of Singha Durbar). The city served as an important transit point in the trade between India and Tibet, leading to tremendous growth in architecture. Descriptions of buildings such as Managriha, Kailaskut Bhawan, and Bhadradiwas Bhawan have been found in the surviving journals of travellers and monks who lived during this era. For example, the famous 7th-century Chinese traveller Xuanzang described Kailaskut Bhawan, the palace of the Licchavi king Amshuverma. The trade route also led to cultural exchange as well. The artistry of the Newar people—the indigenous inhabitants of the Kathmandu Valley—became highly sought after during this era, both within the Valley and throughout the greater Himalayas. Newar artists travelled extensively throughout Asia, creating religious art for their neighbours. For example, Araniko led a group of his compatriot artists through Tibet and China. Bhrikuti, the princess of Nepal who married Tibetan monarch Songtsän Gampo, was instrumental in introducing Buddhism to Tibet.
The Licchavi era was followed by the Malla era. Rulers from Tirhut, upon being attacked by Muslims, fled north to the Kathmandu valley. They intermarried with Nepali royalty, and this led to the Malla era. The early years of the Malla era were turbulent, with raids and attacks from Khas and Turk Muslims. There was also a devastating earthquake which claimed the lives of a third of Kathmandu's population, including the king Abhaya Malla. These disasters led to the destruction of most of the architecture of the Licchavi era (such as Mangriha and Kailashkut Bhawan), and the loss of literature collected in various monasteries within the city. Despite the initial hardships, Kathmandu rose to prominence again and, during most of the Malla era, dominated the trade between India and Tibet. Nepali currency became the standard currency in trans-Himalayan trade.
During the later part of the Malla era, Kathmandu Valley comprised four fortified cities: Kantipur, Lalitpur, Bhaktapur, and Kirtipur. These served as the capitals of the Malla confederation of Nepal. These states competed with each other in the arts, architecture, esthetics, and trade, resulting in tremendous development. The kings of this period directly influenced or involved themselves in the construction of public buildings, squares, and temples, as well as the development of waterspouts, the institutionalisation of trusts (called guthis), the codification of laws, the writing of dramas, and the performance of plays in city squares. Evidence of an influx of ideas from India, Tibet, China, Persia, and Europe among other places can be found in a stone inscription from the time of king Pratap Malla. Books have been found from this era that describe their tantric tradition (e.g. Tantrakhyan), medicine (e.g. Haramekhala), religion (e.g. Mooldevshashidev), law, morals, and history. Amarkosh, a Sanskrit-Nepal Bhasa dictionary from 1381 AD, was also found. Architecturally notable buildings from this era include Kathmandu Durbar Square, Patan Durbar Square, Bhaktapur Durbar Square, the former durbar of Kirtipur, Nyatapola, Kumbheshwar, the Krishna temple, and others.
The Gorkha Kingdom ended the Malla confederation after the Battle of Kathmandu in 1768. This marked the beginning of the modern era in Kathmandu. The Battle of Kirtipur was the start of the Gorkha conquest of the Kathmandu Valley. Kathmandu was adopted as the capital of the Gorkha empire, and the empire itself was dubbed Nepal. During the early part of this era, Kathmandu maintained its distinctive culture. Buildings with characteristic Nepali architecture, such as the nine-story tower of Basantapur, were built during this era. However, trade declined because of continual war with neighbouring nations. Bhimsen Thapa supported France against Great Britain; this led to the development of modern military structures, such as modern barracks in Kathmandu. The nine-storey tower Dharahara was originally built during this era.
Rana rule over Nepal started with the Kot Massacre, which occurred near Hanuman Dhoka Durbar. During this massacre, most of Nepal's high-ranking officials were massacred by Jang Bahadur Rana and his supporters. Another massacre, the Bhandarkhal Massacre, was also conducted by Kunwar and his supporters in Kathmandu. During the Rana regime, Kathmandu's alliance shifted from anti-British to pro-British; this led to the construction of the first buildings in the style of Western European architecture. The most well-known of these buildings include Singha Durbar, Garden of Dreams, Shital Niwas, and the old Narayanhiti palace. The first modern commercial road in the Kathmandu Valley, the New Road, was also built during this era. Trichandra College (the first college of Nepal), Durbar School (the first modern school of Nepal), and Bir Hospital (the first hospital of Nepal) were built in Kathmandu during this era. Rana rule was marked by despotism, economic exploitation and religious persecution.
Kathmandu is in the northwestern part of the Kathmandu Valley to the north of the Bagmati River and covers an area of . The average elevation is above sea level. The city is bounded by several other municipalities of the Kathmandu valley: south of the Bagmati by Lalitpur Metropolitan City (Patan), with which it forms one urban area surrounded by a ring road, to the southwest by Kirtipur Municipality and to the east by Madyapur Thimi Municipality. To the north the urban area extends into several Village Development Committees. However, the urban agglomeration extends well beyond the neighbouring municipalities, e.g. to Bhaktapur, and nearly covers the entire Kathmandu Valley.
Kathmandu is dissected by eight rivers, the main river of the valley, the Bagmati and its tributaries, of which the Bishnumati, Dhobi Khola, Manohara Khola, Hanumante Khola, and Tukucha Khola are predominant. The mountains from where these rivers originate are in the elevation range of , and have passes which provide access to and from Kathmandu and its valley. An ancient canal once flowed from Nagarjuna hill through Balaju to Kathmandu; this canal is now extinct.
Kathmandu and its valley are in the "Deciduous Monsoon Forest Zone" (altitude range of ), one of five vegetation zones defined for Nepal. The dominant tree species in this zone are oak, elm, beech, maple and others, with coniferous trees at higher altitude.
Kathmandu and adjacent cities are composed of neighbourhoods, which are utilized quite extensively and more familiar among locals. However, administratively the city is divided into 32 wards, numbered from 1 to 32. Earlier, there were 35 wards which made it the metropolitan city with the largest number of the wards.
There is no officially defined agglomeration of Kathmandu. The urban area of the Kathmandu valley is split among three different districts (collections of local government units within a zone), which extend very little beyond the valley fringe, except towards the southern ranges, which have comparatively small population. They have the three highest population densities in the country. Within these 3 districts lie VDCs (villages), 20 municipalities and 2 metropolitan municipality (maha-nagarpalika: Kathmandu and lalitpur). The following data table describes these districts which likely would be considered an agglomeration:
Five major climatic regions are found in Nepal. Of these, Kathmandu Valley is in the "Warm Temperate Zone" (elevation ranging from ), where the climate is fairly temperate, atypical for the region. This zone is followed by the "Cool Temperate Zone" with elevation varying between . Under Köppen's climate classification, portions of the city with lower elevations have a humid subtropical climate (Cwa), while portions of the city with higher elevations generally have a subtropical highland climate (Cwb). In the Kathmandu Valley, which is representative of its valley's climate, the average summer temperature varies from . The average winter temperature is .
The city generally has a climate with warm days followed by cool nights and mornings. Unpredictable weather is expected, given that temperatures can drop to or less during the winter. During a 2013 cold front, the winter temperatures of Kathmandu dropped to , and the lowest temperature was recorded on 10 January 2013, at . Rainfall is mostly monsoon-based (about 65% of the total concentrated during the monsoon months of June to August), and decreases substantially () from eastern Nepal to western Nepal. Rainfall has been recorded at about for the Kathmandu valley, and averages for the city of Kathmandu. On average humidity is 75%.
The chart below is based on data from the Nepal Bureau of Standards & Meteorology, "Weather Meteorology" for 2005. The chart provides minimum and maximum temperatures during each month. The annual amount of precipitation was for 2005, as per monthly data included in the table above.
The decade of 2000–2010 saw highly variable and unprecedented precipitation anomalies in Kathmandu. This was mostly due to the annual variation of the southwest monsoon. For example, 2001 recorded only of precipitation due to an extraordinarily weak monsoon season. In contrast, 2003 was the wettest year ever in Kathmandu, totaling over of precipitation due to an exceptionally strong monsoon season.
Air pollution is a major issue in Kathmandu. According to the 2016 World Health Organization's Ambient Air Pollution Database, the annual average PM2.5 concentration in 2013 was 49 μg/m3, which is 4.9 times higher than recommended by the World Health Organization. For annual average PM2.5. Starting in early 2017, the Nepali Government and US Embassy have monitored and publicly share real-time air quality data.
Kathmandu Municipal Corporation (KMC) is the chief nodal agency for the administration of Kathmandu. The Municipality of Kathmandu was upgraded to incorporated in 1994.
Metropolitan Kathmandu is divided into five sectors: the Central Sector, the East Sector, the North Sector, the City Core and the West Sector. For civic administration, the city is further divided into 35 administrative wards. The Council administers the Metropolitan area of Kathmandu city through its 177 elected representatives and 20 nominated members. It holds biannual meetings to review, process and approve the annual budget and make major policy decisions. The ward's profile documents for the 35 wards prepared by the Kathmandu Metropolitan Council is detailed and provides information for each ward on population, the structure and condition of houses, the type of roads, educational, health and financial institutions, entertainment facilities, parking space, security provisions, etc. It also includes lists of development projects completed, on-going and planned, along with informative data about the cultural heritage, festivals, historical sites and the local inhabitants. Ward 16 is the largest, with an area of 437.4 ha; ward 26 is the smallest, with an area of 4 ha.
Kathmandu is the headquarters of the surrounding Kathmandu District. The city of Kathmandu forms this district with Kirtipur Municipality and some 57 Village Development Committees. According to the 2001 census, there are 235,387 households in the metropolitan city.
The Metropolitan Police is the main law enforcement agency in the city. It is headed by a commissioner of police. The Metropolitan Police is a division of the Nepal Police, and the administrative control lies with the National Home Ministry.
The fire service, known as the "Barun Yantra Karyalaya", opened its first station in Kathmandu in 1937 with a single vehicle. An iron tower was erected to monitor the city and watch for fire. As a precautionary measure, firemen were sent to the areas which were designated as accident-prone areas. In 1944, the fire service was extended to the neighbouring cities of Lalitpur and Bhaktapur. In 1966, a fire service was established in Kathmandu airport. In 1975, a West German government donation added seven fire engines to Kathmandu's fire service. The fire service in the city is also overlooked by an international non-governmental organization, the Firefighters Volunteer Association of Nepal (FAN), which was established in 2000 with the purpose of raising public awareness about fire and improving safety.
Electricity in Kathmandu is regulated and distributed by the NEA Nepal Electricity Authority. Water supply and sanitation facilities are provided by the Kathmandu Upatyaka Khanepani Limited (KUKL). There is a severe shortage of water for household purposes such as drinking, bathing, cooking and washing and irrigation. People have been using bottled mineral water, water from tank trucks and from the ancient dhunge dharas for all the purposes related to water. The city water shortage should be solved by the completion of the much plagued Melamchi Water Supply Project by the end of 2019.
Waste management may be through composting in municipal waste management units, and at houses with home composting units. Both systems are common and established in India and neighbouring countries.
Kathmandu's urban cosmopolitan character has made it the most populous city in Nepal, recording a population of 671,846 residents living in 235,387 households in the metropolitan area, according to the 2001 census. According to the National Population Census of 2011, the total population of Kathmandu city was 975,543 with an annual growth rate of 6.12% with respect to the population figure of 2001. 70% of the total population residing in Kathmandu are aged between 15 and 59.
Over the years the city has been home to people of various ethnicities, resulting in a range of different traditions and cultural practices. In one decade, the population increased from 427,045 in 1991 to 671,805 in 2001. The population was projected to reach 915,071 in 2011 and 1,319,597 by 2021. To keep up this population growth, the KMC-controlled area of has expanded to in 2001. With this new area, the population density which was 85 in 1991 is still 85 in 2001; it is likely to jump to 111 in 2011 and 161 in 2021.
The largest ethnic groups residing in Kathmandu Metropolitan City consists of primarily Newar (24%), Brahmins (25%), Chhetris (18%), Tamangs (11%) while the rest 12% are occupied by Hill Janajatis including Kirat, Gurung, Magar, Sherpa etc., Terai Janajatis like Tharus along with various ethicities within the Madhesi of 15% community. More recently, other hill ethnic groups and Caste groups from Terai have come to represent a substantial proportion of the city's population. The major languages are Nepali and Nepal Bhasa, while English is understood by many, particularly in the service industry. According to data from 2011, the major religions in Kathmandu city are Hinduism 81.3%, Buddhism 9%, Muslim 4.4% and other 5.2%.
The linguistic profile of Kathmandu underwent drastic changes during the Shah dynasty's rule because of its strong bias towards the Hindu culture. Sanskrit language therefore was preferred and people were encouraged to learn it even by attending Sanskrit learning centres in Terai. Sanskrit schools were specially set up in Kathmandu and in the Terai region to inculcate traditional Hindu culture and practices originated from Nepal.
The ancient trade route between India and Tibet that passed through Kathmandu enabled a fusion of artistic and architectural traditions from other cultures to be amalgamated with local art and architecture. The monuments of Kathmandu City have been influenced over the centuries by Hindu and Buddhist religious practices. The architectural treasure of the Kathmandu valley has been categorized under the well-known seven groups of heritage monuments and buildings. In 2006 UNESCO declared these seven groups of monuments as a World Heritage Site (WHS). The seven monuments zones cover an area of , with the buffer zone extending to . The Seven Monument Zones (Mzs) inscribed originally in 1979 and with a minor modification in 2006 are Durbar squares of Hanuman Dhoka, Patan and Bhaktapur, Hindu temples of Pashupatinath and Changunarayan, the Buddhist stupas of Swayambhu and Boudhanath.
The literal meaning of Durbar Square is a "place of palaces." There are three preserved Durbar Squares in Kathmandu valley and one unpreserved in Kirtipur. The Durbar Square of Kathmandu is in the old city and has heritage buildings representing four kingdoms (Kantipur, Lalitpur, Bhaktapur, Kirtipur); the earliest is the Licchavi dynasty. The complex has 50 temples and is distributed in two quadrangles of the Durbar Square. The outer quadrangle has the Kasthamandap, Kumari Ghar, and Shiva-Parvati Temple; the inner quadrangle has the Hanuman Dhoka palace. The squares were severely damaged in the April 2015 Nepal earthquake.
Hanuman Dhoka is a complex of structures with the Royal Palace of the Malla kings and of the Shah dynasty. It is spread over five acres. The eastern wing, with ten courtyards, is the oldest part, dating to the mid-16th century. It was expanded by King Pratap Malla in the 17th century with many temples. The royal family lived in this palace until 1886 when they moved to Narayanhiti Palace. The stone inscription outside is in fifteen languages.
Kumari Ghar is a palace in the centre of the Kathmandu city, next to the Durbar square where a Royal Kumari selected from several Kumaris resides. Kumari, or Kumari Devi, is the tradition of worshipping young pre-pubescent girls as manifestations of the divine female energy or "devi" in South Asian countries. In Nepal the selection process is very rigorous. Previously, during the time of monarchy, the queen and the priests used to appoint the proposed Kumari with delicate process of astrological examination and physical examination of 32 'gunas'.The 'china', an ancient Hindu astrological report, of the Kumari and the reigning king was ought to be similar. Kumari is believed to be the bodily incarnation of the goddess Taleju (the Nepali name for Durga) until she menstruates, after which it is believed that the goddess vacates her body. Serious illness or a major loss of blood from an injury are also causes for her to revert to common status. The current Kumari, Trishna Shakya, age three at the time of appointment, was installed in September 2017 succeeding Matina Shakya who was the first Kumari of Kathmandu after the end of monarchy.
Kasthamandap is a three-storeyed temple enshrining an image of Gorakhnath. It was built in the 16th century in pagoda style. The name of Kathmandu is a derivative of the word "Kasthamandap". It was built under the reign of King Laxmi Narsingha Malla. Kasthamandap stands at the intersection of two ancient trade routes linking India and Tibet at Maru square. It was originally built as a rest house for travellers.
The Pashupatinath Temple is a famous 5th century Hindu temple dedicated to Lord Shiva (Pashupati). On the banks of the Bagmati River, Pashupatinath Temple is the oldest Hindu temple in Kathmandu. It served as the seat of national deity, Lord Pashupatinath, until Nepal was secularized. However, a significant part of the temple was destroyed by Mughal invaders in the 14th century and little or nothing remains of the original 5th-century temple exterior. The temple as it stands today was built in the 19th century, although the image of the bull and the black four-headed image of Pashupati are at least 300 years old. The temple is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Shivaratri, or the night of Lord Shiva, is the most important festival that takes place here, attracting thousands of devotees and sadhus.
Believers in Pashupatinath (mainly Hindus) are allowed to enter the temple premises, but non-Hindu visitors are allowed to view the temple only from the across the Bagmati River. The priests who perform the services at this temple have been Brahmins from Karnataka, South India since the time of Malla king Yaksha Malla. This tradition is believed to have been started at the request of Adi Shankaracharya who sought to unify the states of Bharatam a region of the south Asia believed to be ruled by a mythological king Bharat, by encouraging cultural exchange. This procedure is followed in other temples around India, which were sanctified by Adi Shankaracharya.
The temple is built in the pagoda style of architecture, with cubic constructions and carved wooden rafters (tundal) on which they rest, and two-level roofs made of copper and gold.
The Boudhanath (also written as "Bouddhanath", "Bodhnath", "Baudhanath" or the "Khāsa" Chaitya), is one of the holiest Buddhist sites in Nepal, along with the Swayambhu. It is a very popular tourist site. Boudhanath is known as Khāsti by Newars and as Bauddha or Bodhnāth by speakers of Nepali. About from the centre and northeastern outskirts of Kathmandu, the stupa's massive mandala makes it one of the largest spherical stupas in Nepal. Boudhanath became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1979.
The base of the stupa has 108 small depictions of the Dhyani Buddha Amitabha. It is surrounded with a brick wall with 147 niches, each with four or five prayer wheels engraved with the mantra, "om mani padme hum". At the northern entrance where visitors must pass is a shrine dedicated to Ajima, the goddess of smallpox. Every year the stupa attracts many Tibetan Buddhist pilgrims who perform full body prostrations in the inner lower enclosure, walk around the stupa with prayer wheels, chant, and pray. Thousands of prayer flags are hoisted up from the top of the stupa downwards and dot the perimeter of the complex. The influx of many Tibetan refugees from China has seen the construction of over 50 Tibetan gompas (monasteries) around Boudhanath.
Swayambhu is a Buddhist stupa atop a hillock at the northwestern part of the city. This is among the oldest religious sites in Nepal. Although the site is considered Buddhist, it is revered by both Buddhists and Hindus. The stupa consists of a dome at the base; above the dome, there is a cubic structure with the eyes of Buddha looking in all four directions. There are pentagonal "toran" above each of the four sides, with statues engraved on them. Behind and above the torana there are thirteen tiers. Above all the tiers, there is a small space above which lies a gajur.
Ranipokhari which is translated as "Queen's Pond" is a historic artificial pond that nestled in the heart of Kathmandu. It was built by King Pratap Mall in 1670 AD for his beloved queen after she lost her son and couldn't recover from her loss. A large stone statue of an elephant in the south signifies the image of Pratap Malla and his two sons. Balgopaleshwor Temple stands still inside the temple above the pond. Rani Pokhari is opened once a year during the final day of Tihar i.e. Bhai Tika and Chhath festival. The world's largest Chhath takes place every year in Ranipokhari. The pond is one of Kathmandu's most famous landmarks and is known for its religious and aesthetic significance.
Kathmandu valley is described as "an enormous treasure house of art and sculptures", which are made of wood, stone, metal, and terracotta, and found in profusion in temples, shrines, stupas, gompas, chaityasm and palaces. The art objects are also seen in street corners, lanes, private courtyards and in open ground. Most art is in the form of icons of gods and goddesses. Kathmandu valley has had this art treasure for a very long time, but received worldwide recognition only after the country opened to the outside world in 1950.
The religious art of Nepal and Kathmandu in particular consists of an iconic symbolism of the Mother Goddesses such as: Bhavani, Durga, Gaja-Lakshmi, Hariti-Sitala, Mahsishamardini, Saptamatrika (seven mother goddesses), and Sri-Lakshmi(wealth-goddess). From the 3rd century BCE, apart from the Hindu gods and goddesses, Buddhist monuments from the Ashokan period (it is said that Ashoka visited Nepal in 250 BC) have embellished Nepal in general and the valley in particular. These art and architectural edifices encompass three major periods of evolution: the Licchavi or classical period (500 to 900 AD), the post-classical period (1000 to 1400 AD), with strong influence of the Palla art form; the Malla period (1400 onwards) that exhibited explicitly tantric influences coupled with the art of Tibetan Demonology.
A broad typology has been ascribed to the decorative designs and carvings created by the people of Nepal. These artists have maintained a blend of Hinduism and Buddhism. The typology, based on the type of material used are: stone art, metal art, wood art, terracotta art, and painting.
Kathmandu is home to a number of museums and art galleries, including the National Museum of Nepal and the Natural History Museum of Nepal. Nepal's art and architecture is an amalgamation of two ancient religions, Hinduism and Buddhism. These are amply reflected in the many temples, shrines, stupas, monasteries, and palaces in the seven well-defined Monument Zones of the Kathmandu valley are part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site. This amalgamation is also reflected in the planning and exhibitions in museums and art galleries throughout Kathmandu and its sister cities of Patan and Bhaktapur. The museums display unique artefacts and paintings from the 5th century CE to the present day, including archeological exportation.
Kathmandu museums and art galleries include:
The National Museum is in the western part of Kathmandu, near the Swayambhunath stupa in an historical building. This building was constructed in the early 19th century by General Bhimsen Thapa. It is the most important museum in the country, housing an extensive collection of weapons, art and antiquities of historic and cultural importance. The museum was established in 1928 as a collection house of war trophies and weapons, and the initial name of this museum was "Chhauni Silkhana", meaning "the stone house of arms and ammunition". Given its focus, the museum contains many weapons, including locally made firearms used in wars, leather cannons from the 18th–19th century, and medieval and modern works in wood, bronze, stone and paintings.
The Natural History Museum is in the southern foothills of Swayambhunath hill and has a sizeable collection of different species of animals, butterflies, and plants. The museum is noted for its display of species, from prehistoric shells to stuffed animals.
The Tribhuvan Museum contains artifacts related to the King Tribhuvan (1906–1955). It has a variety of pieces including his personal belongings, letters, and papers, memorabilia related to events he was involved in and a rare collection of photos and paintings of Royal family members. The Mahendra Museum is dedicated to the king Mahendra of Nepal (1920–1972). Like the Tribhuvan Museum, it includes his personal belongings such as decorations, stamps, coins and personal notes and manuscripts, but it also has structural reconstructions of his cabinet room and office chamber. The Hanumandhoka Palace, a lavish medieval palace complex in the Durbar, contains three separate museums of historic importance. These museums include the Birendra museum, which contains items related to the second-last monarch, Birendra of Nepal.
The enclosed compound of the Narayanhity Palace Museum is in the north-central part of Kathmandu. "Narayanhity" comes from "Narayana", a form of the Hindu god Lord Vishnu, and "Hiti", meaning "water spout" (Vishnu's temple is opposite the palace, and the water spout is east of the main entrance to the precinct). Narayanhity was a new palace, in front of the old palace built in 1915, and was built in 1970 in the form of a contemporary Pagoda. It was built on the occasion of the marriage of King Birenda Bir Bikram Shah, then heir apparent to the throne. The southern gate of the palace is at the crossing of Prithvipath and Darbar Marg roads. The palace area covers () and is fully secured with gates on all sides. This palace was the scene of the Nepali royal massacre. After the fall of the monarchy, it was converted to a museum.
The Taragaon Museum presents the modern history of the Kathmandu Valley.
It seeks to document 50 years of research and cultural heritage conservation of the Kathmandu Valley, documenting what artists, photographers, architects, and anthropologists from abroad had contributed in the second half of the 20th century. The actual structure of the museum showcases restoration and rehabilitation efforts to preserve the built heritage of Kathmandu. It was designed by Carl Pruscha (master-planner of the Kathmandu Valley) in 1970 and constructed in 1971. Restoration works began in 2010 to rehabilitate the Taragaon hostel into the Taragaon Museum. The design uses local brick along with modern architectural design elements, as well as the use of circle, triangles and squares. The museum is within a short walk from the Boudhnath stupa, which itself can be seen from the museum tower.
Kathmandu is a centre for art in Nepal, displaying the work of contemporary artists in the country and also collections of historical artists. Patan in particular is an ancient city noted for its fine arts and crafts. Art in Kathmandu is vibrant, demonstrating a fusion of traditionalism and modern art, derived from a great number of national, Asian, and global influences. Nepali art is commonly divided into two areas: the idealistic traditional painting known as Paubhas in Nepal and perhaps more commonly known as Thangkas in Tibet, closely linked to the country's religious history and on the other hand the contemporary western-style painting, including nature-based compositions or abstract artwork based on Tantric elements and social themes of which painters in Nepal are well noted for. Internationally, the British-based charity, the Kathmandu Contemporary Art Centre is involved with promoting arts in Kathmandu.
Kathmandu contains many notable art galleries. The NAFA Gallery, operated by the Arts and crafts Department of the Nepal Academy is housed in Sita Bhavan, a neo-classical old Rana palace.
The Srijana Contemporary Art Gallery, inside the Bhrikutimandap Exhibition grounds, hosts the work of contemporary painters and sculptors, and regularly organizes exhibitions. It also runs morning and evening classes in the schools of art. Also of note is the Moti Azima Gallery, in a three-storied building in Bhimsenthan which contains an impressive collection of traditional utensils and handmade dolls and items typical of a medieval Newar house, giving an important insight into Nepali history. The J Art Gallery is also in Kathmandu, near the Royal Palace in Durbarmarg, Kathmandu and displays the artwork of eminent, established Nepali painters. The Nepal Art Council Gallery, in the Babar Mahal, on the way to Tribhuvan International Airport contains artwork of both national and international artists and extensive halls regularly used for art exhibitions.
The National Library of Nepal is in Patan. It is the largest library in the country with more than 70,000 books. English, Nepali, Sanskrit, Hindi, and Nepal Bhasa books are found here. The library is in possession of rare scholarly books in Sanskrit and English dating from the 17th century AD. Kathmandu also contains the Keshar Library, in the Keshar Mahal on the ground floor of the Ministry of Education building. This collection of around 45,000 books is derived from a personal collection of Keshar Shamsher Jang Bahadur Rana. It covers a wide range of subjects including history, law, art, religion, and philosophy, as well as a Sanskrit manual of Tantra, which is believed to be over 1,000 years old. The 2015 earthquake caused severe damage to the Ministry of Education building, and the contents of the Kaiser Library have been temporarily relocated.
The Asa Archives are also noteworthy. They specialize in medieval history and religious traditions of the Kathmandu Valley. The archives, in Kulambhulu, have a collection of some 6,000 loose-leaf handwritten books and 1,000 palm-leaf manuscripts (mostly in Sanskrit or Nepal Bhasa) and a manuscript dated to 1464.
Kathmandu is home to Nepali cinema and theatres. The city contains several theatres, including the National Dance Theatre in Kanti Path, the Ganga Theatre, the Himalayan Theatre and the Aarohan Theater Group founded in 1982. The M. Art Theater is based in the city. The Gurukul School of Theatre organizes the Kathmandu International Theater Festival, attracting artists from all over the world. A mini theatre is also at the Hanumandhoka Durbar Square, established by the Durbar Conservation and Promotion Committee.
Kathmandu has a number of cinemas (old single screen establishments and some new multiplexes) showing Nepali, Bollywood, and Hollywood films. Some old establishments include Vishwajyoti Cinema Hall, Jai Nepal Hall, Kumari Cinema Hall, Gopi Krishna Cinema Hall, and Guna Cinema Hall. Kathmandu also houses some international standard cinema theatres and multiplexes, such as QFX Cinemas, Cine De Chef, Fcube Cinemas, Q's Cinemas Big Movies, BSR Movies, etc.
Kathmandu is the center of music and dance in Nepal, and these art forms are integral to understanding the city. Musical performances are organized in cultural venues. Music is a part of the traditional aspect of Kathmandu. Gunla is the traditional music festival according to Nepal Sambat. Newar music originated in Kathmandu. Furthermore, music from all over Nepal can be found in Kathmandu.
A number of hippies visited Kathmandu during the 1970s and introduced rock and roll, rock, and jazz to the city. Kathmandu is noted internationally for its jazz festival, popularly known as Jazzmandu. It is the only jazz festival in the Himalayan region and was established in March 2002. The festival attracts musicians from countries worldwide, such as Australia, Denmark, United States, Benin, and India.
The city has been referenced in numerous songs, including works by Cat Stevens ('Katmandu', "Mona Bone Jakon" (1970)), Bob Seger ('Katmandu', "Beautiful Loser" (1975)), Rush ('A Passage to Bangkok', "Pulling into Kathmandu"; "2112", 1976), Krematorij ('Kathmandu', "Three Springs" (2000)), Fito Páez ("Tráfico por Katmandú" – "Traffic through Kathmandu") and Cavalcade ('Kathmandu Kid') 2019.
The staple food of most people in Kathmandu is dal bhat. This consists of rice and lentil soup, generally served with vegetable curries, achar and sometimes Chutney. Momo, a type of Nepali version of Tibetan dumpling, has become prominent in Nepal with many street vendors and restaurants selling it. It is one of the most popular fast foods in Kathmandu. Various Nepali variants of momo including buff (i.e. buffalo) momo, chicken momo, and vegetarian momo are famous in Kathmandu.
Most of the cuisines found in Kathmandu are non-vegetarian. However, the practice of vegetarianism is not uncommon, and vegetarian cuisines can be found throughout the city. Consumption of beef is very uncommon and considered taboo in many places. "Buff" (meat of water buffalo) is very common. There is a strong tradition of "buff" consumption in Kathmandu, especially among Newars, which is not found in other parts of Nepal. Consumption of pork was considered taboo until a few decades ago. Due to the intermixing with Kirat cuisine from eastern Nepal, pork has found a place in Kathmandu dishes. A fringe population of devout Hindus and Muslims consider it taboo. The Muslims forbid eating "buff" as from Quran while Hindus eat all varieties except beef as they consider cow to be a goddess and symbol of purity. The chief lunch/snack for locals and visitors is mostly "Momo" or "Chowmein".
Kathmandu had only one western-style restaurant in 1955. A large number of restaurants in Kathmandu have since opened, catering Nepali cuisine, Tibetan cuisine, Chinese cuisine and Indian cuisine in particular. Many other restaurants have opened to accommodate locals, expatriates, and tourists. The growth of tourism in Kathmandu has led to culinary creativity and the development of hybrid foods to accommodate for tourists such as American chop suey, which is a sweet-and-sour sauce with crispy noodles with a fried egg commonly added on top and other westernized adaptations of traditional cuisine. Continental cuisine can be found in selected places. International chain restaurants are rare, but some outlets of Pizza Hut and KFC have recently opened there. It also has several outlets of the international ice-cream chain Baskin-Robbins.
Kathmandu has a larger proportion of tea drinkers than coffee drinkers. Tea is widely served but is extremely weak by western standards. It is richer and contains tea leaves boiled with milk, sugar, and spices. Alcohol is widely drunk, and there are numerous local variants of alcoholic beverages. Drinking and driving is illegal, and authorities have a zero-tolerance policy. Ailaa and thwon (alcohol made from rice) are the alcoholic beverages of Kathmandu, found in all the local bhattis (alcohol serving eateries). Chhyaang, tongba (fermented millet or barley) and raksi are alcoholic beverages from other parts of Nepal which are found in Kathmandu. However, shops and bars in Kathmandu widely sell western and Nepali beers.
Most of the fairs and festivals in Kathmandu originated in the Malla period or earlier. Traditionally, these festivals were celebrated by Newars. In recent years, these festivals have found wider participation from other Kathmanduites as well. As the capital of the Nepal, various national festivals are celebrated in Kathmandu. With mass migration to the city, the cultures of Khas from the west, Kirats from the east, Bon/Tibetan from the north, and Mithila from the south meet in the capital and mingle harmoniously. The festivities such as the Ghode (horse) Jatra, Indra Jatra, Dashain Durga Puja festivals, Shivratri and many more are observed by all Hindu and Buddhist communities of Kathmandu with devotional fervor and enthusiasm. Social regulation in the codes enacted incorporates Hindu traditions and ethics. These were followed by the Shah kings and previous kings, as devout Hindus and protectors of the Buddhist religion.
Cultural continuity has been maintained for centuries in the exclusive worship of goddesses and deities in Kathmandu and the rest of the country. These deities include the Ajima, Taleju (or Tulja Bhavani or Taleju Bhawani) and her other forms : Digu Taleju (or Degu Taleju) and Kumari (the living goddess). The artistic edifices have now become places of worship in the everyday life of the people, therefore a roster is maintained to observe annual festivals. There are 133 festivals held in the year.
Some of the traditional festivals observed in Kathmandu, apart from those previously mentioned, are Bada Dashain, Tihar, Chhath, Maghe Sankranti, Nag Panchami, Janai Purnima, Pancha Dan, Teej/Rishi Panchami, Pahan Charhe, Jana Baha Dyah Jatra (White Machchhendranath Jatra), and Matatirtha Aunsi.
Assumedly, together with the kingdom of Licchhavi (c. 400 to 750), Hinduism and the endogam social stratification of the Caste was established in Kathmandu Valley. The Pashupatinath Temple, Changu Narayan temple (the oldest), and the Kasthamandap are of particular importance to Hindus. Other notable Hindu temples in Kathmandu and the surrounding valley include Bajrayogini Temple, Dakshinkali Temple, Guhyeshwari Temple, and the Sobha Bhagwati shrine.
The Bagmati River which flows through Kathmandu is considered a holy river both by Hindus and Buddhists, and many Hindu temples are on the banks of this river. The importance of the Bagmati also lies in the fact that Hindus are cremated on its banks, and Kirants are buried in the hills by its side. According to the Nepali Hindu tradition, the dead body must be dipped three times into the Bagmati before cremation. The chief mourner (usually the first son) who lights the funeral pyre must take a holy riverwater bath immediately after cremation. Many relatives who join the funeral procession also take bath in the Bagmati River or sprinkle the holy water on their bodies at the end of cremation as the Bagmati is believed to purify people spiritually.
Buddhism started in Kathmandu with the arrival of Buddhist monks during the time of Buddha (c. 563 – 483 BCE). They started a forest monastery in Sankhu. This monastery was renovated by Shakyas after they fled genocide from Virudhaka (rule: 491–461 BCE).
During the Hindu Lichchavi era (c. 400 to 750), various monasteries and orders were created which successively led to the formation of Newar Buddhism, which is still practiced in the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Sanskrit.
Legendary Princess Bhrikuti (7th-century) and artist Araniko (1245–1306 CE) from that tradition of Kathmandu valley played a significant role in spreading Buddhism in Tibet and China. There are over 108 traditional monasteries (Bahals and Bahis) in Kathmandu based on Newar Buddhism. Since the 1960s, the permanent Tibetan Buddhist population of Kathmandu has risen significantly so that there are now over fifty Tibetan Buddhist monasteries in the area. Also, with the modernization of Newar Buddhism, various Theravada Bihars have been established.
Islam people pray to Allah on Friday (the day of Namaj) often going to the Jame Masjid, Ghantaghar near Ratnapark.
Kirant Mundhum is one of the indigenous animistic practices of Nepal. It is practiced by Kirat people. Some animistic aspects of Kirant beliefs, such as ancestor worship (worship of Ajima) are also found in Newars of Kirant origin. Ancient religious sites believed to be worshipped by ancient Kirats, such as Pashupatinath, Wanga Akash Bhairabh (Yalambar) and Ajima are now worshipped by people of all Dharmic religions in Kathmandu. Kirats who have migrated from other parts of Nepal to Kathmandu practice Mundhum in the city.
Sikhism is practiced primarily in Gurudwara at Kupundole. An earlier temple of Sikhism is also present in Kathmandu which is now defunct. Jainism is practiced by a small community. A Jain temple is present in Gyaneshwar, where Jains practice their faith. According to the records of the Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'is of Nepal, there are approximately 300 Baha'is in Kathmandu valley. They have a National Office in Shantinagar, Baneshwor. The Baha'is also have classes for children at the National Centre and other localities in Kathmandu. Islam is practiced in Kathmandu but Muslims are a minority, accounting for about 4.2% of the population of Nepal. It is said that in Kathmandu alone there are 170 Christian churches. Christian missionary hospitals, welfare organizations, and schools are also operating. Nepali citizens who served as soldiers in Indian and British armies, who had converted to Christianity while in service, on return to Nepal continue to practice their religion. They have contributed to the spread of Christianity and the building of churches in Nepal and in Kathmandu, in particular.
The location and terrain of Kathmandu have played a significant role in the development of a stable economy which spans millennia. The city is in an ancient lake basin, with fertile soil and flat terrain. This geography helped form a society based on agriculture. This, combined with its location between India and China, helped establish Kathmandu as an important trading centre over the centuries. Kathmandu's trade is an ancient profession that flourished along an offshoot of the Silk Road which linked India and Tibet. From centuries past, Lhasa Newar merchants of Kathmandu have conducted trade across the Himalaya and contributed to spreading art styles and Buddhism across Central Asia. Other traditional occupations are farming, metal casting, woodcarving, painting, weaving, and pottery.
Kathmandu is the most important industrial and commercial centre in Nepal. The Nepal Stock Exchange, the head office of the national bank, the chamber of commerce, as well as head offices of national and international banks, telecommunication companies, the electricity authority, and various other national and international organizations are in Kathmandu. The major economic hubs are the New Road, Durbar Marg, Ason and Putalisadak.
The economic output of the metropolitan area alone is worth more than one third of national GDP around $6.5billion in terms of nominal GDP NR.s 550 billion approximately per year $2200 per capita income approx three times national average. Kathmandu exports handicrafts, artworks, garments, carpets, pashmina, paper; trade accounts for 21% of its finances. Manufacturing is also important and accounts for 19% of the revenue that Kathmandu generates. Garments and woolen carpets are the most notable manufactured products. Other economic sectors in Kathmandu include agriculture (9%), education (6%), transport (6%), and hotels and restaurants (5%). Kathmandu is famous for lokta paper and pashmina shawls.
Tourism is considered another important industry in Nepal. This industry started around 1950, as the country's political makeup changed and ended the country's isolation from the rest of the world. In 1956, air transportation was established and the Tribhuvan Highway, between Kathmandu and Raxaul (at India's border), was started. Separate organizations were created in Kathmandu to promote this activity; some of these include the Tourism Development Board, the Department of Tourism and the Civil Aviation Department. Furthermore, Nepal became a member of several international tourist associations. Establishing diplomatic relations with other nations further accentuated this activity. The hotel industry, travel agencies, training of tourist guides, and targeted publicity campaigns are the chief reasons for the remarkable growth of this industry in Nepal, and in Kathmandu in particular.
Since then, tourism in Nepal has thrived. It is the country's most important industry. Tourism is a major source of income for most of the people in the city, with several hundred thousand visitors annually. Hindu and Buddhist pilgrims from all over the world visit Kathmandu's religious sites such as Pashupatinath, Swayambhunath, Boudhanath, Changunarayan and Budhanilkantha. From a mere 6,179 tourists in 1961/62, the number increased to 491,504 in 1999/2000. Following the end of the Maoist insurgency, there was a significant rise of 509,956 tourist arrivals in 2009. Since then, tourism has improved as the country turned into the Democratic Republic. In economic terms, the foreign exchange registered 3.8% of the GDP in 1995/96 but then started declining. The high level of tourism is attributed to the natural grandeur of the Himalayas and the rich cultural heritage of the country.
The neighbourhood of Thamel is Kathmandu's primary "traveller's ghetto", packed with guest houses, restaurants, shops, and bookstores, catering to tourists. Another neighbourhood of growing popularity is Jhamel, a name for Jhamsikhel that was coined to rhyme with Thamel. Jhochhen Tol, also known as "Freak Street", is Kathmandu's original traveller's haunt, made popular by the hippies of the 1960s and 1970s; it remains a popular alternative to Thamel. Asan is a bazaar and ceremonial square on the old trade route to Tibet, and provides a fine example of a traditional neighbourhood.
With the opening of the tourist industry after the change in the political scenario of Nepal in 1950, the hotel industry drastically improved. Now Kathmandu boasts several luxuries such as the Hyatt Regency, Dwarika's, theYak & Yeti, The Everest Hotel, Hotel Radisson, Hotel De L'Annapurna, The Malla Hotel, Shangri-La Hotel (which is not operated by the Shangri-La Hotel Group) and The Shanker Hotel. There are several four-star hotels such as Hotel Vaishali, Hotel Narayani, The Blue Star and Grand Hotel. The Garden Hotel, Hotel Ambassador, and Aloha Inn are among the three-star hotels in Kathmandu. Hotels like Hyatt Regency, De L'Annapurna, and Hotel Yak & Yeti are among the five-star hotels providing casinos as well.
The oldest modern school in Nepal is Durbar High School, and the oldest college, Tri Chandra College, are both in Kathmandu city. The largest (according to number of students and colleges), the oldest and most distinguished university in Nepal is in Kirtipur and is called Tribhuvan University. The second largest university, Kathmandu University (KU), is in Dhulikhel, Kavre on the outskirts of Kathmandu. It is the second oldest university in Nepal, established in November 1991. Not surprisingly the best schools and colleges of Nepal are located in Kathmandu and its adjoining cities. Every year thousands of students from all over Nepal arrive at Kathmandu to get admission in the various schools and colleges.
One of the key concerns of educationists and concerned citizens is the massive outflux of students from Nepal to outside Nepal for studies. Every year thousands of students apply for No objection certificates for studying abroad. Consultancy firms specializing in preparing students to go abroad can be found in all prominent locations. The reason for such an outflux range from perceived low quality of education, political instability, fewer opportunities in the job market, opportunities for earning while learning abroad and better job prospects with an international degree.
Healthcare in Kathmandu is the most developed in Nepal, and the city and surrounding valley is home to some of the best hospitals and clinics in the country. Bir Hospital is the oldest, established in July 1889 by Bir Shamsher Jang Bahadur Rana. Notable hospitals include Bir Hospital, Nepal Medical College and Teaching Hospital (Jorpati), Tribhuwan University Institute of Medicine (Teaching Hospital), Patan Hospital, Kathmandu Model Hospital, Scheer Memorial Hospital, Om Hospital, Norvic Hospital, Grande International Hospital, Nobel Hospital and many more.
The city is supported by specialist hospitals/clinics such as Shahid Shukra Tropical Hospital, Shahid Gangalal Foundation, Kathmandu Veterinary Hospital, Nepal Eye Hospital, Kanti Children's Hospital, Nepal International Clinic (Travel and Mountain medicine center), Neuro Center, Spinal Rehabilitation center and Bhaktapur Cancer Hospital. Most of the general hospitals are in the city center, although several clinics are elsewhere in Kathmandu district.
Tilganga Institute of Ophthalmology is an Ophthalmological hospital in Kathmandu. It pioneered the production of low cost intraocular lenses (IOLs), which are used in cataract surgery. The team of Dr. Sanduk Ruit in the same hospital pioneered sutureless small-incision cataract surgery (SICS), a technique which has been used to treat 4 million of the world's 20 million people with cataract blindness.
Institute of Medicine, the central college of Tribhuvan University is the first medical college of Nepal and is in Maharajgunj, Kathmandu. It was established in 1972 and started to impart medical education from 1978. Other major institutions include Patan Academy of Health Sciences, Kathmandu Medical College, Nepal Medical College, KIST Medical College, Nepal Army Institute of Health Sciences, National Academy of Medical Sciences (NAMS) and Kathmandu University School of Medical Sciences (KUSMS), are also in or around Kathmandu.
The total length of roads in Nepal is recorded to be (), as of 2003–04. This fairly large network has helped the economic development of the country, particularly in the fields of agriculture, horticulture, vegetable farming, industry and also tourism. In view of the hilly terrain, transportation takes place in Kathmandu are mainly by road and air. Kathmandu is connected by the Tribhuvan Highway to the south connecting India, Prithvi Highway to the west and Araniko Highway to the north connecting China The BP Highway is connecting Kathmandu to the eastern part of Nepal through Sindhuli. The fast-track is under construction which will be the shortest route to connect Terai with the valley.
The main international airport serving Kathmandu valley is the Tribhuvan International Airport, about from the city centre and is operated by the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal. It has two terminals, one domestic and one international. At present, it connects 30 cities around the globe in Europe, Asia and the Middle East such as Istanbul, Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Kolkata, Singapore, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Dhaka, Paro, Lhasa, Chengdu, Guangzhou and Hong Kong. Since 2013, Turkish Airlines connects Istanbul to Kathmandu. Oman Air also connects Muscat to Kathmandu since 2010. Nepal Airlines started flying to Tokyo-Narita from March 2, 2020. Regionally, several Nepali airlines operate from the city, including Buddha Air, Nepal Airlines, Shree Airlines and Yeti Airlines to other major towns across Nepal.
Sajha Yatayat provides regular bus services throughout Kathmandu and the surrounding valley. Other bus companies including micro-bus companies operate several unscheduled routes.Trolleybusses used to operate on the route between Tripureshwor and Surya Binak on a 13-kilometer route.
Ropeways are another important transportation means in hilly terrain. A ropeway operated between Kathmandu and Hetauda over a length of which carried 25 tonnes of goods per hour. It has since been discontinued due to poor carrying capacity and maintenance issues. During the Rana period, a ropeway was constructed between Kathmandu (then Mathathirtha) to Dhorsing (Makawanpur) of over in length, which carried a cargo of 8 tonnes per hour. At present, a cable car service is operated in Kathmandu in Chandragiri Hills.
Kathmandu is the television hub of Nepal. Nepal Television, established in 1985, is the oldest and most-watched television channel in Nepal, as is government-owned NTV 2 Metro, Channel Nepal, Image Channel, Kantipur Television, Sagarmatha TV, Himalayan Television and other channels.
The headquarters of many of the country's news outlets are also in the city including Kathmandu Tribune, the government-owned Gorkhapatra, the oldest national daily newspaper in Nepal, The Kathmandu Post, Nepali Times, Kantipur Publications and its paper Kantipur, Naya Patrika the largest selling Nepali language paper, The Himalayan Times, the largest selling English broadsheet in Nepal, Karobar Economic Daily and Aarthik Abhiyan National Daily are the only economic daily in Nepal and Jana Aastha National Weekly.
Nepal Republic Media, the publisher of MyRepublica, joined a publishing alliance with the International Herald Tribune (IHT), to publish the Asia Pacific Edition of IHT from Kathmandu from 20 July 2011. There is a state-run National News Agency (RSS).
Radio Nepal is a state-run organization that operates national and regional radio stations. These stations are: Hits FM (Nepal), HBC 94 FM, Radio Sagarmatha, Kantipur FM and Image FM. The BBC also has an FM broadcasting station in Kathmandu. Among them a small part of FM radio come from Community radio Station, that are Radio Pratibodh F.M. – 102.4 MHz, Radio Upatyaka – 87.6 MHz etc.
Football and cricket are the most popular sports among the younger generation in Nepal and there are several stadiums in the city. The sport is governed by the National Sports Council from its headquarters in Kathmandu. The only international football stadium in the city is the Dasarath Rangasala Stadium, a multi-purpose stadium used mostly for football matches and cultural events, in the neighbourhood of Tripureshwor. It is the largest stadium in Nepal with a capacity of 25,000 spectators, built-in 1956. Martyr's Memorial League is also held in this ground every year. The stadium was renovated with Chinese help before the 8th South Asian Games were held in Kathmandu and had floodlights installed. Kathmandu is home to the oldest football clubs of Nepal such as RCT, Sankata and NRT. Other prominent clubs include MMC, Machhindra FC, Tribhuvan Army Club (TAC) and MPC.
Kathmandu is also home of some of the oldest cricket clubs in Nepal, such as Yengal Sports Club. Kathmandu has the only recognized international cricket ground in the country, TU Cricket Ground at the Tribhuvan University in Kirtipur. The Mulpani Cricket Stadium is the under-construction cricket stadium in Mulpani, Kathmandu which will be the largest cricket stadium in the country with a capacity of 30,000. Kathmandu Kings XI represents Kathmandu in Everest Premier League.
An international stadium for swimming events is in Satdobato, Lalitpur, near Kathmandu. The ANFA Technical Football Center is just adjacent to this stadium.
Kathmandu Metropolitan City (KMC), in order to promote international relations has established an International Relations Secretariat (IRC). KMC's first international relationship was established in 1975 with the city of Eugene, Oregon, United States. This activity has been further enhanced by establishing formal relationships with 8 other cities: Matsumoto City (Nagano Prefecture, Japan), Rochester (New York (state), U.S.), Yangon (formerly Rangoon, Myanmar), Xi'an (Shaanxi, China), Minsk (Belarus), and Pyongyang (North Korea). KMC's constant endeavour is to enhance its interaction with SAARC countries, other International agencies and many other major cities of the world to achieve better urban management and developmental programs for Kathmandu.
Kathmandu is home to several international and regional organizations, including the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC).
International Buddhist Meditation Center operates in Kathmandu.
Kathmandu is twinned with:
King Tribhuvan | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17168 |
Kington Magna
Kington Magna is a village and civil parish in the Blackmore Vale in the English county of Dorset, situated about south-west of the town of Gillingham, in the North Dorset administrative district.
The name Kington Magna means 'great King's Town'; it derives from "cyne-" (later "cyning") and "tūn", Old English for 'royal estate or manor'. The affix "magna", Latin for great, was added to distinguish it from Little Kington, a smaller settlement nearby. In 1086 in the Domesday Book these were recorded together in three entries as "Chintone", which had 27 households and a total taxable value of 13 geld units, and was in the hundred of Gillingham. In 1243 it was recorded as Magna Kington. Most of the current buildings in the village are no older than the seventeenth century. In 1851 a Primitive Methodist chapel was built in the village; it was on Chapel Hill, which runs parallel to Church Hill. In 1860 a pottery was established at Bye Farm, north of the main village; it manufactured tiles, drainpipes, bricks, and chimney and flower pots. The parish church of All Saints was restored and enlarged in 1862; most of the building, except for the late 15th-century west tower, was rebuilt. Near the church is a pond which was a medieval fishpond.
The parish covers about and, as well as the main village, includes the small settlement of Nyland in the west. The main village is sited on the slopes of a Corallian limestone hill, overlooking the flat Oxford Clay valley of the small River Cale, which drains into the Stour. In 1906 Sir Frederick Treves wrote in his "Highways & Byways in Dorset" that the village "straggles down hill like a small mountain stream."
In the 2011 census the parish had 180 dwellings, 169 households and a population of 389.
The nearest railway station is in Gillingham. Trains run on the Exeter to Waterloo line. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17169 |
Kiosk
Historically, a kiosk () was a small garden pavilion open on some or all sides common in Persia, the Indian subcontinent, and in the Ottoman Empire from the 13th century onward. Today, several examples of this type of kiosk still exist in and around the Topkapı Palace in Istanbul, and they can be seen in Balkan countries.
The word is used in English-speaking countries for small booths offering goods and services. In Australia they usually offer food service. Freestanding computer terminals dispensing information are called interactive kiosks.
Etymological data points to the Middle Persian word "kōšk" 'palace, portico' as the origin, via Turkish "köşk" 'pavilion' and French "kiosque" or Italian "chiosco".
A kiosk is an open summer-house or pavilion usually having its roof supported by pillars with screened or totally open walls. As a building type, it was first introduced by the Seljuks as a small building attached to the main mosque, which consisted of a domed hall with open arched sides. This architectural concept gradually evolved into a small yet grand residence used by Ottoman sultans, the most famous examples of which are quite possibly the Tiled Kiosk ("Çinili Köşk" in Turkish) and Baghdad Kiosk ("Bağdat Köşkü" in Turkish). The former was built in 1473 by Mehmed II ("the Conqueror") at the Topkapı Palace, Istanbul, and consists of a two storey building topped with a dome and having open sides overlooking the gardens of the palace. The Baghdad Koshk was also built at the Topkapı Palace in 1638–39, by Sultan Murad IV. The building is again domed, offering direct views onto the gardens and park of the Palace as well as the architecture of the city of Istanbul.
Sultan Ahmed III (1703–1730) also built a glass room of the Sofa Kiosk at the Topkapı Palace incorporating some Western elements, such as the gilded brazier designed by Duplessis père, which was given to the Ottoman ambassador by King Louis XV of France.
The first English contact with Turkish Kiosk came through Lady Wortley Montagu (1689–1762), the wife of the English ambassador to Istanbul, who in a letter written on 1 April 1717 to Anne Thistlethwayte, mentions a "chiosk" describing it as ""raised by 9 or 10 steps and enclosed with gilded lattices"".
European monarchs adopted the building type. Stanisław Leszczyński, king of Poland and father-in-law of Louis XV, built kiosks for himself based on his memories of his captivity in Turkey. These kiosks were used as garden pavilions serving coffee and beverages but later were converted into band stands and tourist information stands decorating most European gardens, parks and high streets.
Conservatories were in the form of corridors connecting the Pavilion to the stables and consisting of a passage of flowers covered with glass and linked with orangery, a greenhouse, an aviary, a pheasantry and hothouses. The influence of Muslim and Islamo-Indian forms appears clearly in these buildings and particularly in the pheasantry where its higher part is an adaptation of the kiosks found on the roof of Allahabad Palace, as illustrated by Thomas Daniell. Today's conservatories incorporate many elements of Islamic architecture, although modern art forms have shifted from the classical art forms that were used in earlier times.
In the Western hemisphere and in English-speaking countries, a "kiosk" is also a booth with an open window on one side. Some vendors operate from kiosks (see mall kiosk), selling small, inexpensive consumables such as newspapers, magazines, lighters, street maps, cigarettes, live and frozen fishing bait and confections.
In Australia, the word is commonly used for small buildings that are used to dispense mainly take-away food and drinks, on beaches, in shopping arcades or in parks. Since the 21st century, many of these have been upgraded and serve fancier food and barista-made coffee.
An information kiosk (or information booth) dispenses free information in the form of maps, pamphlets, and other literature, and/or advice offered by an attendant.
An electronic kiosk (or computer kiosk or interactive kiosk) houses a computer terminal that often employs custom kiosk software designed to function while preventing users from accessing system functions. Indeed, "kiosk mode" describes such a mode of software operation. Computerized kiosks may store data locally, or retrieve it from a computer network. Some computer kiosks provide a free, informational public service, while others serve a commercial purpose (see mall kiosk). Touchscreens, trackballs, computer keyboards, and pushbuttons are all typical input devices for interactive computer kiosk. Touchscreen kiosks are commercially used as industrial appliances, reducing lines, eliminating paper, improving efficiency and service. Their uses are unlimited from refrigerators to airports, health clubs, movie theaters and libraries. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17171 |
Knowbot Information Service
The Knowbot Information Service (KIS), also known as netaddress, is an Internet user search engine that debuted in December 1989. Although it searched users, not content, it could be argued to be the first search engine on the Internet as it queried more than a single network for information. It provided a uniform user interface to a variety of remote directory services such as whois, finger, X.500, and MCI Mail. By submitting a single query to KIS, a user can search a set of remote white pages services and see the results of the search in a uniform format. There are several interfaces to the KIS service including e-mail and telnet. Another KIS interface imitates the Berkeley whois command.
KIS consists of two distinct types of modules which interact with each other (typically across a network) to provide the service. One module is a user agent module that runs on the KIS mail host machine. The second module is a remote server module (possibly on a different machine) that interrogates various database services across the network and provides the results to the user agent module in a uniform fashion. Interactions between the two modules can be via messages between knowbots or by actual movement of knowbots. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17174 |
KISS (system)
KISS is an early low-level programming language on the IBM 650 business computer. It was listed in the "Communications of the ACM" 2(5):16 (May 1959). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17175 |
KISS principle
KISS, an acronym for "keep it simple, stupid" or "keep it stupid simple", is a design principle noted by the U.S. Navy in 1960. The KISS principle states that most systems work best if they are kept simple rather than made complicated; therefore, simplicity should be a key goal in design, and unnecessary complexity should be avoided. The phrase has been associated with aircraft engineer Kelly Johnson. The term "KISS principle" was in popular use by 1970. Variations on the phrase include: "Keep it simple, silly", "keep it short and simple", "keep it simple and straightforward", "keep it small and simple", or "keep it stupid simple".
The principle most likely finds its origins in similar minimalist concepts, such as Occam's razor, Leonardo da Vinci's "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication", Shakespeare's "Brevity is the soul of wit", Mies Van Der Rohe's "Less is more", Bjarne Stroustrup's "Make Simple Tasks Simple!", or Antoine de Saint Exupéry's "It seems that perfection is reached not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away". Colin Chapman, the founder of Lotus Cars, urged his designers to "Simplify, then add lightness". Heath Robinson machines and Rube Goldberg's machines, intentionally overly-complex solutions to simple tasks or problems, are humorous examples of "non-KISS" solutions.
A variant "Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler" is attributed to Albert Einstein, although this may be an editor's paraphrase of a lecture he gave. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17176 |
KL0
Kernel Language 0 (KL0) is a sequential logic programming language based on Prolog, used in the ICOT Fifth generation computer project. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17178 |
KL1
KL1, or Kernel Language 1 is an experimental AND-parallel version of KL0 developed for the ICOT Fifth Generation Computer project. KL1 is an implementation of Flat GHC (a subset of the Guarded Horn Clauses language by Kazunori Ueda), making it a parallelised Prolog variant. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17179 |
Klamath people
The Klamath people are a Native American tribe of the Plateau culture area in Southern Oregon and Northern California. Today Klamath people are enrolled in the federally recognized tribes:
The Klamath people lived in the area around the Upper Klamath Lake (E-ukshi - “Lake”) and the Klamath, Williamson (Kóke - “River”), Wood River (E-ukalksini Kóke), and Sprague (Plaikni Kóke - “River Uphill”) rivers. They subsisted primarily on fish and gathered roots and seeds. While there was knowledge of their immediate neighbors, apparently the Klamath were unaware of the existence of the Pacific Ocean. Gatschet has described this position as leaving the Klamath living in a "protracted isolation" from outside cultures.
North of their tribal territory lived the Molala ("Kuikni maklaks"), in the northeast and east in the desert-like plains were various Northern Paiute bands ("Shá'ttumi", collective term for Northern Paiute, Bannock and Northern Shoshone) - among them the "Goyatöka Band" ("Crayfish Eaters"), direct south their Modoc kin ("Mo'dokni maklaks" - "Southern People, i.e. Tule Lake People") with whom they shared the Modoc Plateau, in the southwest were living Shasta peoples ("S[h]asti maklaks") and the Klamath River further downstream the Karuk and Yurok (both: "Skatchpalikni" - "People along the Scott River"), in the west and northwest were the Latgawa ("Upland Takelma") ("Walumskni") and
Takelma/Dagelma ("Lowland/River Takelma") (both called: "Wálamsknitumi, Wálamskni maklaks" - “Rogue River People”). Beyond the Cascade Range ("Yámakisham Yaina" - “mountains of the Northerners”) in the Rogue River Valley ("Wálamsh") lived the "Rogue "River" Athabascan ("Wálamsknitumi, Wálamskni maklaks" - “Rogue River People”) and further south along the Pit River ("Moatuashamkshini/Móatni Kóke" - "South River") lived the Achomawi and Atsugewi (both called: "Móatuash maklaks" - "South River People, i.e. Pit River People").
The Klamath were known to raid neighboring tribes, such as the Achomawi on the Pit River, and occasionally to take prisoners as slaves. They traded with the Wasco-Wishram at The Dalles. However, scholars such as Alfred L. Kroeber and Leslie Spier consider these slaving raids by the Klamath to begin only with the acquisition of the horse.
These natives made southern Oregon their home for long enough to witness the eruption of Mount Mazama. It was a legendary volcanic mountain who is the creator of Crater Lake, now considered to be a beautiful natural formation.
In 1826, Peter Skene Ogden, an explorer for the Hudson's Bay Company, first encountered the Klamath people, and he was trading with them by 1829. The United States frontiersman Kit Carson admired their arrows, which were reported to be able to shoot through a house.
The Klamaths, Modocs, and the Yahooskin (Yahuskin) Band of Northern Paiute (in Paiute known as: Goyatöka - "Crayfish eaters"), which was erroneously called "Upper Sprague River Snakes" believed to be a Band of "Snake Indians", the collective name given to the Northern Paiute, Bannock, and Shoshone Native American tribes, signed a treaty with the United States in 1864, establishing the Klamath Reservation to the northeast of Upper Klamath Lake. This area was largely part of the traditional territory controlled by the ă′ukuckni Klamath band. The treaty required the tribes to cede the land in the Klamath Basin, bounded on the north by the 44th parallel, to the United States. In return, the United States was to make a lump sum payment of $35,000, and annual payments totalling $80,000 over 15 years, as well as providing infrastructure and staff for the reservation. The treaty provided that, if the Indians drank or stored intoxicating liquor on the reservation, the payments could be withheld; the United States could also locate additional tribes on the reservation in the future. The tribes requested Lindsay Applegate as the agent to represent the United States to them. The Indian agent estimated the total population of the three tribes at about 2,000 when the treaty was signed.
Since termination of recognition of their tribal sovereignty in 1954 (with federal payments not disbursed until 1961), the Klamath and neighboring tribes have reorganized their government and revived tribal identity. The Klamath, along with the Modoc and Yahooskin, have formed the federally recognized Klamath Tribes confederation. Their tribal government is based in Chiloquin, Oregon.
Some Klamath live on the Quartz Valley Indian Community in Siskiyou County, California.
Traditionally there were several cultural subdivisions among the Klamath, based on the location of their residency within the Klamath Basin. Despite this, the five recognized "tribelets" (the Klamath Tribes count six) mutually considered each other the same ethnic group, about 1,200 people in total. Like many Indigenous cultures of the Pacific Northwest, the Klamath lived a semi-sedentary life. Winter settlements were in permanent locations that were reoccupied annually. Construction of the earth-lodges would begin in Autumn, with materials salvaged from abandoned, dilapidated buildings made in previous years. Leslie Spier has detailed some of the winter settlement patterns for Klamath as follows:
The towns are not isolated, compact groups of houses, but stretch along the banks for half a mile or more. In fact, the settlements on Williamson river below the Sprague river junction form a practically continuous string of houses for five or six miles, the house pits being, in many spots, crowded close together. Informants insisted that many of these were occupied at the same time. When we consider that these earth-lodges may have housed several families, there is strong suggestion of a considerable population.
Marriage was a unique practice for the Klamath, compared to neighboring cultures found in the borderlands of modern Oregon, California, Nevada and Idaho. For example, unlike the Hupa, Karok, and Yurok, the Klamath didn't hold formal talks between families for a bride price. Especially notable was the cultural norm that allowed wives to leave husbands, as they were "in no sense chattel ... and certainly cannot be disposed of as a possession."
The Klamath use Apocynum cannabinum as a fiber and eat the roots of Lomatium canbyi. They use the rootstocks of Sagittaria cuneata as food.
Dentalium shells were common among the Klamath prior to colonization. Compared to other native cultures dentalium didn't hold as much financial use among the Klamath. However, longer shells were generally held to be more valuable. Nonetheless these shells were esteemed primarily for as jewelry and personal adornment. Septum piercings were commonly given to younger members of Klamath families to allow inserting dentalium. Some individuals wouldn't however use any shells in their septum. Spier gives the following account for their usage:
The septum of the nose is pierced and the ear lobes, the latter twice or even more frequently. Both sexes insert dentalium shells horizontally through the septum ... Ear pendants are a group of four dentalia hung in a bunch by their tips.
The use of dentalium in septum piercings, in addition to other means of ornamentation, was common among the Wasco-Wishram as well.
The Klamath people are grouped with the Plateau Indians—the peoples who originally lived on the Columbia River Plateau. They were most closely linked with the Modoc people.
The Klamath spoke one dialect of the Klamath–Modoc language - the northern or "fi-ukshikni" dialect, the other - the "southern" dialect being spoken by the Modoc people, who lived south of the Klamath. Once thought to be a language isolate, Klamath–Modoc is now considered a member of the Plateau Penutian language family.
Both the Klamath and the Modoc called themselves "maqlaqs", "maqlags" or "Maklaks" meaning "people". When they wanted to distinguish between themselves they added "knii" ("people from/of"), the Klamath were called "?ewksiknii", "people of the [Klamath] Lake", and the Modoc were called "moowatdal'knii", "people of the south". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17180 |
Klerer–May System
The Klerer–May System is a programming language developed in the mid-1960s, oriented to numerical scientific programming, whose most notable feature is its two-dimensional syntax based on traditional mathematical notation.
For input and output, the Klerer–May system used a Friden Flexowriter modified to allow half-line motions for subscripts and superscripts. The character set included digits, upper-case letters, subsets of 14 lower-case Latin letters and 18 Greek letters, arithmetic operators (codice_1 codice_2 codice_3 codice_4 codice_5) and punctuation (codice_6 codice_7 codice_8 codice_9), and eight special line-drawing characters (resembling codice_10 codice_11 codice_12 codice_13 codice_14 codice_15 codice_16 codice_17) used to construct multi-line brackets and symbols for summation, products, roots, and for multi-line division or fractions.
The system was intended to be forgiving of input mistakes, and easy to learn; its reference manual was only two pages.
The system was developed by Melvin Klerer and Jack May at Columbia University's Hudson Laboratories in Dobbs Ferry, New York, for the Office of Naval Research, and ran on GE-200 series computers. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17186 |
KL-ONE
KL-ONE (pronounced "kay ell won") is a well known knowledge representation system in the tradition of semantic networks and frames; that is, it is a frame language. The system is an attempt to overcome semantic indistinctness in semantic network representations and to explicitly represent conceptual information as a structured inheritance network.
There is a whole family of KL-ONE-like systems. One of the innovations that KL-ONE initiated was the use of a deductive classifier, an automated reasoning engine that can validate a frame ontology and deduce new information about the ontology based on the initial information provided by a domain expert.
Frames in KL-ONE are called concepts. These form hierarchies using subsume-relations; in the KL-ONE terminology a super class is said to subsume its subclasses.
Multiple inheritance is allowed. Actually a concept is said to be well-formed only if it inherits from more than one other concept. All concepts, except the top concept (usually THING), must have at least one super class.
In KL-ONE descriptions are separated into two basic classes of concepts: primitive and defined. Primitives are domain concepts that are not fully defined. This means that given all the properties of a concept, this is not sufficient to classify it. They may also be viewed as incomplete definitions. Using the same view, defined concepts are complete definitions. Given the properties of a concept, these are necessary and sufficient conditions to classify the concept.
The slot-concept is called roles and the values of the roles are role-fillers. There are several different types of roles to be used in different situations. The most common and important role type is the generic RoleSet that captures the fact that the role may be filled with more than one filler. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17188 |
Knud Rasmussen
Knud Johan Victor Rasmussen (; 7 June 1879 – 21 December 1933) was a Greenlandic–Danish polar explorer and anthropologist. He has been called the "father of Eskimology" and was the first European to cross the Northwest Passage via dog sled. He remains well known in Greenland, Denmark and among Canadian Inuit.
Rasmussen was born in Jakobshavn, Greenland, the son of a Danish missionary, the vicar Christian Rasmussen, and an Inuit–Danish mother, Lovise Rasmussen (née Fleischer). He had two siblings.
Rasmussen spent his early years in Greenland among the Kalaallit where he learned to speak Kalaallisut, hunt, drive dog sleds and live in harsh Arctic conditions. "My playmates were native Greenlanders; from the earliest boyhood I played and worked with the hunters, so even the hardships of the most strenuous sledge-trips became pleasant routine for me."
He was later educated in Lynge, North Zealand, Denmark. Between 1898 and 1900 he pursued an unsuccessful career as an actor and opera singer.
He went on his first expedition in 1902–1904, known as The Danish Literary Expedition, with Jørgen Brønlund, Harald Moltke and Ludvig Mylius-Erichsen, to examine Inuit culture. After returning home he went on a lecture circuit and wrote "The People of the Polar North" (1908), a combination travel journal and scholarly account of Inuit folklore. In 1908, he married Dagmar Andersen.
In 1910, Rasmussen and friend Peter Freuchen established the Thule Trading Station at Cape York ("Qaanaaq"), Greenland, as a trading base. The name Thule was chosen because it was the most northerly trading post in the world, literally the "Ultima Thule". Thule Trading Station became the home base for a series of seven expeditions, known as the "Thule Expeditions", between 1912 and 1933.
The First Thule Expedition (1912, Rasmussen and Freuchen) aimed to test Robert Peary's claim that a channel divided Peary Land from Greenland. They proved this was not the case in a remarkable journey across the inland ice that almost killed them. Clements Markham, president of the Royal Geographical Society, called the journey the "finest ever performed by dogs." Freuchen wrote personal accounts of this journey (and others) in "Vagrant Viking" (1953) and "I Sailed with Rasmussen" (1958).
The Second Thule Expedition (1916–1918) was larger with a team of seven men, which set out to map a little-known area of Greenland's north coast. This journey was documented in Rasmussen's account "Greenland by the Polar Sea" (1921). The trip was beset with two fatalities, the only in Rasmussen's career, namely Thorild Wulff and Hendrik Olsen. The Third Thule Expedition (1919) was depot-laying for Roald Amundsen's polar drift in "Maud". The Fourth Thule Expedition (1919–1920) was in east Greenland where Rasmussen spent several months collecting ethnographic data near Angmagssalik.
Rasmussen's "greatest achievement" was the massive Fifth Thule Expedition (1921–1924) which was designed to "attack the great primary problem of the origin of the Eskimo race." A ten volume account ("The Fifth Thule Expedition 1921–1924" (1946)) of ethnographic, archaeological and biological data was collected, and many artifacts are still on display in museums in Denmark. The team of seven first went to eastern Arctic Canada where they began collecting specimens, taking interviews (including the shaman Aua, who told him of Uvavnuk), and excavating sites.
Rasmussen left the team and traveled for 16 months with two Inuit hunters by dog sled across North America to Nome, Alaska – he tried to continue to Russia but his visa was refused. He was the first European to cross the Northwest Passage via dog sled. His journey is recounted in "Across Arctic America" (1927), considered today a classic of polar expedition literature. This trip has also been called the ""Great Sled Journey"" and was dramatized in the Canadian film "The Journals of Knud Rasmussen" (2006).
For the next seven years Rasmussen traveled between Greenland and Denmark giving lectures and writing. In 1931, he went on the Sixth Thule Expedition, designed to consolidate Denmark's claim on a portion of eastern Greenland that was contested by Norway.
The Seventh Thule Expedition (1933) was meant to continue the work of the sixth, but Rasmussen contracted pneumonia after an episode of food poisoning attributed to eating kiviaq, dying a few weeks later in Copenhagen at the age of 54.
In addition to several capes and glaciers, Knud Rasmussen Range in Greenland is named after him.
He was awarded an Honorary Fellowship from the American Geographical Society in 1912, and its Daly Medal in 1924. The Royal Geographical Society awarded him their Founder's Gold Medal in 1923 and the Royal Danish Geographical Society their Hans Egede Medal in 1924. He was made honorary doctor at the University of Copenhagen in 1924. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17193 |
Knute Rockne
Knute Kenneth Rockne ( ; March 4, 1888 – March 31, 1931) was a Norwegian-American football player and coach at the University of Notre Dame.
Rockne is regarded as one of the greatest coaches in college football history. His biography at the College Football Hall of Fame identifies him as "without question, American football's most-renowned coach". Rockne helped to popularize the forward pass and made the Notre Dame Fighting Irish a major factor in college football.
Knute Rockne was born Knut Larsen Rokne, in Voss, Norway, to smith and wagonmaker Lars Knutson Rokne (1858–1912) and his wife, Martha Pedersdatter Gjermo (1859–1944). He immigrated to Chicago with his parents when he was five years old. He grew up in the Logan Square area of Chicago, on the northwest side of the city. Rockne learned to play football in his neighborhood and later played end in a local group called the Logan Square Tigers. He attended Lorenz Brentano elementary school, and North West Division High School in Chicago where he played football and ran track.
After Rockne graduated from high school, he took a job as a mail dispatcher with the post office in Chicago for four years. When he was 22, he had saved enough money to continue his education. He headed to Notre Dame in Indiana to finish his schooling. Rockne excelled as a football end there, winning All-American honors in 1913. Rockne worked as a lifeguard at Cedar Point in the summer of 1913.
Rockne helped to transform the college game in a single contest. On November 1, 1913, the Notre Dame squad stunned the highly regarded Army team 35–13 in a game played at West Point. Led by quarterback Charlie "Gus" Dorais and Rockne, the Notre Dame team attacked the Cadets with an offense that featured both the expected powerful running game but also long and accurate downfield forward passes from Dorais to Rockne. This game was not the "invention" of the forward pass, but it was the first major contest in which a team used the forward pass regularly throughout the game.
At Notre Dame, Rockne was educated as a chemist and he graduated in 1914 with a degree in pharmacy. After graduating, he was the laboratory assistant to noted polymer chemist Julius Arthur Nieuwland at Notre Dame and helped out with the football team, but rejected further work in chemistry after receiving an offer to coach football. In 1914, he was recruited by Peggy Parratt to play for the Akron Indians. There Parratt had Rockne playing both end and halfback and teamed with him on several successful forward pass plays during their title drive. Knute wound up in Massillon, Ohio, in 1915 along with former Notre Dame teammate Dorais to play with the professional Massillon Tigers. Rockne and Dorais brought the forward pass to professional football from 1915 to 1917 when they led the Tigers to the championship in 1915. "Pro Football in the Days of Rockne" by Emil Klosinski maintains the worst loss ever suffered by Rockne was in 1917. He coached the "South Bend Jolly Fellows Club" when they lost 40–0 to the Toledo Maroons.
During 13 years as head coach, Rockne led Notre Dame to 105 victories, 12 losses, five ties and three national championships, which included five undefeated and untied seasons. Rockne posted the highest all-time winning percentage (.881) for a major college football coach. His schemes utilized the eponymous Notre Dame Box offense and the 7–2–2 defense. Rockne's box included a shift. The backfield lined up in a T-formation, then quickly shifted into a box to the left or right just as the ball was snapped.
Rockne was also shrewd enough to recognize that intercollegiate sports had a show-business aspect. Thus he worked hard promoting Notre Dame football to make it financially successful. He used his considerable charm to court favor from the media, which then consisted of newspapers, wire services and radio stations and networks, to obtain free advertising for Notre Dame football. He was very successful as an advertising pitchman for South Bend-based Studebaker and other products. He eventually received an annual income of $75,000 from Notre Dame.
During the war-torn season of 1918, Rockne took over from his predecessor Jesse Harper and posted a 3–1–2 record, losing only to the Michigan Aggies. He made his coaching debut on September 28, 1918, against Case Tech in Cleveland, earning a 26–6 victory. In the backfield were Leonard Bahan, George Gipp, and Curly Lambeau. In Gipp, Rockne had an ideal handler of the forward pass.
Rockne handled the line and Gus Dorais handled the backfield of the 1919 team. The team went undefeated and was a national champion, though the championship is not recognized by Notre Dame.
Gipp died on December 14, 1920, just two weeks after being elected Notre Dame's first All-American by Walter Camp. He likely contracted strep throat and pneumonia while giving punting lessons after his final game, on November 20 against Northwestern University. Since antibiotics were not available in the 1920s, treatment options for such infections were limited and they could be fatal even to the young and healthy. It was while on his hospital bed and speaking to Rockne that he is purported to have delivered the line "win just one for the Gipper".
John Mohardt led the 1921 Notre Dame team to a 10-1 record with 781 rushing yards, 995 passing yards, 12 rushing touchdowns, and nine passing touchdowns. Grantland Rice wrote, "Mohardt could throw the ball to within a foot or two of any given space" and noted that the 1921 Notre Dame team "was the first team we know of to build its attack around a forward passing game, rather than use a forward passing game as a mere aid to the running game". Mohardt had both Eddie Anderson and Roger Kiley at end to receive his passes.
The national champion 1924 team included the "Four Horsemen" backfield of Harry Stuhldreher, Don Miller, Jim Crowley, and Elmer Layden. The line was known as the "Seven Mules". The Irish capped an undefeated 10–0 season with a victory over Stanford in the Rose Bowl.
For all his success, Rockne also made what an Associated Press writer called "one of the greatest coaching blunders in history". Instead of coaching his 1926 team against Carnegie Tech, Rockne traveled to Chicago for the Army–Navy Game to "write newspaper articles about it, as well as select an All-America football team". Carnegie Tech used the coach's absence as motivation for a 19–0 win; the upset likely cost the Irish a chance for a national title.
The 1928 team lost to national champion Georgia Tech. "I sat at Grant Field and saw a magnificent Notre Dame team suddenly recoil before the furious pounding of one man–Peter Pund", said Rockne. "Nobody could stop him. I counted 20 scoring plays that this man ruined." Rockne wrote of an attack on his coaching in the "Atlanta Journal", "I am surprised that a paper of such fine, high standing [as yours] would allow a zipper to write in his particular vein ... the article by Fuzzy Woodruff was not called for."
On November 10, 1928, the Fighting Irish were tied with Army 0–0 at the end of the half. Rockne entered the locker room and told the team the words he heard on Gipp's deathbed in 1920: "I've got to go, Rock. It's all right. I'm not afraid. Some time, Rock, when the team is up against it, when things are going wrong and the breaks are beating the boys, tell them to go in there with all they've got and win just one for the Gipper. I don't know where I'll be then, Rock. But I'll know about it, and I'll be happy." This inspired the team, who then won the game 12–6. The phrase "Win one for the Gipper" was later used as a political slogan by Ronald Reagan, who in 1940 portrayed Gipp in "Knute Rockne, All American."
Both the 1929 and the 1930 teams went undefeated and were national champions. According to interviews, Rockne considered his 1929 team his strongest overall. Rockne also said he considered his 1930 team to have been his best offensively before the departure of Jumping Joe Savoldi. Rockne was struck with illness in 1929, and the "de facto" head coach was assistant Tom Lieb. Rockne's all-time All-America backfield was Jim Thorpe, Red Grange, George Gipp, and George Pfann.
Rockne met Bonnie Gwendoline Skiles (1891–1956) of Kenton, Ohio, an avid gardener, while the two were employed at Cedar Point. Bonnie was the daughter of George Skiles and Huldah Dry. The two married at Sts. Peter and Paul Catholic Church in Sandusky, Ohio, on July 14, 1914, with Father William F. Murphy officiating and Gus Dorais as best man. They had four children: Knute Lars Jr., William Dorias, Mary Jeane and John Vincent. Rockne converted from the Lutheran to the Roman Catholic faith on November 20, 1925. The Rev. Vincent Mooney, C.S.C., baptized Rockne in the Log Chapel on Notre Dame's campus.
Rockne died in the crash of a Transcontinental & Western Air airliner in Kansas on March 31, 1931, while "en route" to participate in the production of the film "The Spirit of Notre Dame" (released October 13, 1931). He had stopped in Kansas City to visit his two sons, Bill and Knute Jr., who were in boarding school there at the Pembroke-Country Day School. A little over an hour after taking off from Kansas City, one of the Fokker Trimotor's wings broke up in flight. The cause of the damage was determined to be that the plane's plywood outer skin was bonded to the ribs and spars with water-based aliphatic resin glue and flight in rain had caused the bond to deteriorate to the point that sections of the plywood suddenly separated in flight. The plane crashed into a wheat field near Bazaar, Kansas, killing Rockne and seven others.
Coincidentally, Jess Harper was a friend of Rockne and also the coach who Rockne had replaced at Notre Dame. Harper lived about 100 miles from the spot of the crash and he was called to make positive identification of Rockne's body. A memorial dedicated to the victims stands on the spot where the plane crashed. The memorial is surrounded by a wire fence with wooden posts and was maintained for many years by James Heathman, who, at the age of 13 in 1931, was one of the first people to arrive at the site of the crash.
Rockne's unexpected death startled the nation and triggered a national outpouring of grief, comparable to the deaths of presidents. President Herbert Hoover called Rockne's death "a national loss". King Haakon VII of Norway, Rockne's birthplace, posthumously knighted Rockne and sent a personal envoy to Rockne's massive funeral. More than 100,000 people lined the route of his funeral procession, and the funeral was broadcast live on network radio across the United States and in Europe as well as parts of South America and Asia.
Rockne was buried in Highland Cemetery in South Bend, the city adjacent to the Notre Dame campus.
Driven by the public feeling for Rockne, the crash story played out at length in nearly all the nation's newspapers and public demand for an inquiry into the crash's causes and circumstances ensued.
The national outcry over the disaster that killed Rockne and seven others triggered sweeping changes to aircraft design, manufacturing, operation, inspection, maintenance, regulation and crash investigation, igniting a safety revolution that ultimately transformed airline travel worldwide from the most dangerous forms of travel to one of the safest.
Rockne was not the first coach to use the forward pass, but he helped popularize it nationally. Most football historians agree that a few schools, notably St. Louis University (under coach Eddie Cochems), Michigan, Carlisle and Minnesota, had passing attacks in place before Rockne arrived at Notre Dame. The great majority of passing attacks, however, consisted solely of short pitches and shovel passes to stationary receivers. Additionally, few of the major Eastern teams that constituted the power center of college football at the time used the pass. In the summer of 1913, while he was a lifeguard on the beach at Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio, Rockne and his college teammate and roommate Gus Dorais worked on passing techniques. These were employed in games by the 1913 Notre Dame squad and subsequent Harper- and Rockne-coached teams and included many features common in modern passing, including having the passer throw the ball overhand and having the receiver run under a football and catch the ball in stride. That fall, Notre Dame upset heavily favored Army 35–13 at West Point thanks to a barrage of Dorais-to-Rockne long downfield passes. The game played an important role in displaying the potency of the forward pass and "open offense" and convinced many coaches to add pass plays to their play books. The game is dramatized in the movies "Knute Rockne, All American" and "The Long Gray Line". In May 1949, Knute Rockne appeared in the Master Man story on Kid Eternity comics, Vol 1, number 15.
Rockne's coaching tree includes: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17195 |
Kariba Dam
The Kariba Dam is a double curvature concrete arch dam in the Kariba Gorge of the Zambezi river basin between Zambia and Zimbabwe. The dam stands tall and long. The dam forms Lake Kariba, which extends for and holds of water.
The double curvature concrete arch dam was designed by Coyne et Bellier and constructed between 1955 and 1959 by Impressit of Italy at a cost of $135,000,000 for the first stage with only the Kariba South power cavern. Final construction and the addition of the Kariba North Power cavern by Mitchell Construction was not completed until 1977 due to largely political problems for a total cost of $480,000,000. During construction, 86 men lost their lives.
The Kariba Dam supplies of electricity to parts of both Zambia (the Copperbelt) and Zimbabwe and generates per annum. Each country has its own power station on the north and south bank of the dam respectively. The south station belonging to Zimbabwe has been in operation since 1960 and had six generators of capacity each for a total of .
On November 11, 2013 it was announced by Zimbabwe's Finance Minister, Patrick Chinamasa that capacity at the Zimbabwean (South) Kariba hydropower station would be increased by 300 megawatts. The cost of upgrading the facility has been supported by a $319m loan from China. The deal is a clear example of Zimbabwe's "Look East" policy, which was adopted after falling out with Western powers. Construction on the Kariba South expansion began in mid-2014 and was initially expected to be complete in 2019.
In March 2018, president Emmerson Mnangagwa commissioned the completed expansion of "Kariba South Hydroelectric Power Station". The addition of two new turbines, brings to at capacity at this station to . The expansion work was done by Sinohydro, at a cost of US$533 million. Work started in 2014, and was completed in March 2018.
The north station belonging to Zambia has been in operation since 1976, and has four generators of each for a total of ; work to expand this capacity by an additional to was completed in December 2013. Two additional 180 MW generators were added.
The Kariba Dam project was planned by the government of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, or Central African Federation (CAF). The CAF was a semi-independent state within the Commonwealth in southern Africa that existed from 1953 to the end of 1963, comprising the former self-governing British colonies of Northern Rhodesia and Southern Rhodesia and the former British protectorate of Nyasaland. Northern Rhodesia had decided earlier in 1953 (before the Federation was founded) to build a dam within its territory, on the Kafue River, a major tributary of the Zambezi. It would have been closer to Zambia's Copperbelt, which was in need of more power. This would have been a cheaper and less grandiose project, with a smaller environmental impact. Southern Rhodesia, the richest of the three, objected to a Kafue dam and insisted that the dam be sited instead at Kariba. Also, the capacity of the Kafue dam was much lower than that at Kariba. Initially the dam was managed and maintained by the Central African Power Corporation. The Kariba Dam is now owned and operated by the Zambezi River Authority, which is jointly and equally owned by Zimbabwe and Zambia.
Since Zambia's independence, two dams have been built on the Kafue River: the Kafue Gorge Dam and the Itezhi-Tezhi Dam.
The creation of the reservoir forced resettlement of about 57,000 Tonga people living along the Zambezi in both Northern Rhodesia and Southern Rhodesia.
From "The Shadow of The Dam", a first-hand account written by David Howarth in the 1960s, referring to the situation in Northern Rhodesia:- "Everything that a government can do on a meagre budget is being done. Demonstration gardens have been planted, to try to teach the Tonga more sensible methods of agriculture, and to try to find cash crops that they can grow. The hilly land has been plowed in ridge contours to guard against erosion. In Sinazongwe, an irrigated garden has grown a prodigious crop of pawpaws, bananas, oranges, lemons, and vegetables, and shown that the remains of the valley could be made prolific if only money could be found for irrigation. Cooperative markets have been organized, and Tonga are being taught to run them. Enterprising Tonga have been given loans to set themselves up as farmers. More schools have been built than the Tonga ever had before, and most of the Tonga are now within reach of dispensaries and hospitals."
There are many different perspectives on how much resettlement aid was given to the displaced tribe. According to anthropologist Thayer Scudder, who has studied these communities since the late 1950s, "Today, most are still 'development refugees.' Many live in less-productive, problem-prone areas, some of which have been so seriously degraded within the last generation that they resemble lands on the edge of the Sahara Desert."
A 2005 book, "Deep Water" by Jacques Leslie focused on the plight of the people resettled by the dam, and found the situation little changed. Kariba remains the worst dam-resettlement disaster in African history.
In a quest to restore their lives and find justice, the Tonga formed their own advocacy group in 2000, the Basilwizi Trust.
The Kariba Dam controls 90% of the total runoff of the Zambezi River, thus changing the downstream ecology dramatically.
From 1958 to 1961, 'Operation Noah' captured and removed around 6,000 large animals and numerous small ones threatened by the lake's rising waters.
On 6 February 2008, the BBC reported that heavy rain might lead to a release of water from the dam, which would force 50,000 people downstream to evacuate.
Rising levels led to the opening of the floodgates in March 2010, requiring the evacuation of 130,000 people who lived in the floodplain, and causing concerns that flooding may spread to nearby areas.
In March 2014, at a conference organized by the Zambezi River Authority, engineers warned that the foundations of the dam had weakened and there was a possibility of dam failure unless repairs were made.
On 3 October 2014 the BBC reported that “The Kariba Dam is in a dangerous state. Opened in 1959, it was built on a seemingly solid bed of basalt. But, in the past 50 years, the torrents from the spillway have eroded that bedrock, carving a vast crater that has undercut the dam's foundations. … engineers are now warning that without urgent repairs, the whole dam will collapse. If that happened, a tsunami-like wall of water would rip through the Zambezi valley, reaching the Mozambique border within eight hours. The torrent would overwhelm Mozambique's Cahora Bassa Dam and knock out 40% of southern Africa's hydroelectric capacity. Along with the devastation of wildlife in the valley, the Zambezi River Authority estimates that the lives of 3.5 million people are at risk.”
In June 2015 The Institute of Risk Management South Africa completed a Risk Research Report entitled "Impact of the failure of the Kariba Dam". It concluded: "Whilst we can debate whether the Kariba
Dam will fail, why it might occur and when, there is no doubt that the impact across the region would be devastating."
In January 2016 it was reported that water levels at the dam had dropped to 12% of capacity. Levels fell by , which is just above the minimum operating level for hydropower. Low rainfalls and overuse of the water by the power plants have left the reservoir near empty, raising the prospect that both Zimbabwe and Zambia will face water shortages.
In July and September 2018 the Lusaka Times reported that work had started relating to the plunge pool and cracks in the dam wall.
On 22 February 2019 Bloomberg reported "Zambia has reduced hydropower production at the Kariba Dam because of rapidly declining water levels" but "Zambia doesn’t anticipate power cuts as a result of shortages". On 5 August that year, the same publication reported that the reservoir was near empty, and that it may have to stop hydropower production. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17198 |
Keilhauite
Keilhauite (also known as "yttrotitanite") is a variety of the mineral titanite of a brownish black color, related to titanite in form. It consists chiefly of silicon dioxide, titanium dioxide, calcium oxide, and yttrium oxide. The variety was described in 1841 and named for Baltazar Mathias Keilhau (1797-1858) a Norwegian geologist.
Keilhauite has a chemical formula of (CaTi,Al2,Fe23+,Y23+)SiO5. It differs from titanite only in that calcium is substituted by up to 10 percent (Y,Ce)2O3. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17199 |
Kingsley Amis
Sir Kingsley William Amis, (16 April 1922 – 22 October 1995) was an English novelist, poet, critic and teacher. He wrote more than 20 novels, six volumes of poetry, a memoir, short stories, radio and television scripts, and works of social and literary criticism. He is best known for satirical comedies such as "One Fat Englishman" (1963), "Ending Up" (1974), "Jake's Thing" (1978) and "The Old Devils" (1986). His biographer, Zachary Leader, called Amis "the finest English comic novelist of the second half of the twentieth century." He was the father of the novelist Martin Amis. In 2008, "The Times" ranked him ninth on a list of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945.
Kingsley Amis was born on 16 April 1922 in Clapham, south London, the only child of William Robert Amis (1889–1963), a clerk for the mustard manufacturer Colman's in the City of London, and his wife Rosa Annie (née Lucas). The Amis grandparents were wealthy. William Amis's father, the glass merchant Joseph James Amis, owned a mansion called Barchester at Purley, then part of Surrey. Amis considered J. J. Amis – always called "Pater" or "Dadda" – "a jokey, excitable, silly little man," whom he "disliked and was repelled by". His wife Julia "was a large, dreadful, hairy-faced creature... whom [Amis] loathed and feared. His mother's parents (her father an enthusiastic collector of books employed at a gentleman's outfitters, being "the only grandparent [Amis] cared for") lived at Camberwell. Amis hoped to inherit much of his grandfather's library, but Amis was only permitted by his grandmother to take five volumes, on condition he wrote "from his grandfather's collection" on the flyleaf of each.
Amis was raised at Norbury – in his later estimation "not really a place, it's an expression on a map [–] really I should say I came from Norbury station." In 1940, the Amises moved to Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire. He was educated at the City of London School (as his father had been) on a scholarship, after his first year, and in April 1941 was admitted to St John's College, Oxford, also on a scholarship, where he read English. It was there he met Philip Larkin, with whom he formed the most important friendship of his life. While at Oxford in June 1941, Amis joined the Communist Party of Great Britain although he broke with communism in 1956, in view of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev's denunciation of Joseph Stalin in his speech "On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences".). In July 1942, he was called up for national service and served in the Royal Corps of Signals. He returned to Oxford in October 1945 to complete his degree. Although he worked hard and earned a first in English in 1947, he had decided by then to give much of his time to writing.
In 1946 he met Hilary Bardwell. They married in 1948 after she became pregnant with their first child, Philip. Amis initially arranged for her to have a back-street abortion, but changed his mind, fearing for her safety. He was a lecturer in English at the University College of Swansea from 1949 to 1961. Two other children followed: Martin in August 1949 and Sally in January 1954.
Days after Sally's birth, Amis's first novel, "Lucky Jim", was published to great acclaim. Critics felt it had caught the flavour of Britain in the 1950s and ushered in a new style of fiction. By 1972, its impressive sales in Britain had been matched by 1.25 million paperback copies sold in the United States. It was translated into 20 languages, including Polish, Hebrew, Korean, and Serbo-Croat. The novel won the Somerset Maugham Award for fiction and Amis became one of the writers known as the Angry Young Men. "Lucky Jim" was among the first British campus novels, setting a precedent for later generations of writers such as Malcolm Bradbury, David Lodge, Tom Sharpe and Howard Jacobson. As a poet, Amis was associated with The Movement.
In 1958–1959 Amis made the first of two visits to the United States, as Visiting Fellow in Creative Writing at Princeton University and a visiting lecturer in other north-eastern universities. On returning to Britain, he fell into a rut, and he began looking for another post. After 13 years at Swansea, Amis became a fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge in 1961, but regretted the move within a year, finding Cambridge an academic and social disappointment. He resigned in 1963, intent on moving to Majorca, although he actually moved no further than London.
In 1963, Hilary discovered that Amis was having an affair with the novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard. Hilary and Amis separated in August and he went to live with Howard, divorcing Hilary and marrying Howard in 1965. In 1968 he moved with Howard to Lemmons, a house in Barnet, north London. She and Amis divorced in 1983.
In his last years, Amis shared a house with Hilary and her third husband, Alastair Boyd, 7th Baron Kilmarnock. Martin wrote the memoir "Experience" about the life, charm and decline of his father.
Amis was knighted in 1990. In August 1995 he fell, suffering a suspected stroke. After apparently recovering, he worsened and died on 22 October 1995 at St Pancras Hospital, London. He was cremated and his ashes laid to rest at Golders Green Crematorium.
Amis is widely known as a comic novelist of life in mid to late 20th-century Britain, but his literary work covered many genres — poetry, essays, criticism, short stories, food and drink, anthologies, and several novels in genres such as science fiction and mystery. His career initially developed in an inverse pattern to that of his close friend Philip Larkin's. Before becoming known as a poet, Larkin had published two novels; Amis originally sought to be a poet and turned to novels only after publishing several volumes of verse. He continued throughout his career to write poetry, in a straightforward, accessible style that often masks a nuance of thought.
Amis's first novel, "Lucky Jim" (1954), satirises the highbrow academic set of an unnamed university, through the eyes of a struggling young lecturer of history. It was widely perceived as part of the Angry Young Men movement of the 1950s, in reacting against stultification of conventional British life, although Amis never encouraged this interpretation. Amis's other novels of the 1950s and early 1960s likewise depict contemporary situations drawn from his own experience. "That Uncertain Feeling" (1955) features a young provincial librarian (perhaps with an eye to Larkin working as a librarian in Hull) and his temptation to adultery. "I Like It Here" (1958) takes a contemptuous view of "abroad", after Amis's own travels on the Continent with a young family. "Take a Girl Like You" (1960) steps away from the immediately autobiographical, but remains grounded in the concerns of sex and love in ordinary modern life, tracing the courtship and ultimate seduction of the heroine by a young schoolmaster.
With "The Anti-Death League" (1966), Amis begins to show some of the experimentation – in content, if not style – that marked much of his work in the 1960s and 1970s. His departure from the strict realism of his early comedic novels is not so abrupt as might first appear. He had been avidly reading science fiction since a boy and developed that interest in the Christian Gauss Lectures of 1958, while visiting Princeton University. These were published that year as "New Maps of Hell: A Survey of Science Fiction", giving a serious yet light-handed treatment of what the genre had to say about man and society. Amis was especially keen on the dystopian works of Frederik Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth, and in "New Maps of Hell" coined the term "comic inferno" to describe a type of humorous dystopia, exemplified in the works of Robert Sheckley. He further displayed his devotion to the genre in editing, with the Sovietologist Robert Conquest, the science-fiction anthology series "Spectrum" I–V, which drew heavily upon 1950s numbers of the magazine "Astounding Science Fiction".
Though not explicitly science fiction, "The Anti-Death League" takes liberties with reality not found in Amis's earlier novels. It introduces a speculative bent that continued to develop in others of his genre novels such as "The Green Man" (1969) (mystery/horror) and "The Alteration" (1976) (alternative history). Much of this speculation concerned the improbability of the existence of any benevolent deity involved in human affairs. In "The Anti-Death League", "The Green Man", "The Alteration" and elsewhere, including poems such as "The Huge Artifice: an interim assessment" and "New Approach Needed", Amis showed frustration with a God who could lace the world with cruelty and injustice, and championed the preservation of ordinary human happiness – in family, in friendships, in physical pleasure – against the demands of any cosmological scheme. Amis's religious views appear in a response, reported in his "Memoirs". To the Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko's question, "You atheist?" Amis replied, "It's more that I hate Him."
During this time, Amis had not turned completely away from the comedic realism of "Lucky Jim" and "Take a Girl Like You". "I Want It Now" (1968) and "Girl, 20" (1971) both depict the "swinging" atmosphere of London in the late 1960s, in which Amis certainly participated, though neither book is strictly autobiographical. "Girl, 20", for instance, is set in the world of classical (and pop) music, in which Amis had no part. The book's noticeable command of music terminology and opinion shows Amis's amateur devotion to music and almost journalistic capacity to explore a subject that interested him. That intelligence is similarly displayed, for instance, in the ecclesiastical matters in "The Alteration", for Amis was neither a Roman Catholic nor a devotee of any church.
Throughout the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, Amis regularly produced essays and criticism, principally for periodical publication. Some were collected in 1968 into "What Became of Jane Austen? and Other Essays", in which Amis's wit and literary and social opinions were displayed on books such as Colin Wilson's "The Outsider" (panned), Iris Murdoch's début novel "Under the Net" (praised), and William Empson's "Milton's God" (inclined to agreement). Amis's opinions on books and people tended to appear, and often were, conservative, and yet, as the title essay of the collection shows, he was not merely reverent of "the classics" and of traditional morals, but more disposed to exercise his own rather independent judgement in all things.
Amis became associated with Ian Fleming's James Bond novels, which he admired, in the late 1960s, when he began composing critical works connected with the fictional spy, either under a pseudonym or uncredited. In 1965, he wrote the popular "James Bond Dossier" under his own name. That same year, he wrote "The Book of Bond, or, Every Man His Own 007", a tongue-in-cheek how-to manual about being a sophisticated spy, under the pseudonym "Lt Col. William ('Bill') Tanner", Tanner being M's Chief of Staff in many of Fleming's Bond novels. In 1968 Amis wrote "Colonel Sun", which was published under the pseudonym "Robert Markham".
Amis's literary style and tone changed significantly after 1970, with the possible exception of "The Old Devils", a Booker Prize winner. Several critics found him old-fashioned and misogynistic. His "Stanley and the Women", an exploration of social sanity, could be said to instance these traits. Others said that his output lacked the humanity, wit and compassion of earlier work.
This period also saw Amis as an anthologist, displaying a wide knowledge of all kinds of English poetry. "The New Oxford Book of Light Verse" (1978), which he edited, was a revision of an original volume done by W. H. Auden. Amis took it in a markedly new direction: Auden had interpreted light verse to include "low" verse of working-class or lower-class origin, regardless of subject matter, while Amis defined light verse as essentially light in tone, though not necessarily simple in composition. "The Amis Anthology" (1988), a personal selection of his favourite poems, grew out of his work for a London newspaper, in which he selected a poem a day and gave it a brief introduction.
Amis was shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times, for "Ending Up" (1974) and "Jake's Thing" (1978), and finally, as prizewinner, for "The Old Devils" in 1986.
In 2008, "The Times" ranked Kingsley Amis 13th on its list of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945.
As a young man at Oxford, Amis joined the Communist Party. He left in 1956. He later described this stage of his political life as "the callow Marxist phase that seemed almost compulsory in Oxford". Amis remained nominally on the Left for some time after the war, declaring in the 1950s that he would always vote for the Labour Party.
But he eventually moved further right, a development he discussed in the essay "Why Lucky Jim Turned Right" (1967); his conservatism and anti-communism can be seen in works like the dystopian novel "Russian Hide and Seek" (1980). In 1967, Amis, Robert Conquest, John Braine and several other authors signed a letter to "The Times" entitled "Backing for U.S. Policies in Vietnam", supporting the US government in the Vietnam War. He spoke at the Adam Smith Institute, arguing against government subsidy to the arts.
Amis, by his own admission and according to his biographers, was a serial adulterer for much of his life. This was a major contributory factors in the breakdown of his first marriage. A famous photograph of a sleeping Amis on a Yugoslav beach shows the slogan (written by wife Hilary) on his back "1 Fat Englishman — I fuck anything."
In one memoir, Amis wrote, "Now and then I become conscious of having the reputation of being one of the great drinkers, if not one of the great drunks, of our time". He suggests this reflects a naïve tendency in readers to apply the behaviour of his characters to himself. In fact he enjoyed drink and spent a good deal of time in pubs. Hilary Rubinstein, who accepted "Lucky Jim" for Victor Gollancz, commented, "I doubted whether Jim Dixon would have gone to the pub and drunk ten pints of beer... I didn't know Kingsley very well, you see." Clive James commented: "All on his own, he had the weekly drinks bill of a whole table at the Garrick Club even before he was elected. After he was, he would get so tight there that he could barely make it to the taxi." Amis was, however, adamant in his belief that inspiration did not come from a bottle: "Whatever part drink may play in the writer's life, it must play none in his or her work." This matches a disciplined approach to writing. For "many years" Amis imposed a rigorous daily schedule on himself, segregating writing and drink. Mornings were spent on writing, with a minimum daily output of 500 words. Drinking began about lunchtime, when this had been achieved. Such self-discipline was essential to Amis's prodigious output.
Yet according to James, Amis reached a turning point when his drinking ceased to be social and became a way of dulling his remorse and regret at his behaviour toward Hilly. "Amis had turned against himself deliberately... It seems fair to guess that the troubled grandee came to disapprove of his own conduct." His friend Christopher Hitchens said: "The booze got to him in the end, and robbed him of his wit and charm as well as of his health."
Amis had an unclear relationship with anti-Semitism, which he sometimes expressed, but also disliked and opposed.
He occasionally speculated on the commonly advanced Jewish stereotypes. Anti-Semitism was sometimes present in his conversations and letters to friends and associates: "The great Jewish vice is glibness, fluency... also possibly just bullshit, as in Marx, Freud, Marcuse." Or, "Chaplin is a horse's arse. He's a Jeeeew you see, like the Marx Brothers, like Danny Kaye." (Chaplin was not, in fact, Jewish.) It is a minor theme in his novel about a paranoid schizophrenic, "Stanley and the Women". As for the cultural complexion of America, Amis had this to say: "I've finally worked out why I don't like Americans... Because everyone there is either a Jew or a hick." Amis himself described his anti-Semitism as "very mild".
Amis's first, 15-year marriage was to Hilary Bardwell, the daughter of a civil servant, by whom he had two sons and one daughter: Philip Amis, a graphics designer; Martin Amis, a novelist; and Sally Amis, who died in 2000.
Amis was married a second time, to the novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard from 1965 to 1983, with whom he had no children. At the end of that marriage, he went to live with his ex-wife Hilary and her third husband, in a deal brokered by their two sons Philip and Martin to ensure he could be cared for until his death.
Richard Aldington – Kenneth Allott – Matthew Arnold – Kenneth Ashley – W. H. Auden – William Barnes – Oliver Bayley – Hilaire Belloc – John Betjeman – Laurence Binyon – William Blake – Edmund Blunden – Rupert Brooke – Robert Browning – Robert Burns – Thomas Campbell – Thomas Campion – G. K. Chesterton – Hartley Coleridge – Robert Conquest – W. J. Cory – John Davidson – Donald Davie – C. Day Lewis – Walter de la Mare – Ernest Dowson – Michael Drayton – Lawrence Durrell – Jean Elliot – George Farewell – James Elroy Flecker – Thomas Ford – Roy Fuller – Robert Graves – Thomas Gray – Fulke Greville – Heath – Reginald Heber – Felicia Dorothea Hemans – W. E. Henley – George Herbert – Ralph Hodgson – Thomas Hood – Teresa Hooley – Gerard Manley Hopkins – A. E. Housman – Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey – T. E. Hulme – Leigh Hunt – Elizabeth Jennings – Samuel Johnson – John Keats – Henry King – Charles Kingsley – Rudyard Kipling – Philip Larkin – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – John Lydgate – H. F. Lyte – Louis MacNeice – Andrew Marvell – John Masefield – Alice Meynell – Harold Monro – William Morris – Edwin Muir – Henry Newbolt – Alfred Noyes – Wilfred Owen – Thomas Love Peacock – George Peele – Alexander Pope – Frederic Prokosch – Walter Ralegh – John Crowe Ransom – Christina Rossetti – Siegfried Sassoon – John Skelton – Robert Southey – Edmund Spenser – Sir John Squire – Robert Louis Stevenson – John Suckling – Algernon Charles Swinburne – George Szirtes – Alfred, Lord Tennyson – Dylan Thomas – Edward Thomas – R. S. Thomas – Francis Thompson – Anthony Thwaite – Chidiock Tichborne – Aurelian Townsend – W. J. Turner – Oscar Wilde – John Wilmot, Lord Rochester – Roger Woddis – Charles Wolfe – William Wordsworth – William Butler Yeats – Andrew Young | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17202 |
Kana
Katakana, with a few additions, are also used to write Ainu. Taiwanese kana were used in Taiwanese Hokkien as glosses ("furigana") for Chinese characters in Taiwan under Japanese rule.
Each kana character (syllabogram) corresponds to one sound in the Japanese language, unlike kanji regular script corresponding to meaning (logogram). That is why the character system is named kana, literally "false name". Apart from the five vowels, this is always CV (consonant onset with vowel nucleus), such as "ka", "ki", etc., or V (vowel), such as "a", "i", etc., with the sole exception of the C grapheme for nasal codas usually romanised as "n". This structure has led some scholars to label the system "moraic" instead of "syllabic", because it requires the combination of two syllabograms to represent a CVC syllable with coda (i.e. CV"n", CV"m", CV"ng"), a CVV syllable with complex nucleus (i.e. multiple or expressively long vowels), or a CCV syllable with complex onset (i.e. including a glide, C"y"V, C"w"V).
Due to the limited number of phonemes in Japanese, as well as the relatively rigid syllable structure, the kana system is a very accurate representation of spoken Japanese.
The following table reads, in gojūon order, as "a", "i", "u", "e", "o" (down first column), then "ka", "ki", "ku", "ke", "ko" (down second column), and so on. "n" appears on its own at the end. Asterisks mark unused combinations.
Syllables beginning with the voiced consonants [g], [z], [d] and [b] are spelled with kana from the corresponding unvoiced columns ("k", "s", "t" and "h") and the voicing mark, "dakuten". Syllables beginning with [p] are spelled with kana from the "h" column and the half-voicing mark, "handakuten".
Syllables beginning with palatalized consonants are spelled with one of the seven consonantal kana from the "i" row followed by small "ya", "yu" or "yo". These digraphs are called yōon.
The difference in usage between hiragana and katakana is stylistic. Usually, hiragana is the default syllabary, and katakana is used in certain special cases.
Hiragana is used to write native Japanese words with no kanji representation (or whose kanji is thought obscure or difficult), as well as grammatical elements such as particles and inflections (okurigana).
Today katakana is most commonly used to write words of foreign origin that do not have kanji representations, as well as foreign personal and place names. Katakana is also used to represent onomatopoeia and interjections, emphasis, technical and scientific terms, transcriptions of the Sino-Japanese readings of kanji, and some corporate branding.
Kana can be written in small form above or next to lesser-known kanji in order to show pronunciation; this is called furigana. Furigana is used most widely in children's or learners' books. Literature for young children who do not yet know kanji may dispense with it altogether and instead use hiragana combined with spaces.
The first kana was a system called "man'yōgana," a set of kanji used solely for their phonetic values, much as Chinese uses characters for their phonetic values in foreign loanwords (especially proper nouns) today. "Man'yōshū", a poetry anthology assembled in 759, is written in this early script. Hiragana developed as a distinct script from cursive "man'yōgana", whereas katakana developed from abbreviated parts of regular script "man'yōgana" as a glossing system to add readings or explanations to Buddhist sutras.
Kana is traditionally said to have been invented by the Buddhist priest Kūkai in the ninth century. Kūkai certainly brought the Siddhaṃ script of India home on his return from China in 806; his interest in the sacred aspects of speech and writing led him to the conclusion that Japanese would be better represented by a phonetic alphabet than by the kanji which had been used up to that point. The modern arrangement of kana reflects that of Siddhaṃ, but the traditional "iroha" arrangement follows a poem which uses each kana once.
The present set of kana was codified in 1900, and rules for their usage in 1946.
Kana are the basis for collation in Japanese. They are taken in the order given by the "gojūon" (あ い う え お ... わ を ん), though iroha (い ろ は に ほ へ と ... せ す (ん)) ordering is used for enumeration in some circumstances. Dictionaries differ in the sequence order for long/short vowel distinction, small "tsu" and diacritics. As Japanese does not use word spaces (except as a tool for children), there can be no word-by-word collation; all collation is kana-by-kana.
The hiragana range in Unicode is U+3040 ... U+309F, and the katakana range is U+30A0 ... U+30FF. The obsolete and rare characters ("wi" and "we") also have their proper code points.
Characters U+3095 and U+3096 are hiragana small "ka" and small "ke", respectively. U+30F5 and U+30F6 are their katakana equivalents. Characters U+3099 and U+309A are combining dakuten and handakuten, which correspond to the spacing characters U+309B and U+309C. U+309D is the hiragana iteration mark, used to repeat a previous hiragana. U+309E is the voiced hiragana iteration mark, which stands in for the previous hiragana but with the consonant voiced ("k" becomes "g", "h" becomes "b", etc.). U+30FD and U+30FE are the katakana iteration marks. U+309F is a ligature of "yori" (より) sometimes used in vertical writing. U+30FF is a ligature of "koto" (コト), also found in vertical writing.
Additionally, there are halfwidth equivalents to the standard fullwidth katakana. These are encoded within the Halfwidth and Fullwidth Forms block (U+FF00–U+FFEF), starting at U+FF65 and ending at U+FF9F (characters U+FF61–U+FF64 are halfwidth punctuation marks):
There is also a small "Katakana Phonetic Extensions" range (U+31F0 ... U+31FF), which includes some additional small kana characters for writing the Ainu language. Further small kana characters are present in the "Small Kana Extension" block.
Unicode also includes "Katakana letter archaic E" (U+1B000), as well as 255 archaic Hiragana, in the Kana Supplement block. It also includes a further 31 archaic Hiragana in the Kana Extended-A block. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17204 |
Knights of the Lambda Calculus
The Knights of the Lambda Calculus is a semi-fictional organization of expert Lisp and Scheme hackers. The name refers to the lambda calculus, a mathematical formalism invented by Alonzo Church, with which Lisp is intimately connected, and references the Knights Templar.
There is no actual organization that goes by the name "Knights of the Lambda Calculus"; it mostly only exists as a hacker culture in-joke. The concept most likely originated at MIT. For example, in the Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs video lectures, Gerald Jay Sussman presents the audience with the button, saying they are now members of this special group. However, according to the Jargon File, a "well-known LISPer" has been known to give out buttons with Knights insignia on them, and some people have claimed to have membership in the Knights.
A group that evolved from or is similar to them, called "The Knights of Eastern Calculus", make a major appearance in the anime series "Serial Experiments Lain". References to MIT professors and other American computer scientists are prominent in Episode 11 of the series. At one point in the anime, Lain is seen with code displayed on her handheld device that appears to be Lisp. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17209 |
Knowbot
A knowbot is a kind of bot that collects information by automatically gathering certain specified information from web sites.
KNOWBOT is the acronym for Knowledge-Based Object Technology. This term, used as early as 1988 and known to have been implemented by December 1989 at the latest describes computer-based objects developed for collecting and storing specific information, in order to use that information to accomplish a specific task, and to enable sharing that information with other objects or processes. An early use of knowbots was to provide a computerized assistant to users to complete redundant detailed tasks without a need to train the user in computer technology. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17210 |
KOMPILER
In computing, the KOMPILER was one of the first language compilation and runtime systems for International Business Machines' IBM 701, the fastest commercial U.S. computer available in 1955.
Information on KOMPILER is listed on page 16 of Volume 2, Number 5 (May 1959) of the "Communications of the ACM". Known versions are KOMPILER 2 for IBM 701 and KOMPILER 3 for the IBM 704. KOMPILER was eventually replaced by a Fortran compiler on the IBM 704. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17212 |
KornShell
KornShell (codice_1) is a Unix shell which was developed by David Korn at Bell Labs in the early 1980s and announced at USENIX on July 14, 1983. The initial development was based on Bourne shell source code. Other early contributors were Bell Labs developers Mike Veach and Pat Sullivan, who wrote the Emacs and vi-style line editing modes' code, respectively. KornShell is backward-compatible with the Bourne shell and includes many features of the C shell, inspired by the requests of Bell Labs users.
KornShell complies with POSIX.2, Shell and Utilities, Command Interpreter (IEEE Std 1003.2-1992.) Major differences between KornShell and the traditional Bourne shell include:
KornShell was originally proprietary software. In 2000 the source code was released under a license particular to AT&T, but since the 93q release in early 2005 it has been licensed under the Eclipse Public License. KornShell is available as part of the AT&T Software Technology (AST) Open Source Software Collection. As KornShell was initially only available through a proprietary license from AT&T, a number of free and open source alternatives were created. These include , , , and .
The functionality of the original KornShell, , was used as a basis for the standard POSIX.2, Shell and Utilities, Command Interpreter (IEEE Std 1003.2-1992.)
Some vendors still ship their own versions of the older variant, sometimes with extensions. is maintained on GitHub.
As "Desktop KornShell" (), is distributed as part of the Common Desktop Environment. This version also provides shell-level mappings for Motif widgets. It was intended as a competitor to Tcl/Tk.
The original KornShell, , became the default shell on AIX in version 4, with ksh93 being available separately.
UnixWare 7 includes both and . The default Korn shell is , which is supplied as , and the older version is available as . UnixWare also includes when CDE is installed.
The ksh93 distribution underwent a less stable fate after the authors left AT&T around 2012 at stable version ksh93u+. The authors continued working on a ksh93v- beta branch until around 2014, when a few community developers essentially "took over" and kept working to produce a heavily refactored "ksh2020". In March 2020, AT&T decided to roll back the community changes, stash them in a branch, and restart from ksh93u+, as the changes were too broad and too ksh-focused for the company to absorb into a project in maintenance mode. Debian offers ksh2020 in its testing version.
There are several software products related to KornShell: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17213 |
Mary II of England
Mary II (30 April 1662 – 28 December 1694) was Queen of England, Scotland, and Ireland, co-reigning with her husband, King William III & II, from 1689 until her death. Popular histories usually refer to their joint reign as that of William and Mary.
Although their father James, Duke of York, was Roman Catholic, Mary and her younger sister Anne were raised as Anglicans at the wishes of their uncle, King Charles II. Charles lacked legitimate children, making Mary second in the line of succession. She married her Protestant first cousin, William of Orange, in 1677. Charles died in 1685 and James took the throne, making Mary heir presumptive. James's attempts at rule by decree and the birth of his son, James Francis Edward, led to his deposition in the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the adoption of the English Bill of Rights.
William and Mary became king and queen regnant. Mary mostly deferred to William, a renowned military leader and principal opponent of Louis XIV, when he was in England. She did, however, act alone when William was engaged in military campaigns abroad, proving herself to be a powerful, firm, and effective ruler. Mary's death left William as sole ruler until his own death in 1702, when he was succeeded by Mary's sister, Anne.
Mary, born at St James's Palace in London on 30 April 1662, was the eldest daughter of the Duke of York (the future King James II & VII), and his first wife, Anne Hyde. Mary's uncle was King Charles II, who ruled the three kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland; her maternal grandfather, Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon, served for a lengthy period as Charles's chief advisor. She was baptised into the Anglican faith in the Chapel Royal at St James's, and was named after her ancestor, Mary, Queen of Scots. Her godparents included her father's cousin, Prince Rupert of the Rhine. Although her mother bore eight children, all except Mary and her younger sister Anne died very young, and King Charles II had no legitimate children. Consequently, for most of her childhood, Mary was second in line to the throne after her father.
The Duke of York converted to Roman Catholicism in 1668 or 1669 and the Duchess about eight years earlier, but Mary and Anne were brought up as Anglicans, pursuant to the command of Charles II. They were moved to their own establishment at Richmond Palace, where they were raised by their governess Lady Frances Villiers, with only occasional visits to see their parents at St James's or their grandfather Lord Clarendon at Twickenham. Mary's education, from private tutors, was largely restricted to music, dance, drawing, French, and religious instruction. Her mother died in 1671, and her father remarried in 1673, taking as his second wife Mary of Modena, a Catholic who was only four years older than Mary.
From about the age of nine until her marriage, Mary wrote passionate letters to an older girl, Frances Apsley, the daughter of courtier Sir Allen Apsley. Mary signed herself 'Mary Clorine'; Apsley was 'Aurelia'. In time, Frances became uncomfortable with the correspondence, and replied more formally. At the age of fifteen, Mary became betrothed to her cousin, the Protestant Stadtholder of Holland, William III of Orange. William was the son of the King's late sister, Mary, Princess Royal, and thus fourth in the line of succession after James, Mary, and Anne. At first, Charles II opposed the alliance with the Dutch ruler—he preferred that Mary wed the heir to the French throne, the Dauphin Louis, thus allying his realms with Catholic France and strengthening the odds of an eventual Catholic successor in Britain; but later, under pressure from Parliament and with a coalition with the Catholic French no longer politically favourable, he approved the proposed union. The Duke of York agreed to the marriage, after pressure from chief minister Lord Danby and the King, who incorrectly assumed that it would improve James's popularity among Protestants. When James told Mary that she was to marry her cousin, "she wept all that afternoon and all the following day".
William and a tearful Mary were married in St James's Palace by Bishop Henry Compton on 4 November 1677. The bedding ceremony to publicly establish the consummation of the marriage was attended by the royal family, with the King himself drawing the bedcurtains. Mary accompanied her husband on a rough sea crossing back to the Netherlands later that month, after a delay of two weeks caused by bad weather. Rotterdam was inaccessible because of ice, and they were forced to land at the small village of Ter Heijde, and walk through the frosty countryside until met by coaches to take them to Huis Honselaarsdijk. On 14 December, they made a formal entry to The Hague in a grand procession.
Mary's animated and personable nature made her popular with the Dutch people, and her marriage to a Protestant prince was popular in Britain. She was devoted to her husband, but he was often away on campaigns, which led to Mary's family supposing him to be cold and neglectful. Within months of the marriage Mary was pregnant; however, on a visit to her husband at the fortified city of Breda, she suffered a miscarriage, which may have permanently impaired her ability to have children. She suffered further bouts of illness that may have been miscarriages in mid-1678, early 1679, and early 1680. Her childlessness would be the greatest source of unhappiness in her life.
From May 1684, King Charles's illegitimate son, James Scott, Duke of Monmouth, lived in the Netherlands, where he was fêted by William and Mary. Monmouth was viewed as a rival to the Duke of York, and as a potential Protestant heir who could supplant the Duke in the line of succession. William, however, did not consider him a viable alternative and correctly assumed that Monmouth had insufficient support.
Upon the death of Charles II without legitimate issue in February 1685, the Duke of York became king as James II in England and Ireland and James VII in Scotland. Mary was playing cards when her husband informed her of her father's accession, and that she was heir presumptive.
When Charles's illegitimate son the Duke of Monmouth assembled an invasion force at Amsterdam, and sailed for Britain, William informed James of the Duke's departure, and ordered English regiments in the Low Countries to return to Britain. To William's relief, Monmouth was defeated, captured and executed, but both he and Mary were dismayed by James's subsequent actions.
James had a controversial religious policy; his attempt to grant freedom of religion to non-Anglicans by suspending acts of Parliament by royal decree was not well received. Mary considered such action illegal, and her chaplain expressed this view in a letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Sancroft, on her behalf. She was further dismayed when James refused to help when the Catholic King of France, Louis XIV, invaded Orange and persecuted Huguenot refugees there. In an attempt to damage William, James encouraged his daughter's staff to inform her that William was having an affair with Elizabeth Villiers, the daughter of her childhood governess Frances Villiers. Acting on the information, Mary waited outside Villiers's room and caught her husband leaving it late at night. William denied adultery, and Mary apparently believed and forgave him. Possibly, Villiers and William were not meeting as lovers but to exchange diplomatic intelligence. Mary's staff was dismissed and sent back to Britain.
Disgruntled Protestant politicians and noblemen were in contact with Mary's husband as early as 1686. After James took the step of forcing Anglican clergymen to read the Declaration of Indulgence—the proclamation granting religious liberty to Catholics and dissenters—from their churches in May 1688, his popularity plunged further. Alarm amongst Protestants increased when his wife, Mary of Modena, gave birth to a son—James Francis Edward—in June 1688, for the son would, unlike Mary and Anne, be raised a Roman Catholic. Some charged that the boy was "supposititious", having been secretly smuggled into the Queen's room in a bed-warming pan as a substitute for her stillborn baby. Seeking information, Mary sent a pointed list of questions to her sister, Anne, regarding the circumstances of the birth. Anne's reply, and continued gossip, seemed to confirm Mary's suspicions that the child was not her natural brother, and that her father was conspiring to secure a Catholic succession.
On 30 June, the "Immortal Seven" secretly requested William—then in the Dutch Republic with Mary—to come to England with an army to depose James. William had made known earlier that a military intervention, for which he had been assembling forces, would be conditional on such an invitation. At first, William was still reluctant; possibly he was jealous of his wife's position as the heiress to the English Crown and feared she would become more powerful than he was. According to Gilbert Burnet, however, Mary convinced her husband that she did not care for political power, and told him "she would be no more but his wife, and that she would do all that lay in her power to make him King for life". She would, she assured him, always obey her husband as she had promised to do in her marriage vows.
William agreed to invade and issued a declaration which referred to James's newborn son as the "pretended Prince of Wales". He also gave a list of grievances of the English people and stated that his proposed expedition was for the sole purpose of having "a free and lawful Parliament assembled". William and the Dutch army, without Mary who stayed behind in the Netherlands, finally landed on 5 November 1688, having been turned back by storms in October. The disaffected English Army and Navy went over to William, and on 11 December the defeated King James attempted to flee, but was intercepted. A second attempt at flight, on 23 December, was successful; William deliberately allowed James to escape to France, where he lived in exile until his death.
Mary was upset by the circumstances surrounding the deposition of her father, and was torn between concern for him and duty to her husband, but was convinced that her husband's actions, however unpleasant, were necessary to "save the Church and State". When Mary travelled to England after the New Year, she wrote of her "secret joy" at returning to her homeland, "but that was soon checked with the consideration of my father's misfortunes". William ordered her to appear cheerful on their triumphant arrival in London. As a result, she was criticised by Sarah Churchill among others, for appearing cold to her father's plight. James, too, wrote a diatribe against her criticising her disloyalty, an action which deeply affected the pious Mary.
In January 1689, a Convention Parliament summoned by the Prince of Orange assembled, and much discussion relating to the appropriate course of action ensued. A party led by Lord Danby held that Mary should be sole monarch, as the rightful hereditary heir, while William and his supporters were adamant that a husband could not be subject to his wife. William wished to reign as a king, rather than function as a mere consort of a queen. For her part, Mary did not wish to be queen regnant, believing that women should defer to their husbands, and "knowing my heart is not made for a kingdom and my inclination leads me to a retired quiet life".
On 13 February 1689, Parliament passed the Declaration of Right, in which it deemed that James, by attempting to flee on 11 December 1688, had abdicated the government of the realm, and that the Throne had thereby become vacant. Parliament offered the Crown not to James's eldest son, James Francis Edward (who would have been the heir apparent under normal circumstances), but to William and Mary as joint sovereigns. The only precedent for a joint monarchy dated from the sixteenth century: when Queen Mary I married Philip of Spain, it was agreed that the latter would take the title of king, but only during his wife's lifetime, and restrictions were placed on his power. William, however, would be king even after his wife's death, and "the sole and full exercise of the regal power [would be] executed by the said Prince of Orange in the names of the said Prince and Princess during their joint lives." The declaration was later extended to exclude not only James and his heirs (other than Anne) from the throne, but all Catholics, since "it hath been found by experience that it is inconsistent with the safety and welfare of this Protestant kingdom to be governed by a papist prince".
The Bishop of London, Henry Compton (one of the "Immortal Seven"), crowned William and Mary together at Westminster Abbey on 11 April 1689. Normally, the Archbishop of Canterbury performs coronations, but the incumbent Archbishop, William Sancroft, although an Anglican, refused to recognise the validity of James II's removal. Neither William nor Mary enjoyed the ceremony; she thought it "all vanity" and William called it "Popish". On the same day, the Convention of the Estates of Scotland—which was much more divided than the English Parliament—finally declared that James was no longer King of Scotland, that "no Papist can be King or Queen of this Realm", that William and Mary would be joint sovereigns, and that William would exercise sole and full power. The following day, they were proclaimed king and queen in Edinburgh. They took the Scottish coronation oath in London on 11 May.
Even after the declaration, there was still substantial support for James in Scotland. Viscount Dundee raised an army in the Scottish Highlands and won a convincing victory at Killiecrankie on 27 July. The huge losses suffered by Dundee's troops, however, coupled with his fatal wounding at the start of the battle, served to remove the only effective resistance to William and the uprising was quickly crushed, suffering a resounding defeat the next month at the Battle of Dunkeld.
In December 1689, Parliament passed one of the most important constitutional documents in English history, the Bill of Rights. This measure—which restated and confirmed many provisions of the earlier Declaration of Right—established restrictions on the royal prerogative; it declared, among other things, that the Sovereign could not suspend laws passed by Parliament, levy taxes without parliamentary consent, infringe the right to petition, raise a standing army during peacetime without parliamentary consent, deny the right to bear arms to Protestant subjects, unduly interfere with parliamentary elections, punish members of either House of Parliament for anything said during debates, require excessive bail, or inflict cruel or unusual punishments. The Bill of Rights also confirmed the succession to the throne. Following the death of either William III or Mary II, the other was to continue to reign. Next in the line of succession would be any children of the couple, to be followed by Mary's sister Anne and her children. Last in the line of succession stood any children William III might have had from any subsequent marriage.
From 1690 onwards, William was often absent from England on campaign, each year generally from the spring until the autumn. In 1690, he fought Jacobites (who supported James) in Ireland. William had crushed the Irish Jacobites by 1692, but he continued with campaigns abroad to wage war against France in the Netherlands. Whilst her husband was away, Mary administered the government of the realm with the advice of a nine-member Cabinet Council. She was not keen to assume power and felt "deprived of all that was dear to me in the person of my husband, left among those that were perfect strangers to me: my sister of a humour so reserved that I could have little comfort from her." Anne had quarrelled with William and Mary over money, and the relationship between the two sisters had soured.
When her husband was away, Mary acted on her own if his advice was not available; whilst he was in England, Mary completely refrained from interfering in political matters, as had been agreed in the Declaration and Bill of Rights, and as she preferred. However, she proved a firm ruler, ordering the arrest of her own uncle, Henry Hyde, 2nd Earl of Clarendon, for plotting to restore James II to the throne. In January 1692, the influential John Churchill, 1st Earl of Marlborough, was dismissed on similar charges; the dismissal somewhat diminished her popularity and further harmed her relationship with her sister Anne (who was strongly influenced by Churchill's wife, Sarah). Anne appeared at court with Sarah, obviously supporting the disgraced Churchill, which led to Mary angrily demanding that Anne dismiss Sarah and vacate her lodgings.
Mary fell ill with a fever in April 1692, and missed Sunday church service for the first time in 12 years. She also failed to visit Anne, who was suffering a difficult labour. After Mary's recovery and the death of Anne's baby soon after it was born, Mary did visit her sister, but chose the opportunity to berate Anne for her friendship with Sarah. The sisters never saw each other again. Marlborough was arrested and imprisoned, but then released after his accuser was revealed to be an impostor. Mary recorded in her journal that the breach between the sisters was a punishment from God for the "irregularity" of the Revolution. She was extremely devout, and attended prayers at least twice a day.
Many of Mary's proclamations focus on combating licentiousness, insobriety and vice. She often participated in the affairs of the Church—all matters of ecclesiastical patronage passed through her hands. On the death of Archbishop of Canterbury John Tillotson in December 1694, Mary was keen to appoint Bishop of Worcester Edward Stillingfleet to the vacancy, but William over-ruled her and the post went to Bishop of Lincoln Thomas Tenison.
Mary was tall (5 foot 11 inches; 180 cm) and apparently fit; she would regularly walk between her palaces at Whitehall and Kensington. In late 1694, however, she contracted smallpox. She sent away anyone who had not previously had the disease, to prevent the spread of infection. Anne, who was once again pregnant, sent Mary a letter saying she would run any risk to see her sister again, but the offer was declined by Mary's groom of the stool, the Countess of Derby. Mary died at Kensington Palace shortly after midnight on the morning of 28 December, at the young age of 32.
William, who had grown increasingly to rely on Mary, was devastated by her death, and told Burnet that "from being the happiest" he was "now going to be the miserablest creature on earth". While the Jacobites considered her death divine retribution for breaking the fifth commandment ("honour thy father"), she was widely mourned in Britain. During a cold winter, in which the Thames froze, her embalmed body lay in state in Banqueting House, Whitehall. On 5 March, she was buried at Westminster Abbey. Her funeral service was the first of any royal attended by all the members of both Houses of Parliament. For the ceremony, composer Henry Purcell wrote "Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary".
Mary endowed the College of William and Mary (in the present day Williamsburg, Virginia) in 1693, supported Thomas Bray, who founded the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, and was instrumental in the foundation of the Royal Hospital for Seamen, Greenwich, after the Anglo-Dutch victory at the Battle of La Hogue. She is credited with influencing garden design at Het Loo and Hampton Court Palaces, and with popularising blue and white porcelain and the keeping of goldfish as pets.
Mary was depicted by Jacobites as an unfaithful daughter who destroyed her father for her own and her husband's gain. In the early years of their reign, she was often seen as completely under the spell of her husband, but after she had temporarily governed alone during his absences abroad, she was portrayed as capable and confident. Nahum Tate's "A Present for the Ladies" (1692) compared her to Queen Elizabeth I. Her modesty and diffidence were praised in works such as "A Dialogue Concerning Women" (1691) by William Walsh, which compared her to Cincinnatus, the Roman general who took on a great task when called to do so, but then willingly abandoned power.
A week before her death, Mary went through her papers, weeding out some, which were burnt, but her journal survives, as do her letters to William and to Frances Apsley. The Jacobites lambasted her, but the assessment of her character that came down to posterity was largely the vision of Mary as a dutiful, submissive wife, who assumed power reluctantly, exercised it with considerable ability when necessary, and willingly deferred it to her husband.
Mary is portrayed by:
The joint style of William III and Mary II was "William and Mary, by the Grace of God, King and Queen of England, France and Ireland, Defenders of the Faith, etc." when they ascended the English throne. From 11 April 1689—when the Estates of Scotland recognised them as sovereigns—the royal couple used the style "William and Mary, by the Grace of God, King and Queen of England, Scotland, France and Ireland, Defenders of the Faith, etc.".
The coat of arms used by the King and Queen were: Quarterly, I and IV Grandquarterly, Azure three fleurs-de-lis Or (for France) and Gules three lions passant guardant in pale Or (for England); II Or a lion rampant within a double tressure flory-counter-flory Gules (for Scotland); III Azure a harp Or stringed Argent (for Ireland); overall an escutcheon Azure billetty a lion rampant Or (for the House of Orange-Nassau). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=20709 |
Mary I of England
Mary I (18 February 1516 – 17 November 1558), also known as Mary Tudor, was the queen of England from July 1553 until her death. She is best known for her vigorous attempt to reverse the English Reformation, which had begun during the reign of her father, Henry VIII. Her attempt to restore to the Church the property confiscated in the previous two reigns was largely thwarted by parliament, but during her five-year reign, Mary had over 280 religious dissenters burned at the stake in the Marian persecutions, which led to her denunciation as "Bloody Mary" by her Protestant opponents.
Mary was the only child of Henry VIII by his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, to survive to adulthood. Her younger half-brother, Edward VI, succeeded their father in 1547 at the age of nine. When Edward became mortally ill in 1553, he attempted to remove Mary from the line of succession because he supposed, correctly, that she would reverse the Protestant reforms that had continued during his reign. Upon his death, leading politicians proclaimed Lady Jane Grey as queen. Mary speedily assembled a force in East Anglia and deposed Jane, who was ultimately beheaded. Mary was—excluding the disputed reigns of Jane and the Empress Matilda—the first queen regnant of England. In 1554, Mary married Philip of Spain, becoming queen consort of Habsburg Spain on his accession in 1556.
After Mary's death in 1558, her re-establishment of Roman Catholicism was reversed by her younger half-sister and successor, Elizabeth I.
Mary was born on 18 February 1516 at the Palace of Placentia in Greenwich, England. She was the only child of King Henry VIII and his first wife Catherine of Aragon to survive infancy. Her mother had suffered many miscarriages. Before Mary's birth, four previous pregnancies had resulted in a stillborn daughter and three short-lived or stillborn sons, including Henry, Duke of Cornwall.
Mary was baptised into the Catholic faith at the Church of the Observant Friars in Greenwich three days after her birth. Her godparents included Lord Chancellor Thomas Wolsey; her great-aunt Catherine of York, Countess of Devon; and Agnes Howard, Duchess of Norfolk. Henry VIII's cousin once removed, Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, stood sponsor for Mary's confirmation, which was held immediately after the baptism. The following year, Mary became a godmother herself when she was named as one of the sponsors of her cousin Frances Brandon. In 1520, the Countess of Salisbury was appointed Mary's governess. Sir John Hussey, later Lord Hussey, was her chamberlain from 1530, and his wife, Lady Anne, daughter of George Grey, 2nd Earl of Kent, was one of Mary's attendants.
Mary was a precocious child. In July 1520, when scarcely four and a half years old, she entertained a visiting French delegation with a performance on the virginals (a type of harpsichord). A great part of her early education came from her mother, who consulted the Spanish humanist Juan Luis Vives for advice and commissioned him to write "De Institutione Feminae Christianae", a treatise on the education of girls. By the age of nine, Mary could read and write Latin. She studied French, Spanish, music, dance, and perhaps Greek. Henry VIII doted on his daughter and boasted to the Venetian ambassador Sebastian Giustiniani, "This girl never cries." Also, as the miniature portrait of her shows, Mary had, like both her parents, a very fair complexion, pale blue eyes and red or reddish-golden hair. She was also ruddy-cheeked, a trait she inherited from her father.
Despite his affection for Mary, Henry was deeply disappointed that his marriage had produced no sons. By the time Mary was nine years old, it was apparent that Henry and Catherine would have no more children, leaving Henry without a legitimate male heir. In 1525, Henry sent Mary to the border of Wales to preside, presumably in name only, over the Council of Wales and the Marches. She was given her own court based at Ludlow Castle and many of the royal prerogatives normally reserved for the Prince of Wales. Vives and others called her the Princess of Wales, although she was never technically invested with the title. She appears to have spent three years in the Welsh Marches, making regular visits to her father's court, before returning permanently to the home counties around London in mid-1528.
Throughout Mary's childhood, Henry negotiated potential future marriages for her. When she was only two years old, she was promised to Francis, the infant son of King Francis I of France, but the contract was repudiated after three years. In 1522, at the age of six, she was instead contracted to marry her 22-year-old first cousin, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. However, the engagement was broken off within a few years by Charles with Henry's agreement. Cardinal Wolsey, Henry's chief adviser, then resumed marriage negotiations with the French, and Henry suggested that Mary marry the Dauphin's father, King Francis I himself, who was eager for an alliance with England. A marriage treaty was signed which provided that Mary marry either Francis I or his second son Henry, Duke of Orleans, but Wolsey secured an alliance with France without the marriage. In 1528 Wolsey's agent Thomas Magnus discussed the idea of her marriage to James V of Scotland with the Scottish diplomat Adam Otterburn.
According to the Venetian Mario Savorgnano, by this time Mary was developing into a pretty, well-proportioned young lady with a fine complexion.
Meanwhile, the marriage of Mary's parents was in jeopardy. Disappointed at the lack of a male heir, and eager to remarry, Henry attempted to have his marriage to Catherine annulled, but Pope Clement VII refused his request. Henry claimed, citing biblical passages (Leviticus 20:21), that his marriage to Catherine was unclean because she was the widow of his brother Arthur (Mary's uncle). Catherine claimed that her marriage to Arthur was never consummated and so was not a valid marriage. Her first marriage had been annulled by a previous pope, Julius II, on that basis. Clement may have been reluctant to act because he was influenced by Charles V, Catherine's nephew and Mary's former betrothed, whose troops had surrounded and occupied Rome in the War of the League of Cognac.
From 1531, Mary was often sick with irregular menstruation and depression, although it is not clear whether this was caused by stress, puberty or a more deep-seated disease. She was not permitted to see her mother, who had been sent to live away from court by Henry. In early 1533, Henry married Anne Boleyn, who was pregnant with his child, and in May Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury, formally declared the marriage with Catherine void, and the marriage to Anne valid. Henry repudiated the authority of the Pope, declaring himself Supreme Head of the Church of England. Catherine was demoted to Dowager Princess of Wales (a title she would have held as the widow of Arthur), and Mary was deemed illegitimate. She was styled "The Lady Mary" rather than Princess, and her place in the line of succession was transferred to her newborn half-sister, Elizabeth, Anne's daughter. Mary's own household was dissolved; her servants (including the Countess of Salisbury) were dismissed and in December 1533 she was sent to join the household of the infant Elizabeth at Hatfield, Hertfordshire.
Mary determinedly refused to acknowledge that Anne was the queen or that Elizabeth was a princess, further enraging King Henry. Under strain and with her movements restricted, Mary was frequently ill, which the royal physician attributed to her "ill treatment". The Imperial ambassador Eustace Chapuys became her close adviser, and interceded, unsuccessfully, on her behalf at court. The relationship between Mary and her father worsened; they did not speak to each other for three years. Although both she and her mother were ill, Mary was refused permission to visit Catherine. When Catherine died in 1536, Mary was "inconsolable". Catherine was interred in Peterborough Cathedral, while Mary grieved in semi-seclusion at Hunsdon in Hertfordshire.
In 1536, Queen Anne fell from the king's favour and was beheaded. Elizabeth, like Mary, was declared illegitimate and stripped of her succession rights. Within two weeks of Anne's execution, Henry married Jane Seymour, who urged her husband to make peace with Mary. Henry insisted that Mary recognise him as head of the Church of England, repudiate papal authority, acknowledge that the marriage between her parents was unlawful, and accept her own illegitimacy. She attempted to reconcile with him by submitting to his authority as far as "God and my conscience" permitted, but she was eventually bullied into signing a document agreeing to all of Henry's demands. Reconciled with her father, Mary resumed her place at court. Henry granted her a household (which included the reinstatement of Mary's favourite Susan Clarencieux). Mary's privy purse expenses for this period show that Hatfield House, the Palace of Beaulieu (also called Newhall), Richmond and Hunsdon were among her principal places of residence, as well as Henry's palaces at Greenwich, Westminster and Hampton Court. Her expenses included fine clothes and gambling at cards, one of her favourite pastimes. Rebels in the North of England, including Lord Hussey, Mary's former chamberlain, campaigned against Henry's religious reforms, and one of their demands was that Mary be made legitimate. The rebellion, known as the Pilgrimage of Grace, was ruthlessly suppressed. Along with other rebels, Hussey was executed, but there was no suggestion that Mary was directly involved. The following year, 1537, Jane died after giving birth to a son, Edward. Mary was made godmother to her half-brother and acted as chief mourner at the queen's funeral.
Mary was courted by Duke Philip of Bavaria from late 1539, but he was Lutheran and his suit for her hand was unsuccessful. Over 1539, the king's chief minister, Thomas Cromwell, negotiated a potential alliance with the Duchy of Cleves. Suggestions that Mary marry the Duke of Cleves, who was the same age, came to nothing, but a match between Henry and the Duke's sister Anne was agreed. When the king saw Anne for the first time in late December 1539, a week before the scheduled wedding, he did not find himself attracted to her but was unable, for diplomatic reasons and in the absence of a suitable pretext, to cancel the marriage. Cromwell fell from favour and was arrested for treason in June 1540; one of the unlikely charges against him was that he had plotted to marry Mary himself. Anne consented to the annulment of the marriage, which had not been consummated, and Cromwell was beheaded.
In 1541, Henry had the Countess of Salisbury, Mary's old governess and godmother, executed on the pretext of a Catholic plot, in which her son (Reginald Pole) was implicated. Her executioner was "a wretched and blundering youth" who "literally hacked her head and shoulders to pieces". In 1542, following the execution of Henry's fifth wife, Catherine Howard, the unmarried Henry invited Mary to attend the royal Christmas festivities. At court, while her father was between marriages and without a consort, Mary acted as hostess. In 1543, Henry married his sixth and last wife, Catherine Parr, who was able to bring the family closer together. Henry returned Mary and Elizabeth to the line of succession, through the Act of Succession 1544, placing them after Edward. However, both remained legally illegitimate.
Henry VIII died in 1547 and Edward succeeded him. Mary inherited estates in Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex, and was granted Hunsdon and Beaulieu as her own. Since Edward was still a child, rule passed to a regency council dominated by Protestants, who attempted to establish their faith throughout the country. For example, the Act of Uniformity 1549 prescribed Protestant rites for church services, such as the use of Thomas Cranmer's new "Book of Common Prayer". Mary remained faithful to Roman Catholicism and defiantly celebrated the traditional Mass in her own chapel. She appealed to her cousin Emperor Charles V to apply diplomatic pressure demanding that she be allowed to practise her religion.
For most of Edward's reign, Mary remained on her own estates and rarely attended court. A plan between May and July 1550 to smuggle her out of England to the safety of the European mainland came to nothing. Religious differences between Mary and Edward continued. When Mary was in her thirties, she attended a reunion with Edward and Elizabeth for Christmas 1550, where the 13-year-old Edward embarrassed Mary, and reduced both her and himself to tears in front of the court, by publicly reproving her for ignoring his laws regarding worship. Mary repeatedly refused Edward's demands that she abandon Catholicism, and Edward persistently refused to drop his demands.
On 6 July 1553, at the age of 15, Edward VI died from a lung infection, possibly tuberculosis. He did not want the crown to go to Mary, because he feared she would restore Catholicism and undo his reforms as well as those of Henry VIII, and so he planned to exclude her from the line of succession. His advisers, however, told him that he could not disinherit only one of his half-sisters: he would have to disinherit Elizabeth as well, even though she was a Protestant. Guided by John Dudley, 1st Duke of Northumberland, and perhaps others, Edward excluded both from the line of succession in his will.
Contradicting the Succession Act, which restored Mary and Elizabeth to the line of succession, Edward named Dudley's daughter-in-law Lady Jane Grey, the granddaughter of Henry VIII's younger sister, Mary, as his successor. Lady Jane's mother was Frances Brandon, Mary's cousin and goddaughter. Just before Edward VI's death, Mary was summoned to London to visit her dying brother. She was warned, however, that the summons was a pretext on which to capture her and thereby facilitate Lady Jane's accession to the throne. Therefore, instead of heading to London from her residence at Hunsdon, Mary fled into East Anglia, where she owned extensive estates and Dudley had ruthlessly put down Kett's Rebellion. Many adherents to the Catholic faith, opponents of Dudley's, lived there. On 9 July, from Kenninghall, Norfolk, she wrote to the privy council with orders for her proclamation as Edward's successor.
On 10 July 1553, Lady Jane was proclaimed queen by Dudley and his supporters, and on the same day Mary's letter to the council arrived in London. By 12 July, Mary and her supporters had assembled a military force at Framlingham Castle, Suffolk. Dudley's support collapsed, and Jane was deposed on 19 July. She and Dudley were imprisoned in the Tower of London. Mary rode triumphantly into London on 3 August 1553, on a wave of popular support. She was accompanied by her half-sister Elizabeth and a procession of over 800 nobles and gentlemen.
One of Mary's first actions as queen was to order the release of the Roman Catholic Duke of Norfolk and Stephen Gardiner from imprisonment in the Tower of London, as well as her kinsman Edward Courtenay. Mary understood that the young Lady Jane was essentially a pawn in Dudley's scheme, and Dudley was the only conspirator of rank executed for high treason in the immediate aftermath of the coup. Lady Jane and her husband, Lord Guildford Dudley, though found guilty, were kept under guard in the Tower rather than immediately executed, while Lady Jane's father, Henry Grey, 1st Duke of Suffolk, was released. Mary was left in a difficult position, as almost all the Privy Counsellors had been implicated in the plot to put Lady Jane on the throne. She appointed Gardiner to the council and made him both Bishop of Winchester and Lord Chancellor, offices he held until his death in November 1555. Susan Clarencieux became Mistress of the Robes. On 1 October 1553, Gardiner crowned Mary at Westminster Abbey.
At age 37, Mary turned her attention to finding a husband and producing an heir, which would prevent the Protestant Elizabeth (still next-in-line under the terms of Henry VIII's will and the Act of Succession of 1544) from succeeding to the throne. Edward Courtenay and Reginald Pole were both mentioned as prospective suitors, but her cousin Charles V suggested she marry his only son, Prince Philip of Spain. Philip had a son from a previous marriage and was heir apparent to vast territories in Continental Europe and the New World. As part of the marriage negotiations, a portrait of Philip, by Titian, was sent to her in the latter half of 1553.
Lord Chancellor Gardiner and the House of Commons unsuccessfully petitioned her to consider marrying an Englishman, fearing that England would be relegated to a dependency of the Habsburgs. The marriage was unpopular with the English; Gardiner and his allies opposed it on the basis of patriotism, while Protestants were motivated by a fear of Catholicism. When Mary insisted on marrying Philip, insurrections broke out. Thomas Wyatt the younger led a force from Kent to depose Mary in favour of Elizabeth, as part of a wider conspiracy now known as Wyatt's rebellion, which also involved the Duke of Suffolk, the father of Lady Jane. Mary declared publicly that she would summon Parliament to discuss the marriage, and if Parliament decided that the marriage was not to the advantage of the kingdom, she would refrain from pursuing it. On reaching London, Wyatt was defeated and captured. Wyatt, the Duke of Suffolk, his daughter Lady Jane, and her husband Guildford Dudley were executed. Courtenay, who was implicated in the plot, was imprisoned, and then exiled. Elizabeth, though protesting her innocence in the Wyatt affair, was imprisoned in the Tower of London for two months, then was put under house arrest at Woodstock Palace.
Mary was—excluding the brief, disputed reigns of the Empress Matilda and Lady Jane Grey—England's first queen regnant. Further, under the English common law doctrine of "jure uxoris", the property and titles belonging to a woman became her husband's upon marriage, and it was feared that any man she married would thereby become King of England in fact and in name. While Mary's grandparents, Ferdinand and Isabella, had retained sovereignty of their own realms during their marriage, there was no precedent to follow in England. Under the terms of Queen Mary's Marriage Act, Philip was to be styled "King of England", all official documents (including Acts of Parliament) were to be dated with both their names, and Parliament was to be called under the joint authority of the couple, for Mary's lifetime only. England would not be obliged to provide military support to Philip's father in any war, and Philip could not act without his wife's consent or appoint foreigners to office in England. Philip was unhappy at the conditions imposed, but he was ready to agree for the sake of securing the marriage. He had no amorous feelings toward Mary and sought the marriage for its political and strategic gains; Philip's aide Ruy Gómez de Silva wrote to a correspondent in Brussels, "the marriage was concluded for no fleshly consideration, but in order to remedy the disorders of this kingdom and to preserve the Low Countries."
To elevate his son to Mary's rank, Emperor Charles V ceded to Philip the crown of Naples as well as his claim to the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Therefore, Mary became Queen of Naples and titular Queen of Jerusalem upon marriage. Their wedding at Winchester Cathedral on 25 July 1554 took place just two days after their first meeting. Philip could not speak English, and so they spoke in a mixture of Spanish, French, and Latin.
In September 1554, Mary stopped menstruating. She gained weight, and felt nauseated in the mornings. For these reasons, almost the entirety of her court, including her doctors, believed her to be pregnant. Parliament passed an act making Philip regent in the event of Mary's death in childbirth. In the last week of April 1555, Elizabeth was released from house arrest, and called to court as a witness to the birth, which was expected imminently. According to Giovanni Michieli, the Venetian ambassador, Philip may have planned to marry Elizabeth in the event of Mary's death in childbirth, but in a letter to his brother-in-law, Maximilian of Austria, Philip expressed uncertainty as to whether his wife was pregnant.
Thanksgiving services in the diocese of London were held at the end of April after false rumours that Mary had given birth to a son spread across Europe. Through May and June, the apparent delay in delivery fed gossip that Mary was not pregnant. Susan Clarencieux revealed her doubts to the French ambassador, Antoine de Noailles. Mary continued to exhibit signs of pregnancy until July 1555, when her abdomen receded. Michieli dismissively ridiculed the pregnancy as more likely to "end in wind rather than anything else". It was most likely a false pregnancy, perhaps induced by Mary's overwhelming desire to have a child. In August, soon after the disgrace of the false pregnancy, which Mary considered to be "God's punishment" for her having "tolerated heretics" in her realm, Philip left England to command his armies against France in Flanders. Mary was heartbroken and fell into a deep depression. Michieli was touched by the queen's grief; he wrote she was "extraordinarily in love" with her husband, and was disconsolate at his departure.
Elizabeth remained at court until October, apparently restored to favour. In the absence of any children, Philip was concerned that one of the next claimants to the English throne after his sister-in-law was the Queen of Scots, who was betrothed to the Dauphin of France. Philip persuaded his wife that Elizabeth should marry his cousin Emmanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy, to secure the Catholic succession and preserve the Habsburg interest in England, but Elizabeth refused to comply and parliamentary consent was unlikely.
In the month following her accession, Mary issued a proclamation that she would not compel any of her subjects to follow her religion, but by the end of September 1553, leading Protestant churchmen—including John Bradford, John Rogers, John Hooper, Hugh Latimer, and Thomas Cranmer—were imprisoned. Mary's first Parliament, which assembled in early October, declared the marriage of her parents valid and abolished Edward's religious laws. Church doctrine was restored to the form it had taken in the 1539 Six Articles of Henry VIII, which (among other things) re-affirmed clerical celibacy. Married priests were deprived of their benefices.
Mary had always rejected the break with Rome instituted by her father and the establishment of Protestantism by her brother's regents. Philip persuaded Parliament to repeal Henry's religious laws, thus returning the English church to Roman jurisdiction. Reaching an agreement took many months and Mary and Pope Julius III had to make a major concession: the confiscated monastery lands were not returned to the church but remained in the hands of their influential new owners. By the end of 1554, the pope had approved the deal, and the Heresy Acts were revived.
Under the Heresy Acts, numerous Protestants were executed in the Marian persecutions. Around 800 rich Protestants, including John Foxe, fled into exile. The first executions occurred over a period of five days in early February 1555: John Rogers on 4 February, Laurence Saunders on 8 February, and Rowland Taylor and John Hooper on 9 February. Thomas Cranmer, the imprisoned archbishop of Canterbury, was forced to watch Bishops Ridley and Latimer being burned at the stake. Cranmer recanted, repudiated Protestant theology, and rejoined the Catholic faith. Under the normal process of the law, he should have been absolved as a repentant. Mary, however, refused to reprieve him. On the day of his burning, he dramatically withdrew his recantation. In total, 283 were executed, most by burning. The burnings proved so unpopular that even Alfonso de Castro, one of Philip's own ecclesiastical staff, condemned them and another adviser, Simon Renard, warned him that such "cruel enforcement" could "cause a revolt". Mary persevered with the policy, which continued until her death and exacerbated anti-Catholic and anti-Spanish feeling among the English people. The victims of the persecutions became lauded as martyrs.
Reginald Pole, the son of Mary's executed governess and once considered a suitor, arrived as papal legate in November 1554. He was ordained a priest and appointed Archbishop of Canterbury immediately after Cranmer's execution in March 1556.
Furthering the Tudor conquest of Ireland, under Mary and Philip's reign English colonists were settled in the Irish Midlands. Queen's and King's Counties (now Counties Laois and Offaly) were founded, and their plantation began. Their principal towns were respectively named Maryborough (now Portlaoise) and Philipstown (now Daingean).
In January 1556, Mary's father-in-law the Emperor abdicated. Mary and Philip were still apart; he was declared King of Spain in Brussels, but she stayed in England. Philip negotiated an unsteady truce with the French in February 1556. The following month, the French ambassador in England, Antoine de Noailles, was implicated in a plot against Mary when Sir Henry Dudley, a second cousin of the executed Duke of Northumberland, attempted to assemble an invasion force in France. The plot, known as the Dudley conspiracy, was betrayed, and the conspirators in England were rounded up. Dudley remained in exile in France, and Noailles prudently left Britain.
Philip returned to England from March to July 1557 to persuade Mary to support Spain in a renewed war against France. Mary was in favour of declaring war, but her councillors opposed it because French trade would be jeopardised, it contravened the foreign war provisions of the marriage treaty, and a bad economic legacy from Edward VI's reign and a series of poor harvests meant England lacked supplies and finances. War was only declared in June 1557 after Reginald Pole's nephew, Thomas Stafford, invaded England and seized Scarborough Castle with French help, in a failed attempt to depose Mary. As a result of the war, relations between England and the Papacy became strained, since Pope Paul IV was allied with Henry II of France. In August, English forces were victorious in the aftermath of the Battle of Saint Quentin, with one eyewitness stating "Both sides fought most choicely, and the English best of all." Celebrations however, were brief, as in January 1558 French forces took Calais, England's sole remaining possession on the European mainland. Although the territory was financially burdensome, its loss was a mortifying blow to the queen's prestige. According to Holinshed's Chronicles, Mary later lamented, "When I am dead and opened, you shall find 'Calais' lying in my heart", although this may be apocryphal.
The years of Mary's reign were consistently wet. The persistent rain and subsequent flooding led to famine. Another problem was the decline of the Antwerp cloth trade. Despite Mary's marriage to Philip, England did not benefit from Spain's enormously lucrative trade with the New World. The mercantilist Spanish guarded their trade routes jealously, and Mary could not condone English illicit trade or piracy against her husband. In an attempt to increase trade and rescue the English economy, Mary's counsellors continued Northumberland's policy of seeking out new commercial opportunities. She granted a royal charter to the Muscovy Company under governor Sebastian Cabot, and commissioned a world atlas from Diogo Homem. Adventurers such as John Lok and William Towerson sailed south in an attempt to develop links with the coast of Africa.
Financially, Mary's regime tried to reconcile a modern form of government—with correspondingly higher spending—with a medieval system of collecting taxation and dues. Mary retained the Edwardian appointee William Paulet, 1st Marquess of Winchester, as Lord High Treasurer and assigned him to oversee the revenue collection system. A failure to apply new tariffs to new forms of imports meant that a key source of revenue was neglected. To solve this problem, Mary's government published a revised "Book of Rates" (1558), which listed the tariffs and duties for every import. This publication was not extensively reviewed until 1604.
English coinage was debased under both Henry VIII and Edward VI. Mary drafted plans for currency reform but they were not implemented until after her death.
After her husband Philip's visit in 1557, Mary again thought she was pregnant, with a baby due in March 1558. She decreed in her will that her husband would be the regent during the minority of their child. However, no child was born, and Mary was forced to accept that her half-sister Elizabeth would be her lawful successor.
Mary was weak and ill from May 1558. In pain, possibly from ovarian cysts or uterine cancer, she died on 17 November 1558, aged 42, at St James's Palace, during an influenza epidemic that also claimed the life of Reginald Pole later the same day. She was succeeded by Elizabeth. Philip, who was in Brussels, wrote to his sister Joan: "I felt a reasonable regret for her death."
Although Mary's will stated that she wished to be buried next to her mother, she was interred in Westminster Abbey on 14 December, in a tomb she would eventually share with Elizabeth. The Latin inscription on their tomb, "Regno consortes et urna, hic obdormimus Elizabetha et Maria sorores, in spe resurrectionis" (affixed there by James I when he succeeded Elizabeth), translates to: "Consorts in realm and tomb, we sisters Elizabeth and Mary here lie down to sleep in hope of the resurrection."
At her funeral service, John White, bishop of Winchester, praised Mary: "She was a king's daughter; she was a king's sister; she was a king's wife. She was a queen, and by the same title a king also." She was the first woman to successfully claim the throne of England, despite competing claims and determined opposition, and enjoyed popular support and sympathy during the earliest parts of her reign, especially from the Roman Catholics of England.
Mary's attempts to undo the national religious reforms of her brother's reign faced major obstacles. Despite her belief in the papal supremacy, she ruled constitutionally as the Supreme Head of the English Church, a contradiction under which she bridled. She found herself powerless to restore the vast number of ecclesiastical properties handed over or sold to private landowners.
Protestant writers at the time, and since, have often condemned Mary's reign. By the 17th century, the memory of her religious persecutions had led to the adoption of her sobriquet "Bloody Mary". John Knox attacked her in his "First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women" (1558), and she was prominently vilified in "Actes and Monuments" (1563), by John Foxe. Foxe's book remained popular throughout the following centuries and helped shape enduring perceptions of Mary as a bloodthirsty tyrant.
Mary is remembered in the 21st century for her vigorous efforts to restore the primacy of Roman Catholicism in England after the rise of Protestant influence during the previous reigns. Protestant historians have long deplored her reign, emphasizing that in just five years she burned several hundred Protestants at the stake. In the mid-20th century, H. F. M. Prescott attempted to redress the tradition that Mary was intolerant and authoritarian, and scholarship since then has tended to view the older, simpler assessments of Mary with increasing reservations. A historiographical revisionism since the 1980s has to some degree improved her reputation among scholars. Christopher Haigh argued that her revival of religious festivities and Catholic practices was generally welcomed. Haigh concluded that the "last years of Mary's reign were not a gruesome preparation for Protestant victory, but a continuing consolidation of Catholic strength."
Catholic historians, such as John Lingard, thought Mary's policies failed not because they were wrong but because she had too short a reign to establish them and because of natural disasters beyond her control. In other countries, the Catholic Counter-Reformation was spearheaded by Jesuit missionaries, but Mary's chief religious advisor, Cardinal Reginald Pole, refused to allow the Jesuits into England. Her marriage to Philip was unpopular among her subjects and her religious policies resulted in deep-seated resentment. The military loss of Calais to France was a bitter humiliation to English pride. Failed harvests increased public discontent. Philip spent most of his time abroad, while his wife remained in England, leaving her depressed at his absence and undermined by their inability to have children. After Mary's death, Philip sought to marry Elizabeth but she refused him. Although Mary's rule was ultimately ineffectual and unpopular, the policies of fiscal reform, naval expansion, and colonial exploration that were later lauded as Elizabethan accomplishments were started in Mary's reign.
When Mary ascended the throne, she was proclaimed under the same official style as Henry VIII and Edward VI: "Mary, by the Grace of God, Queen of England, France and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, and of the Church of England and of Ireland on Earth Supreme Head". The title Supreme Head of the Church was repugnant to Mary's Catholicism, and she omitted it after Christmas 1553.
Under Mary's marriage treaty with Philip, the official joint style reflected not only Mary's but also Philip's dominions and claims: "Philip and Mary, by the grace of God, King and Queen of England, France, Naples, Jerusalem, and Ireland, Defenders of the Faith, Princes of Spain and Sicily, Archdukes of Austria, Dukes of Milan, Burgundy and Brabant, Counts of Habsburg, Flanders and Tyrol". This style, which had been in use since 1554, was replaced when Philip inherited the Spanish Crown in 1556 with "Philip and Mary, by the Grace of God King and Queen of England, Spain, France, both the Sicilies, Jerusalem and Ireland, Defenders of the Faith, Archdukes of Austria, Dukes of Burgundy, Milan and Brabant, Counts of Habsburg, Flanders and Tyrol".
Mary I's coat of arms was the same as those used by all her predecessors since Henry IV: Quarterly, Azure three fleurs-de-lys Or [for France] and Gules three lions passant guardant in pale Or (for England). Sometimes, her arms were impaled (depicted side-by-side) with those of her husband. She adopted "Truth, the Daughter of Time" () as her personal motto.
Both Mary and Philip were descended from John of Gaunt, the Duke of Lancaster, a relationship that was used to portray Philip as an English king. They descended from Lancaster and his first two wives: Blanche of Lancaster (grandmother of John, Constable of Portugal) and Constance of Castile (mother of Catherine of Lancaster). Mary also descended from Lancaster and his third wife, Katherine Swynford (grandmother of John Beaufort, 1st Duke of Somerset and Cecily Neville). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=20713 |
Marbury v. Madison
Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137 (1803), was a U.S. Supreme Court case that established the principle of judicial review in the United States, meaning that American courts have the power to strike down laws, statutes, and some government actions that violate the Constitution of the United States. Decided in 1803, "Marbury" remains the single most important decision in American constitutional law. The Court's landmark decision established that the U.S. Constitution is actual "law", not just a statement of political principles and ideals, and helped define the boundary between the constitutionally separate executive and judicial branches of the federal government.
The case originated from an incident that occurred in early 1801 as part of the political and ideological rivalry between outgoing President John Adams, who espoused the pro-business and pro-national government ideals of Alexander Hamilton and the Federalist Party, and incoming President Thomas Jefferson, who favored agriculture and decentralization and led the Democratic-Republican Party. Adams had lost the U.S. presidential election of 1800 to Jefferson, and in March 1801, just two days before his term as president ended, Adams appointed several dozen Federalist Party supporters to new circuit judge and justice of the peace positions in an attempt to frustrate Jefferson and his supporters in the Democratic-Republican Party. The U.S. Senate quickly confirmed Adams's appointments, but upon Adams' departure and Jefferson's inauguration a few of the new judges' commissions still had not been delivered. Jefferson believed the commissions were void because they had not been delivered in time, and instructed his new Secretary of State, James Madison, not to deliver them. One of the men whose commissions had not been delivered in time was William Marbury, a Maryland businessman who had been a strong supporter of Adams and the Federalists. In late 1801, after Madison had repeatedly refused to deliver his commission, Marbury filed a lawsuit in the Supreme Court asking the Court to issue a writ of mandamus forcing Madison to deliver his commission.
In an opinion written by Chief Justice John Marshall, the Court held firstly that Madison's refusal to deliver Marbury's commission was illegal, and secondly that it was normally proper for a court in such situations to order the government official in question to deliver the commission. However, in Marbury's case, the Court did not order Madison to comply. Examining the section of the law Congress had passed that gave the Supreme Court jurisdiction over types of cases like Marbury's, Marshall found that it had expanded the definition of the Supreme Court's jurisdiction beyond what was originally set down in the U.S. Constitution. Marshall then struck down that section of the law, announcing that American courts have the power to invalidate laws that they find to violate the Constitution. Because this meant the Court had no jurisdiction over the case, it could not issue the writ that Marbury had requested.
In the fiercely contested U.S. presidential election of 1800, the three main candidates were Thomas Jefferson, Aaron Burr, and the incumbent president, John Adams. Adams was aligned with the pro-business and pro-national government politics of Alexander Hamilton and the Federalist Party, while Jefferson and Burr were part of the opposing Democratic-Republican Party, which favored agriculture and decentralization. American public opinion had gradually turned against the Federalists in the months prior to the election, mainly due to their use of the controversial Alien and Sedition Acts, as well as growing tensions with Great Britain, with whom the Federalists favored close ties. Jefferson easily won the popular vote, but only narrowly defeated Adams in the Electoral College.
As the results of the election became clear in early 1801, Adams and the Federalists became determined to exercise their influence in the weeks remaining before Jefferson took office, and did all they could to fill federal offices with "anti-Jeffersonians" who were loyal to the Federalists. On March 2, 1801, just two days before his presidential term ended, Adams nominated nearly 60 Federalist supporters to circuit judge and justice of the peace positions the Federalist-controlled Congress had newly created with the Judiciary Act of 1801. These last-minute nomineeswhom Jefferson's supporters derisively referred to as the "Midnight Judges"included William Marbury, a prosperous businessman from Maryland. An ardent Federalist, Marbury was active in Maryland politics and had been a vigorous supporter of the Adams presidency.
The following day, March 3, the Senate approved Adams's nominations "en masse". The appointees' commissions were immediately written out, then signed by Adams and sealed by his Secretary of State, John Marshall, who had been named the new Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in January but continued also serving as Secretary of State for the remainder of Adams's term. Marshall then dispatched his younger brother James Markham Marshall to deliver the commissions to the appointees. With only one day left before Jefferson's inauguration, James Marshall was able to deliver most of the commissions, but a fewincluding Marbury'swere not delivered.
The day after, March 4, 1801, Thomas Jefferson was sworn in and became the third President of the United States. As soon as he was able, Jefferson instructed his new Secretary of State, James Madison, to withhold the undelivered appointments. In Jefferson's opinion, the commissions were void because they had not been delivered in time. Without the commissions, the appointees were unable to assume the offices and duties to which they had been appointed.
Over the next several months, Madison continually refused to deliver Marbury's commission to him. Finally, in December 1801, Marbury filed suit against Madison in the U.S. Supreme Court, asking the Court to issue a writ of mandamus forcing Madison to deliver his commission. This lawsuit resulted in the case of "Marbury v. Madison". The case was not decided until February 1803 because, in retaliation for Adams's appointment of the "Midnight Judges", Jefferson and the new Democratic-Republican Congressmen successfully passed a bill that canceled the Supreme Court's 1802 term, and so all pending casesincluding "Marbury v. Madison"were not decided until 1803.
On February 24, 1803, the Court rendered a unanimous 4–0 decision against Marbury. Due to illnesses, Justices William Cushing and Alfred Moore did not sit for oral argument or participate in the Court's decision.
The Court's opinion was written by the Chief Justice, John Marshall. Marshall structured the Court's opinion around a series of three questions that Marshall answered in turn:
First, Marshall wrote that Marbury had a right to his commission because all appropriate procedures were followed: the commission had been properly signed and sealed. Madison contended that the commissions were void if not delivered, but the Court disagreed, and said that the delivery of the commission was merely a custom, not an essential element of the commission itself.
Because Marbury's commission was valid, Marshall wrote, Madison's withholding of it was "violative of a vested legal right" on Marbury's part.
Turning to the second question, the Court said that the laws clearly afforded Marbury a remedy. Marshall wrote that "it is a general and indisputable rule, that where there is a legal right, there is also a legal remedy by suit or action at law, whenever that right is invaded." This rule derives from the traditional Roman legal maxim ("where there is a legal right, there is a legal remedy"), which was well established in the early Anglo-American common law. In what the American legal scholar Akhil Amar called "one of the most important and inspiring passages" of the opinion, Marshall wrote:
Marshall then confirmed that a writ of mandamusa type of court order that commands a government official to perform an act he or she is legally required to performwas the proper remedy for Marbury's situation. But this raised the issue of whether the Court, which was part of the judicial branch of the government, had the power to command Madison, who as Secretary of State was part of the executive branch of the government. The Court held that so long as the remedy involved a mandatory duty to a specific person, and not a political matter left to discretion, the courts could provide the legal remedy. Borrowing a phrase John Adams had drafted in 1779 for the Massachusetts State Constitution, Marshall wrote: "The government of the United States has been emphatically termed a government of laws, and not of men."
This brought Marshall to the third question: whether the Supreme Court had proper jurisdiction over the case, which would determine whether or not the Court had the power to issue the writ Marbury requested. This issue depended entirely on how the Court interpreted the text of the Judiciary Act of 1789. Congress had passed this Act to establish the American federal court system, since the U.S. Constitution itself only mandates a Supreme Court and leaves the rest of the U.S. federal judicial power to reside in "such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish." Section 13 of the Judiciary Act deals with the Supreme Court's original and appellate jurisdictions.
As Marshall explains in the opinion, under , a court has the power to be the first to hear and decide a case; under , a court has the power to hear a party's appeal from a lower court's decision and to "revise and correct" the previous decision. Marbury had argued that the language of Section 13 of the Judiciary Act gave the Supreme Court the authority to issue writs of mandamus when hearing cases under original jurisdiction, not just appellate jurisdiction. Although the language on the power to issue writs of mandamus appears with the sentence on appellate jurisdiction, rather than with the earlier sentences on original jurisdiction, a semicolon separates it from the specific clause on appellate jurisdiction. The section itself does not make clear whether the mandamus clause was intended to be read as part of the appellate sentence or on its ownin the opinion, Marshall quoted only the end of the sectionand the law's wording can plausibly be read either way. In the end, Marshall agreed with Marbury, and interpreted section 13 of the Judiciary Act to authorize mandamus on original jurisdiction.
But as Marshall then pointed out, this meant that the Judiciary Act clashes with Article III of the U.S. Constitution, which establishes the judicial branch of the U.S. government. Section 2 of Article III defines the nature of the Supreme Court's original and appellate jurisdiction:
This section of the Constitution says that the Supreme Court only has original jurisdiction over cases where a U.S. State is a party to a lawsuit or where a lawsuit involves foreign dignitaries. Neither of these categories covered Marbury's lawsuit, which was a dispute over a writ of mandamus for his justice of the peace commission. And so according to the Constitution, the Court could only have heard Marbury's case while exercising appellate jurisdiction over an appeal, not under original jurisdiction over a lawsuit directly filed with it, as Marbury had done.
But per Marshall's earlier interpretation, Section 13 of the Judiciary Act said that the Supreme Court have original jurisdiction over mandamus cases like Marbury's. This meant that the Judiciary Act apparently took the initial scope of the Supreme Court's original jurisdiction, as specified in the Constitution, and expanded it to include cases involving writs of mandamus. Marshall ruled that Congress cannot increase the Supreme Court's original jurisdiction as it was set down in the Constitution, and therefore that the relevant portion of Section 13 of the Judiciary Act violated Article III of the Constitution.
After ruling that it conflicted with the Constitution, Marshall struck down the relevant portion of the Judiciary Act in the U.S. Supreme Court's first ever declaration of the power of judicial review. Marshall ruled that American federal courts have the power to refuse to give any effect to congressional legislation that is inconsistent with their interpretation of the Constitutiona move known as "striking down" laws.
The U.S. Constitution does not explicitly give the American judiciary the power of judicial review. Nevertheless, Marshall's opinion gives a number of reasons in support of the judiciary's possession of the power. First, Marshall reasoned that the written nature of the Constitution inherently established judicial review. In a line borrowed from Alexander Hamilton's essay "Federalist No. 78", Marshall wrote: "The powers of the legislature are defined and limited; and that those limits may not be mistaken or forgotten, the constitution is written." He continued: "Certainly all those who have framed written constitutions contemplate them as forming the fundamental and paramount law of the nation, and consequently the theory of every such government must be, that an act of the legislature, repugnant to the constitution, is void."
Next, Marshall declared that deciding the constitutionality of the laws it applies is an inherent part of the American judiciary's role. In what has become the most famous and frequently quoted line of the opinion, Marshall wrote:
Marshall reasoned that the Constitution places limits on the American government's powers, and that those limits would be meaningless unless they were subject to judicial review and enforcement. He reasoned that the Constitution's provisions limiting Congress's powersuch as the export tax clause, or the prohibitions on bills of attainder and "ex post facto" lawsmeant that in some cases judges would be forced to choose between enforcing the Constitution or following Congress. In his opinion, the dilemma was not difficult: "The question whether an act repugnant to the Constitution can become the law of the land is a question deeply interesting to the United States, but, happily, not of an intricacy proportioned to its interest." He held "virtually as a matter of iron logic" that in the event of conflict between the Constitution and statutory laws passed by Congress, the constitutional law must be supreme. Again borrowing from Federalist No. 78, Marshall stated:
Third, Marshall stated that denying the supremacy of the Constitution over Congress's acts would mean that "courts must close their eyes on the constitution, and see only the law." And this, he said, would make Congress omnipotent, since none of the laws it passed would ever be invalid:
Marshall then gave several other reasons in favor of judicial review. He argued that the authorization in Article III of the Constitution that the Court can decide cases arising "under this Constitution" implied that the Court had the power to strike down laws conflicting with the Constitution. This, Marshall wrote, meant that the Founders were willing to have the American judiciary use and interpret the Constitution when judging cases. He also argued that federal judges' oaths of office—in which they swear to discharge their duties impartially and "agreeably to the Constitution and laws of the United States"—requires them to support the Constitution. Lastly, Marshall argued that judicial review is implied in Article VI of the U.S. Constitution, since it declares the supreme law of the United States to be not the Constitution and the laws of the United States in general, but rather the Constitution and laws made "in Pursuance thereof".
Having given his list of reasons, Marshall concluded the Court's opinion by reaffirming the Court's ruling of the jurisdiction law's invalidity and, therefore, the Court's inability to issue Marbury's writ of mandamus.
Besides its inherent legal questions, the case of "Marbury v. Madison" also created a difficult political dilemma for Marshall and the Supreme Court itself. If the Court had ruled in favor of Marbury and issued a writ of mandamus ordering Madison to deliver Marbury's commission, Jefferson and Madison would probably have simply ignored it, which would have made the Court look impotent and emphasized the "shakiness" of the judiciary. On the other hand, a plain and simple ruling against Marbury would have given Jefferson and the Democratic-Republicans a clear political victory.
Marshall avoided both problems and solved the dilemma. First, he ruled that Madison's withholding of Marbury's commission was illegal, which pleased the Federalists. But in the end he said the Court could not give Marbury his requested writ of mandamus, which gave Jefferson and the Democratic-Republicans the result they desired. But he did so in a way that simultaneously maneuvered Marbury's simple petition for a writ of mandamus into a case that presented a question that went to the heart of American constitutional law itself, in what the American legal scholar Laurence Tribe described as "an oft-told tale ... [that] remains awe-inspiring". In his history of the Supreme Court, the American political historian Robert G. McCloskey wrote:
Marshall had been looking for a case that was suitable for introducing judicial review, and was eager to use the situation in "Marbury" to establish his claim. He introduced judicial reviewa move Jefferson decriedbut used it to strike down a provision of a law that he read to have expanded the Supreme Court's powers, and thereby produced Jefferson's hoped-for result of Marbury losing his case. He "seized the occasion to uphold the institution of judicial review, but he did so in the course of reaching a judgment that his political opponents could neither defy nor protest." Though Jefferson criticized Marshall's opinion, he accepted it, and Marshall's decision in "Marbury" "articulate[d] a role for the federal courts that survives to this day." The American legal scholar Erwin Chemerinsky concluded: "The brilliance of Marshall's opinion cannot be overstated."
Given its preeminent position in American constitutional law, Marshall's opinion in "Marbury v. Madison" continues to be the subject of critical analysis and historical inquiry. In a 1955 "Harvard Law Review" article, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter emphasized that one can criticize Marshall's opinion in "Marbury" without demeaning it: "The courage of "Marbury v. Madison" is not minimized by suggesting that its reasoning is not impeccable and its conclusion, however wise, not inevitable." Criticisms of Marshall's opinion in "Marbury" usually fall into two general categories.
First, some criticize the way Marshall "strove" to reach the conclusion that the U.S. Supreme Court has constitutional authority over the other branches of the U.S. government. Today, American courts generally follow the principle of "constitutional avoidance": if a certain interpretation of a law raises constitutional problems, they prefer to use alternative interpretations that avoid these problems, so long as the alternative interpretations are still plausible. In "Marbury", Marshall could have avoided the constitutional questions through different legal rulings: for example, if he had ruled that Marbury did not have a right to his commission until it was delivered, or if he had ruled that refusals to honor political appointments could only be remedied through the political process and not the judicial process, it would have ended the case immediately, and the Court would not have reached the case's constitutional issues. Marshall did not do so, and many legal scholars have criticized him for it. However, others have noted that the "constitutional avoidance" principle did not exist in 1803, and in any case is "only a general guide for Court action", not an ironclad precept. Alternatively, it has also been argued that the claim that Marshall "strove" to create a controversy largely vanishes when the case is viewed from the legal perspective of the late 18th century, when American colonies' and states' supreme courts were largely modeled on the British Court of King's Bench, which inherently possessed "mandamus" powers.
Second, Marshall's arguments for the Court's authority are sometimes said to be mere "series of assertions", rather than substantive reasons logically laid out to support his position. It is generally agreed that Marshall's series of assertions regarding the U.S. Constitution and the actions of the other branches of government do not "inexorably lead to the conclusion that Marshall draws from them." Marshall's assertion of the American judiciary's authority to review executive branch actions was the most controversial issue when "Marbury" was first decided, and several subsequent U.S. presidents have tried to dispute it, to varying degrees.
Additionally, it is questionable whether Marshall should have participated in the "Marbury" case because of his participating role in the dispute. Marshall was still the acting Secretary of State when the nominations were made, and he himself had signed Marbury and the other men's commissions and had been responsible for their delivery. This potential conflict of interest raises strong grounds for Marshall to have recused himself from the case. In hindsight, the fact that Marshall did not recuse himself from "Marbury" is likely indicative of his eagerness to hear the case and use it to establish judicial review.
"Marbury v. Madison" remains the single most important decision in American constitutional law. It established American judges' authority to review the constitutionality of Congress's legislative acts, and to this day the Supreme Court's power to review the constitutionality of American laws at both the federal and state level "is generally rested upon the epic decision of "Marbury v. Madison"."
Although the Court's opinion in "Marbury" established judicial review in American federal law, it did not create or invent it. Some 18th-century British jurists had argued that British courts had the power to circumscribe Parliament, and the principle became generally accepted in Colonial Americaespecially in Marshall's native Virginiadue to the idea that in America only the people were sovereign, rather than the government, and therefore that the courts should only implement legitimate laws. By the time of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, American courts' "independent power and duty to interpret the law" was well established, and Alexander Hamilton defended the concept of judicial review in "Federalist No. 78." Nevertheless, Marshall's opinion in "Marbury" was the power's first announcement and exercise by the Supreme Court. It made the practice more routine, rather than exceptional, and prepared the way for the Court's opinion in the 1819 case "McCulloch v. Maryland", in which Marshall implied that the Supreme Court was the supreme interpreter of the U.S. Constitution.
"Marbury" also established that the power of judicial review covers actions by the executive branch—the President and his cabinet members. However, American courts' power of judicial review over executive branch actions only extends to matters in which the executive has a legal duty to act or refrain from acting, and does not extend to matters that are entirely within the President's discretion, such as whether to veto a bill or whom to appoint to an office. This power has been the basis of many subsequent important Supreme Court decisions in American history, such as the 1974 case "United States v. Nixon", in which the Court held that President Richard Nixon had to comply with a subpoena to provide tapes of his conversations for use in a criminal trial related to the Watergate scandal, and which ultimately led to Nixon's resignation.
Although it is a potent check on the other branches of the U.S. government, federal courts rarely exercised the power of judicial review in early American history. After deciding "Marbury" in 1803, the Supreme Court did not strike down another federal law until 1857, when the Court struck down the Missouri Compromise in its now-infamous decision "Dred Scott v. Sandford", a ruling that contributed to the outbreak of the American Civil War. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=20715 |
Mellitus
Mellitus (died 24 April 624) was the first bishop of London in the Saxon period, the third Archbishop of Canterbury, and a member of the Gregorian mission sent to England to convert the Anglo-Saxons from their native paganism to Christianity. He arrived in 601 AD with a group of clergy sent to augment the mission, and was consecrated as Bishop of London in 604. Mellitus was the recipient of a famous letter from Pope Gregory I known as the "Epistola ad Mellitum", preserved in a later work by the medieval chronicler Bede, which suggested the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons be undertaken gradually, integrating pagan rituals and customs. In 610, Mellitus returned to Italy to attend a council of bishops, and returned to England bearing papal letters to some of the missionaries.
Mellitus was exiled from London by the pagan successors to his patron, King Sæberht of Essex, following the latter's death around 616. King Æthelberht of Kent, Mellitus' other patron, died at about the same time, forcing him to take refuge in Gaul. Mellitus returned to England the following year, after Æthelberht's successor had been converted to Christianity, but he was unable to return to London, whose inhabitants remained pagan. Mellitus was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury in 619. During his tenure, he was alleged to have miraculously saved the cathedral, and much of the town of Canterbury, from a fire. After his death in 624, Mellitus was revered as a saint.
The medieval chronicler Bede described Mellitus as being of noble birth. In letters, Pope Gregory I called him an abbot, but it is unclear whether Mellitus had previously been abbot of a Roman monastery, or this was a rank bestowed on him to ease his journey to England by making him the leader of the expedition. The papal register, a listing of letters sent out by the popes, describes him as an "abbot in Frankia" in its description of the correspondence, but the letter itself only says "abbot". The first time Mellitus is mentioned in history is in the letters of Gregory, and nothing else of his background is known. It appears likely that he was a native of Italy, along with all the other bishops consecrated by Augustine.
Pope Gregory I sent Mellitus to England in June 601, in response to an appeal from Augustine, the first Archbishop of Canterbury. Augustine needed more clergy to join the Gregorian mission that was converting the kingdom of Kent, then ruled by Æthelberht, from paganism to Christianity. The new missionaries brought with them a gift of books and "all things which were needed for worship and the ministry of the Church." Thomas of Elmham, a 15th-century Canterbury chronicler, claimed that in his day there were a number of the books brought to England by Mellitus still at Canterbury. Examination of the remaining manuscripts has determined that one possible survivor of Mellitus' books is the St Augustine Gospels, now in Cambridge, as Corpus Christi College, MS (manuscript) 286. Along with the letter to Augustine, the missionaries brought a letter for Æthelberht, urging the King to act like the Roman Emperor Constantine I and force the conversion of his followers to Christianity. The king was also encouraged to destroy all pagan shrines.
The historian Ian Wood has suggested that Mellitus' journey through Gaul probably took in the bishoprics of Vienne, Arles, Lyons, Toulon, Marseilles, Metz, Paris, and Rouen, as evidenced by the letters that Gregory addressed to those bishops soliciting their support for Mellitus' party. Gregory also wrote to the Frankish kings Chlothar II, Theuderic II, Theudebert II, along with Brunhilda of Austrasia, who was Theudebert and Theuderic's grandmother and regent. Wood feels that this wide appeal to the Frankish episcopate and royalty was an effort to secure more support for the Gregorian mission. While on his journey to England, Mellitus received a letter from Gregory allowing Augustine to convert pagan temples to Christian churches, and to convert pagan animal sacrifices into Christian feasts, to ease the transition to Christianity. Gregory's letter marked a sea change in the missionary strategy, and was later included in Bede's "Ecclesiastical History of the English People". Usually known as the "Epistola ad Mellitum", it conflicts with the letter sent to Æthelberht, which the historian R. A. Markus sees as a turning point in missionary history, when forcible conversion gave way to persuasion. This traditional view, that the "Epistola" represents a contradiction of the letter to Æthelberht, has been challenged by the historian and theologian George Demacopoulos, who argues that the letter to Æthelberht was mainly meant to encourage the King in spiritual matters, while the "Epistola" was sent to deal with purely practical matters, and thus the two do not contradict each other.
Exactly when Mellitus and his party arrived in England is unknown, but he was certainly in the country by 604, when Augustine consecrated him as bishop in the province of the East Saxons, making Mellitus the first Bishop of London after the Roman departure (London was the East Saxons' capital). The city was a logical choice for a new bishopric, as it was a hub for the southern road network. It was also a former Roman town; many of the Gregorian mission's efforts were centred in such locations. Before his consecration, Mellitus baptised Sæberht, Æthelberht's nephew, who then allowed the bishopric to be established. The episcopal church built in London was probably founded by Æthelberht, rather than Sæberht. Although Bede records that Æthelberht gave lands to support the new episcopate, a charter that claims to be a grant of lands from Æthelberht to Mellitus is a later forgery.
Although Gregory had intended London to be the southern archbishopric for the island, Augustine never moved his episcopal see to London, and instead consecrated Mellitus as a plain bishop there. After Augustine's death in 604, Canterbury continued to be the site of the southern archbishopric, and London remained a bishopric. It may have been that the Kentish king did not wish greater episcopal authority to be exercised outside his own kingdom.
Mellitus attended a council of bishops held in Italy in February 610, convened by Pope Boniface IV. The historian N. J. Higham speculates that one reason for his attendance may have been to assert the English Church's independence from the Frankish Church. Boniface had Mellitus take two papal letters back to England, one to Æthelbert and his people, and another to Laurence, the Archbishop of Canterbury. He also brought back the synod's decrees to England. No authentic letters or documents from this synod remain, although some were forged in the 1060s and 1070s at Canterbury. During his time as a bishop, Mellitus joined with Justus, the Bishop of Rochester, in signing a letter that Laurence wrote to the Celtic bishops urging the Celtic Church to adopt the Roman method of calculating the date of Easter. This letter also mentioned the fact that Irish missionary bishops, such as Dagan, refused to eat with the Roman missionaries.
Both Æthelberht and Sæberht died around 616 or 618, causing a crisis for the mission. Sæberht's three sons had not converted to Christianity, and drove Mellitus from London. Bede says that Mellitus was exiled because he refused the brothers' request for a taste of the sacramental bread. Whether this occurred immediately after Sæberht's death or later is impossible to determine from Bede's chronology, which has both events in the same chapter but gives neither an exact time frame nor the elapsed time between the two events. The historian N. J. Higham connects the timing of this episode with a change in the "overkingship" from the Christian Kentish Æthelberht to the pagan East Anglian Raedwald, which Higham feels happened after Æthelberht's death. In Higham's view, Sæberht's sons drove Mellitus from London because they had passed from Kentish overlordship to East Anglian, and thus no longer needed to keep Mellitus, who was connected with the Kentish kingdom, in office.
Mellitus fled first to Canterbury, but Æthelberht's successor Eadbald was also a pagan, so Mellitus, accompanied by Justus, took refuge in Gaul. Mellitus was recalled to Britain by Laurence, the second Archbishop of Canterbury, after his conversion of Eadbald. How long Mellitus' exile lasted is unclear. Bede claims it was a year, but it may have been longer. However, Mellitus did not return to London, because the East Saxons remained pagan. Although Mellitus fled, there does not seem to have been any serious persecution of Christians in the East Saxon kingdom. The East Saxon see was not occupied again until Cedd was consecrated as bishop in about 654.
Mellitus succeeded Laurence as the third Archbishop of Canterbury after the latter's death in 619. During his tenure as archbishop, Mellitus supposedly performed a miracle in 623 by diverting a fire that had started in Canterbury and threatened the church. He was carried into the flames, upon which the wind changed direction, thus saving the building. Bede praised Mellitus' sane mind, but other than the miracle, little happened during his time as archbishop. Bede also mentioned that Mellitus suffered from gout. Boniface wrote to Mellitus encouraging him in the mission, perhaps prompted by the marriage of Æthelburh of Kent to King Edwin of Northumbria. Whether Mellitus received a pallium, the symbol of an archbishop's authority, from the pope is unknown.
Mellitus died on 24 April 624, and was buried at St Augustine's Abbey in Canterbury that same day. He became revered as a saint after his death, and was allotted the feast day of 24 April. In the ninth century, Mellitus' feast day was mentioned in the Stowe Missal, along with Laurence and Justus. He was still venerated at St Augustine's in 1120, along with a number of other local saints. There was also a shrine to him at Old St Paul's Cathedral in London. Shortly after the Norman Conquest, Goscelin wrote a life of Mellitus, the first of several to appear around that time, but none contain any information not included in Bede's earlier works. These later medieval lives do, however, reveal that during Goscelin's lifetime persons suffering from gout were urged to pray at Mellitus' tomb. Goscelin records that Mellitus' shrine flanked that of Augustine, along with Laurence, in the eastern central chapel of the presbytery. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=20716 |
M'Naghten rules
The M'Naghten rule (pronounced, and sometimes spelled, McNaughton) is any variant of the 1840s jury instruction in a criminal case when there is a defence of insanity:
The rule was formulated as a reaction to the acquittal in 1843 of Daniel M'Naghten on the charge of murdering Edward Drummond. M'Naghten had shot Drummond after mistakenly identifying him as UK Prime Minister Robert Peel, who was the intended target. The House of Lords asked a panel of judges, presided over by Sir Nicolas Conyngham Tindal, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, a series of hypothetical questions about the defence of insanity. The principles expounded by this panel have come to be known as the "M'Naghten Rules", though they have gained any status only by usage in the common law and M'Naghten himself would have been found guilty if they had been applied at his trial.
The rules so formulated as "M'Naghten's Case" 1843 10 C & F 200 have been a standard test for criminal liability in relation to mentally disordered defendants in common law jurisdictions ever since, with some minor adjustments. When the tests set out by the Rules are satisfied, the accused may be adjudged "not guilty by reason of insanity" or "guilty but insane" and the sentence may be a mandatory or discretionary (but usually indeterminate) period of treatment in a secure hospital facility, or otherwise at the discretion of the court (depending on the country and the offence charged) instead of a punitive disposal.
The insanity defence is recognized in Australia, Canada, England and Wales, Hong Kong, India, the Republic of Ireland, New Zealand, Norway and most U.S. states with the exception of Idaho, Kansas, Montana, Utah, and Vermont but not all of these jurisdictions still use the M'Naghten Rules. States that disallow the insanity defence still allow defendants to demonstrate that they are not capable of forming intent to commit a crime as a result of mental illness.
There are various justifications for the exemption of the insane from criminal responsibility. When mental incapacity is successfully raised as a defence in a criminal trial it absolves a defendant from liability: it applies public policies in relation to criminal responsibility by applying a rationale of compassion, accepting that it is morally wrong to punish a person if that person is deprived permanently or temporarily of the capacity to form a necessary mental intent that the definition of a crime requires. Punishment of the obviously mentally ill by the state may undermine public confidence in the penal system. A utilitarian and humanitarian approach suggests that the interests of society are better served by treatment of the illness rather than punishment of the individual.
Historically, insanity was seen as grounds for leniency. In pre-Norman times in England there was no distinct criminal code – a murderer could pay compensation to the victim's family under the principle of "buy off the spear or bear it". The insane person's family were expected to pay any compensation for the crime. In Norman times insanity was not seen as a defence in itself but a special circumstance in which the jury would deliver a guilty verdict and refer the defendant to the King for a pardon
In "R v Arnold" 1724 16 How St. Tr. 765, the test for insanity was expressed in the following terms
whether the accused is totally deprived of his understanding and memory and knew what he was doing "no more than a wild beast or a brute, or an infant".
The next major advance occurred in "Hadfield's Trial" 1800 27 How St. Tr. 765 in which the court decided that a crime committed under some delusion would be excused only if it would have been excusable had the delusion been true. This would deal with the situation, for example, when the accused imagines he is cutting through a loaf of bread, whereas in fact he is cutting through a person's neck.
Each jurisdiction may have its own standards of the insanity defence. More than one standard can be applied to any case based on multiple jurisdictions.
The House of Lords delivered the following exposition of the Rules:
The central issue of this definition may be stated as "did the defendant know what they were doing, or, if so, that it was wrong?", and the issues raised have been analysed in subsequent appellate decisions:
Sanity is a rebuttable presumption and the burden of proof is on the party denying it; the standard of proof is on a balance of probabilities, that is to say that mental incapacity is more likely than not. If this burden is successfully discharged, the party relying upon it is entitled to succeed. In Lord Denning's judgement in "Bratty v Attorney-General for Northern Ireland" 1963 AC 386, whenever the defendant makes an issue of his state of mind, the prosecution can adduce evidence of insanity. However, this will normally only arise to negate the defence case when automatism or diminished responsibility is in issue. In practical terms, the defence will be more likely to raise the issue of mental incapacity to negate or minimise criminal liability. In "R v Clarke" 1972 1 All E R 219 a defendant charged with a shoplifting claimed she had no "mens rea" because she had absent-mindedly walked out of the shop without paying because she suffered from depression. When the prosecution attempted to adduce evidence that this constituted insanity within the Rules, she changed her plea to guilty, but on appeal the Court ruled that she had been merely denying mens rea rather than raising a defence under the Rules and her conviction was quashed. The general rule was stated that the Rules apply only to cases in which the defect of reason is substantial.
Whether a particular condition amounts to a disease of the mind within the Rules is not a medical but a legal question to be decided in accordance with the ordinary rules of interpretation. It seems that any disease which produces a malfunctioning of the mind is a disease of the mind and need not be a disease of the brain itself. The term has been held to cover numerous conditions:
The courts have clearly drawn a distinction between internal and external factors affecting a defendant's mental condition. This is partly based on risk of recurrence, whereby the High Court of Australia has expressed that the defence of automatism is unable considered when the mental disorder has been proved transient and as such not likely to recur. However, the distinction between insanity and automatism is difficult because the distinction between internal and external divide is difficult. Many diseases consist of a predisposition, considered an internal cause, combined with a precipitant, which would be considered an external cause. Actions committed while sleepwalking would normally be considered as "non-insane automatism", but often alcohol and stress trigger bouts of sleepwalking and make them more likely to be violent. The diabetic who takes insulin but does not eat properly – is that an internal or external cause?
This phrase refers to the physical nature and quality of the act, rather than the moral quality. It covers the situation where the defendant does not know what he is physically doing. Two common examples used are:
The judges were specifically asked if a person could be excused if he committed an offence in consequence of an insane delusion. They replied that if he labours under such partial delusion only, and is not in other respects insane, "he must be considered in the same situation as to responsibility as if the facts with respect to which the delusion exists were real". This rule requires the court to take the facts as the accused believed them to be and follows "Hadfield's Trial", above. If the delusions do not prevent the defendant from having mens rea there will be no defence. In "R v Bell" 1984 Crim. LR 685 the defendant smashed a van through the entrance gates of a holiday camp because "It was like a secret society in there, I wanted to do my bit against it" as instructed by God. It was held that, as the defendant had been aware of his actions, he could neither have been in a state of automatism nor insane, and the fact that he believed that God had told him to do this merely provided an explanation of his motive and did not prevent him from knowing that what he was doing was wrong in the legal sense.
The interpretation of this clause is a subject of controversy among legal authorities, and different standards may apply in different jurisdictions.
"Wrong" was interpreted to mean "legally" wrong, rather than "morally" wrong, in the case of "Windle" 1952 2QB 826; 1952 2 All ER 1 246, where the defendant killed his wife with an overdose of aspirin; he telephoned the police and said, "I suppose they will hang me for this." It was held that this was sufficient to show that although the defendant was suffering from a mental illness, he was aware that his act was wrong, and the defence was not allowed. Under this interpretation, there may be cases where the mentally ill know that their conduct is legally prohibited, but it is arguable that their mental condition prevents them making the connection between an act being legally prohibited and the societal requirement to conform their conduct to the requirements of the criminal law.
As an example of a contrasting interpretation in which defendant lacking knowledge that the act was "morally" wrong meets the M'Naghten standards, there are the instructions the judge is required to provide to the jury in cases in New York State when the defendant has raised an insanity plea as a defence:
... with respect to the term "wrong", a person lacks substantial capacity to know or appreciate that conduct is wrong if that person, as a result of mental disease or defect, lacked substantial capacity to know or appreciate either that the conduct was against the law or that it was against commonly held moral principles, or both.
There is other support in the authorities for this interpretation of the standards enunciated in the findings presented to the House of Lords regarding M'Naghten's case:
If it be accepted, as can hardly be denied, that the answers of the judges to the questions asked by the House of Lords in 1843 are to be read in the light of the then existing case-law and not as novel pronouncements of a legislative character, then the [Australian] High Court's analysis in "Stapleton's Case" is compelling. Their exhaustive examination of the extensive case-law concerning the defence of insanity prior to and at the time of the trial of M'Naughten establishes convincingly that it was morality and not legality which lay as a concept behind the judges' use of "wrong" in the M'Naghten rules.
In "DPP v Harper" (1997) it was held that insanity is not generally a defence to strict liability offences. In this instance, the accused was driving with excess alcohol. By definition, the accused is sufficiently aware of the nature of the activity to commit the "actus reus" of driving and presumably knows that driving while drunk is legally wrong. Any other feature of the accused's knowledge is irrelevant.
Section 1 of the Criminal Procedure (Insanity and Unfitness to Plead) Act 1991 provides that a jury shall not return a special verdict that "the accused is not guilty by reason of insanity" except on the written or oral evidence of two or more registered medical practitioners of whom at least one has special experience in the field of mental disorder. This may require the jury to decide between conflicting medical evidence which they are not necessarily equipped to do, but the law goes further and allows them to disagree with the experts if there are facts or surrounding circumstances which, in the opinion of the court, justify the jury in coming to that conclusion.
Under section 5 of the Criminal Procedure (Insanity) Act 1964 (as amended):
There have been four major criticisms of the law as it currently stands:
The insanity defense article has a number of alternative tests that have been used at different times and places. As one example, the ALI test replaced the M'Naughten rule in many parts of the United States for many years until the 1980s; when in the aftermath of John Hinckley shooting President Ronald Reagan many ALI states returned to a variation of M'Naughten.
The M'Naghten rules are at the focus of John Grisham's legal thriller "A Time to Kill". The M'Naghten rules apply in the US State of Mississippi, where the plot is set, and using them is the only way for the lawyer protagonist to save his client. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=20723 |
Mineraloid
A mineraloid is a naturally occurring mineral-like substance that does not demonstrate crystallinity. Mineraloids possess chemical compositions that vary beyond the generally accepted ranges for specific minerals. For example, obsidian is an amorphous glass and not a crystal. Jet is derived from decaying wood under extreme pressure. Opal is another mineraloid because of its non-crystalline nature. Pearl contains calcium carbonate crystals within its structure, but it should be considered a mineraloid because the crystals are bonded by an organic material, and there is no definite proportion of the components. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=20725 |
Mathematical formulation of quantum mechanics
The mathematical formulations of quantum mechanics are those mathematical formalisms that permit a rigorous description of quantum mechanics. This mathematical formalism uses mainly a part of functional analysis, especially Hilbert space which is a kind of linear space. Such are distinguished from mathematical formalisms for physics theories developed prior to the early 1900s by the use of abstract mathematical structures, such as infinite-dimensional Hilbert spaces(L2 space mainly), and operators on these spaces. In brief, values of physical observables such as energy and momentum were no longer considered as values of functions on phase space, but as eigenvalues; more precisely as spectral values of linear operators in Hilbert space.
These formulations of quantum mechanics continue to be used today. At the heart of the description are ideas of "quantum state" and "quantum observables" which are radically different from those used in previous models of physical reality. While the mathematics permits calculation of many quantities that can be measured experimentally, there is a definite theoretical limit to values that can be simultaneously measured. This limitation was first elucidated by Heisenberg through a thought experiment, and is represented mathematically in the new formalism by the non-commutativity of operators representing quantum observables.
Prior to the development of quantum mechanics as a separate theory, the mathematics used in physics consisted mainly of formal mathematical analysis, beginning with calculus, and increasing in complexity up to differential geometry and partial differential equations. Probability theory was used in statistical mechanics. Geometric intuition played a strong role in the first two and, accordingly, theories of relativity were formulated entirely in terms of differential geometric concepts. The phenomenology of quantum physics arose roughly between 1895 and 1915, and for the 10 to 15 years before the development of quantum theory (around 1925) physicists continued to think of quantum theory within the confines of what is now called classical physics, and in particular within the same mathematical structures. The most sophisticated example of this is the Sommerfeld–Wilson–Ishiwara quantization rule, which was formulated entirely on the classical phase space.
In the 1890s, Planck was able to derive the blackbody spectrum which was later used to avoid the classical ultraviolet catastrophe by making the unorthodox assumption that, in the interaction of electromagnetic radiation with matter, energy could only be exchanged in discrete units which he called quanta. Planck postulated a direct proportionality between the frequency of radiation and the quantum of energy at that frequency. The proportionality constant, , is now called Planck's constant in his honor.
In 1905, Einstein explained certain features of the photoelectric effect by assuming that Planck's energy quanta were actual particles, which were later dubbed photons.
All of these developments were phenomenological and challenged the theoretical physics of the time. Bohr and Sommerfeld went on to modify classical mechanics in an attempt to deduce the Bohr model from first principles. They proposed that, of all closed classical orbits traced by a mechanical system in its phase space, only the ones that enclosed an area which was a multiple of Planck's constant were actually allowed. The most sophisticated version of this formalism was the so-called Sommerfeld–Wilson–Ishiwara quantization. Although the Bohr model of the hydrogen atom could be explained in this way, the spectrum of the helium atom (classically an unsolvable 3-body problem) could not be predicted. The mathematical status of quantum theory remained uncertain for some time.
In 1923 de Broglie proposed that wave–particle duality applied not only to photons but to electrons and every other physical system.
The situation changed rapidly in the years 1925–1930, when working mathematical foundations were found through the groundbreaking work of Erwin Schrödinger, Werner Heisenberg, Max Born, Pascual Jordan, and the foundational work of John von Neumann, Hermann Weyl and Paul Dirac, and it became possible to unify several different approaches in terms of a fresh set of ideas. The physical interpretation of the theory was also clarified in these years after Werner Heisenberg discovered the uncertainty relations and Niels Bohr introduced the idea of complementarity.
Werner Heisenberg's matrix mechanics was the first successful attempt at replicating the observed quantization of atomic spectra. Later in the same year, Schrödinger created his wave mechanics. Schrödinger's formalism was considered easier to understand, visualize and calculate as it led to differential equations, which physicists were already familiar with solving. Within a year, it was shown that the two theories were equivalent.
Schrödinger himself initially did not understand the fundamental probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics, as he thought that the absolute square of the wave function of an electron should be interpreted as the charge density of an object smeared out over an extended, possibly infinite, volume of space. It was Max Born who introduced the interpretation of the absolute square of the wave function as the probability distribution of the position of a "pointlike" object. Born's idea was soon taken over by Niels Bohr in Copenhagen who then became the "father" of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. Schrödinger's wave function can be seen to be closely related to the classical Hamilton–Jacobi equation. The correspondence to classical mechanics was even more explicit, although somewhat more formal, in Heisenberg's matrix mechanics. In his PhD thesis project, Paul Dirac discovered that the equation for the operators in the Heisenberg representation, as it is now called, closely translates to classical equations for the dynamics of certain quantities in the Hamiltonian formalism of classical mechanics, when one expresses them through Poisson brackets, a procedure now known as canonical quantization.
To be more precise, already before Schrödinger, the young postdoctoral fellow Werner Heisenberg invented his matrix mechanics, which was the first correct quantum mechanics–– the essential breakthrough. Heisenberg's matrix mechanics formulation was based on algebras of infinite matrices, a very radical formulation in light of the mathematics of classical physics, although he started from the index-terminology of the experimentalists of that time, not even aware that his "index-schemes" were matrices, as Born soon pointed out to him. In fact, in these early years, linear algebra was not generally popular with physicists in its present form.
Although Schrödinger himself after a year proved the equivalence of his wave-mechanics and Heisenberg's matrix mechanics, the reconciliation of the two approaches and their modern abstraction as motions in Hilbert space is generally attributed to Paul Dirac, who wrote a lucid account in his 1930 classic "The Principles of Quantum Mechanics". He is the third, and possibly most important, pillar of that field (he soon was the only one to have discovered a relativistic generalization of the theory). In his above-mentioned account, he introduced the bra–ket notation, together with an abstract formulation in terms of the Hilbert space used in functional analysis; he showed that Schrödinger's and Heisenberg's approaches were two different representations of the same theory, and found a third, most general one, which represented the dynamics of the system. His work was particularly fruitful in all kinds of generalizations of the field.
The first complete mathematical formulation of this approach, known as the Dirac–von Neumann axioms, is generally credited to John von Neumann's 1932 book "Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics", although Hermann Weyl had already referred to Hilbert spaces (which he called "unitary spaces") in his 1927 classic paper and book. It was developed in parallel with a new approach to the mathematical spectral theory based on linear operators rather than the quadratic forms that were David Hilbert's approach a generation earlier. Though theories of quantum mechanics continue to evolve to this day, there is a basic framework for the mathematical formulation of quantum mechanics which underlies most approaches and can be traced back to the mathematical work of John von Neumann. In other words, discussions about "interpretation" of the theory, and extensions to it, are now mostly conducted on the basis of shared assumptions about the mathematical foundations.
The application of the new quantum theory to electromagnetism resulted in quantum field theory, which was developed starting around 1930. Quantum field theory has driven the development of more sophisticated formulations of quantum mechanics, of which the ones presented here are simple special cases.
On a different front, von Neumann originally dispatched quantum measurement with his infamous postulate on the collapse of the wavefunction, raising a host of philosophical problems. Over the intervening 70 years, the "problem of measurement" became an active research area and itself spawned some new formulations of quantum mechanics.
A related topic is the relationship to classical mechanics. Any new physical theory is supposed to reduce to successful old theories in some approximation. For quantum mechanics, this translates into the need to study the so-called classical limit of quantum mechanics. Also, as Bohr emphasized, human cognitive abilities and language are inextricably linked to the classical realm, and so classical descriptions are intuitively more accessible than quantum ones. In particular, quantization, namely the construction of a quantum theory whose classical limit is a given and known classical theory, becomes an important area of quantum physics in itself.
Finally, some of the originators of quantum theory (notably Einstein and Schrödinger) were unhappy with what they thought were the philosophical implications of quantum mechanics. In particular, Einstein took the position that quantum mechanics must be incomplete, which motivated research into so-called hidden-variable theories. The issue of hidden variables has become in part an experimental issue with the help of quantum optics.
A physical system is generally described by three basic ingredients: states; observables; and dynamics (or law of time evolution) or, more generally, a group of physical symmetries. A classical description can be given in a fairly direct way by a phase space model of mechanics: states are points in a symplectic phase space, observables are real-valued functions on it, time evolution is given by a one-parameter group of symplectic transformations of the phase space, and physical symmetries are realized by symplectic transformations. A quantum description normally consists of a Hilbert space of states, observables are self adjoint operators on the space of states, time evolution is given by a one-parameter group of unitary transformations on the Hilbert space of states, and physical symmetries are realized by unitary transformations. (It is possible, to map this Hilbert-space picture to a phase space formulation, invertibly. See below.)
The following summary of the mathematical framework of quantum mechanics can be partly traced back to the Dirac–von Neumann axioms.
One can in this formalism state Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and prove it as a theorem, although the exact historical sequence of events, concerning who derived what and under which framework, is the subject of historical investigations outside the scope of this article.
Furthermore, to the postulates of quantum mechanics one should also add basic statements on the properties of spin and Pauli's exclusion principle, see below.
The time evolution of the state is given by a differentiable function from the real numbers , representing instants of time, to the Hilbert space of system states. This map is characterized by a differential equation as follows:
If denotes the state of the system at any one time , the following Schrödinger equation holds:
where is a densely defined self-adjoint operator, called the system Hamiltonian, is the imaginary unit and is the reduced Planck constant. As an observable, corresponds to the total energy of the system.
Alternatively, by Stone's theorem one can state that there is a strongly continuous one-parameter unitary map : such that
for all times . The existence of a self-adjoint Hamiltonian such that
is a consequence of Stone's theorem on one-parameter unitary groups. It is assumed that does not depend on time and that the perturbation starts at ; otherwise one must use the Dyson series, formally written as
where formula_7 is Dyson's time-ordering symbol.
(This symbol permutes a product of noncommuting operators of the form
into the uniquely determined re-ordered expression
The result is a causal chain, the primary "cause" in the past on the utmost r.h.s., and finally the present "effect" on the utmost l.h.s. .)
It is then easily checked that the expected values of all observables are the same in both pictures
and that the time-dependent Heisenberg operators satisfy
which is true for time-dependent . Notice the commutator expression is purely formal when one of the operators is unbounded. One would specify a representation for the expression to make sense of it.
The interaction picture does not always exist, though. In interacting quantum field theories, Haag's theorem states that the interaction picture does not exist. This is because the Hamiltonian cannot be split into a free and an interacting part within a superselection sector. Moreover, even if in the Schrödinger picture the Hamiltonian does not depend on time, e.g. , in the interaction picture it does, at least, if does not commute with , since | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=20728 |
Multiple-document interface
A multiple-document interface (MDI) is a graphical user interface in which multiple windows reside under a single parent window. Such systems often allow child windows to embed other windows inside them as well, creating complex nested hierarchies. This contrasts with single-document interfaces (SDI) where all windows are independent of each other.
In the usability community, there has been much debate about whether the multiple-document or single-document interface is preferable. Software companies have used both interfaces with mixed responses. For example, Microsoft changed its Office applications from SDI to MDI mode and then back to SDI, although the degree of implementation varies from one component to another. SDI can be more useful in cases where users switch more often between separate applications than among the windows of one application.
MDI can be confusing if it has a lack of information about the currently opened windows. In MDI applications, the application developer must provide a way to switch between documents or view a list of open windows, and the user might have to use an application-specific menu ("window list" or something similar) to switch between open documents. This is different from SDI applications where the window manager's task bar or task manager displays the currently opened windows. In recent years it has become increasingly common for MDI applications to use "tabs" to display the currently opened windows. An interface in which tabs are used to manage open documents is referred to as a "tabbed document interface" (TDI). Another option is "tiled" panes or windows, which make it easier to prevent content from overlapping.
Some applications allow the user to switch between these modes at their choosing, depending on personal preference or the task at hand.
Nearly all graphical user interface toolkits to date provide at least one solution for designing MDIs. A notable exception was Apple's Cocoa API until the advent of tabbed window groups in MacOS High Sierra. The Java GUI toolkit, Swing, for instance, provides the class which serves as a container for individual frames (class ). GTK lacks any standardized support for MDI.
Graphical computer applications with an IDE-style interface (IDE) are those whose child windows reside under a single parent window (usually with the exception of modal windows). An IDE-style interface is distinguishable from the Multiple Document Interface (MDI), because all child windows in an IDE-style interface are enhanced with added functionality not ordinarily available in MDI applications. Because of this, IDE-style applications can be considered a functional superset and descendant of MDI applications.
Examples of enhanced child-window functionality include:
A common convention for child windows in IDE-style applications is the ability to collapse child windows, either when inactive, or when specified by the user. Child windows that are collapsed will conform to one of the four outer boundaries of the parent window, with some kind of label or indicator that allows them to be expanded again.
In contrast to (MDI) applications, which ordinarily allow a single tabbed interface for the parent window, applications with an IDE-style interface allow tabs for organizing one or more subpanes of the parent window.
Mac OS and its GUI are document-centric instead of window-centric or application-centric. Every document window is an object with which the user can work. The menu bar changes to reflect whatever application the front window belongs to. Application windows can be hidden and manipulated as a group, and the user may switch between applications (i.e., groups of windows) or between individual windows, automatically hiding palettes, and most programs will stay running even with no open windows. Indeed, prior to Mac OS X, it was purposely impossible to interleave windows from multiple applications.
In spite of this, some unusual applications breaking the human interface guidelines (most notably Photoshop) do exhibit different behavior. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=20732 |
Microlith
A microlith is a small stone tool usually made of flint or chert and typically a centimetre or so in length and half a centimetre wide. They were made by humans from around 35,000 to 3,000 years ago, across Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia. The microliths were used in spear points and arrowheads.
Microliths are produced from either a small blade (microblade) or a larger blade-like piece of flint by abrupt or truncated retouching, which leaves a very typical piece of waste, called a microburin. The microliths themselves are sufficiently worked so as to be distinguishable from workshop waste or accidents.
Two families of microliths are usually defined: laminar and geometric. An assemblage of microliths can be used to date an archeological site. Laminar microliths are slightly larger, and are associated with the end of the Upper Paleolithic and the beginning of the Epipaleolithic era; geometric microliths are characteristic of the Mesolithic and the Neolithic. Geometric microliths may be triangular, trapezoid or lunate. Microlith production generally declined following the introduction of agriculture (8000 BCE) but continued later in cultures with a deeply rooted hunting tradition.
Regardless of type, microliths were used to form the points of hunting weapons, such as spears and (in later periods) arrows, and other artifacts and are found throughout Africa, Asia and Europe. They were utilised with wood, bone, resin and fiber to form a composite tool or weapon, and traces of wood to which microliths were attached have been found in Sweden, Denmark and England. An average of between six and eighteen microliths may often have been used in one spear or harpoon, but only one or two in an arrow.
Laminar microliths date from at least the Gravettian culture or possibly the start of the Upper Paleolithic era, and they are found all through the Mesolithic and Neolithic eras. "Noailles" burins and micro-gravettes indicate that the production of microliths had already started in the Gravettian culture.
This style of flint working flourished during the Magdalenian period and persisted in numerous Epipaleolithic traditions all around the Mediterranean basin. These microliths are slightly larger than the geometric microliths that followed and were made from the flakes of flint obtained "ad hoc" from a small nucleus or from a depleted nucleus of flint. They were produced either by percussion or by the application of a variable pressure (although pressure is the best option, this method of producing microliths is complicated and was not the most commonly used technique).
There are three basic types of laminar microlith. The truncated blade type can be divided into a number of sub-types depending on the position of the truncation (for example, oblique, square or double) and according to its form, for example, concave or convex. "Raclette scrapers" are notable for their particular form, being blades or flakes whose edges have been sharply retouched until they are semicircular or even shapeless. Raclettes are indefinite cultural indicators, as they appear from the Upper Paleolithic through to the Neolithic.
Backed edge blades have one of the edges, generally a side one, rounded or chamfered by abrupt retouching. There are fewer types of these blades, and may be divided into those where the entire edge is rounded and those where only a part is rounded, or even straight. They are fundamental in the blade-forming processes, and from them, innumerable other types were developed. Dufour bladelets are up to three centimeters in length, finely shaped with a curved profile whose retouches are semi-abrupt and which characterize a particular phase of the Aurignacian period. Solutrean backed edge blades display pronounced and abrupt retouching, so that they are long and narrow and, although rare, characterize certain phases of the Solutrean period. Ouchtata bladelets are similar to the others, except that the retouched back is not uniform but irregular; this type of microlith characterizes certain periods of the Epipaleolithic Saharans. The Ibero-Maurusian and the Montbani bladelet, with a partial and irregular lateral retouching, is characteristic of the Italian Tardenoisian.
These are very sharp bladelets formed by abrupt retouching. There are a huge number of regional varieties of these microliths, nearly all of which are very hard to distinguish (especially those from the western area) without knowing the archaeological context in which they appear. The following is a small selection. Omitted are the foliaceous tips (also called leafed tips), which are characterized by a covering retouch and which constitute a group apart.
The next group contains a number of points from the Middle East characterized as cultural markers.
The "Adelaide point" is found in Australia. Its construction, based on truncations on a blade, has a nearly trapezoidal form. The Adelaide point emphasizes the range of variation in both time and culture of the laminar microliths; it also shows their technological differences, but sometimes morphological similarities, with geometric microliths. Laminar microliths can also sometimes be described as trapezoidal, triangular or lunate. However, as we will see below, they are distinct from the geometric microliths because of the strokes used in the manufacture of geometric microliths, which mainly involved the microburin technique.
Geometric microliths are a clearly defined type of stone tool, at least in their basic forms. They can be divided into trapezoid, triangular and lunate (half-moon) forms, although there are many subdivisions of each of these types. A microburin is included among the illustrations below because, although it is not a geometrical microlith (or even a tool), it is now seen as a characteristic waste product from the manufacture of these geometric microliths:
Geometric microliths, though rare, are present as trapezoids in Northwest Africa in the Iberomaurusian. They later appear in Europe in the Magdalenian initially as elongated triangles and later as trapezoids (although the microburin technique is seen from the Perigordian), they are mostly seen during the Epipaleolithic and the Neolithic. They remained in existence even into the Copper Age and Bronze Age, competing with "leafed" and then metallic arrowheads.
All the currently known geometric microliths share the same fundamental characteristics – only their shapes vary. They were all made from blades or from microblades (nearly always of flint), using the microburin technique (which implies that it is not possible to conserve the remains of the heel or the conchoidal flakes from the blank). The pieces were then finished by a percussive retouching of the edges (generally leaving one side with the natural edge of the blank), giving the piece its definitive polygonal form. For example, in order to make a triangle, two adjacent notches were retouched, leaving free the third edge or "base" (using the terminology of Fortea). They generally have one long axis and concave or convex edges, and it is possible for them to have a gibbosity (hump) or indentations. Triangular microliths may be isosceles, scalene or equilateral. In the case of trapezoid geometric microliths, on the other hand, the notches are not retouched, leaving a portion of the natural edge between them. Trapezoids can be further subdivided into symmetrical, asymmetrical and those with concave edges. Lunate microliths have the least diversity of all and may be either semicircular or segmental.
Archeological findings and the analysis of wear marks, or use-wear analysis, has shown that, predictably, the tips of spears, harpoons and other light projectiles of varying size received the most wear. Microliths were also used from the Neolithic on arrows, although a decline in this use coincided with the appearance of bifacial or "leafed" arrowheads that became widespread in the Chalcolithic period, or Copper Age (that is, stone arrowheads were increasingly made by a different technique during this later period).
Not all the different types of laminar microliths had functions that are clearly understood. It is likely that they contributed to the points of spears or light projectiles, and their small size suggests that they were fixed in some way to a shaft or handle.
Backed edge bladelets are particularly abundant at a site in France that preserves habitation from the late Magdalenian – the Pincevent. In the remains of some of the hearths at this location, bladelets are found in groups of three, perhaps indicating that they were mounted in threes on their handles. A javelin tip made of horn has been found at this site with grooves made for flint bladelets that could have been secured using a resinous substance. Signs of much wear and tear have been found on some of these finds.
Specialists have carried out lithic or microwear analysis on artefacts, but it has sometimes proved difficult to distinguish those fractures made during the process of fashioning the flint implement from those made during its use. Microliths found at Hengistbury Head in Dorset, England, show features that can be confused with chisel marks, but which might also have been produced when the tip hit a hard object and splintered. Microliths from other locations have presented the same problems of interpretation.
An exceptional piece of evidence for the use of microliths has been found in the excavations of the cave at Lascaux in the French Dordogne. Twenty backed edge bladelets were found with the remains of a resinous substance and the imprint of a circular handle (a horn). It appears that the bladelets might have been fixed in groups like the teeth of a harpoon or similar weapon.
In all these locations, the microliths found have been backed edge blades, tips and crude flakes. Despite the great number of geometric microliths that have been found in Western Europe, few examples show any clear evidence of their use, and all the examples are from the Mesolithic or Neolithic periods. Despite this, there is unanimity amongst researchers that these items were used to increase the penetrating potential of light projectiles such as harpoons, assegais, javelins and arrows.
In France, one unusual find stands out: in the Mesolithic cemetery of Téviec, in Morbihan, one of the skeletons that has been found has a geometric microlith lodged in one of its vertebra. All indications suggest that the person died because of this projectile; whether by intention or by accident is unknown. It is widely agreed that geometric microliths were mainly used in hunting and fishing, but they may also have been used as weapons.
Well-preserved examples of arrows with microliths in Scandinavia have been found at Loshult, at Osby in Sweden, and Tværmose, at Vinderup in Denmark. These finds, which have been preserved practically intact due to the special conditions of the peat bogs, have included wooden arrows with microliths attached to the tip by resinous substances and cords.
There are many examples of possible tools from Mesolithic deposits in England. Possibly the best known is a microlith from Star Carr in Yorkshire that retains residues of resin, probably used to fix it to the tip of a projectile. Recent excavations have found other examples. Archeologists at the Risby Warren V site in Lincolnshire have uncovered a row of eight triangular microliths that are equidistantly aligned along a dark stain indicating organic remains (possibly the wood from an arrow shaft). Another clear indication is from the Readycon Dene site in West Yorkshire, where 35 microliths appear to be associated with a single projectile. In Urra Moor, North Yorkshire, 25 microliths give the appearance of being related to one another, due to the extreme regularity and symmetry of their arrangement in the ground.
The study of English and European artifacts in general has revealed that projectiles were made with a widely variable number of microliths: in "Tværmose" there was only one, in "Loshult" there were two (one for the tip and the other as a fin), in White Hassocks, in West Yorkshire, more than 40 have been found together; the average is between 6 and 18 pieces for each projectile.
Early research regard the microlithic industry in India as a Holocene phenomenon, however a new research provides solid data to put the South Asia microliths industry up to 35 ka across whole South Asia subcontinent. This new research also synthesizes the data from genetic, paleoenvironmental and archaeological research, and proposes that the emergence of microlith in India subcontinent could reflect the increase of population and adaptation of environmental deterioration.
In 1968 human burials sites were uncovered inside the Fa Hien Cave in Sri Lanka. A further excavation in 1988 yielded microlith stone tools, remnants of prehistoric fireplaces and organic material, such as floral and human remains. Radiocarbon dating indicates that the cave had been occupied from about 33,000 years ago, the Late Pleistocene and Mesolithic to 4,750 years ago, the Neolithic in the Middle Holocene. Human remains of the several sediment deposits were analyzed at Cornell University and studied by Kenneth A. R. Kennedy and graduate student Joanne L. Zahorsky. Sri Lanka has yielded the earliest known microliths, which didn't appear in Europe until the Early Holocene.
Laminar microliths are common artifacts from the Upper Paleolithic and the Epipaleolithic, to such a degree that numerous studies have used them as markers to date different phases of prehistoric cultures.
During the Epipaleolithic and the Mesolithic, the presence of laminar or geometric microliths serves to date the deposits of different cultural traditions. For instance, in the Atlas Mountains of northwest Africa, the end of the Upper Paleolithic period coincides with the end of the Aterian tradition of producing laminar microliths, and deposits can be dated by the presence or absence of these artifacts. In the Near East, the laminar microliths of the Kebarian culture were superseded by the geometric microliths of the Natufian tradition a little more than 11,000 years ago. This pattern is repeated throughout the Mediterranean basin and across Europe in general.
A similar thing is found in England, where the preponderance of elongated microliths, as opposed to other frequently occurring forms, has permitted the Mesolithic to be separated into two phases: the Earlier Mesolithic of about 8300–6700 BCE, or the ancient and laminar Mesolithic, and the Later Mesolithic, or the recent and geometric Mesolithic. Deposits can be thus dated based upon the assemblage of artifacts found. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=20734 |
Menorah (Temple)
The menorah (; ) is described in the Bible as the seven-lamp (six branches) ancient Hebrew lampstand made of pure gold and used in the portable sanctuary set up by Moses in the wilderness and later in the Temple in Jerusalem. Fresh olive oil of the purest quality was burned daily to light its lamps. The menorah has been a symbol of Judaism since ancient times and is the emblem on the coat of arms of the modern state of Israel.
The Hebrew Bible states that God revealed the design for the menorah to Moses and describes the construction of the menorah as follows ():
31Make a lampstand of pure gold. Hammer out its base and shaft, and make its flowerlike cups, buds and blossoms of one piece with them.
32Six branches are to extend from the sides of the lampstand—three on one side and three on the other.
33Three cups shaped like almond flowers with buds and blossoms are to be on one branch, three on the next branch, and the same for all six branches extending from the lampstand.
34And on the lampstand are to be four cups shaped like almond flowers with buds and blossoms.
35One bud shall be under the first pair of branches extending from the lampstand, a second bud under the second pair, and a third bud under the third pair—six branches in all.
36The buds and branches shall be all of one piece with the lampstand, hammered out of pure gold.
37Then make its seven lamps and set them up on it so that they light the space in front of it.
38Its wick trimmers and trays are to be of pure gold.
39A talent of pure gold is to be used for the lampstand and all these accessories.
40See that you make them according to the pattern shown you on the mountain.
Numbers, chapter 8, adds that the seven lamps are to give light in front of the lampstand and reiterates that the lampstand was made in accordance with the pattern shown to Moses on the mountain.
In Jewish oral tradition, the menorah stood 18 handbreadths/palms (three common cubits) high, or approximately . Although the menorah was placed in the antechamber of the Temple sanctuary, over against its southernmost wall, the Talmud ("Menahot" 98b) brings down a dispute between two scholars on whether or not the menorah was situated north to south, or east to west. The historian Josephus, who witnessed the Temple's destruction, says that the menorah was actually situated obliquely, to the east and south.
The branches are often artistically depicted as semicircular, but Rashi, (according to some contemporary readings) and Maimonides (according to his son Avraham), held that they were straight; all other Jewish authorities, both classical (e.g. Philo and Josephus) and medieval (e.g. Ibn Ezra) who express an opinion on the subject state that the arms were round. Archaeological evidence, including depictions by artists who had seen the menorah, indicates that they were not straight, but show them as rounded, either semicircular or elliptical.
The most famous preserved representation of the menorah of the Temple was depicted in a frieze on the Arch of Titus, commemorating his triumphal parade in Rome following the destruction of Jerusalem in the year 70 CE. In that frieze, the menorah is shown resting upon a hexagonal base, which in turn rests upon a slightly larger but concentric and identically shaped base; a stepwise appearance on all sides is thus produced. Each facet of the hexagonal base was made with two vertical stiles and two horizontal rails, a top rail and a bottom rail, resembling a protruding frame set against a sunken panel. These panels have some relief design set or sculpted within them. The panels depict the Ziz and the Leviathan from Jewish mythology.
In 2009, the ruins of a synagogue with pottery dating from before the destruction of the Second Temple were discovered under land in Magdala owned by the "Legionaries of Christ", who had intended to construct a center for women's studies. Inside that synagogue's ruins was discovered a rectangular stone, which had on its surface, among other ornate carvings, a depiction of the seven-lamp menorah differing markedly from the depiction on the Arch of Titus, which could possibly have been carved by an eyewitness to the actual menorah present at the time in the Temple at Jerusalem. This menorah has arms which are polygonal, not rounded, and the base is not graduated but triangular. It is notable, however, that this artifact was found a significant distance from Jerusalem and the Arch of Titus has often been interpreted as an eyewitness account of the original menorah being looted from the temple in Jerusalem.
Representations of the seven lamp artifact have been found on tombs and monuments dating from the 1st century as a frequently used symbol of Judaism and the Jewish people.
It has been noted that the shape of the menorah bears a certain resemblance to that of the plant Salvia palaestina.
Contrary to some modern designs, the ancient menorah burned oil and did not contain anything resembling candles, which were unknown in the Middle East until about 400 CE.
The lamps of the menorah were lit daily from fresh, consecrated olive oil and burned from evening until morning, according to .
The Roman-Jewish historian Flavius Josephus states that three of the seven lamps were allowed to burn during the day also; however, according to one opinion in the Talmud, only the center lamp was left burning all day, into which as much oil was put as into the others. Although all the other lights were extinguished, that light continued burning oil, in spite of the fact that it had been kindled first. This miracle, according to the Talmud, was taken as a sign that the Shechinah rested among Israel. It was called the "ner hama'aravi" (Western lamp) because of the direction of its wick. This lamp was also referred to as the "ner Elohim" (lamp of God), mentioned in . According to the Talmud, the miracle of the "ner hama'aravi" ended after the High Priesthood of Simon the Just in the 3rd or 4th century BCE.
The original menorah was made for the Tabernacle, and the Bible records it as being present until the Israelites crossed the Jordan river. When the Tabernacle tent was pitched in Shiloh (), it is assumed that the menorah was also present. However, no mention is made of it during the years that the Ark of the Covenant was moved in the times of Samuel and Saul.
There is no further mention of the menorah in Solomon's temple, except in , and , which notes that he created ten lampstands. The weight of the lampstands forms part of the detailed instructions given to Solomon by David.
They are recorded as being taken away to Babylon by the invading armies under the general Nebuzar-Adan some centuries later ().
During the restoration of the Temple worship after the captivity in Babylon, no mention is made of the return of the menorah but only of "vessels" (). Since the new Temple, known as the Second Temple, was an enclosed place with no natural light, some means of illumination must have existed.
The Book of Maccabees records that Antiochus Epiphanes took away the lampstands (plural) when he invaded and robbed the Temple (). The later record of the making of "new holy vessels" may refer to the manufacture of new lampstands (). There is no biblical mention of the fate of the menorah.
Herod the Great had the Second Temple remodeled while not disrupting the temple service.
The menorah from the Second Temple was carried to Rome after the Roman conquest of Jerusalem in 70 AD during the First Jewish–Roman War. The fate of the menorah used in the Second Temple is recorded by Josephus, who states that it was brought to Rome and carried along during the triumph of Vespasian and Titus. The bas relief on the Arch of Titus in Rome depicts a scene of Roman soldiers carrying away the spoils of the Second Temple, in particular, the seven-branched menorah, or candelabrum. For centuries, the Menorah was displayed as a war trophy at the Temple of Peace in Rome, a Roman temple paid for with spoils taken from the conquered city of Jerusalem. It was still there when the city was conquered by Vandals in 455.
Its fate during and after the 455 Sack of Rome is unknown. While it may have been melted down or broken into chunks of gold by the conquerors, it has been variously claimed that it was destroyed in a fire; that it was taken to Carthage, and then to the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire at Constantinople, or that it sank in a shipwreck. Another persistent rumor is that the Vatican has kept it hidden for centuries. Some claim that it has been kept in Vatican City, others that it is in the cellars of the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran.
Most likely, the menorah was looted by the Vandals in the sacking of Rome in 455 CE, and taken to their capital, Carthage. The Byzantine army under General Belisarius might have removed it in 533 and brought it to Constantinople. According to Procopius, it was carried through the streets of Constantinople during Belisarius' triumphal procession. Procopius adds that the object was later sent back to Jerusalem where there is no record of it. It could have been destroyed when Jerusalem was pillaged by the Persians in 614.
In the Avot of Rabbi Natan, one of the minor tractates printed with the Babylonian Talmud, there is a listing of Jewish treasures, which according to Jewish oral tradition are still in Rome, as they have been for centuries.
The objects that were crafted, and then hidden away are these: the tent of meeting and the vessels contained therein, the ark and the broken tablets, the container of manna, and the flask of annointing oil, the stick of Aaron and its almonds and flowers, the priestly garments, and the garments of the annointed [high] priest.But, the spice-grinder of the family of Avtinas [used to make the unique incense in the Temple], the [golden] table [of the showbread], the menorah, the curtain [that partitioned the holy from the holy-of-holies], and the head-plate are still sitting in Rome.
The menorah symbolized the ideal of universal enlightenment. The idea that the Menorah symbolizes wisdom is noted in the Talmud, for example, in the following: "Rabbi Isaac said: He who desires to become wise should incline to the south [when praying]. The symbol [by which to remember this] is that… the Menorah was on the southern side [of the Temple]."
The seven lamps allude to the branches of human knowledge, represented by the six lamps inclined inwards towards, and symbolically guided by, the light of God represented by the central lamp. The menorah also symbolizes the creation in seven days, with the center light representing the Sabbath.
The New Testament Book of Revelation refers to a mystery of seven golden lampstands representing seven churches . Interpretations of what these churches refer to include: 1) churches of seven specific cities, 2) all churches of all generations, 3) historical phases of the church history, and 4) an abstract metaphor only to be understood by individual believers. . One interpretation of the lampstands representing seven churches is that each represents a church of Asia to which the revelation was sent (Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamon, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia and Laodicea), with "one like a Son of Man" in their midst.
According to Clement of Alexandria and Philo Judaeus, the seven lamps of the golden menorah represented the seven classical planets in this order: the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn.
It is also said to symbolize the burning bush as seen by Moses on Mount Horeb ().
Kevin Conner has noted of the original menorah, described in Exodus 25, that each of the six tributary branches coming out of the main shaft was decorated with three sets of "cups... shaped like almond blossoms... a bulb and a flower..." (Exodus 25:33, NASB). This would create three sets of three units on each branch, a total of nine units per branch. The main shaft, however, had four sets of blossoms, bulbs and flowers, making a total of twelve units on the shaft (Exodus 25:34). This would create a total of 66 units, which Conner claims is a picture of the Protestant canon of scripture (containing 66 books). Moreover, Conner notes that the total decorative units on the shaft and three branches equate to 39 (the number of Old Testament books within Protestant versions of the Bible); and the units on the remaining three branches come to 27 (the number of New Testament books). Conner connects this to Bible passages that speak of God's word as a light or lamp (e.g. Psalms 119:105; Psalms 119:130; cf. Proverbs 6:23).
The Menorah is also a symbol closely associated with the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah (also spelled Chanukah). According to the Talmud, after the Seleucid desecration of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, there was only enough sealed (and therefore not desecrated) consecrated olive oil left to fuel the eternal flame in the Temple for one day. Miraculously, the oil burned for eight days, which was enough time to make new pure oil.
The Talmud states that it is prohibited to use a seven-lamp menorah outside of the Temple. The Hanukkah menorah therefore has eight main branches, plus the raised ninth lamp set apart as the "shamash" (servant) light which is used to kindle the other lights. This type of menorah is called a "hanukiah" in Modern Hebrew.
Synagogues have a continually lit lamp or light in front of the Ark, where the Torah scroll is kept, called the "ner tamid" (eternal light). This lamp represents the continually lit "ner Elohim" of the menorah used in Temple times.
In addition, many synagogues display either a Menorah or an artistic representation of a menorah.
A menorah appears in the coat of arms of the State of Israel, based on the depiction of the menorah on the Arch of Titus.
Sometimes when teaching learners of the Hebrew language, a chart shaped like the seven-lamp menorah is used to help students remember the role of the binyanim of the Hebrew verb.
The Temple Institute has created a life-sized menorah, designed by goldsmith Chaim Odem, intended for use in a future Third Temple. The Jerusalem Post describes the menorah as made "according to excruciatingly exacting Biblical specifications and prepared to be pressed into service immediately should the need arise." The menorah is made of one talent (interpreted as 45 kg) of 24 karat pure gold, hammered out of a single block of solid gold, with decorations based on the depiction of the original in the Arch of Titus and the Temple Institute's interpretation of the relevant religious texts.
In the Orthodox Church the use of the menorah has been preserved, always standing on or behind the altar in the sanctuary. Though candles may be used, the traditional practice is to use olive oil in the seven-lamp lampstand. There are varying liturgical practices, and usually all seven lamps are lit for the services, though sometimes only the three centermost are lit for the lesser services. If the church does not have a sanctuary lamp the centermost lamp of the seven lamps may remain lit as an eternal flame.
The Menorah has also become a symbol for the Iglesia ni Cristo since the 20th century.
The kinara is also, like the menorah, a seven candleholder which is associated with the African American festival of Kwanzaa. One candle is lit on each day of the week-long celebration, in a similar manner as the Hanukiah (which was modeled after the menorah) during Hanukkah.
In Taoism, the Seven-Star Lamp qi xing deng 七星燈 is a seven-lamp oil lamp lit to represent the seven stars of the Northern Dipper. This lampstand is a requirement for all Taoist temples, never to be extinguished. In the first 9 days of the lunar 9th month festival, an oil lamp of nine connected lamps may also be lit to honour both the Northern Dipper and two other assistant stars (collectively known as the Nine Emperor Stars), sons of Dou Mu appointed by the Taoist Trinity (the Three Pure Ones) to hold the Books of Life and Death of humanity. The lamps represent the illumination of the 7 stars, and lighting them are believed to absolve sins while prolonging one's lifespan.
The menorah features prominently in the 2013 crypto-thriller "The Sword of Moses" by Dominic Selwood. It is also featured in the archaeology novels "Crusader Gold", by David Gibbins, and "The Last Secret of the Temple", by Paul Sussman. A menorah can be seen in the movie "", when Charles Xavier reads Erik Lehnsherr's mind, searching for a happy memory from his childhood before the Holocaust, and together they see Erik as a young child lighting his first menorah with his mother. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=20735 |
Pointing device gesture
In computing, a pointing device gesture or mouse gesture (or, simply, gesture) is a way of combining pointing device or finger movements and clicks that the software recognizes as a specific computer event and responds in a manner particular to that software. They can be useful for people who have difficulties typing on a keyboard. For example, in a web browser, a user can navigate to the previously viewed page by pressing the right pointing device button, moving the pointing device briefly to the left, then releasing the button.
The first pointing device gesture, the "drag," was introduced by Apple to replace a dedicated "move" button on mice shipped with its Macintosh and Lisa computers. Dragging involves holding down a pointing device button while moving the pointing device; the software interprets this as an action distinct from separate clicking and moving behaviors. Unlike most pointing device gestures, it does not involve the tracing of any particular shape. Although the "drag" behavior has been adopted in a huge variety of software packages, few other gestures have been as successful.
, most programs do not support gestures other than the drag operation. Each program that recognizes pointing device gestures does so in its own way, sometimes allowing for very short mouse movement distances to be recognized as gestures, and sometimes requiring very precise emulation of a certain movement pattern (e.g. circle). Some implementations allow users to customize these factors.
Some video games have used gestures. For example, in the "" real-time tactics series, originally created by Bungie, players use them to order battlefield units to face in a desired direction. Another game using gestures is Lionhead's "Black & White". The game "Arx Fatalis" uses mouse gestures for drawing runes in the air to cast spells. Several Nintendo Wii games take advantage of such a system. "Ōkami" uses a system similar to mouse gestures; the player can enter a drawing mode in which the shape they create (circle, lightning bolt, line, etc.) performs a function in the game such as creating a bomb or changing the time from night to day. Another example is Silver where basic mouse gestures actually map attack moves and such in real-time combat.
The Opera web browser has recognized gestures since version 5.10 (April 2001) but this feature was disabled by default. Opera browser also supports mouse chording which serves a similar function but doesn't necessitate mouse movement. The first browser that used advanced mouse gestures (in 2002) was Maxthon, in which a highly customizable interface allowed the assignment of almost every action to one of 52 mouse gestures and few mouse chords. Several mouse gesture extensions are also available for the Mozilla Firefox browser. These extensions use almost identical gestures as Opera.
Some tools provide mouse gestures support in any application for Microsoft Windows. K Desktop Environment 3 includes universal mouse gesture support since version 3.2.
Windows Aero provides three mouse gestures called Aero Peek, Aero Shake and Aero Snap. See the corresponding article for a description.
Touchscreens of tablet-type devices, such as the iPad, utilize multi-touch technology, with gestures acting as the main form of user interface. Many touchpads, which in laptops replace the traditional mouse, have similar gesture support. For example, a common gesture is to use two fingers in a downwards or upwards motion to scroll the currently active page. The rising popularity of touchscreen interfaces has led to gestures becoming a more standard feature in computing. Windows 7 introduced touchscreen support and touchpad gestures. Its successor, Windows 8 is designed to run both on traditional desktops and mobile devices and hence gestures are now enabled by default where the hardware allows it.
Related to gestures are touchpad hotspots, where a particular region of the touchpad has additional functionality. For example, a common hotspot feature is the far right side of the touchpad, which will scroll the active page if a finger is dragged down or up it.
Multi-touch touchscreen gestures are predefined motions used to interact with multi-touch devices. An increasing number of products like smartphones, tablets, laptops or desktop computers have functions that are triggered by multi-touch gestures. Common touchscreen gestures include:
Other gestures including more than 2 fingers on screen have also been developed such as Sticky Tools. These techniques are often developed for 3D applications and are not considered standard.
A major drawback of current gesture interaction solutions is the lack of support for two necessary user interface design principles, feedback and visibility (or affordance). Feedback notification is required to indicate whether the gesture has been entered correctly by indicating the gesture recognized and the corresponding command activated, although Sensiva does approach this to some extent in providing voice notification. The other principle is visibility of gestures, providing the user some means of learning the necessary gestures and the contexts they can be used in. Both Mouse Gestures for Internet Explorer and ALToolbar Mouse Gestures display colored tracers that indicate the current motion that the user is taking to facilitate visual clues for the user. Pie menus and marking menus have been proposed as solutions for both problems, since they support learning of the available options but can also be used with quick gestures. Most recent versions of Opera (11 and above) uses an on-screen pie menu to simply and instructively display which mouse gestures are available and how to activate them, providing feedback and visibility.
One limitation with gesture interaction is the scope context in which the gestures can be used. For example, each gesture has only one corresponding command for each application window.
Holding down buttons while moving the mouse can be awkward and requires some practice, since the downwards action increases friction for the horizontal motion. An optical mouse would be less susceptible to changes in behavior than a ball mouse with increased friction because the sensor does not rely on mechanical contact to sense movement; a touchpad provides no added friction with all its buttons held down with a thumb. However, it was also argued that muscular tension resulting from holding down buttons could be exploited in user interface design as it gives constant feedback that the user is in a temporary state, or mode (Buxton, 1995). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=20736 |
Monorail
A monorail is a railway in which the track consists of a single rail or a beam. The term is also used to describe the beam of the system, or the trains traveling on such a beam or track. The term originates from joining "mono" (meaning one) and "rail" from 1897, possibly from German engineer Eugen Langen, who called an elevated railway system with wagons suspended the "Eugen Langen One-railed Suspension Tramway" (Einschieniges Hängebahnsystem Eugen Langen).
Colloquially, the term "monorail" is often used to describe any form of elevated rail or people mover. More accurately, the term refers to the style of track.
Monorails have found applications in airport transfer and medium capacity metros. To differentiate monorails from other transport modes, the Monorail Society defines a monorail as a "single rail serving as a track for passenger or freight vehicles. In most cases rail is elevated, but monorails can also run at grade, below grade or in subway tunnels. Vehicles either are suspended from or straddle a narrow guide way. Monorail vehicles are wider than the guide way that supports them.”
Monorails are often elevated, sometimes leading to confusion with other elevated systems such as the Docklands Light Railway, Vancouver SkyTrain and the AirTrain JFK, which run on two rails.
Monorail vehicles often appear similar to light rail vehicles, and can be manned or unmanned. They can be individual rigid vehicles, articulated single units, or multiple units coupled into trains. Like other advanced rapid transit systems, monorails can be driven by linear induction motors; like conventional railways, vehicle bodies can be connected to the beam via bogies, allowing curves to be negotiated.
Unlike some trams and light rail systems, modern monorails are always separated from other traffic and pedestrians due to the geometry of the rail. They are both guided and supported via interaction with the same single beam, in contrast to other guided systems like rubber-tyred metros, the Sapporo Municipal Subway; or guided buses or trams, such as Translohr. Monorails do not use pantographs.
From the passenger's perspective, monorails can have some advantages over trains, buses, and automobiles. As with other grade-separated transit systems, monorails avoid red lights, intersection turns, and traffic jams. Surface-level trains, buses, automobiles, and pedestrians can collide each one with the other, while vehicles on dedicated, grade-separated rights-of-way such as monorails can collide only with other vehicles on the same system, with much fewer opportunities for collision. As with other elevated transit systems, monorail passengers enjoy sunlight and views and by watching for familiar landmarks, they can know better when to get off to reach their destinations. Monorails can be quieter than diesel buses and trains. They obtain electricity from the track structure, eliminating costly and, to many people, unsightly overhead power lines and poles. Compared to the elevated train systems of New York, Chicago and elsewhere, a monorail beamway casts a narrow shadow. ("See 'Chicago "L"' ")
Under the Monorail Society's beam-width criterion, some, but not all, maglev systems are considered monorails, such as the Transrapid and Linimo. Maglevs differ from other monorails in that they do not (normally) physically contact the beam.
The first monorail prototype was made in Russia in 1820 by Ivan Elmanov. Attempts at creating monorail alternatives to conventional railways have been made since the early part of the 19th century.
The Centennial Monorail was featured at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876.
Around 1879 a "one-rail" system was proposed independently by Haddon and by Stringfellow, which used an inverted "V" rail (and thus shaped like "Λ" in cross-section). It was intended for military use, but was also seen to have civilian use as a "cheap railway."
The Boynton Bicycle Railroad was a steam-powered monorail in Brooklyn on Long Island, New York. It ran on a single load-bearing rail at ground level, but with a wooden overhead stabilising rail engaged by a pair of horizontally opposed wheels. The railway operated for only two years beginning in 1890.
The Hotchkiss Bicycle Railroad was a monorail on which a matching pedal bicycle could be ridden. The first example was built between Smithville and Mount Holly, New Jersey, in 1892. It closed in 1897. Other examples were built in Norfolk from 1895 to 1909, Great Yarmouth, and Blackpool, UK from 1896.
Early designs used a double-flanged single metal rail alternative to the double rail of conventional railways, both guiding and supporting the monorail car. A surviving suspended version is the oldest still in service system: the Wuppertal monorail in Germany. Also in the early 1900s, Gyro monorails with cars gyroscopically balanced on top of a single rail were tested, but never developed beyond the prototype stage. The Ewing System, used in the Patiala State Monorail Trainways in Punjab, India, relies on a hybrid model with a load-bearing single rail and an external wheel for balance. One of the first systems put into practical use was that of French engineer Charles Lartigue, who built a line between Ballybunion and Listowel in Ireland, opened in 1888 and closed in 1924 (due to damage from Ireland's Civil War). It uses a load-bearing single rail and two lower, external rails for balance, the three carried on triangular supports.
Possibly the first monorail locomotive was a 0-3-0 steam locomotive.
A highspeed monorail using the Lartigue system was proposed in 1901 between Liverpool and Manchester.
In 1910, the Brennan gyroscopic monorail was considered for use to a coal mine in Alaska. In June 1920, the French Patent Office published FR 503782, by Henri Coanda, on a 'Transporteur Aérien' -Air Carrier.
In the northern Mojave desert, the Epsom Salts Monorail was built in 1924. It ran for 28 miles from a connection on the Trona Railway, eastward to harvest epsomite deposits in the Owlshead Mountains. This non-passenger, Lartigue type monorail achieved gradients of up to ten percent. It only operated until June 1926, when the mineral deposits become uneconomic, and was dismantled for scrap in the late 1930s.
The first half of the 20th century saw many further proposed designs that either never left the drawing board or remained short-lived prototypes. One of the first monorails planned in the United States was in New York City in the early 1930s, scrubbed for an elevated train system.
In the latter half of the 20th century, monorails had settled on using larger beam- or girder-based track, with vehicles supported by one set of wheels and guided by another. In the 1950s, a 40% scale prototype of a system designed for speed of on straight stretches and on curves was built in Germany. There were designs with vehicles supported, suspended or cantilevered from the beams. In the 1950s the ALWEG straddle design emerged, followed by an updated suspended type, the SAFEGE system. Versions of ALWEG's technology are used by the two largest monorail manufacturers, Hitachi Monorail and Bombardier.
In 1956, the first monorail to operate in the US began test operations in Houston, Texas. Disneyland in Anaheim, California, opened the United States' first daily operating monorail system in 1959. Later during this period, additional monorails were installed at Walt Disney World in Florida, Seattle, and in Japan. Monorails were promoted as futuristic technology with exhibition installations and amusement park purchases, as seen by the legacy systems in use today. However, monorails gained little foothold compared to conventional transport systems. In March 1972, Alejandro Goicoechea-Omar had patent DE1755198 published, on a 'Vertebrate Train', build as experimental track in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain.
Niche private enterprise uses for monorails emerged, with the emergence of air travel and shopping malls, with shuttle-type systems being built.
From 1950 to 1980, the monorail concept may have suffered, as with all public transport systems, from competition with the automobile. At the time, the was riding high and people were buying automobiles in large numbers due to suburbanization and the Interstate Highway System. Monorails in particular may have suffered from the reluctance of public transit authorities to invest in the perceived high cost of un-proven technology when faced with cheaper mature alternatives. There were also many competing monorail technologies, splitting their case further. One notable example of a public monorail is the AMF Monorail that was used as transportation around the 1964-1965 World's Fair.
This high-cost perception was challenged most notably in 1963 when the ALWEG consortium proposed to finance the construction of a major system in Los Angeles County, California in return for the right of operation. This was turned down by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors under pressure from Standard Oil of California and General Motors (which were strong advocates for automobile dependency), and the later subway system faced criticism by famed author Ray Bradbury as it had yet to reach the scale of the proposed monorail.
Several monorails initially conceived as transport systems survive on revenues generated from tourism, benefiting from the unique views offered from the largely elevated installations.
From the 1980s, most monorail mass transit systems are in Japan, with a few exceptions. Tokyo Monorail, today one of the world's busiest, averages 127,000 passengers per day and has served over 1.5 billion passengers since 1964. Monorails have seen continuing use in niche shuttle markets and amusement parks.
Modern mass transit monorail systems use developments of the ALWEG beam and tire approach, with only two suspended types in large use. Monorail configurations have also been adopted by maglev trains. Since the 2000s, with the rise of traffic congestion and urbanization, there has been a resurgence of interest in the technology for public transport. With a number of cities such as Malta and Istanbul today investigating monorails as a possible mass transit solution.
In 2004, Chongqing Rail Transit in China has adopted a unique ALWEG-based design with rolling stock that is much wider than most monorails, with capacity comparable to heavy rail. This is because Chongqing is criss-crossed by numerous hills, mountains and rivers, therefore tunneling is not feasible except in some cases (for example, lines 1 and 6) due to the extreme depth involved. Today it is the largest and busiest monorail system in the world. São Paulo, Brazil is building a Bombardier Innovia Monorail system as part of its public transportation network. The 14.9 mile guideway will have 17 stations, 54 monorail trains and a passenger capacity of 40,000 commuters per hour in each direction. Another city installing a Bombardier Innovia Monorail system in an urban centre is Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, for its new King Abdullah Financial District. India has proposed monorails in several cities for mass rapid transit; Mumbai Monorail is the first one in operation. China, already home to the world's largest and busiest monorail system has a number of mass transit monorails under construction in several of cities. A Bombardier Innovia Monorail-based system is under construction in Wuhu and several "Cloudrail" systems developed by BYD under construction a number of cities such as Guang'an, Liuzhou Bengbu and Guilin.
Modern monorails depend on a large solid beam as the vehicles' running surface. There are a number of competing designs divided into two broad classes, "straddle-beam" and "suspended" monorails. The most common type is the straddle-beam, in which the train straddles a steel or reinforced concrete beam wide. A rubber-tired carriage contacts the beam on the top and both sides for traction and to stabilize the vehicle. The style was popularized by the German company ALWEG. There is also a historical type of "suspension monorail" developed by German inventors Nicolaus Otto and Eugen Langen in the 1880s. It was built in the twin cities of Barmen and Elberfeld in Wuppertal, Germany, opened in 1901, and is still in operation. The Chiba Urban Monorail is the world's largest suspended network.
Almost all modern monorails are powered by electric motors fed by dual third rails, contact wires or electrified channels attached to or enclosed in their guidance beams, but diesel-powered monorail systems also exist. Historically some systems, such as the Lartigue Monorail, used steam locomotives.
Magnetic levitation train (maglev) systems by the German Transrapid were built as straddle-type monorails, as they are highly stable and allow rapid deceleration from great speed. At speed, maglev trains hover over the track and are not in physical contact with it. The maglev is the fastest train of any type, the experimental SCMaglev having recorded a speed of . The commercial Shanghai Maglev Train has run at . However, the guideway is so wide that it can be argued it is not legitimate to call it a monorail. There are also slower maglev monorails intended for urban transport, such as Japan's Linimo (2003).
Some early monorails (notably the suspended monorail at Wuppertal, Germany) have a design that makes it difficult to switch from one line to another. Some other monorails avoid switching as much as possible by operating in a continuous loop or between two fixed stations, as in the Seattle Center Monorail.
Current monorails are capable of more efficient switching than in the past. With suspended monorails, switching may be accomplished by moving flanges inside the beamway to shift trains to one line or another.
Straddle-beam monorails require that the beam moves for switching, which was an almost prohibitively ponderous procedure. Now the most common way of achieving this is to place a moving apparatus on top of a sturdy platform capable of bearing the weight of vehicles, beams and its own mechanism. Multiple-segmented beams move into place on rollers to smoothly align one beam with another to send the train in its desired direction, with the design originally developed by ALWEG capable of completing a switch in 12 seconds. Some of these beam turnouts are quite elaborate, capable of switching between several beams or simulating a railroad double-crossover.
An alternative to using a wye or other form of switch, is to use a turntable, where a car sits upon a section of track that can be reoriented to several different tracks. For example, this can be used to switch a car from being in a storage location, to being on the main line. The now-closed Sydney Monorail had a traverser at the depot, which allowed a train on the main line to be exchanged with another from the depot. There were about six lines in the depot, including one for maintenance.
Rubber-tired monorails are typically designed to cope with a 6% grade. Rubber-tired light rail or metro lines can cope with similar or greater grades - for example, the Lausanne Metro has grades of up to 12% and the Montreal Metro up to 6.5%, while VAL systems can handle 7% grades.
Only four companies make monorail rolling stock: Hitachi, CRRC, Intamin and Bombardier Transportation (now Alstom)
The fourth season of the American animated television show "The Simpsons" features the episode "Marge vs. the Monorail". In it, the town of Springfield impulse purchases a faulty monorail from a conman at a wildly inflated price.
Blaine the Mono is a train featured in Stephen King's "Dark Tower" series of books and first appears in *Wizard and Glass." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=20739 |
Michael Halliday
Michael Alexander Kirkwood Halliday (often M. A. K. Halliday; 13 April 1925 – 15 April 2018) was an English-born linguist who developed the internationally influential "systemic functional linguistics" (SFL) model of language. His grammatical descriptions go by the name of "systemic functional grammar". Halliday describes language as a semiotic system, "not in the sense of a system of signs, but a systemic resource for meaning". For Halliday, language is a "meaning potential"; by extension, he defines linguistics as the study of "how people exchange meanings by 'languaging'". Halliday describes himself as a "generalist", meaning that he has tried "to look at language from every possible vantage point", and has described his work as "wander[ing] the highways and byways of language". But he has claimed that "to the extent that I favoured any one angle, it was the social: language as the creature and creator of human society".
Halliday's grammar differs markedly from traditional accounts that emphasise classification of individual words (e.g. noun, verb, pronoun, preposition) in formal, written sentences in a restricted number of "valued" varieties of English. Halliday's model conceives grammar explicitly as how meanings are coded into wordings, in both spoken and written modes in all varieties and registers of a language. Three strands of grammar operate simultaneously. They concern: (i) the interpersonal exchange between speaker and listener, and writer and reader; (ii) representation of our outer and inner worlds; and (iii) the wording of these meanings in cohesive spoken and written texts, from within the clause up to whole texts. Notably, the grammar embraces intonation in spoken language. Halliday's seminal "Introduction to Functional Grammar" (first edition, 1985) spawned a new research discipline and related pedagogical approaches. By far the most progress has been made on English, but the international growth of communities of SFL scholars has led to the adaptation of Halliday's advances to some other languages.
Halliday was born and raised in England. His parents nurtured his fascination for language: his mother, Winifred, had studied French, and his father, Wilfred, was a dialectologist, a dialect poet, and an English teacher with a love for grammar and Elizabethan drama. In 1942, Halliday volunteered for the national services' foreign language training course. He was selected to study Chinese on the strength of his success in being able to differentiate tones. After 18 months' training, he spent a year in India working with the Chinese Intelligence Unit doing counter-intelligence work. In 1945 he was brought back to London to teach Chinese. He took a BA honours degree in modern Chinese language and literature (Mandarin) through the University of London—an external degree for which he studied in China. He then lived for three years in China, where he studied under Luo Changpei at Peking University and under Wang Li at Lingnan University, before returning to take a PhD in Chinese linguistics at Cambridge under the supervision of Gustav Hallam and then J.R. Firth. Having taught languages for 13 years, he changed his field of specialisation to linguistics, and developed systemic functional linguistics, including systemic functional grammar, elaborating on the foundations laid by his British teacher J.R. Firth and a group of European linguists of the early 20th century, the Prague school. His seminal paper on this model was published in 1961.
Halliday's first academic position was as assistant lecturer in Chinese, at Cambridge University, from 1954 to 1958. In 1958 he moved to Edinburgh, where he was lecturer in general linguistics until 1960, and reader from 1960 to 1963. From 1963 to 1965 he was the director of the Communication Research Centre at University College, London. During 1964, he was also Linguistic Society of America Professor, at Indiana University. From 1965 to 1971 he was professor of linguistics at UCL. In 1972–73 he was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioural Sciences, Stanford, and in 1973–74 professor of linguistics at the University of Illinois. In 1974 he briefly moved back to Britain to be professor of language and linguistics at Essex University. In 1976 he moved to Australia as foundation professor of linguistics at the University of Sydney, where he remained until he retired in 1987. While at the University of Sydney Halliday founded the Sydney School, a genre-based literacy pedagogy, in 1979 at the Working Conference on Language in Education.
Halliday worked in multiple areas of linguistics, both theoretical and applied, and was especially concerned with applying the understanding of the basic principles of language to the theory and practices of education. In 1987 he was awarded the status of Emeritus Professor of the University of Sydney and Macquarie University, Sydney. He has honorary doctorates from University of Birmingham (1987), York University (1988), the University of Athens (1995), Macquarie University (1996), Lingnan University (1999) and Beijing Normal University(2011).
He died in Sydney of natural causes on 15 April 2018 at the age of 93.
Halliday's grammatical theory and descriptions gained wide recognition after publication of the first edition of his book "An Introduction to Functional Grammar" in 1985. A second edition was published in 1994, and then a third, in which he collaborated with Christian Matthiessen, in 2004. A fourth edition was published in 2014. Halliday's conception of grammar – or "lexicogrammar", a term he coined to argue that lexis and grammar are part of the same phenomenon – is based on a more general theory of language as a social semiotic resource, or "meaning potential" (see Systemic functional linguistics). Halliday follows Hjelmslev and Firth in distinguishing theoretical from descriptive categories in linguistics. He argues that "theoretical categories, and their inter-relations, construe an abstract model of language ... they are interlocking and mutally defining. The theoretical architecture derives from work on the description of natural discourse, and as such 'no very clear line is drawn between '(theoretical) linguistics' and 'applied linguistics'". So the theory "is continually evolving as it is brought to bear on solving problems of a research or practical nature". Halliday contrasts theoretical categories with descriptive categories, defined as "categories set up in the description of particular languages". His descriptive work has focused on English and Mandarin.
Halliday argues against some claims about language associated with the generative tradition. Language, he argues, "cannot be equated with 'the set of all grammatical sentences', whether that set is conceived of as finite or infinite". He rejects the use of formal logic in linguistic theories as "irrelevant to the understanding of language" and the use of such approaches as "disastrous for linguistics". On Chomsky specifically, he writes that "imaginary problems were created by the whole series of dichotomies that Chomsky introduced, or took over unproblematized: not only syntax/semantics but also grammar/lexis, language/thought, competence/performance. Once these dichotomies had been set up, the problem arose of locating and maintaining the boundaries between them."
Halliday's first major work on grammar was "Categories of the theory of grammar", in the journal "Word" in 1961. In this paper, he argued for four "fundamental categories" in grammar: "unit", "structure", "class", and "system". These categories are "of the highest order of abstraction", but he defended them as necessary to "make possible a coherent account of what grammar is and of its place in language" In articulating unit, Halliday proposed the notion of a "rank scale". The units of grammar form a hierarchy, a scale from largest to smallest, which he proposed as: "sentence", "clause", "group/phrase", "word" and "morpheme". Halliday defined structure as "likeness between events in successivity" and as "an arrangement of elements ordered in places". He rejects a view of structure as "strings of classes, such as nominal group + verbalgroup + nominal group", describing structure instead as "configurations of functions, where the solidarity is organic".
Halliday's early paper shows that the notion of "system" has been part of his theory from its origins. Halliday explains this preoccupation in the following way: "It seemed to me that explanations of linguistic phenomena needed to be sought in relationships among systems rather than among structures – in what I once called "deep paradigms" – since these were essentially where speakers made their choices". Halliday's "systemic grammar" is a semiotic account of grammar, because of this orientation to choice. Every linguistic act involves choice, and choices are made on many scales. Systemic grammars draw on system networks as their primary representation tool as a consequence. For instance, a major clause must display some structure that is the formal realization of a choice from the system of "voice", i.e. it must be either "middle" or "effective", where "effective" leads to the further choice of "operative" (otherwise known as 'active') or "receptive" (otherwise known as "passive").
Halliday's grammar is not just "systemic", but "systemic functional". He argues that the explanation of how language works "needed to be grounded in a functional analysis, since language had evolved in the process of carrying out certain critical functions as human beings interacted with their ... 'eco-social' environment". Halliday's early grammatical descriptions of English, called "Notes on Transitivity and Theme in English – Parts 1–3" include reference to "four components in the grammar of English representing four functions that the language as a communication system is required to carry out: the experiential, the logical, the discoursal and the speech functional or interpersonal". The "discoursal" function was renamed the "textual function". In this discussion of functions of language, Halliday draws on the work of Bühler and Malinowski. Halliday's notion of language functions, or "metafunctions", became part of his general linguistic theory.
The final volume of Halliday's 10 volumes of Collected Papers is called "Language in society", reflecting his theoretical and methodological connection to language as first and foremost concerned with "acts of meaning". This volume contains many of his early papers, in which he argues for a deep connection between language and social structure. Halliday argues that language does not exist merely to reflect social structure. For instance, he writes:
In enumerating his claims about the trajectory of children's language development, Halliday eschews the metaphor of "acquisition", in which language is considered a static product which the child takes on when sufficient exposure to natural language enables "parameter setting". By contrast, for Halliday what the child develops is a "meaning potential". Learning language is "Learning how to mean", the name of his well-known early study of a child's language development.
Halliday (1975) identifies seven functions that language has for children in their early years. For Halliday, children are motivated to develop language because it serves certain purposes or functions for them. The first four functions help the child to satisfy physical, emotional and social needs. Halliday calls them instrumental, regulatory, interactional, and personal functions.
The next three functions are heuristic, imaginative, and representational, all helping the child to come to terms with his or her environment.
According to Halliday, as the child moves into the mother tongue, these functions give way to the generalized "metafunctions" of language. In this process, in between the two levels of the simple protolanguage system (the "expression" and "content" pairing of the Saussure's sign), an additional level of content is inserted. Instead of one level of content, there are now two: lexicogrammar and semantics. The "expression" plane also now consists of two levels: phonetics and phonology.
Halliday's work is sometimes seen as representing a competing viewpoint to the formalist approach of Noam Chomsky. Halliday's stated concern is with "naturally occurring language in actual contexts of use" in a large typological range of languages. Critics of Chomsky often characterise his work, by contrast, as focused on English with Platonic idealization, a characterization which Chomskyans reject (see Universal Grammar). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=20741 |
Muslim Brotherhood
The Society of the Muslim Brothers (" "), better known as the Muslim Brotherhood ( ""), is a transnational Sunni Islamist organization founded in Egypt by Islamic scholar and schoolteacher Hassan al-Banna in 1928. Al-Banna's teachings spread far beyond Egypt, influencing today various Islamist movements from charitable organizations to political parties—not all using the same name.
Initially, as a Pan-Islamic, religious, and social movement, it preached Islam in Egypt, taught the illiterate, and set up hospitals and business enterprises. It later advanced into the political arena, aiming to end British colonial control of Egypt. The movement's self-stated aim is the establishment of a state ruled by Sharia law–its most famous slogan worldwide being: "Islam is the solution". Charity is a major propellant to its work.
The group spread to other Muslim countries but has its largest, or one of its largest, organizations in Egypt despite a succession of government crackdowns starting in 1948 up until today, with accusations of planning assassinations and plots. It remained a fringe group in politics of the Arab World until the 1967 Six-Day War, when Islamism managed to replace popular secular Arab nationalism after a resounding Arab defeat by Israel. The movement was also supported by Saudi Arabia, with which it shared mutual enemies like communism.
The Arab Spring brought it legalization and substantial political power at first, but as of 2013 it has suffered severe reversals. The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood was legalized in 2011 and won several elections, including the 2012 presidential election when its candidate Mohamed Morsi became Egypt's first president to gain power through an election, though one year later, following massive demonstrations and unrest, he was overthrown by the military and placed under house arrest. The group was then banned in Egypt and declared as a terrorist organization. Persian Gulf monarchies of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates followed suit, driven by the perception that the Brotherhood is a threat to their authoritarian rule.
The Brotherhood itself claims to be a peaceful, democratic organization, and that its leader "condemns violence and violent acts".
Today, the primary state backers of the Muslim Brotherhood are Qatar and Turkey. As of 2015, it is considered a terrorist organization by the governments of Bahrain, Egypt, Russia, Syria, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
The Brotherhood's English-language website describes its principles as including firstly the introduction of the Islamic Sharia as "the basis for controlling the affairs of state and society" and secondly, working to unify "Islamic countries and states, mainly among the Arab states, and liberate them from foreign imperialism".
According to a spokesman on its English-language website, the Muslim Brotherhood believes in reform, democracy, freedom of assembly, press, etc.
We believe that the political reform is the true and natural gateway for all other kinds of reform. We have announced our acceptance of democracy that acknowledges political pluralism, the peaceful rotation of power and the fact that the nation is the source of all powers. As we see it, political reform includes the termination of the state of emergency, restoring public freedoms, including the right to establish political parties, whatever their tendencies may be, and the freedom of the press, freedom of criticism and thought, freedom of peaceful demonstrations, freedom of assembly, etc. It also includes the dismantling of all exceptional courts and the annulment of all exceptional laws, establishing the independence of the judiciary, enabling the judiciary to fully and truly supervise general elections so as to ensure that they authentically express people's will, removing all obstacles that restrict the functioning of civil society organizations, etc.
Its founder, Hassan Al-Banna, was influenced by Islamic modernist reformers Muhammad Abduh and Rashid Rida (who attacked the "taqlid" of the official "`ulama", and he insisted that only the Quran and the best-attested hadiths should be sources of the "Sharia"), with the group structure and approach being influenced by Sufism. Al-Banna avoided controversies over doctrine. It downplayed doctrinal differences between schools (although takfiring Bahais and Ahmadi Muslims) emphasizing the political importance of worldwide unity of the Muslim Nation (umma).
As Islamic Modernist beliefs were co-opted by secularist rulers and official "`ulama", the Brotherhood has become traditionalist and conservative, "being the only available outlet for those whose religious and cultural sensibilities had been outraged by the impact of Westernization". Al-Banna believed the Quran and Sunnah constitute a perfect way of life and social and political organization that God has set out for man. Islamic governments must be based on this system and eventually unified in a Caliphate. The Muslim Brotherhood's goal, as stated by its founder al-Banna was to drive out British colonial and other Western influences, reclaim Islam's manifest destiny—an empire, stretching from Spain to Indonesia. The Brotherhood preaches that Islam will bring social justice, the eradication of poverty, corruption and sinful behavior, and political freedom (to the extent allowed by the laws of Islam). Blended with methods of modern social sciences, some key thinkers of Brotherhood have also contemplated the Islamic perspective on bureaucratic effectiveness, mapping out solutions to problems of formalism and irresponsiveness to public concerns in public administration, which pertains to the pro-democratic tenets of Muslim Brotherhood. Such variations of thoughts have also purportedly negated the realities of contemporary Muslim countries as their authors have proclaimed.
On the issue of women and gender the Muslim Brotherhood interprets Islam conservatively. Its founder called for "a campaign against ostentation in dress and loose behavior", "segregation of male and female students", a separate curriculum for girls, and "the prohibition of dancing and other such pastimes ... "
There have been breakaway groups from the movement, including the Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya and Al Takfir Wal Hijra. Prominent figures of the Brotherhood include Sayyid Qutb, a highly influential thinker of Islamism, and the author of "Milestones". Osama bin Laden criticized the Brotherhood, and accused it of betraying jihad and the ideals of Qutb.
The Brotherhood's "most frequently used slogan" (according to the BBC) is "Islam is the Solution" (الإسلام هو الحل). According to academic Khalil Yusuf, its motto "was traditionally" "Believers are but Brothers."
The Muslim Brotherhood's position on political participation varied according to the "domestic situation" of each branch, rather than ideology. For many years its stance was "collaborationist" in Kuwait and Jordan; for "pacific opposition" in Egypt; "armed opposition" in Libya and Syria. When it comes to its activity in the West, the Brotherhood's strategy may be linked to a 12-point document titled "Towards a Worldwide Strategy for Islamic Policy", commonly known as "The Project". It was written on December 1, 1982, by Yusuf al-Qaradawi at the culmination of a series of two meetings held in 1977 and 1982 in Lugano, Switzerland. The treaty instructs Brotherhood members to show "flexibility" when it comes to their activity outside the Islamic world, encouraging them to temporarily adopt Western values without deviating from their "basic [Islamic] principles."
The Muslim Brotherhood is a transnational organization as opposed a political party, but its members have created political parties in several countries, such as the Islamic Action Front in Jordan, Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank, and the former Freedom and Justice Party in Egypt. These parties are staffed by Brotherhood members, but are otherwise kept independent from the Muslim Brotherhood to some degree, unlike Hizb ut-Tahrir, which is highly centralized. The Brotherhood has been described as a "combination of neo-Sufic "tariqa"" (with al-Banna as the original "murshid" i.e., guide of the tariqa) "and a political party". The Egyptian Brotherhood has a pyramidal structure with "families" (or "usra", which consists of four to five people and is headed by a naqib, or "captain) at the bottom, "clans" above them, "groups" above clans and "battalions" or "phalanxes" above groups. Potential Brethren start out as "Muhib" or "lovers", and if approved move up to become a "muayyad", or "supporter", then to "muntasib" or "affiliated", (who are nonvoting members). If a muntasib "satisfies his monitors", he is promoted to "muntazim", or "organizer", before advancing to the final level—"ach 'amal", or "working brother". With this slow careful advancement, the loyalty of potential members can be "closely probed" and obedience to orders assured.
At the top of the hierarchy is the Guidance Office ("Maktab al-Irshad"), and immediately below it is the Shura Council. Orders are passed down through a chain of command:
The Muslim Brotherhood aimed to build a transnational organization. In the 1940s, the Egyptian Brotherhood organized a "section for Liaison with the Islamic World" endowed with nine committees. Groups were founded in Lebanon (1936), in Syria (1937), and Transjordan (1946). It also recruited members among the foreign students who lived in Cairo where its headquarters became a center and a meeting place for representatives from the whole Muslim world.
In each country with an MB there is a Branch committee with a Masul (leader) appointed by the General Executive leadership with essentially the same Branch-divisions as the Executive office. "Properly speaking" Brotherhood branches exist only in Arab countries of the Middle East where they are "in theory" subordinate to the Egyptian General Guide. Beyond that the Brotherhood sponsors national organizations in countries like Tunisia ("Ennahda Movement"), Morocco (Justice and Charity party), Algeria (Movement of Society for Peace). Outside the Arab world it also has influence, with former President of Afghanistan, Burhanuddin Rabbani, having adopted MB ideas during his studies at Al-Azhar University, and many similarities between mujahideen groups in Afghanistan and Arab MBs. Angkatan Belia Islam Malaysia in Malaysia is close to the Brotherhood. According to scholar Olivier Roy, as of 1994 "an international agency" of the Brotherhood "assures the cooperation of the ensemble" of its national organizations. The agency's "composition is not well known, but the Egyptians maintain a dominant position".
Hassan al-Banna founded the Muslim Brotherhood in the city of Ismailia in March 1928 along with six workers of the Suez Canal Company, as a Pan-Islamic, religious, political, and social movement. The Suez Canal Company helped Banna build the mosque in Ismailia that would serve as the Brotherhood's headquarters, according to Richard Mitchell's "The Society of Muslim Brothers". According to al-Banna, contemporary Islam had lost its social dominance, because most Muslims had been corrupted by Western influences. Sharia law based on the Qur'an and the Sunnah were seen as laws passed down by God that should be applied to all parts of life, including the organization of the government and the handling of everyday problems.
Al-Banna was populist in his message of protecting workers against the tyranny of foreign and monopolist companies. It founded social institutions such as hospitals, pharmacies, schools, etc. Al-Banna held highly conservative views on issues such as women's rights, opposing equal rights for women, but supporting the establishment of justice towards women. The Brotherhood grew rapidly going from 800 members in 1936, to 200,000 by 1938 and over 2 million by 1948.
As its influence grew, it opposed British rule in Egypt starting in 1936, but it was banned after being accused of violent killings including the assassination of a Prime Minister by a young Brotherhood member.
In November 1948, following several bombings and alleged assassination attempts by the Brotherhood, the Egyptian government arrested 32 leaders of the Brotherhood's "secret apparatus" and banned the Brotherhood. At this time the Brotherhood was estimated to have 2,000 branches and 500,000 members or sympathizers. In succeeding months Egypt's prime minister was assassinated by a Brotherhood member, and following that Al-Banna himself was assassinated in what is thought to be a cycle of retaliation.
In 1952, members of the Muslim Brotherhood were accused of taking part in the Cairo Fire that destroyed some 750 buildings in downtown Cairo – mainly night clubs, theatres, hotels, and restaurants frequented by British and other foreigners.
In 1952 Egypt's monarchy was overthrown by a group of nationalist military officers (Free Officers Movement) who had formed a cell within the Brotherhood during the first war against Israel in 1948. However, after the revolution Gamal Abdel Nasser, the leader of the 'free officers' cell, after deposing the first President of Egypt, Muhammad Neguib, in a coup, quickly moved against the Brotherhood, blaming them for an attempt on his life. The Brotherhood was again banned and this time thousands of its members were imprisoned, many being tortured and held for years in prisons and concentration camps. In the 1950s and 1960s many Brotherhood members sought sanctuary in Saudi Arabia. From the 1950s, Al-Banna's son-in-law Said Ramadan emerged as a major leader of the Brotherhood and the movement's unofficial "foreign minister". Ramadan built a major center for the Brotherhood centered on a mosque in Munich, which became "a refuge for the beleaguered group during its decades in the wilderness".
In the 1970s after the death of Nasser and under the new President (Anwar Sadat), the Egyptian Brotherhood was invited back to Egypt and began a new phase of participation in Egyptian politics. Imprisoned Brethren were released and the organization was tolerated to varying degrees with periodic arrests and crackdowns until the 2011 Revolution.
During the Mubarak era, observers both defended and criticized the Brotherhood. It was the largest opposition group in Egypt, calling for "Islamic reform", and a democratic system in Egypt. It had built a vast network of support through Islamic charities working among poor Egyptians. According to ex-Knesset member and author Uri Avnery the Brotherhood was religious but pragmatic, "deeply embedded in Egyptian history, more Arab and more Egyptian than fundamentalist". It formed "an old established party which has earned much respect with its steadfastness in the face of recurrent persecution, torture, mass arrests and occasional executions. Its leaders are untainted by the prevalent corruption, and admired for their commitment to social work". It also developed a significant movement online.
In the 2005 parliamentary elections, the Brotherhood became "in effect, the first opposition party of Egypt's modern era". Despite electoral irregularities, including the arrest of hundreds of Brotherhood members, and having to run its candidates as independents (the organization being technically illegal), the Brotherhood won 88 seats (20% of the total) compared to 14 seats for the legal opposition.
During its term in parliament, the Brotherhood "posed a democratic political challenge to the regime, not a theological one", according to one "The New York Times" journalist, while another report praised it for attempting to transform "the Egyptian parliament into a real legislative body", that represented citizens and kept the government "accountable".
But fears remained about its commitment to democracy, equal rights, and freedom of expression and belief—or lack thereof. In December 2006, a campus demonstration by Brotherhood students in uniforms, demonstrating martial arts drills, betrayed to some such as Jameel Theyabi, "the group's intent to plan for the creation of militia structures, and a return by the group to the era of 'secret cells'". Another report highlighted the Muslim Brotherhood's efforts in Parliament to combat what one member called the "current US-led war against Islamic culture and identity," forcing the Minister of Culture at the time, Farouk Hosny, to ban the publication of three novels on the ground they promoted blasphemy and unacceptable sexual practices. In October 2007, the Muslim Brotherhood issued a detailed political platform. Among other things, it called for a board of Muslim clerics to oversee the government, and limiting the office of the presidency to Muslim men. In the "Issues and Problems" chapter of the platform, it declared that a woman was not suited to be president because the office's religious and military duties "conflict with her nature, social and other humanitarian roles". While proclaiming "equality between men and women in terms of their human dignity", the document warned against "burdening women with duties against their nature or role in the family".
Internally, some leaders in the Brotherhood disagreed on whether to adhere to Egypt's 32-year peace treaty with Israel. A deputy leader declared the Brotherhood would seek dissolution of the treaty, while a Brotherhood spokesman stated the Brotherhood would respect the treaty as long as "Israel shows real progress on improving the lot of the Palestinians".
Following the Egyptian Revolution of 2011 and fall of Hosni Mubarak, the Brotherhood was legalized and was at first very successful, dominating the 2011 parliamentary election and winning the 2012 presidential election, before the overthrow of President Mohamed Morsi a year later, leading to a crackdown on the Brotherhood again.
On 30 April 2011, the Brotherhood launched a new party called the Freedom and Justice Party, which won 235 of the 498 seats in the 2011 Egyptian parliamentary elections, far more than any other party. The party rejected the "candidacy of women or Copts for Egypt's presidency", but not for cabinet positions.
The Muslim Brotherhood's candidate for Egypt's 2012 presidential election was Mohamed Morsi, who defeated Ahmed Shafiq—the last prime minister under Mubarak's rule—with 51.73% of the vote. Although during his campaign Morsi himself promised to stand for peaceful relations with Israel, some high level supporters and former Brotherhood officials reiterated hostility toward Zionism. For example, Egyptian cleric Safwat Hegazi spoke at the announcement rally for the Muslim Brotherhood's candidate Morsi and expressed his hope and belief that Morsi would liberate Gaza, restore the Caliphate of the "United States of the Arabs" with Jerusalem as its capital, and that "our cry shall be: 'Millions of martyrs march towards Jerusalem.'" Within a short period, serious public opposition developed to President Morsi. In late November 2012, he "temporarily" granted himself the power to legislate without judicial oversight or review of his acts, on the grounds that he needed to "protect" the nation from the Mubarak-era power structure. He also put a draft constitution to a referendum that opponents complained was "an Islamist coup". These issues—and concerns over the prosecutions of journalists, the unleashing of pro-Brotherhood gangs on nonviolent demonstrators, the continuation of military trials, new laws that permitted detention without judicial review for up to 30 days, brought hundreds of thousands of protesters to the streets starting in November 2012.
By April 2013, Egypt had "become increasingly divided" between President Mohamed Morsi and "Islamist allies" and an opposition of "moderate Muslims, Christians and liberals". Opponents accused "Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood of seeking to monopolize power, while Morsi's allies say the opposition is trying to destabilize the country to derail the elected leadership". Adding to the unrest were severe fuel shortages and electricity outages, which raised suspicions among some Egyptians that the end of gas and electricity shortages since the ouster of President Mohamed Morsi was evidence of a conspiracy to undermine him, although other Egyptians say it was evidence of Morsi's mismanagement of the economy.
On 3 July 2013, Mohamed Morsi was removed from office and put into house arrest by the military, that happened shortly after mass protests against him began. demanding the resignation of Morsi. There were also significant counter-protests in support of Morsi; those were originally intended to celebrate the one-year anniversary of Morsi's inauguration, and started days before the uprising.
On 14 August, the interim government declared a month-long state of emergency, and riot police cleared the pro-Morsi sit-in during the Rabaa sit-in dispersal of August 2013. Violence escalated rapidly following armed protesters attacking police, according to the National Council for Human Rights' report; this led to the deaths of over 600 people and injury of some 4,000, with the incident resulting in the most casualties in Egypt's modern history. In retaliation, Brotherhood supporters looted and burned police stations and dozens of churches in response to the violence, though a Muslim Brotherhood spokesperson condemned the attacks on Christians and instead blamed military leaders for plotting the attacks. The crackdown that followed has been called the worst for the Brotherhood's organization "in eight decades". By 19 August, Al Jazeera reported that "most" of the Brotherhood's leaders were in custody. On that day Supreme Leader Mohammed Badie was arrested, crossing a "red line", as even Hosni Mubarak had never arrested him. On 23 September, a court ordered the group outlawed and its assets seized. Prime Minister, Hazem Al Beblawi on 21 December 2013, declared the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organisation after a car bomb ripped through a police building and killed at least 14 people in the city of Mansoura, which the government blamed on the Muslim Brotherhood, despite no evidence and an unaffiliated Sinai-based terror group claiming responsibility for the attack.
On 24 March 2014, an Egyptian court sentenced 529 members of the Muslim Brotherhood to death following an attack on a police station, an act described by Amnesty International as "the largest single batch of simultaneous death sentences we've seen in recent years […] anywhere in the world". By May 2014, approximately 16,000 people (and as high as more than 40,000 by what "The Economist" calls an "independent count"), mostly Brotherhood members or supporters, have allegedly been arrested by police since the 2013 uprising. On 2 February 2015, an Egyptian court sentenced another 183 members of the Muslim Brotherhood to death.
An editorial in "The New York Times" claimed that "leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, which became the leading political movement in the wake of Egypt's 2011 popular uprising, are languishing in prison, unfairly branded as terrorists. ... Egypt's crushing authoritarianism could well persuade a significant number of its citizens that violence is the only tool they have for fighting back".
Mohamed Morsi was sentenced to death on 16 May 2015, along with 120 others.
The Muslim Brotherhood claimed that Muslims did not carry out the Botroseya Church bombing and claimed it was a false flag conspiracy by the Egyptian government and Copts, in a statement released in Arabic on the FJP's website, but its claim was challenged by 100 Women participant Nervana Mahmoud and Hoover Institution and Hudson Institute fellow Samuel Tadros. The Muslim Brotherhood released an Arabic-language statement claiming the attack was carried out by the Egyptian security forces working for the Interior Ministry. The Anti-Coup Alliance said that "full responsibility for the crime" was on the "coup authority". The Muslim Brotherhood released an English-language commentary on the bombing and said it condemned the terrorist attack.
Qatar-based Muslim Brotherhood members are suspected to have helped a Muslim Brotherhood agent carry out the bombing, according to the Egyptian government. The Qatar-based supporter was named as Mohab Mostafa El-Sayed Qassem. The terrorist was named as Mahmoud Shafiq Mohamed Mostaf.
The Arabic-language website of the Muslim Brotherhood commemorated the anniversary of the death of its leader, Hassan al-Banna, and repeated his words calling for the teachings of Islam to spread all over the world and to raise the "flag of Jihad", taking their land, "regaining their glory", "including diaspora Muslims" and demanding an Islamic State and a Muslim government, a Muslim people, a Muslim house, and Muslim individuals. The Brotherhood cited some of Hassan al-Banna's sayings calling for brotherhood between Muslims.
The death of Omar Abdel Rahman, a convicted terrorist, received condolences from the Muslim Brotherhood. Mekameleen TV, a Turkey-based free-to-air satellite television channel run by exiled Brotherhood supporters, mourned his death and claimed it was "martyrdom". Mekameleen supports the Brotherhood Condolences were sent upon Omar Abdel Rahman's death by the website of the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party in Egypt.
How much of the blame for the fall from power in Egypt of the Brotherhood and its allied Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) can be placed on the Brotherhood, and how much of it can be placed on its enemies in the Egyptian bureaucracy, media and security establishment is disputed. The Mubarak government's state media portrayed the Brotherhood as secretive and illegal, and numerous TV channels such as OnTV spent much of their air time vilifying the organization. But the Brotherhood took a number of controversial steps and also acquiesced to or supported crackdowns by the military during Morsi's presidency. Before the revolution, the Muslim Brotherhood's supporters appeared at a protest at Al-Azhar University wearing military-style fatigues, after which the Mubarak government accused the organization of starting an underground militia. When it came to power, the Muslim Brotherhood indeed tried to establish armed groups of supporters and it sought official permission for its members to be armed.
In Bahrain, the Muslim Brotherhood ideology is speculated to be represented by the Al Eslah Society and its political wing, the Al-Menbar Islamic Society. Following parliamentary elections in 2002, Al Menbar became the largest joint party with eight seats in the forty-seat Chamber of Deputies. Prominent members of Al Menbar include Dr. Salah Abdulrahman, Dr. Salah Al Jowder, and outspoken MP Mohammed Khalid. The party has generally backed government-sponsored legislation on economic issues, but has sought a clampdown on pop concerts, sorcery and soothsayers. Additionally, it has strongly opposed the government's accession to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights .
Although Iran is a predominately Shi'ite Muslim country and the Muslim Brotherhood has never attempted to create a branch for Shi'ites, Olga Davidson and Mohammad Mahallati claim the Brotherhood has had influence among Shia in Iran. Navab Safavi, who founded Fada'iyan-e Islam, (also Fedayeen of Islam, or Fadayan-e Islam), an Iranian Islamic organization active in Iran in the 1940s and 1950s, was, according to Abbas Milani, "very much enamored of the Muslim Brotherhood".
Iranian Call and Reform Organization, a Sunni Islamist group active in Iran, has been described as an organization "that belongs to the Muslim Brotherhood" or "Iranian Muslim Brotherhood", while it has officially stated that it is not affiliated with the latter.
The Turkish AKP, the ruling party of Turkey, publicly supported the Muslim Brotherhood during and a few months after the overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi in July 2013. Then-Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan claimed in an interview that this was because "Turkey would stand by whoever was elected as a result of legitimate elections". According to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, each year after Morsi's overthrow has seen the AKP "significantly detach itself from the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt".
The Iraqi Islamic Party was formed in 1960 as the Iraqi branch of the Brotherhood, but was banned from 1961 during the nationalist rule of Abd al-Karim Qasim. As government repression hardened under the Baath Party from February 1963, the group was forced to continue underground. After the fall of the Saddam Hussein government in 2003, the Islamic Party has reemerged as one of the main advocates of the country's Sunni community. The Islamic Party has been sharply critical of the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq, but still participates in the political process nevertheless. Its leader is Iraqi Vice-President Tariq Al-Hashimi.
Anti-infidel jihad was encouraged by Imams of the Muslim Brotherhood simultaneously while the US Army was having dialogues with them in Mosul. They pose as modern while encouraging violence at the same time. The role of political representatives of Sunnis was seized on by the Muslim Brotherhood in Mosul since 2003.
The Muslim Brotherhood was an active participation in the "Faith Campaign". An ideology akin to the Brotherhood's was propagated in the faith campaign.
Khaled al-Obaidi said that he received a death threat and was declared a non-Muslim by the Muslim Brotherhood.
A pro-Turkish demonstration was held in London by Muslim Brotherhood-sympathizing Iraqis.
Also, in the north of Iraq there are several Islamic movements inspired by or part of the Muslim Brotherhood network. The Kurdistan Islamic Union (KIU), a small political party holding 10 seats in the Kurdish parliament, was believed to be supportive of the Muslim Brotherhood in the 90's. The group leaders and members have been continuously arrested by Kurdish authorities.
'Abd al-Rahman al-Banna, the brother of the Muslim Brotherhood founder Hasan al-Banna, went to Mandatory Palestine and established the Muslim Brotherhood there in 1935. Al-Hajj Amin al-Husseini, eventually appointed by the British as Grand Mufti of Jerusalem in hopes of accommodating him, was the leader of the group in Palestine. Another important leader associated with the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine was 'Izz al-Din al-Qassam, an inspiration to Islamists because he had been the first to lead an armed resistance in the name of Palestine against the British in 1935. In 1945, the group established a branch in Jerusalem, and by 1947 twenty-five more branches had sprung up, in towns such as Jaffa, Lod, Haifa, Nablus, and Tulkarm, which total membership between 12,000 and 20,000.
Brotherhood members fought alongside the Arab armies during the 1948 Arab–Israeli war, and, after Israel's creation, the ensuing Palestinian refugee crisis encouraged more Palestinian Muslims to join the group. After the war, in the West Bank, the group's activity was mainly social and religious, not political, so it had relatively good relations with Jordan during the Jordanian annexation of the West Bank. In contrast, the group frequently clashed with the Egyptian government that controlled the Gaza Strip until 1967.
In the 1950s and 1960s, the Brotherhood's goal was "the upbringing of an Islamic generation" through the restructuring of society and religious education, rather than opposition to Israel, and so it lost popularity to insurgent movements and the presence of Hizb ut-Tahrir. Eventually, however, the Brotherhood was strengthened by several factors:
In 2006, the Brotherhood supported Hezbollah's military action against Israel. It does not recognize the State of Israel.
Between 1967 and 1987, the year Hamas was founded, the number of mosques in Gaza tripled from 200 to 600, and the Muslim Brotherhood named the period between 1975 and 1987 a phase of "social institution building." During that time, the Brotherhood established associations, used zakat (alms giving) for aid to poor Palestinians, promoted schools, provided students with loans, used waqf (religious endowments) to lease property and employ people, and established mosques. Likewise, antagonistic and sometimes violent opposition to Fatah, the Palestine Liberation Organization and other secular nationalist groups increased dramatically in the streets and on university campuses.
In 1987, following the First Intifada, the "Islamic Resistance Movement", or Hamas was established from Brotherhood-affiliated charities and social institutions that had gained a strong foothold among the local population. During the First Intifada (1987–93), Hamas militarized and transformed into one of the strongest Palestinian militant groups.
The Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip in 2007 was the first time since the Sudanese coup of 1989 that brought Omar al-Bashir to power, that a Muslim Brotherhood group ruled a significant geographic territory. However, the 2013 overthrow of the Mohammad Morsi government in Egypt significantly weakened Hamas's position, leading to a blockade of Gaza and economic crisis.
The Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan originates from the merging of two separate groups which represent the two components of the Jordanian public: the Transjordanian and the West Bank Palestinian. On 9 November 1945 the Association of the Muslim Brotherhood (Jam'iyat al-Ikhwan al-Muslimin) was officially registered and Abu Qura became its first General Supervisor. Abu Qura originally brought the Brotherhood to Jordan from Egypt after extensive study and spread of the teachings of Imam Hasan al-Banna. While most political parties and movements were banned for a long time in Jordan such as Hizb ut-Tahrir, the Brotherhood was exempted and allowed to operate by the Jordanian monarchy. In 1948, Egypt, Syria, and Transjordan offered "volunteers" to help Palestine in its war against Israel. Due to the defeat and weakening of Palestine, the Transjordanian and Palestinian Brotherhood merged. The newly merged Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan was primarily concerned with providing social services and charitable work as well as with politics and its role in the parliament. It was seen as compatible with the political system and supported democracy without the forced implementation of Sharia law which was part of its doctrine. However, internal pressures from younger members of the Brotherhood who called for more militant actions as well as his failing health, Abu Qura resigned as the leader of the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood. On 26 December 1953, Muhammad 'Abd al-Rahman Khalifa, was elected by the movement's administrative committee as the new leader of the Transjordanian Brotherhood and he retained this position until 1994. Khalifa was different than his predecessor and older members of the organization because he was not educated in Cairo, he was educated in Syria and Palestine. He established close ties with Palestinian Islamists during his educational life which led him to be jailed for several months in Jordan for criticizing Arab armies in the war. Khalifa also reorganized the Brotherhood and applied to the government to designate the Brotherhood as "a comprehensive and general Islamic Committee, instead of the previous basis of operation under the "Societies and Clubs Law". This allowed the Brotherhood to spread throughout the country each with slight socioeconomic and political differences although the majority of the members were of the upper middle class. The radicalization of the Brotherhood began to take place after the peace process between Egypt and Israel, the Islamic Revolution of Iran, as well as their open criticism towards the Jordan-US relationship in the 1970s. Support for the Syrian branch of the Brotherhood also aided the radicalization of the group through open support and training for the rebel forces in Syria. The ideology began to transform into a more militant one which without it would not have the support of the Islamic radicals.
The Jordanian Brotherhood has formed its own political party, the Islamic Action Front. In 1989 they become the largest group in parliament, with 23 out of 80 seats, and 9 other Islamist allies. A Brother was elected president of the National Assembly and the cabinet formed in January 1991 included several MBs. Its radicalization which calls for more militant support for Hamas in Palestine has come into direct conflict with its involvement in the parliament and overall political process. The Brotherhood claimed its acceptance of democracy and the democratic process but only within their own groups. There is a high degree of dissent amongst Brotherhood leaders who do not share the same values therefore undermining its acceptance and commitment to democracy.
In 2011, against the backdrop of the Arab Spring, the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood "mobilized popular protests on a larger, more regular, and more oppositional basis than ever before". and had uniquely positioned themselves as "the only traditional political actor to have remained prominent during [the] new phase of post-Arab Spring activism" which led King Abdullah II and then-Prime Minister Marouf al-Bakhit to invite the Muslim Brotherhood to join Bakhit's cabinet, an offer they refused. The Muslim Brotherhood also boycotted the 2011 Jordanian municipal elections and led the 2011-12 Jordanian protests demanding a constitutional monarchy and electoral reforms, which resulted in the firing of Prime Minister Bakhit and the calling of early general elections in 2013.
As of late 2013, the movement in Jordan was described as being in "disarray". The instability and conflict with the monarchy has led the relationship between the two to crumble. In 2015, some 400 members of the Muslim Brotherhood defected from the original group including top leaders and founding members, to establish another Islamic group, with an allegedly moderate stance. The defectors said that they didn't like how things were run in the group and due to the group's relations with Hamas, Qatar and Turkey, which put suspicion on the group questioning if they are under the influence and working for the benefit of these states and organizations on the expense of the Jordanian state.
On 13 April 2016, Jordanian police raided and shut the Muslim Brotherhood headquarters in Amman. This comes despite the fact that the Jordanian branch cut ties with the mother Egyptian group in January 2016, a designated terrorist organization, a move that is considered to be exclusively cosmetic by experts. Jordanian authorities state that the reason of closure is because that the Brotherhood is unlicensed and is using the name of the defectors' licensed group. This comes after the Jordanian senate passed a new legislation for the regulation of political parties in 2014, the Muslim Brotherhood did not adhere by the regulations of the new law and so they did not renew their membership.
Qatar continues to back the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani denounced the 2013 Egyptian coup d'état that had taken place in Egypt. In June 2016, Mohamed Morsi was sentenced to a life sentence for passing state secrets to Qatar.
The continuous support for the Muslim Brotherhood by Qatar is considered one of the stepping stones that started the Qatar diplomatic crisis.
Egyptian Brethren came to Kuwait in the 1950s as refugees from Arab nationalism and integrated into the education ministry and other parts of the state. The Brotherhood's charity arm in Kuwait is called Al Eslah (Social Reform Society) and its political arm is called the Islamic Constitutional Movement (ICM) or "Hadas". Members of ICM have been elected to parliament and served in the government and are "widely believed to hold sway with the Ministry of Awqaf" (Islamic endowment) and Islamic Affairs, but have never reached a majority or even a plurality—"a fact that has required them to be pragmatic about working with other political groups". During the invasion of Kuwait, the Kuwait MB (along with other MB in the Gulf States) supported the American-Saudi coalition forces against Iraq and "quit the brotherhood's international agency in protest" over its pro-Sadam stand. However following the Arab Spring and the crackdown on the Egyptian Brotherhood, the Saudi government has put "pressure on other states that have Muslim Brotherhood adherents, asking them to decree that the group is a terrorist organization", and the local Kuwaiti and other Gulf state Brotherhoods have not been spared pressure from their local governments.
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia helped the Brotherhood financially for "over half a century", but the two became estranged during the Gulf War, and enemies after the election of Mohamed Morsi. Inside the kingdom, before the crushing of the Egyptian MB, the Brotherhood was called a group whose "many quiet supporters" made it "one of the few potential threats" to the royal family's control.
The Brotherhood first had an impact inside Saudi Arabia in 1954 when thousands of Egyptian Brethren sought to escape president Gamal Abdel Nasser's clampdown, while (the largely illiterate) Saudi Arabia was looking for teachers—who were also conservative pious Arab Muslims—for its newly created public school system. The Muslim Brotherhood's brand of Islam and Islamic politics differs from the Salafi creed called Wahhabiyya, officially held by the state of Saudi Arabia, and MB members "obeyed orders of the ruling family and ulama to not attempt to proselytize or otherwise get involved in religious doctrinal matters within the Kingdom. Nonetheless, the group "methodically ... took control of Saudi Arabia's intellectual life" by publishing books and participating in discussion circles and salons held by princes. Although the organization had no "formal organizational presence" in the Kingdom, (no political groups or parties are allowed to operate openly) MB members became "entrenched both in Saudi society and in the Saudi state, taking a leading role in key governmental ministries". In particular, many established themselves in Saudi educational system. One expert on Saudi affairs (Stephane Lacroix) has stated: "The education system is so controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood, it will take 20 years to change—if at all. Islamists see education as their base" in Saudi Arabia.
Relations between the Saudi ruling family and the Brotherhood became strained with Saudi opposition to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait and the willingness of Saudi government to allow US troops to be based in the Kingdom to fight Iraq. The Brotherhood supported the "Sahwah" ("Awakening") movement that pushed for political change in the Kingdom. In 2002, the then Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef denounced the Brotherhood, saying it was guilty of "betrayal of pledges and ingratitude" and was "the source of all problems in the Islamic world". The ruling family was also alarmed by the Arab Spring and the example set by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, with president Mohamed Morsi bringing an Islamist government to power by means of popular revolution and elections. Sahwa figures published petitions for reform addressed to the royal government (in violation of Wahhabi quietist doctrine). After the overthrow of the Morsi government in Egypt, all the major Sahwa figures signed petitions and statements denouncing the removal of Morsi and the Saudi government support for it.
In March 2014, in a "significant departure from its past official stance" the Saudi government declared the Brotherhood a "terrorist organization", followed with a royal decree announced that, from now on,
belonging to intellectual or religious trends or groups that are extremist or categorized as terrorist at the local, regional or international level, as well supporting them, or showing sympathy for their ideas and methods in whichever way, or expressing support for them through whichever means, or offering them financial or moral support, or inciting others to do any of this or promoting any such actions in word or writing
will be punished by a prison sentence "of no less than three years and no more than twenty years".
The Muslim Brotherhood in Syria was founded in the 1930s (according to lexicorient.com) or in 1945, a year before independence from France, (according to journalist Robin Wright). In the first decade or so of independence it was part of the legal opposition, and in the 1961 parliamentary elections it won ten seats (5.8% of the house). But after the 1963 coup that brought the secular Ba'ath Party to power it was banned. It played a major role in the mainly Sunni-based movement that opposed the secularist, pan-Arabist Ba'ath Party. This conflict developed into an armed struggle that continued until culminating in the Hama uprising of 1982, when the rebellion was crushed by the military.
Membership in the Syrian Brotherhood became a capital offense in Syria in 1980 (under Emergency Law 49, which was revoked in 2011), but the headquarters of the Muslim Brotherhood-linked Palestinian group, Hamas, was located in the Syria's capital Damascus, where it was given Syrian government support. This has been cited as an example of the lack of international centralization or even coordination of the Muslim Brotherhood.
The Brotherhood is said to have "resurrected itself" and become the "dominant group" in the opposition by 2012 during the Syrian Civil War according to the "Washington Post" newspaper. But by 2013 another source described it as having "virtually no influence on the conflict". Syrian President Bashar al-Assad welcomed the fall of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and remarked that "Arab identity is back on the right track after the fall from power of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, which had used religion for its own political gain".
Muslim Brotherhood presence in the United Arab Emirates began with the formation of the Al Islah group in the United Arab Emirates in 1974 with the approval of Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum.
Al Islah in the UAE has openly stated that it shares ideology with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Al Islah has criticized the UAE for the country's religious tolerance and presence of community Christian churches in the UAE. Since its formation, its members have sought to impose control on state social issues, such as promoting several measures limiting the rights of women. Emirati Al Islah member Tharwat Kherbawi said the Muslim Brotherhood finds the present UAE government to be an "impediment", and the country itself to be a "treasure and a crucial strategic and economic prize".
Al Islah was reported to have been secretly forming a military wing that has sought to recruit retired military officers and young Emiratis and is alleged to have plotted the overthrow of the current government and the establishment of an Islamist state in the UAE.
In March 2013, a trial began in Abu Dhabi for 94 individuals linked to Al Islah for an attempted coup on the government. Of the 94, 56 suspects received prison sentences ranging between three and ten years. Eight suspects were sentenced in absentia to 15 years in jail and 26 were acquitted.
On 7 March 2014, the Muslim Brotherhood was designated as a terrorist group by the UAE government.
The Muslim Brothers fought with North Yemen in the NDF rebellion as Islamic Front.
The Muslim Brotherhood is the political arm of the Yemeni Congregation for Reform, commonly known as Al-Islah. Former President Ali Abdullah Saleh made substantial efforts to entrench the accusations of being in league with Al Qaeda.
The Treasury Department of the US used the label "Bin Laden loyalist" for Abdul Majeed al-Zindani, the Yemeni Muslim Brotherhood's leader.
The Muslim Brotherhood reached Algeria during the later years of the French colonial presence in the country (1830–1962). Sheikh Ahmad Sahnoun led the organization in Algeria between 1953 and 1954 during the French colonialism. Brotherhood members and sympathizers took part in the uprising against France in 1954–1962, but the movement was marginalized during the largely secular FLN one-party rule which was installed at independence in 1962. It remained unofficially active, sometimes protesting the government and calling for increased Islamization and Arabization of the country's politics.
When a multi-party system was introduced in Algeria in the early 1990s, the Muslim Brotherhood formed the Movement of Society for Peace (MSP, previously known as Hamas), led by Mahfoud Nahnah until his death in 2003 (he was succeeded by present party leader Boudjerra Soltani). The Muslim Brotherhood in Algeria did not join the Front islamique du salut (FIS), which emerged as the leading Islamist group, winning the 1991 elections and which was banned in 1992 following a military coup d'état, although some Brotherhood sympathizers did. The Brotherhood subsequently also refused to join the violent post-coup uprising by FIS sympathizers and the Armed Islamic Groups (GIA) against the Algerian state and military which followed, and urged a peaceful resolution to the conflict and a return to democracy. It has thus remained a legal political organization and enjoyed parliamentary and government representation. In 1995, Sheikh Nahnah ran for President of Algeria finishing second with 25.38% of the popular vote. During the 2000s (decade), the party—led by Nahnah's successor Boudjerra Soltani—has been a member of a three-party coalition backing President Abdelaziz Bouteflika.
A group of the Muslim Brotherhood came to the Libyan kingdom in the 1950s as refugees escaping crackdown by the Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser, but it was not able to operate openly until after the First Libyan Civil War. They were viewed negatively by King Idris of Libya who had become increasingly wary of their activities. Muammar Gaddafi forbade all forms of Islamism in Libya and was an archenemy to the Muslim Brotherhood for long time. The group held its first public press conference on 17 November 2011, and on 24 December the Brotherhood announced that it would form the Justice and Construction Party (JCP) and contest the General National Congress elections the following year. The Libyan Muslim Brotherhood has "little history of interactions with the masses."
Despite predictions based on fellow post-Arab Spring nations Tunisia and Egypt that the Brotherhood's party would easily win the elections, it instead came a distant second to the National Forces Alliance, receiving just 10% of the vote and 17 out of 80 party-list seats. Their candidate for Prime Minister, Awad al-Baraasi was also defeated in the first round of voting in September, although he was later made a Deputy Prime Minister under Ali Zeidan. A JCP Congressman, Saleh Essaleh is also the vice speaker of the General National Congress.
The Party of Reform and Development is led by Khaled al-Werchefani, a former member of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Sallabi, the Head of Homeland Party, has close ties to Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the spiritual leader of the international Muslim Brotherhood.
The Muslim Brotherhood in Libya has come under widespread criticism, particularly for their alleged ties with extremist organizations operating in Libya. In fact, the text of the U.S. Congress Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Designation Act of 2015 directly accuses the militias of the Libyan Muslim Brotherhood of "joining forces with United States designated terrorist organizations, particularly Ansar al-Sharia" who the United States blames for the attack on its compound in Benghazi. There have been similar reports that those tasked with guarding the Benghazi consulate on the night of the assault were connected to the Muslim Brotherhood.
The Libyan Muslim Brotherhood has lost much of its popular support since 2012 as the group was blamed for divisions in the country. Secular Libyan politicians have continued to voice concerns of the Brotherhood's ties to extremist groups. In October 2017, spokesman of the Libyan National Army (LNA) colonel Ahmed Al Masmary claimed that "branches of the Muslim Brotherhood affiliated to al-Qaeda" had joined forces with ISIS in Libya. In the 2014 parliamentary elections, the Muslim Brotherhood won only 25 of the 200 available seats.
Changes to the demographic and political makeup of Mauritania in the 1970s heavily contributed to the growth of Islamism within Mauritanian society. Periods of severe drought resulted in urbanization, as large numbers of Mauritanians moved from the countryside to the cities, particularly Nouakchott, to escape the drought. This sharp increase in urbanization resulted in new civil associations being formed, and Mauritania's first Islamist organisation, known as Jemaa Islamiyya (Islamic Association) was formed by Mauritanians sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood.
There was increased activism relating to the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1980s, partially driven by members of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.
In 2007 the National Rally for Reform and Development, better known as Tewassoul, was legalized as a political party. The party is associated with the Mauritanian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.
The Justice and Development Party was the largest vote-getter in Morocco's 2011 election, and as of May 2015, held the office of Prime Minister. It is historically affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, however, despite this, the party has reportedly "ostentatiously" praised the King of Morocco, while "loudly insisting that it is in no sense whatsoever a Muslim Brotherhood party"—a development one source (Hussein Ibish), calls evidence of how "regionally discredited the movement has become".
Somalia's wing of the Muslim Brotherhood is known by the name Harakat Al-Islah or "Reform Movement". Muslim Brotherhood ideology reached Somalia in the early 1960s, but Al-Islah movement was formed in 1978 and slowly grew in the 1980s. Al-Islah has been described as "a generally nonviolent and modernizing Islamic movement that emphasizes the reformation and revival of Islam to meet the challenges of the modern world", whose "goal is the establishment of an Islamic state" and which "operates primarily in Mogadishu". The organization structured itself loosely and was not openly visible on the political scene of Somali society.
Until the election of Hamas in Gaza, Sudan was the one country where the Brotherhood was most successful in gaining power, its members making up a large part of the government officialdom following the 1989 coup d'état by General Omar al-Bashir. However, the Sudanese government dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood affiliated National Islamic Front (NIF) has come under considerable criticism for its human rights policies, links to terrorist groups, and war in southern Sudan and Darfur.
In 1945, a delegation from the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt visited Sudan and held various meetings inside the country advocating and explaining their ideology. Sudan has a long and deep history with the Muslim Brotherhood compared to many other countries. By April 1949, the first branch of the Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood organization emerged. However, simultaneously, many Sudanese students studying in Egypt were introduced to the ideology of the Brotherhood. The Muslim student groups also began organizing in the universities during the 1940s, and the Brotherhood's main support base has remained to be college educated. In order to unite them, in 1954, a conference was held, attended by various representatives from different groups that appeared to have the same ideology. The conference voted to establish a Unified Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood Organization based on the teachings of Imam Hassan Al-banna.
An offshoot of the Sudanese branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamic Charter Front grew during the 1960, with Islamic scholar Hasan al-Turabi becoming its Secretary general in 1964. The Islamic Charter Front (ICM) was renamed several times most recently being called the National Islamic Front (NIF). The Muslim Brotherhood/NIF's main objective in Sudan was to Islamize the society "from above" and to institutionalize the Islamic law throughout the country where they succeeded. To that end the party infiltrated the top echelons of the government where the education of party cadre, frequently acquired in the West, made them "indispensable". This approach was described by Turabi himself as the "jurisprudence of necessity".
Meeting resistance from non-Islamists, from already established Muslim organisations, and from non-Muslims in the south, the Sudanese NIF government under Turabi and the NIF organized a coup to overthrow a democratically elected government in 1989, organized the Popular Defense Force which committed "widespread, deliberate and systematic atrocities against hundreds of thousands of southern civilians" in the 1990s. The NIF government also employed "widespread arbitrary and extrajudicial arrest, torture, and execution of labor union officials, military officers, journalists, political figures and civil society leaders".
The NCP was dissolved in the aftermath of the military takeover on 11 April 2019.
Like their counterparts elsewhere in the Islamic world in general, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood has influenced the Tunisian Islamists. One of the notable organization that was influenced and inspired by the Brotherhood is Ennahda (The Revival or Renaissance Party), which is Tunisia's major Islamist political grouping. An Islamist founded the organization in 1981. While studying in Damascus and Paris, Rashid Ghannouchi embraced the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood, which he disseminated on his return to Tunisia.
The Islamic Community of Germany "(de: Islamische Gemeinschaft in Deutschland e.V, IGD)" being constituent and founding organisation of the MB umbrella organisation FIOE, the MB is active in Germany with the IGD as a proxy. IGD members take care to not publicly declare their affiliation to the MB.
The Muslim Brotherhood is banned in Russia as a terrorist organisation.
As affirmed on 14 February 2003 by the decision of the Supreme Court of Russia, the Muslim Brotherhood coordinated the creation of an Islamic organisation called "" (, led by Ibn Al-Khattab and Basaev; an organisation that committed multiple terror-attack acts in Russia and was allegedly financed by drug trafficking, counterfeiting of coins and racketeering.
The first MB-affiliated organisations in the UK were founded in the 1960s, which comprised exiles and overseas students. They promoted the works of Indian theologician Abu A'la Mawdudi and represented the Jama'at-e-Islami. In their initial phase they were politically inactive in the UK as they assumed they would return to their home countries and instead focused on recruiting new members and to support the MB in the Arab World.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the MB and its associated organisations changed to a new strategy of political activity in western countries with the purpose to promote the MB overseas but also preserve the autonomy of Muslim communities in the UK.
In the 1990s, the MB established publicly visible organisations and ostensibly "national" organisations to further its agenda, but membership in the MB was and remains a secret. The MB dominated the Islamic Society of Britain (ISB), the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB) and founded the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB). MAB became politically active in foreign policy issues such as Palestine and Iraq, while MCB established a dialogue with the then governments.
In 1996, the first representative of the Muslim Brotherhood in the UK, Kamal el-Helbawy, an Egyptian, was able to say that "there are not many members here, but many Muslims in the UK intellectually support the aims of the Muslim Brotherhood".
In September 1999, the Muslim Brotherhood opened a "global information centre" in London.
Since 2001, the ISB has distanced itself from Muslim Brotherhood ideology along with the MCB.
In April 2014, David Cameron, who was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom at the time, launched an investigation into the Muslim Brotherhood's activities in the UK and its alleged extremist activities. Egypt welcomed the decision. After Cameron's decision, the Muslim Brotherhood reportedly moved its headquarters from London to Austria attempting to avoid the investigation.
In a 2015 government report, the MB was found to not have been linked to terrorist related activity against in the UK and MAB has condemned Al-Qaeda terrorist activity in the UK.
Several parties and organizations in Indonesia are linked or at least inspired by the Muslim Brotherhood, although none have a formal relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood. One of the Muslim Brotherhood-linked parties is the PKS (Prosperous Justice Party),which gained 6.79% of votes in the 2014 legislative election, down from 7.88% in the 2009 election. The PKS's relationship with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood was confirmed by Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a prominent Muslim Brotherhood leader. The PKS was a member of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's government coalition with 3 ministers in the cabinet.
The Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS), the oldest and largest mainstream Islamist party in Malaysia, has close personal and ideological ties with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Founded in 1951, PAS's founders were exposed to the ideas and teachings while they were studying in Cairo during the 1940s. PAS is the main rival to the Malay nationalist United Malays National Organisation, which dominated Malaysian politics until 2018. According to the think tank Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs' CEO Wan Saiful Wan Jan, PAS is regarded by the Muslim Brotherhood as an electorally successful Islamic political party; PAS has governed the state of Kelantan since 2002. PAS representatives are often invited to Muslim Brotherhood speaking engagements overseas. In 2012, PAS President Abdul Hadi Awang spoke alongside Muslim Brotherhood scholar Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi at a speaking event in London. In April 2014, PAS leader Abdul Awang spoke out against Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates' decision to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization.
According to Bubalo and Fealy, "Angkatan Belia Islam Malaysia" (or the Muslim Youth Movement of Malaysia) was inspired or influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood.
According to a 2004 article by "The Washington Post", U.S. Muslim Brotherhood supporters "make up the U.S. Islamic community's most organized force" by running hundreds of mosques and business ventures, promoting civic activities, and setting up American Islamic organizations to defend and promote Islam. In 1963, the U.S. chapter of Muslim Brotherhood was started by activists involved with the Muslim Students Association (MSA). U.S. supporters of the Brotherhood also started other organizations including: North American Islamic Trust in 1971, the Islamic Society of North America in 1981, the American Muslim Council in 1990, the Muslim American Society in 1992 and the International Institute of Islamic Thought in the 1980s. In addition, according to "An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America", the "Understanding of the Role of the Muslim Brotherhood in North America", and a relatively benign goal of the Muslim Brotherhood in North America is identified as the following:
Establishing an effective and a stable Islamic movement led by the Muslim Brotherhood which adopts Muslims' causes domestically and globally, and which works to expand the observant Muslim base, aims at unifying and directing Muslims' efforts, presents Islam as a civilization alternative, and supports the global Islamic state wherever it is.
The process of settlement is a 'Civilization-Jihadist Process' with all the word means. The Ikhwan [Muslim Brotherhood] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and 'sabotaging' its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion [Islam] is made victorious over all other religions.
During the Holy Land Foundation trial in 2007, several documents pertaining to the Brotherhood were unsuccessful in convincing the courts that the Brotherhood was involved in subversive activities. In one, dated 1984 called "Ikhwan in America" (Brotherhood in America), the author alleges that the activities of the Muslim Brotherhood in the US include going to camps to do weapons training (referred to as "special work" by the Muslim Brotherhood), as well as engaging in counter-espionage against U.S. government agencies such as the FBI and CIA (referred to as "Securing the Group"). Another (dated 1991) outlined a strategy for the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States that involved "eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within".
Penned in May of 1991 by a man named Mohamed Akram Adlouni, the 'Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America' was discovered during an FBI raid of a Virginia home in 2004. The document was admitted as an exhibit to the court during the 2007 Holy Land Foundation trial, in which that group was charged with laundering money. After the trial, the document became public. But, according to a 2009 opinion by the presiding judge, the memo was not considered 'supporting evidence' for that alleged money laundering scheme, nor any other conspiracy.
The documents continue to be widely publicized in American conservative circles.
U.S. Congress attempts to pass legislation criminalizing the group, put forward by the 114th Congress, were defeated. The Bill, called the Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Designation Act of 2015, was introduced to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations by Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX). In it the bill states that the Department of State should designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization. If passed, the bill would have required the State Department to report to Congress within 60 days whether or not the group fits the criteria, and if it did not, to state which specific criteria it had not met. Senator Cruz announced the legislation along with Representative Mario Díaz-Balart (R-FL) in November 2015. However, it did not pass.
This bill came after a handful of foreign countries made similar moves in recent years including Egypt, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and others, and after, according to Cruz, recent evidence emerged suggesting that the group supports terrorism. The senator further alleged that the group's stated goal is to wage violent jihad against its enemies, which includes the United States, and the fact that the Obama administration has listed numerous group members on its terror list. Cruz further stated that the bill would "reject the fantasy that [the] parent institution [of the Muslim Brotherhood] is a political entity that is somehow separate from these violent activities".
The bill identifies three Muslim Brotherhood entities in the U.S. including the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), a non-profit group denounced by the UAE for its MB ties. This group is regarded by the Egyptian government as a Brotherhood lobby in the United States. The other two entities are the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT).
Conservatives in the Congress believe that the group is a breeding ground for radical Islam. Previous attempts were made in the previous year by Representative Michele Bachmann (R-MN), but it failed largely due to her allegation that Huma Abedin, Hillary Clinton's aide, had links to the organization, a statement which was dismissed by establishment Democrats and Republicans.
In February 2016, the House Judiciary Committee approved the legislation in a 17 to 10 vote, which if enacted could increase grounds for enforcing criminal penalties and give permission to the Secretary of Treasury to block financial transactions and freeze assets of anyone who has showed material support for the group. Scholars against this classification claim that the group simply promotes Islamism, or the belief that society should be governed according to Islamic values and Sharia law.
Past U.S. presidential administrations have examined whether to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a Foreign Terrorist Organization and have decided not to do so. During the George W. Bush administration, the U.S. government investigated the Brotherhood and associated Islamist groups, but "after years of investigations, ... the U.S. and other governments, including Switzerland's, closed investigations of the Brotherhood leaders and financial group for lack of evidence, and removed most of the leaders from sanctions lists." The Obama administration was also pressured to designate the Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, but did not do so. During the Donald Trump administration, there were serious steps towards designating the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization.
The Brotherhood was criticised by Ayman al-Zawahiri in 2007 for its refusal to advocate the violent overthrow of the Mubarak government. Issam al-Aryan, a top Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood figure, denounced the al-Qaeda leader: "Zawahiri's policy and preaching bore dangerous fruit and had a negative impact on Islam and Islamic movements across the world".
Dubai police chief, Dhahi Khalfan accused Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood of an alleged plot to overthrow the UAE government. He referred to the Muslim Brotherhood as "dictators" who want "Islamist rule in all the Gulf States".
Numerous officials and reporters question the sincerity of the Muslim Brotherhood's pronouncements. These critics include, but are not limited to:
According to authors writing in the Council on Foreign Relations magazine "Foreign Affairs": "At various times in its history, the group has used or supported violence and has been repeatedly banned in Egypt for attempting to overthrow Cairo's secular government. Since the 1970s, however, the Egyptian Brotherhood has disavowed violence and sought to participate in Egyptian politics". Jeremy Bowen, the Middle East editor for the BBC, called it "conservative and non-violent". The Brotherhood "has condemned" terrorism and the 9/11 attacks.
The Brotherhood itself denounces the "catchy and effective terms and phrases" like "fundamentalist" and "political Islam" which it claims are used by "Western media" to pigeonhole the group, and points to its "15 Principles" for an Egyptian National Charter, including "freedom of personal conviction ... opinion ... forming political parties ... public gatherings ... free and fair elections ..."
Similarly, some analysts maintain that whatever the source of modern Jihadi terrorism and the actions and words of some rogue members, the Brotherhood now has little in common with radical Islamists and modern jihadists who often condemn the Brotherhood as too moderate. They also deny the existence of any centralized and secretive global Muslim Brotherhood leadership. Some claim that the origins of modern Muslim terrorism are found in Wahhabi ideology, not that of the Muslim Brotherhood.
According to anthropologist Scott Atran, the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood even in Egypt has been overstated by Western commentators. He estimates that it can count on only 100,000 militants (out of some 600,000 dues paying members) in a population of more than 80 million, and that such support as it does have among Egyptians—an often cited figure is 20 percent to 30 percent—is less a matter of true attachment than an accident of circumstance: secular opposition groups that might have countered it were suppressed for many decades, but in driving the Egyptian Revolution of 2011, a more youthful constellation of secular movements has emerged to threaten the Muslim Brotherhood's dominance of the political opposition. This has not yet been the case, however, as evidenced by the Brotherhood's strong showing in national elections. Polls also indicate that a majority of Egyptians and other Arab nations endorse laws based on "Sharia".
On 29 June 2011, as the Brotherhood's political power became more apparent and solidified following the Egyptian Revolution of 2011, the United States announced that it would reopen formal diplomatic channels with the group, with whom it had suspended communication as a result of suspected terrorist activity. The next day, the Brotherhood's leadership announced that they welcomed the diplomatic overture.
In September 2014, Brotherhood leaders were expelled from Qatar. "The New York Times" reported: "Although the Brotherhood's views are not nearly as conservative as the puritanical, authoritarian version of Islamic law enforced in Saudi Arabia, the Saudis and other gulf monarchies fear the group because of its broad organization, its mainstream appeal and its calls for elections".
Countries and organizations below have officially listed the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization.
Libya's Tobruk-based House of Representatives also designated the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist group on May 14, 2019.
In February 2003, the Supreme Court of Russia banned the Muslim Brotherhood, labelling it as a terrorist organization, and accusing the group of supporting Islamist rebels who want to create an Islamic state in the North Caucasus.
In January 2017, during his confirmation hearing, the former U.S. Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, referred to the Muslim Brotherhood, along with Al-Qaeda, as an agent of radical Islam—a characterization that Human Rights Watch member Sarah Leah Whitson criticized on social media, disseminating a statement from the HRW Washington director saying that the conflation of the group with violent extremists was inaccurate. The following month, "The New York Times" reported that the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump was considering an order designating the Muslim Brotherhood as a foreign terrorist organization.
The Muslim Brotherhood was criticized by Secretary Tillerson. The terrorist designation for the Muslim Brotherhood is opposed by Human Rights Watch and "The New York Times", both liberal-leaning institutions. The potential terrorist designation was criticized, in particular, by Human Rights Watch member Laura Pitter. "The New York Times" set forth its opposition in an editorial that claimed that the Muslim Brotherhood is a collection of movements, and argued that the organization as a whole does not merit the terrorist designation: "While the Brotherhood calls for a society governed by Islamic law, it renounced violence decades ago, has supported elections and has become a political and social organization". The designation of the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization is opposed by the Brennan Center for Justice, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Council of American-Islamic Relations and American Civil Liberties Union.
Human Rights Watch and its director Kenneth Roth oppose proposals to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization.
Gehad El-Haddad, a Muslim Brotherhood member, denied that terrorism was practiced by the Muslim Brotherhood in an editorial published by "The New York Times".
In a report by the Carnegie Middle East Center, Nathan Brown and Michele Dunne argued that "designating the Muslim Brotherhood a foreign terrorist organization may actually backfire," writing: "The sweeping measure to declare the Brotherhood a foreign terrorist organization now being contemplated not only does not accord with the facts, but is also more likely to undermine than achieve its ostensible purpose and could result in collateral damage affecting other U.S. policy goals. The greatest damage might be in the realm of public diplomacy, as using a broad brush to paint all Muslim Brotherhood organizations as terrorists would be understood by many Muslims around the world as a declaration of war against non-violent political Islamists—and indeed against Islam itself."
The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt avoids directly implicating itself materially in terrorism while it supports terrorism with words and encourages it, according to WINEP fellow Eric Trager, who advocated pushing them into a corner instead of designating them due to issues with materially connecting them to terrorism other than with their words.
The editorial boards of "The New York Times" and "The Washington Post" oppose designation of the group as a terrorist organization.
Civil rights lawyer and adjunct professor of law Arjun Singh Sethi wrote that the push to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization was based on anti-Islamic conspiracy theories, noting that "Two previous U.S. administrations concluded that it does not engage in terrorism, as did a recent report by the British government."
Ishaan Tharoor of "The Washington Post" condemned the movement to designate the Brotherhood as a terrorist group.
A Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) intelligence report from January 2017 warned that designation of the Brotherhood as a terrorist organization "may fuel extremism" and harm relations with U.S. allies. The report noted that the Brotherhood had "rejected violence as a matter of official policy and opposed al-Qa'ida and ISIS" and that while "a minority of MB [Muslim Brotherhood] members have engaged in violence, most often in response to harsh regime repression, perceived foreign occupation, or civil conflicts", designation of the organization as a terrorist group would prompt concern from U.S. allies in the Middle East "that such a step could destabilize their internal politics, feed extremist narratives, and anger Muslims worldwide." The CIA analysis stated: "MB groups enjoy widespread support across the Near East-North Africa region and many Arabs and Muslims worldwide would view an MB designation as an affront to their core religious and societal values. Moreover, a US designation would probably weaken MB leaders' arguments against violence and provide ISIS and al-Qa'ida additional grist for propaganda to win followers and support, particularly for attacks against US interests."
An article in "The Atlantic" against designating the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization was written by Shadi Hamid.
Qatar's relationship with Muslim Brotherhood has been a persistent point of contention between Qatar and other Arab states, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, and Egypt, which view the Brotherhood as a serious threat to social stability in those countries.
Following the overthrow of Mohamed Morsi in July 2013, Qatar allowed some Brotherhood members who fled Egypt to live in the country. The Qatar-based Al Jazeera "housed them in a five-star Doha hotel and granted them regular airtime for promoting their cause"; the station also broadcast protests against the post-Brotherhood authorities in Egypt by the Brotherhood, "and in some cases allegedly paid Muslim Brothers for the footage." Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain said that Qatar had violated the Gulf Cooperation Council rule against interference in the internal affairs of other members, and in March 2014 all three countries withdrew their ambassadors from Qatar. After two months of diplomatic tensions the issue was resolved, with Brotherhood leaders departing from Doha later in 2014.
However, "from Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the UAE's standpoint, Qatar never lived up to the 2014 agreement and continued to serve as the nexus of the Brotherhood's regional networks." This led to the 2017 Qatar diplomatic crisis, which is viewed as being precipitated in large part by a conflict over the Muslim Brotherhood. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt made 13 demands of the government of Qatar, six of which reflect the group's opposition to Qatar's relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood and demand that the country cut ties to the Brotherhood. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=20742 |
Moctezuma I
Moctezuma I (c. 1398-1469), also known as Moteuczomatzin Ilhuicamina (), Huehuemoteuczoma or Montezuma I ( , ), was the second Aztec emperor and fifth king of Tenochtitlan. During his reign, the Aztec Empire was consolidated, major expansion was undertaken, and Tenochtitlan started becoming the dominant partner of the Aztec Triple Alliance. Often mistaken for his popular descendant, Moctezuma II, Moctezuma I greatly contributed to the famed Aztec Empire that thrived until Spanish arrival, and he ruled over a period of peace from 1440 to 1453. Moctezuma brought social, economical, and political reform to strengthen Aztec rule, and Tenochititlan benefited from relations with other tribes.
Moctezuma was the son of emperor Huitzilihuitl (meaning "Hummingbird Feather") and queen Miahuaxihuitl. He was a brother of Chimalpopoca, Tlacaelel I, and Huehue Zaca. He was the grandson of the first ruler of Tenochtitlan. His name meant “he is angry like a lord” (from the root “tēuc-” [lord] combined with the reflexive verb “mo/zōma” [becomes angry]).
After emperor Huitzilihuitl's death, Moctezuma's brother Chimalpopoca was ruler for ten years until his assassination. During his reign, Moctezuma and his brother Tlacaelel I lead an opposition group of young nobles. This group was militant in nature and they chose Itzcoatl as the next ruler. Under Itzcoatl, Moctezuma and Tlacaelel were generals in his army.
Moctezuma then was elected to power in 1440 by this group of nobles, at the age of 42, after the death of his half-uncle Itzcoatl. He held the title of "Great Speaker". This was distinguished from the title of "Speaker" since he spoke for both the Aztecs and the other tribes under their control.
His coronation was a large ceremony, involving many human sacrifices of prisoners. Moctezuma was seated on a basketwork throne and was crowned by the ruler of Texoco. His crown was a turquoise diadem known as the fire crown.
As "tlatoani", Moctezuma solidified the alliance with two neighboring states, Tlacopan (a small city-state) and Texcoco. Tlacopan, located on the western shore of Lake Texcoco, controlled 7 city-states to the northwest, while Texcoco was located on the eastern shore and rule over 9 city-states in the northeast. As the two regions were added to Moctezuma's empire, the Aztecs relied on already established city-states to increase military power. In this skillfully crafted Triple Alliance, 4/5ths of a newly conquered territory would be divided between Texcoco and the Aztecs, with the remaining 1/5 given to Tlacopan.
Among the Aztecs' greatest achievements, Moctezuma and Nezahualcoyotl of Texcoco organized the construction and completion of a double aqueduct pipe system, supplying the city of Tenochtitlan with fresh water. The newly adopted water source provided an ample supply of fresh water to Texcoco's various communities, which extended over a distance of 12-kilometers from their lakeshore to the hills of Tetxcotxinco.
Early in his rule, he led a conquest against the state of Oaxaca in 1445. Moctezuma also then went on to extend the boundaries of the Aztec empire beyond the Valley of México to the Gulf Coast, known as the "Sea of the Sky", for the first time, subjugating the Huastec people and Totonac peoples and thereby gaining access to exotic goods such as cocoa, rubber, cotton, fruits, feathers, and seashells. The Aztec were then known as the "Neighbors of the Sea of the Sky", as they controlled all the territory up to the Gulf of Mexico.
As a ruler, Moctezuma faced and overcame many natural disasters. In 1446, a swarm of locusts destroyed the region's crops In 1449, Lake Texcoco flooded the city. In 1450, a frost and drought again destroyed the region's crops. These droughts and frosts continued for four years. The famines resulted in some selling their children or themselves into slavery, and the city lost most of its population. This drought resulted in Moctezuma's period of peace ending.
After the famine ravaged through Aztec agricultural resources, a series of conflicts, known as the Flower War, involved the Triple Alliance, and the city-states of Huejotzingo, Tlaxcala, Cholula, in the Tlaxcala-Pueblan Valley of Central Mexico. Believing the famine to have occurred due to their gods' anger, Moctezuma supported the order for an increase of human sacrifices to please them. Thus, began the war to accumulate as many victims as possible for sacrifice. The war lasted until Spanish Conquest in Mexico, where Spaniards recruited enemy tribes of the Triple Alliance to conquer all of Mexico. In preparation for the war, Moctezuma would issue three declarations of war and provide weapons to the enemy region. If the last declaration was not accepted by the enemy region, then within 20 days the Aztecs would attack.
In about 1458, Moctezuma led an expedition into Mixtec territory against the city-state of Coixtlahuaca, the pretext being the mistreatment of Aztec merchants. Despite the support of contingents of Tlaxcala and Huexotzinco warriors, traditional enemies of the Aztecs, the Mixtecs were defeated. While most of the defeated chieftains were allowed to retain their positions, the Mixtec ruler Atonal was ritually strangled and his family was taken as slaves. The Codex Mendoza records that the tribute owed by Coixtlahuaca consisted of 2000 blankets (of 5 types), 2 military outfits with headdresses and shields, green gemstone beads, 800 bunches of green feathers, 40 bags of cochineal dye, and 20 bowls of gold dust. He took many girls from Coixtlahuaca and had ten harems all to himself. He stole three of them from his dead brother Zaca. Similar campaigns were conducted against Cosamaloapan, Ahuilizapan (Orizaba), and Cuetlachtlan (Cotaxtla).
It is reported that Moctezuma's half brother Tlacaelel opposed his leadership in the early years. However, other historians report that he was once given the opportunity to rule and turned the opportunity down. He took over the empire in 1469 after the death of Moctezuma.
While Moctezuma did lead conquests against others, he was able to maintain peace from 1440 to 1453 within his empire. With this peace his government was able to enact social, political, and economic reforms.
He enacted codes, which determined what people of certain classes could wear and what their houses could look like. For example, only noblemen or great warriors could have a home with a second story. No one was allowed to have towers, because he claimed they could only be granted by the gods.
He also created legal and education policies that were determined by class. In the palace, different classes were to be received in different rooms. No mixing was allowed under the punishment of death. Only Moctezuma was allowed to give a death sentence, and all judges had to notify him of any death penalty rulings. Religion was also emphasized, and religious schools were required in every neighborhood.
Tlacaelel, Moctezuma's first successor, was succeeded by Moctezuma's cousin or son Axayacatl, who was 19 years old. Moctezuma is also now used as a symbol of Mexican independence and resistance. Moctezuma I is depicted much less than Moctezuma II in popular culture. However, one depiction is in the "Sid Meier's Civilization" series. In this video game, Moctezuma is the leader of one the playable civilizations which are competing to have a successful empire. One of his unique abilities is "Gifts for the Tlatoani", in which new resources help improve the happiness of the society as well as its military power. In game, the civilization is known for aggression and expansion.
Moctezuma is also seen as a "hero-god" by several Southwestern Native American tribes, especially the Tohono O'odham and Pueblo. His legend is somewhat distinct from the actual historical figure, but shares elements of him and likely originated with tales of the real one. He is a somewhat ambiguous "Noah" figure, who is subservient to the Great Spirit. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=20746 |
Moctezuma II
Moctezuma II ( 1466 – 29 June 1520), variant spellings include Montezuma, Moteuczoma, Motecuhzoma, Motēuczōmah, Muteczuma, and referred to in full by early Nahuatl texts as Motecuhzoma Xocoyotzin ("Moctezuma the Younger", ), was the ninth "tlatoani" or ruler of the Aztec Empire, reigning from 1502 to 1520. The first contact between the indigenous civilizations of Mesoamerica and Europeans took place during his reign, and he was killed during the initial stages of the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire, when conquistador Hernán Cortés and his men fought to take over the Aztec capital Tenochtitlán.
During his reign, the Aztec Empire reached its greatest size. Through warfare, Moctezuma expanded the territory as far south as Xoconosco in Chiapas and the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, and incorporated the Zapotec and Yopi people into the empire. He changed the previous meritocratic system of social hierarchy and widened the divide between "pipiltin" (nobles) and "macehualtin" (commoners) by prohibiting commoners from working in the royal palaces.
Though two other Aztec rulers succeeded Moctezuma after his death, their reigns were short-lived and the empire quickly collapsed under them. Historical portrayals of Moctezuma have mostly been colored by his role as ruler of a defeated nation, and many sources have described him as weak-willed, superstitious, and indecisive. His story remains one of the most well-known conquest narratives from the history of European contact with the New World, and he has been mentioned or portrayed in numerous works of historical fiction and popular culture.
The Nahuatl pronunciation of his name is . It is a compound of a noun meaning "lord" and a verb meaning "to frown in anger", and so is interpreted as "he is one who frowns like a lord" or "he who is angry in a noble manner." His name glyph, shown in the upper left corner of the image from the "Codex Mendoza" above, was composed of a diadem ("xiuhuitzolli") on straight hair with an attached earspool, a separate nosepiece, and a speech scroll.
The Aztecs did not use regnal numbers; they were given retroactively by historians to more easily distinguish him from the first Moctezuma, referred to as Moctezuma I. The Aztec chronicles called him "Motecuhzoma Xocoyotzin", while the first was called "Motecuhzoma Ilhuicamina" or "Huehuemotecuhzoma" ("Old Moctezuma"). "Xocoyotzin" () means "honored young one" (from "xocoyotl" [younger son] + suffix "-tzin" added to nouns or personal names when speaking about them with deference).
In 1517, Moctezuma received the first reports of Europeans landing on the east coast of his empire; this was the expedition of Juan de Grijalva who had landed on San Juan de Ulúa, which although within Totonac territory was under the auspices of the Aztec Empire. Moctezuma ordered that he be kept informed of any new sightings of foreigners at the coast and posted extra watch guards to accomplish this.
When Cortés arrived in 1519, Moctezuma was immediately informed and he sent emissaries to meet the newcomers; one of them was an Aztec noble named Tentlil in the Nahuatl language but referred to in the writings of Cortés and Bernal Díaz del Castillo as "Tendile". As the Spaniards approached Tenochtitlán they made an alliance with the Tlaxcalteca, who were enemies of the Aztec Triple Alliance, and they helped instigate revolt in many towns under Aztec dominion. Moctezuma was aware of this and sent gifts to the Spaniards, probably in order to show his superiority to the Spaniards and Tlaxcalteca.
On 8 November 1519, Moctezuma met Cortés on the causeway leading into Tenochtitlán and the two leaders exchanged gifts. Moctezuma gave Cortés the gift of an Aztec calendar, one disc of crafted gold and another of silver. Cortés later melted these down for their monetary value.
According to Cortés, Moctezuma immediately volunteered to cede his entire realm to Charles V, King of Spain. Though some indigenous accounts written in the 1550s partly support this notion, it is still unbelievable for several reasons. As Aztec rulers spoke an overly polite language that needed translation for his subjects to understand, it is difficult to find out what Moctezuma really said. According to an indigenous account, he said to Cortés: "You have come to sit on your seat of authority, which I have kept for a while for you, where I have been in charge for you, for your agents the rulers..." However, these words might be a polite expression that was meant to convey the exact opposite meaning, which was common in Nahua culture; Moctezuma might actually have intended these words to assert his own stature and multigenerational legitimacy. Also, according to Spanish law, the king had no right to demand that foreign peoples become his subjects, but he had every right to bring rebels to heel. Therefore, to give the Spanish the necessary legitimacy to wage war against the indigenous people, Cortés might just have said what the Spanish king needed to hear.
Moctezuma brought Cortés to his palace where the Spaniards lived as his guests for several months. Moctezuma continued to govern his empire and even undertook conquests of new territory during the Spaniards' stay at Tenochtitlán.
At some time during that period, Moctezuma became a prisoner in his own house. Exactly why this happened is not clear from the extant sources. The Aztec nobility reportedly became increasingly displeased with the large Spanish army staying in Tenochtitlán, and Moctezuma told Cortés that it would be best if they left. Shortly thereafter, Cortés left to fight Pánfilo de Narváez, who had landed in Mexico to arrest Cortés. During his absence, tensions between Spaniards and Aztecs exploded into the Massacre in the Great Temple, and Moctezuma became a hostage used by the Spaniards to ensure their security.
In the subsequent battles with the Spaniards after Cortés' return, Moctezuma was killed. The details of his death are unknown, with different versions of his demise given by different sources.
In his "Historia", Bernal Díaz del Castillo states that on 1 July 1520, the Spanish forced Moctezuma to appear on the balcony of his palace, appealing to his countrymen to retreat. Four leaders of the Aztec army met with Moctezuma to talk, urging their countrymen to cease their constant firing upon the stronghold for a time. Díaz states: "Many of the Mexican Chieftains and Captains knew him well and at once ordered their people to be silent and not to discharge darts, stones or arrows, and four of them reached a spot where Montezuma could speak to them."
Díaz alleges that the Aztecs informed Moctezuma that a relative of his had risen to the throne and ordered their attack to continue until all of the Spanish were annihilated, but expressed remorse at Moctezuma's captivity and stated that they intended to revere him even more if they could rescue him. Regardless of the earlier orders to hold fire, however, the discussion between Moctezuma and the Aztec leaders was immediately followed by an outbreak of violence. The Aztecs, disgusted by the actions of their leader, renounced Moctezuma and named his brother Cuitláhuac "tlatoani" in his place. In an effort to pacify his people, and undoubtedly pressured by the Spanish, Moctezuma was struck dead by a rock. Díaz gives this account:
"They had hardly finished this speech when suddenly such a shower of stones and darts were discharged that (our men who were shielding him having neglected for a moment their duty, because they saw how the attack ceased while he spoke to them) he was hit by three stones, one on the head, another on the arm and another on the leg, and although they begged him to have the wounds dressed and to take food, and spoke kind words to him about it, he would not. Indeed, when we least expected it, they came to say that he was dead."
Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagún recorded two versions of the conquest of Mexico from the Tenochtitlán-Tlatelolco viewpoint. In Book 12 of the twelve-volume Florentine Codex, the account in Spanish and Nahuatl is accompanied by illustrations by natives. One is of the death of Moctezuma II, which the indigenous assert was due to the Spaniards. According to the Codex, the bodies of Moctezuma and Itzquauhtzin were cast out of the Palace by the Spanish; the body of Moctezuma was gathered up and cremated at Copulco.
The Spaniards were forced to flee the city and they took refuge in Tlaxcala, and signed a treaty with the natives there to conquer Tenochtitlán, offering to the Tlaxcalans control of Tenochtitlán and freedom from any kind of tribute.
Moctezuma was then succeeded by his brother Cuitláhuac, who died shortly after during a smallpox epidemic. He was succeeded by his adolescent nephew, Cuauhtémoc. During the siege of the city, the sons of Moctezuma were murdered by the Aztecs, possibly because they wanted to surrender. By the following year, the Aztec Empire had fallen to an army of Spanish and their Native American allies, primarily Tlaxcalans, who were traditional enemies of the Aztecs.
The firsthand account of Bernal Díaz del Castillo's "True History of the Conquest of New Spain" paints a portrait of a noble leader who struggles to maintain order in his kingdom after he is taken prisoner by Hernán Cortés. In his first description of Moctezuma, Díaz del Castillo writes:
When Moctezuma was allegedly killed by being stoned to death by his own people, "Cortés and all of us captains and soldiers wept for him, and there was no one among us that knew him and had dealings with him who did not mourn him as if he were our father, which was not surprising, since he was so good. It was stated that he had reigned for seventeen years, and was the best king they ever had in Mexico, and that he had personally triumphed in three wars against countries he had subjugated. I have spoken of the sorrow we all felt when we saw that Montezuma was dead. We even blamed the Mercederian friar for not having persuaded him to become a Christian."
Unlike Bernal Díaz, who was recording his memories many years after the fact, Cortés wrote his "Cartas de relación" ("Letters from Mexico") to justify his actions to the Spanish Crown. His prose is characterized by simple descriptions and explanations, along with frequent personal addresses to the King. In his Second Letter, Cortés describes his first encounter with Moctezuma thus:
"Moctezuma came to greet us and with him some two hundred lords, all barefoot and dressed in a different costume, but also very rich in their way and more so than the others. They came in two columns, pressed very close to the walls of the street, which is very wide and beautiful and so straight that you can see from one end to the other. Moctezuma came down the middle of this street with two chiefs, one on his right hand and the other on his left. And they were all dressed alike except that Moctezuma wore sandals whereas the others went barefoot; and they held his arm on either side."
Anthony Pagden and Eulalia Guzmán have pointed the Biblical messages that Cortés seems to ascribe to Moctezuma's retelling of the legend of Quetzalcoatl as a vengeful Messiah who would return to rule over the Mexica. Pagden has written that "There is no preconquest tradition which places Quetzalcoatl in this role, and it seems possible therefore that it was elaborated by Sahagún and Motolinía from informants who themselves had partially lost contact with their traditional tribal histories".
The Florentine Codex, made by Bernardino de Sahagún, relied on native informants from Tlatelolco, and generally portrays Tlatelolco and Tlatelolcan rulers in a favorable light relative to those of Tenochtitlan. Moctezuma in particular is depicted unfavorably as a weak-willed, superstitious, and indulgent ruler. Historian James Lockhart suggests that the people needed to have a scapegoat for the Aztec defeat, and Moctezuma naturally fell into that role.
Fernando Alvarado Tezozómoc, who may have written the "Crónica Mexicayotl", was possibly a grandson of Moctezuma II. It is possible that his chronicle relates mostly the genealogy of the Aztec rulers. He described Moctezuma's issue and estimates them to be nineteen – eleven sons and eight daughters.
Some of the Aztec stories about Moctezuma describe him as being fearful of the Spanish newcomers, and some sources, such as the Florentine Codex, comment that the Aztecs believed the Spaniards to be gods and Cortés to be the returned god Quetzalcoatl. The veracity of this claim is difficult to ascertain, though some recent ethnohistorians specialising in early Spanish/Nahua relations have discarded it as post-conquest mythicalisation.
Much of the idea of Cortés being seen as a deity can be traced back to the Florentine Codex, written some 50 years after the conquest. In the codex's description of the first meeting between Moctezuma and Cortés, the Aztec ruler is described as giving a prepared speech in classical oratorical Nahuatl, a speech which as described verbatim in the codex (written by Sahagún's Tlatelolcan informants) included such prostrate declarations of divine or near-divine admiration as, "You have graciously come on earth, you have graciously approached your water, your high place of Mexico, you have come down to your mat, your throne, which I have briefly kept for you, I who used to keep it for you," and, "You have graciously arrived, you have known pain, you have known weariness, now come on earth, take your rest, enter into your palace, rest your limbs; may our lords come on earth." While some historians such as Warren H. Carroll consider this as evidence that Moctezuma was at least open to the possibility that the Spaniards were divinely sent based on the Quetzalcoatl legend, others such as Matthew Restall argue that Moctezuma politely offering his throne to Cortés (if indeed he did ever give the speech as reported) may well have been meant as the exact opposite of what it was taken to mean, as politeness in Aztec culture was a way to assert dominance and show superiority. Other parties have also propagated the idea that the Native Americans believed the conquistadors to be gods, most notably the historians of the Franciscan order such as Fray Gerónimo de Mendieta. Bernardino de Sahagún, who compiled the Florentine Codex, was also a Franciscan priest.
Bernardino de Sahagún (1499–1590) includes in Book 12 of the Florentine Codex eight events said to have occurred prior to the arrival of the Spanish. These were purportedly interpreted as signs of a possible disaster, e.g. a comet, the burning of a temple, a crying ghostly woman, and others. Some speculate that the Aztecs were particularly susceptible to such ideas of doom and disaster because the particular year in which the Spanish arrived coincided with a "tying of years" ceremony at the end of a 52-year cycle in the Aztec calendar, which in Aztec belief was linked to changes, rebirth, and dangerous events. The belief of the Aztecs being rendered passive by their own superstition is referred to by Matthew Restall as part of "The Myth of Native Desolation" to which he dedicates chapter 6 in his book "Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest". These legends are likely a part of the post-conquest rationalization by the Aztecs of their defeat, and serve to show Moctezuma as indecisive, vain, and superstitious, and ultimately the cause of the fall of the Aztec Empire.
Ethnohistorian Susan Gillespie has argued that the Nahua understanding of history as repeating itself in cycles also led to a subsequent rationalization of the events of the conquests. In this interpretation the description of Moctezuma, the final ruler of the Aztec Empire prior to the Spanish conquest, was tailored to fit the role of earlier rulers of ending dynasties—for example Quetzalcoatl, the mythical last ruler of the Toltecs. In any case it is within the realm of possibility that the description of Moctezuma in post-conquest sources was colored by his role as a monumental closing figure of Aztec history.
Moctezuma had numerous wives and concubines by whom he fathered an enormous family, but only two women held the position of queen – Tlapalizquixochtzin and Teotlalco. His partnership with Tlapalizquixochtzin also made him a king consort of Ecatepec since she was queen of that city.
Of his many wives may be named the princesses Teitlalco, Acatlan, and Miahuaxochitl, of whom the first named appears to have been the only legitimate consort. By her he left a son, Asupacaci, who fell during the Noche Triste, and a daughter, Tecuichpoch, later baptized as Isabel Moctezuma. By the Princess Acatlan were left two daughters, baptized as Maria and Marina (also known as Leonor); the latter alone left offspring, from whom descends the Sotelo-Montezuma family.
Though the exact number of his children is unknown and the names of most of them have been lost to history, according to a Spanish chronicler, by the time he was taken captive, Moctezuma had fathered 100 children and fifty of his wives and concubines were then in some stage of pregnancy, though this estimate may have been exaggerated. As Aztec culture made class distinctions between the children of senior wives, lesser wives, and concubines, not all of his children were considered equal in nobility or inheritance rights. Among his many children were Princess Isabel Moctezuma and sons Chimalpopoca (not to be confused with the previous "huey tlatoani") and Tlaltecatzin.
Several lines of descendants exist in Mexico and Spain through Moctezuma II's son and daughters, notably Tlacahuepan Ihualicahuaca, or Pedro Moctezuma, and Tecuichpoch Ixcaxochitzin, or Isabel Moctezuma. Following the conquest, Moctezuma's daughter, Techichpotzin (or Tecuichpoch), became known as Isabel Moctezuma and was given a large estate by Cortés, who also fathered a child by her, Leonor Cortés Moctezuma, who in turn was the mother of Isabel de Tolosa Cortés de Moctezuma. Isabel married consecutively to Cuauhtémoc (the last Mexican sovereign), to a conquistador in Cortés' original group, Alonso Grado (died c. 1527), a "poblador" (a Spaniard who had arrived after the fall of Tenochtitlán), to Pedro Andrade Gallego (died c. 1531), and to conquistador Juan Cano de Saavedra, who survived her. She had children by the latter two, from whom descend the illustrious families of Andrade-Montezuma and Cano-Montezuma. A nephew of Moctezuma II was Diego de Alvarado Huanitzin.
The grandson of Moctezuma II, Pedro's son, Ihuitemotzin, baptized as Diego Luis de Moctezuma, was brought to Spain by King Philip II. There he married Francisca de la Cueva de Valenzuela. In 1627, their son Pedro Tesifón de Moctezuma was given the title "Count of Moctezuma" (later altered to "Moctezuma de Tultengo"), and thus became part of the Spanish nobility. In 1766, the holder of the title became a Grandee of Spain. In 1865 (coincidentally during the Second Mexican Empire), the title, which was held by Antonio María Moctezuma-Marcilla de Teruel y Navarro, 14th Count of Moctezuma de Tultengo, was elevated to that of a Duke, thus becoming "Duke of Moctezuma", with "de Tultengo" again added in 1992 by Juan Carlos I.
Descendants of Pedro Tesifón de Moctezuma included (through an illegitimate child of his son Diego Luis) General Jerónimo Girón-Moctezuma, 3rd Marquess de las Amarilas (1741–1819), a ninth-generation descendant of Moctezuma II, who was commander of the Spanish forces at the Battle of Fort Charlotte, and his grandson, Francisco Javier Girón y Ezpeleta, 2nd Duke of Ahumada and 5th Marquess of the Amarillas who was the founder of the Guardia Civil in Spain. Other holders of Spanish noble titles that descend from the Aztec emperor include Dukes of Atrisco.
Many indigenous peoples in Mexico are reported to worship deities named after the Aztec ruler, and often a part of the myth is that someday the deified Moctezuma shall return to vindicate his people. In Mexico, the contemporary Pames, Otomi, Tepehuán, Totonac, and Nahua peoples are reported to worship earth deities named after Moctezuma. His name also appears in Tzotzil Maya ritual in Zinacantán where dancers dressed as a rain god are called "Moctezumas".
Hubert Howe Bancroft, writing in the 19th century ("Native Races", Volume #3), speculated that the name of the historical Aztec emperor Moctezuma had been used to refer to a combination of different cultural heroes who were united under the name of a particularly salient representative of Mesoamerican identity.
As a symbol of resistance against the Spanish, the name of Moctezuma has been invoked in several indigenous rebellions. One such example was the rebellion of the Virgin Cult in Chiapas in 1721, where the followers of the Virgin Mary rebelled against the Spanish after having been told by an apparition of the virgin that Moctezuma would be resuscitated to assist them against their Spanish oppressors. In the Quisteil rebellion of the Yucatec Maya in 1761, the rebel leader Jacinto Canek reportedly called himself "Little Montezuma".
The Aztec emperor is the title character in several 18th-century operas: "Motezuma" (1733) by Antonio Vivaldi; "Motezuma" (1771) by Josef Mysliveček; "Montezuma" (1755) by Carl Heinrich Graun; and "Montesuma" (1781) by Niccolò Antonio Zingarelli. He is also the subject of Roger Sessions' dodecaphonic opera "Montezuma" (1963), and the protagonist in the modern opera "La Conquista" (2005) by Italian composer Lorenzo Ferrero, where his part is written in the Nahuatl language.
Numerous other works of popular culture have mentioned or referred to Moctezuma: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=20747 |
Mickey Hart
Mickey Hart (born Michael Steven Hartman, September 11, 1943) is an American percussionist and musicologist. He is best known as one of the two drummers of the rock band Grateful Dead. He was a member of the Grateful Dead from September 1967 until February 1971, and again from October 1974 until their final show in August 1995. He and fellow Dead drummer Bill Kreutzmann earned the nickname "the rhythm devils".
Michael Steven Hartman was born in Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. He was raised in suburban Inwood, New York by his mother, Leah, a drummer, gown maker and bookkeeper. His father Lenny Hart, a champion rudimental drummer, had abandoned his family when the younger Hart was a toddler. Although Hart (who was hyperactive and not academically inclined) became interested in percussion as a grade school student, his interest intensified after seeing his father's picture in a newsreel documenting the 1939 World's Fair. Shortly thereafter, he discovered a practice pad and a pair of snakewood sticks that belonged to his father. "From the age of ten," he recalled, "all I did was drum."
He attended Lawrence High School in Cedarhurst, New York. Hart would later recall that many champion rudimental drummers attended his high school; this inspired him to ascend to the first chair in the All State Band as a pupil of Arthur Jones, who served as a father figure to him and ensured that he was not suspended for neglecting his other classes.
While employed as a soda jerk at El Patio, a jazz club in Atlantic Beach, New York, he was influenced by Tito Puente's regular appearances. A few months out of high school, he discovered the work of Nigerian drummer Babatunde Olatunji, another formative influence. Olatunji later taught and collaborated with Hart.
Hart dropped out of high school as a senior. Impressed by its musical pedigree, he enlisted in the United States Air Force in 1961. He served as a drummer in The Airmen of Note, an elite big band unit in the United States Air Force Band modeled after Glenn Miller's celebrated Army Air Forces Band.
For three and a half years, he was stationed throughout Europe, where he also claimed to have taught "combative measures" (most notably judo, in which he had attained a black belt) to units of the Strategic Air Command and other units in Europe and Africa. During a tour in Spain, he reportedly sat in with a variety of notable jazz musicians (including Gerry Mulligan and Count Basie) in addition to performing in various ensembles (spanning the gamut from small jazz combos to marching bands) and on recording sessions for local pop stars. Hart would later intimate in a 1972 interview that his Airmen of Note assignment served as a "cover" for his instructive duties. While in the Air Force, he co-founded Joe and the Jaguars (alternatively billed as The Jaguars) with a fellow serviceman, guitarist Joe Bennett. Following his 1965 discharge, Hart briefly returned to the New York metropolitan area, where he filled in for the regular drummer in a "staid fox-trot band" as a member of the local musician's union.
While stationed in southern California, he had discovered that his father (by now employed as a savings and loan association executive in Los Angeles) was still involved in the drumming community as an endorser for Remo. Founder Remo Belli facilitated an introduction before Hart was reassigned to Spain, but the elder Hart soon disappeared. A post-discharge reconciliation attempt (also mediated by Belli) proved to be more successful. Shortly thereafter, father and son established the Hart Music Center in San Carlos, California. In late 1965 or early 1966, Hart performed in an early iteration of William Penn and His Pals prior to Gregg Rolie's membership and the recording of the garage rock classic "Swami." Later in 1966, Hart and Bennett briefly resumed their collaboration before the latter reenlisted for a tour of duty in Vietnam.
By the end of the year, he had moved in with Michael Hinton, a student and friend who would accompany him to a fateful Count Basie Orchestra performance at The Fillmore in mid-1967. At the concert, Hart fulfilled Grateful Dead drummer Bill Kreutzmann's request to meet Basie Orchestra drummer Sonny Payne, leading to an informal tutorial between Hart and Kreutzmann and thence his eventual introduction to the Grateful Dead.
Hart joined the Grateful Dead in September 1967. His interests in polyrhythmic rudiments and exotic percussion were integral to the band's arrangements in the period that archivist Dick Latvala would subsequently characterize as the "primal Dead era" of 1968-1969. However, he left by mutual agreement in February 1971, extricating himself after his father (who briefly managed the group) embezzled $70,000 from the band. In his 2015 memoir, Kreutzmann divulged that Hart's use of heroin and other "dark drugs" had accelerated in the wake of the embezzlement and impacted his contributions to the group, also contributing to his departure: "Mickey wasn't able to play at the level he was capable of and it was beginning to affect our performances. He was getting really spacey and just getting so far out there that he wasn't able to deliver the music. It became impossible for me to play with him. It wasn't out of anger or meanness, but we had to address it and deal with it. So our brother Mickey left the band and retreated to his ranch in Novato and it really strained our relationship for a while, sad to say."
During his sabbatical, he released the album "Rolling Thunder" in 1972. Two additional solo albums (including an ambient music project that was envisaged as the soundtrack for "The Silent Flute", a screenplay co-written by Bruce Lee, James Coburn and Stirling Silliphant that was ultimately filmed in 1978 as the David Carradine vehicle "Circle of Iron") were completed but rejected by Warner Brothers due to the label's increasingly strained relationship with the Grateful Dead. Hart's home recording studio proved to be a haven for the more idiosyncratic endeavors pursued by various band members, and he continued to collaborate with his former bandmates on various projects, most notably Robert Hunter's "Tales Of The Great Rum Runners" (1974) and Ned Lagin's "Seastones" (1975).
He returned to the Dead for their final pre-hiatus concert in October 1974 (much to the initial chagrin of Kreutzmann, who soon reconciled with Hart) and was formally reinstated by the beginning of the group's 1976 tour. He remained with the group until their official dissolution in 1995. Hart's collaboration with the remaining members of the Grateful Dead has continued with The Other Ones, The Dead and Dead & Company.
Alongside his work with the Grateful Dead, Hart has performed as a solo artist, percussionist, and the author of several books. In these endeavors he has pursued a lifelong interest in ethnomusicology and world music.
Hart was influential in recording global musical traditions on the verge of possible extinction, working with archivists and ethnomusicologists at both the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress and the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage at the Smithsonian Institution. He is on the Board of Trustees of the American Folklife Center and has been a spokesperson for the "Save Our Sounds" audio preservation initiative. He also serves on the Library of Congress National Recorded Sound Preservation Board and is known for reissues and other recordings with historical and cultural value.
In 1991, Hart produced the album "Planet Drum", which remained at #1 on the "Billboard" World Music chart for 26 weeks, and received the first ever Grammy Award for Best World Music Album.
Hart has written books on the history and traditions of drumming throughout history. His solo recordings (featuring a variety of guest musicians) are percussive but verge on New Age. His enthusiasm for world music traditions and preservation and collaborative efforts is comparable to that of guitarist Ry Cooder.
In 1994, Mickey Hart was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Grateful Dead.
In 2000, Hart became a member of the Board of Directors of the Institute for Music and Neurologic Function, a nonprofit organization that studies the healing power of music – continuing his investigation into the connection between healing and rhythm, and the neural basis of rhythm. In 2003, he was honored with the organization's Music Has Power Award, recognizing his advocacy and continuous commitment to raising public awareness of the positive effect of music.
Hart was also a judge for the 3rd annual Independent Music Awards to support independent artists' careers.
After the death of Jerry Garcia and the consequent dissolution of the Grateful Dead in 1995, Hart continued to play music with various groups including members of the Grateful Dead. In the 1996 Furthur Festival, Mickey Hart's Mystery Box played, as did Bob Weir's band Ratdog.
In 2005, Hart and the members of the band Particle joined to create the Hydra Project.
During 2006, Hart teamed up with fellow Grateful Dead bandmate Bill Kreutzmann, Phish bassist Mike Gordon and former Other Ones lead guitarist Steve Kimock, to form the Rhythm Devils, a nickname that refers to Hart and Kreutzmann's drum duets and improvisation. The band features songs from their respective repertoires as well as new songs written by Jerry Garcia's songwriting companion Robert Hunter. The Rhythm Devils announced their first tour in 2006, which ended at the popular Vegoose festival in Las Vegas, Nevada over the Halloween weekend.
In June and July 2008, Hart led the Mickey Hart Band on a US concert tour. The band consists of Hart, Steve Kimock on guitar and pedal steel guitar, George Porter, Jr. on bass, Kyle Hollingsworth on keyboards, Sikiru Adepoju on talking drum, Walfredo Reyes, Jr. on drums, and Jen Durkin on vocals.
In 2010 Hart debuted "Rhythms of the Universe," a composition based on a variety of astrophysical data. The composition represents a collaboration between scientist and artist, using their own sophisticated tools. Nobel Laureate in physics George Smoot from the University of California, Berkeley, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), and Keith Jackson, a computer scientist and musician also from LBNL, are providing some of the data for the project. The final result will be a "musical history of the universe", from the Big Bang onwards through galaxy and star formation, up until modern times, including images from the Hubble Space Telescope and rhythms derived from the cosmic background radiation, supernovae, quasars, and many other astrophysical phenomena. The work premiered at the conference "Cosmology on the Beach" in Playa del Carmen in January 2010.
In April 2010, it was announced that Rhythm Devils will tour in the summer of 2010 with a new lineup including Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann (assorted percussion), Keller Williams (guitar, vocals), Sikiru Adepoju (talking drum), Davy Knowles (guitar, vocals), and Andy Hess (bass).
The Rhythm Devils did only one show in 2011, at the Gathering of the Vibes Music Festival in Bridgeport, Connecticut. This version of the band was Hart, Kreutzmann, Keller Williams, Sikiru, Steve Kimock and Reed Mathis of Tea Leaf Green on bass.
In 2011 Hart debuted a new version of the Mickey Hart Band. This lineup included Tim Hockenberry (vocals, keyboards, trombone, saxophone, other instruments), Crystal Monee Hall (vocals, guitar, hand percussion), Ben Yonas (keyboards), Gawain Mathews (guitar), Sikiru Adepoju (talking drum, djembe, shakers), Ian "Inkx" Herman (drums), Greg Ellis (percussion), Vir McCoy (bass). The band played a few shows in August 2011 on the east and west coasts of the United States. In November and December 2011, the Mickey Hart Band did a 17-date tour with a slightly modified lineup. McCoy and Ellis were not in this lineup, and Widespread Panic band member Dave Schools joined the band as their bass player for the tour.
On October 11, 2011, Smithsonian Folkways released "The Mickey Hart Collection". Comprising 25 albums, the series includes music from regions that span the globe, including the Sudan, Nigeria, Tibet, Indonesia, Latvia, and Brazil.
In August 2013, the Mickey Hart Band embarked upon a tour with the Tea Leaf Trio, which includes three members of the band Tea Leaf Green, in support of the band's album "Superorganism."
On September 29, 2013, the completed version of his and George Smoot's film "Rhythms of the Universe" premiered at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.
In the summer of 2015, the surviving members of the Grateful Dead (Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart), joined by Trey Anastasio, Bruce Hornsby and Jeff Chimenti, performed a series of concerts to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Grateful Dead. The performances took place at Santa Clara's Levi Stadium on June 27 and 28, 2015 and Chicago's Soldier Field on July 3, 4 and 5, 2015. These performances marked the first time Weir, Lesh, Kreutzmann and Hart performed together since the Dead's 2009 tour and was publicized as the final time the musicians will all perform together.
Also in 2015, Mickey began touring with Dead & Company, a band consisting of former Grateful Dead members Bob Weir, Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann, along with John Mayer (guitar), Oteil Burbridge (bass), and Jeff Chimenti (keyboards). The band began touring in the Fall of 2015 and have conducted multiple Fall, Spring, and Summer tours since then. In 2017, he released "RAMU", which featured contributions from both his longtime collaborators Steve Kimock and Sikiru Adepoju as well as Avey Tare and Tank Ball, among others
Hart plays, or has played, drum set, RAMU, gong, tubular bells, tambourine, timpani, bongos, timbales, maracas, bass drum, snare drum, triangle, güiro, djembe, castanets, didgeridoo, glockenspiel, cymbals, surdo, saron, beats, tar, berimbau, kalimba, cowbell, rattle, shekere, rainstick, agogo bells, bells, wood block, taragat, balafon, tarang, gourd, clacker, bombo, dumbek, tom-toms, caxixi, water gong, talking drum, blaster beam and even pan flute.
Hart has been married since 1990 to lawyer, environmental activist and former Sonoma County (California) Regional Parks Director Caryl Hart, with whom he has had two children Reya and Taro. He had Taro's heartbeat recorded "in utero" and used as the basis for the album "Music to Be Born By". He lives in Occidental, California. Jerry Hart, Mickey's half brother, is an online talk show host and social media consultant based in Concord, California. Hart is the only Jewish member of the Grateful Dead. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=20756 |
Miguel de Icaza
Miguel de Icaza (born November 23, 1972) is a Mexican-American programmer, best known for starting the GNOME, Mono, and Xamarin projects.
De Icaza was born in Mexico City and studied Mathematics at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), but dropped out before getting a degree to work in IT. He came from a family of scientists in which his father is a physicist and his mother a biologist. He started writing free software in 1992.
One of the earliest pieces of software he wrote for Linux was the Midnight Commander file manager in 1994, a text-mode file manager. He was also one of the early contributors to the Wine project.
He worked with David S. Miller on the Linux SPARC port and wrote several of the video and network drivers in the port, as well as the libc ports to the platform. They both later worked on extending Linux for MIPS to run on SGI's Indy computers and wrote the original X drivers for the system. With Ingo Molnar he wrote the original software implementation of RAID-1 and RAID-5 drivers of the Linux kernel.
In summer of 1997, he was interviewed by Microsoft for a job in the Internet Explorer Unix team (to work on a SPARC port), but lacked the university degree required to obtain a work H-1B visa. He said in an interview that he tried to persuade his interviewers to free the IE code even before Netscape did so with their own browser.
De Icaza started the GNOME project with Federico Mena in August 1997 to create a completely free desktop environment and component model for Linux and other Unix-like operating systems. He also created the GNOME spreadsheet program, Gnumeric.
In 1999, de Icaza, along with Nat Friedman, co-founded Helix Code, a GNOME-oriented free software company that employed a large number of other GNOME hackers. In 2001, Helix Code, later renamed Ximian, announced the Mono Project, to be led by de Icaza, with the goal to implement Microsoft's new .NET development platform on Linux and Unix-like platforms. In August 2003, Ximian was acquired by Novell. There, de Icaza was Vice President of Developer Platform.
In May 2011, de Icaza started Xamarin to replace MonoTouch and Mono for Android after Novell was bought by Attachmate and the projects were abandoned. Shortly afterwards, Xamarin and Novell reached an agreement where Xamarin took over the development and sales of these products.
In February 2016, Xamarin announced being acquired by Microsoft. One month later in Microsoft Build conference, it was announced that the Mono Project would be relicensed to MIT, Visual Studio would include Xamarin (even the free versions) without restrictions, and Xamarin SDKs would be opensourced.
De Icaza endorsed Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML) document standard, disagreeing with a lot of the widespread criticism in the open source and free-software community.
He also developed Mono – a free and open-source alternative to Microsoft's .NET Framework – for GNOME. This has raised much disagreement due to the patents that Microsoft holds on the .NET Framework.
De Icaza was criticized by Richard Stallman on the Software Freedom Day 2009, who labeled him as "Traitor to the Free Software Community". Icaza responded on his blog to Stallman with the remark that he believes in a "world of possibility" and that he is open for discussions on ways to improve the pool of open source and free software.
In August 2012, de Icaza criticized the Linux desktop as "killed by Apple". De Icaza specifically criticized a generally developer-focused culture, lack of backward compatibility and fragmentation among the various Linux distributions. In March 2013, de Icaza announced on his personal blog that he regularly used macOS instead of Linux for desktop computing.
In 2014 he joined Anders Hejlsberg on stage during the announcements of the .NET Foundation and the open sourcing of Microsoft's C# Compiler. He serves on the board of directors of the .NET Foundation.
Miguel de Icaza has received the Free Software Foundation 1999 Award for the Advancement of Free Software, the MIT Technology Review Innovator of the Year Award 1999, and was named one of "Time" magazine's 100 innovators for the new century in September 2000.
In early 2010 he received a Microsoft MVP Award.
In March 2010, he was named as the fifth in the "Most Powerful Voices in Open Source" by MindTouch.
De Icaza has had cameo appearances in the 2001 motion pictures "Antitrust" and "The Code."
He married Brazilian Maria Laura Soares da Silva (now Maria Laura de Icaza) in 2003.
De Icaza is critical of the actions of the state of Israel towards the Palestinians in the Middle East and has blogged about the subject.
De Icaza was granted US citizenship in January 2015. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=20757 |
Major scale
The major scale (or Ionian scale) is one of the most commonly used musical scales, especially in Western music. It is one of the diatonic scales. Like many musical scales, it is made up of seven notes: the eighth duplicates the first at double its frequency so that it is called a higher octave of the same note (from Latin "octavus", the eighth).
The simplest major scale to write is C major, the only major scale not requiring sharps or flats:
\override Score.TimeSignature #'stencil = ##f
\relative c' {
The major scale had a central importance in Western music, particularly in the common practice period and in popular music.
In Carnatic music, it is known as "Dheerasankarabharanam". In Hindustani classical music, it is known as "Bilaval".
A major scale is a diatonic scale. The sequence of intervals between the notes of a major scale is:
where "whole" stands for a whole tone (a red u-shaped curve in the figure), and "half" stands for a semitone (a red broken line in the figure).
A major scale may be seen as two identical tetrachords separated by a whole tone. Each tetrachord consists of two whole tones followed by a semitone (i.e. whole, whole, half).
The major scale is maximally even.
\override Score.TimeSignature #'stencil = ##f
\relative c' {
The scale degrees are:
\override Score.TimeSignature #'stencil = ##f
The triads built on each scale degree follow a distinct pattern. The roman numeral analysis is shown in parentheses.
If a piece of music (or part of a piece of music) is in a major key, then the notes "in" the corresponding major scale are considered "diatonic" notes, while the notes "outside" the major scale are considered "chromatic" notes. Moreover, the key signature of the piece of music (or section) will generally reflect the accidentals in the corresponding major scale.
For instance, if a piece of music is in E major, then the seven pitches in the E major scale (E, F, G, A, B, C and D) are considered diatonic pitches, and the other five pitches (E, F/G, A, B, and C/D) are considered chromatic pitches. In this case, the key signature will have three flats (B, E, and A).
The figure below shows all 12 relative major and minor keys, with major keys on the outside and minor keys on the inside arranged around the circle of fifths.
The numbers inside the circle show the number of sharps or flats in the key signature, with the sharp keys going clockwise, and the flat keys counterclockwise from C major (which has no sharps or flats.) The circular arrangement depends on enharmonic relationships in the circle, usually reckoned at six sharps or flats for the major keys of F = G and D = E for minor keys. Seven sharps or flats make major keys (C major or C major) that may be more conveniently spelled with five flats or sharps (as D major or B major).
The term "major scale" is also used in the names of some other scales whose first, third, and fifth degrees form a major triad.
The harmonic major scale has a minor sixth. It differs from the harmonic minor scale only by raising the third degree.
\override Score.TimeSignature #'stencil = ##f
\relative c' {
There are two scales that go by the name melodic major scale:
The first is the fifth mode of the jazz minor scale, which can be thought of as the major scale (Ionian mode) with a lowered sixth and seventh degree or the natural minor scale (Aeolian mode) with a raised third.
\override Score.TimeSignature #'stencil = ##f
\relative c' {
The second is the combined scale that goes as Ionian ascending and as the previous melodic major descending. It differs from melodic minor scale only by raising the third degree to a major third.
\override Score.TimeSignature #'stencil = ##f
\relative c' {
The double harmonic major scale has a minor second and a minor sixth. It is the fifth mode of the Hungarian minor scale.
\override Score.TimeSignature #'stencil = ##f
\relative c' { | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=20759 |
Montenegro
Montenegro (; , is a country of South and Southeast Europe on the coast of the Balkans. It borders Bosnia-Herzegovina to the northwest, Serbia to the northeast, Kosovo to the east, Albania to the southeast, the Adriatic Sea to the southwest, and Croatia to the west. Montenegro has an area of 13,812 square kilometres and a population of 620,079 (2011 census). Its capital, Podgorica, is one of the twenty-three municipalities in the country. Cetinje is designated as the Old Royal Capital.
During the Early Medieval period, three principalities were located on the territory of modern-day Montenegro: Duklja, roughly corresponding to the southern half; Travunia, the west; and Rascia proper, the north. In 1042, "archon" Stefan Vojislav led a revolt that resulted in the independence of Duklja from the Byzantine Empire and the establishment of the Vojislavljević dynasty. After being ruled by the Nemanjić dynasty for two centuries, the independent Principality of Zeta emerged in the 14th and 15th centuries, ruled by the House of Balšić between 1356 and 1421, and by the House of Crnojević between 1431 and 1498, when the name Montenegro started being used for the country. After falling under Ottoman rule, Montenegro regained "de facto" independence in 1697 under the rule of the House of Petrović-Njegoš, first under the theocratic rule of prince-bishops, before being transformed into a secular principality in 1852. Montenegro's "de jure" independence was recognised by the Great Powers at the Congress of Berlin in 1878, following the Montenegrin–Ottoman War. In 1905, the country became a kingdom. After World War I, it became part of Yugoslavia. Following the breakup of Yugoslavia, the republics of Serbia and Montenegro together established a federation known as the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which was renamed to the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro in 2003. On the basis of an independence referendum held in May 2006, Montenegro declared independence and the federation peacefully dissolved on 3 June of that year, ending a nearly 88-year union between the two states.
Since 1990, the state of Montenegro has been governed by the Democratic Party of Socialists and its minor coalition partners. Classified by the World Bank as an upper middle-income country, Montenegro is a member of the UN, NATO, the World Trade Organization, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the Council of Europe, and the Central European Free Trade Agreement. Montenegro is a founding member of the Union for the Mediterranean. It is also in the process of joining the European Union.
The country's English name derives from Venetian and translates as "Black Mountain", deriving from the appearance of Mount Lovćen when covered in dense evergreen forests. In the monuments of Kotor, Montenegro was mentioned as Montenegro in 1397, as Monte Nigro in 1443 and as Crna Gora in 1435 and 1458, but there are much older papers of Latin sources where Montenegro is mentioned as Monte nigro. The first mention of Montenegro (as Monte nigro) dates to 9 November 1053 in a papal epistle and the others date to 1061, 1097, 1121, 1125, 1144, 1154, 1179 and 1189.
The native name "Crna Gora," also meaning "black mountain," came to denote the majority of contemporary Montenegro in the 15th century. Originally, it had referred to only a small strip of land under the rule of the Paštrovići, but the name eventually came to be used for the wider mountainous region after the Crnojević noble family took power in Upper Zeta. The aforementioned region became known as "Stara Crna Gora" 'Old Montenegro' by the 19th century to distinguish the independent region from the neighbouring Ottoman-occupied Montenegrin territory of "Brda" '(The) Highlands'. Montenegro further increased its size several times by the 20th century, as the result of wars against the Ottoman Empire, which saw the annexation of Old Herzegovina and parts of Metohija and southern Raška. Its borders have changed little since then, losing Metohija and gaining the Bay of Kotor.
The ISO Alpha-2 code for Montenegro is ME and the Alpha-3 Code is MNE.
In the 9th century, three Slavic principalities were located on the territory of Montenegro: Duklja, roughly corresponding to the southern half, Travunia, the west, and Rascia, the north. Duklja gained its independence from the Byzantine Roman Empire in 1042. Over the next few decades, it expanded its territory to neighbouring Rascia and Bosnia, and also became recognised as a kingdom. Its power started declining at the beginning of the 12th century. After King Bodin's death (in 1101 or 1108), several civil wars ensued. Duklja reached its zenith under Vojislav's son, Mihailo (1046–81), and his grandson Constantine Bodin (1081–1101).
By the 13th century, "Zeta" had replaced "Duklja" when referring to the realm. In the late 14th century, southern Montenegro (Zeta) came under the rule of the Balšić noble family, then the Crnojević noble family, and by the 15th century, Zeta was more often referred to as "Crna Gora" (Venetian: "").
As the nobility fought for the throne, the kingdom was weakened, and by 1186, it was conquered by Stefan Nemanja and incorporated into the Serbian realm as a province named Zeta. After the Serbian Empire collapsed in the second half of the 14th century, the most powerful Zetan family, the Balšićs, became sovereigns of Zeta.
In 1421, Zeta was annexed to the Serbian Despotate, but after 1455, another noble family from Zeta, the Crnojevićs, became sovereign rulers of the country, making it the last free monarchy of the Balkans before it fell to the Ottomans in 1496, and got annexed to the "sanjak" of Shkodër. During the reign of Crnojevićs, Zeta became known under its current name – Montenegro. For a short time, Montenegro existed as a separate autonomous "sanjak" in 1514–1528 (Sanjak of Montenegro). Also, Old Herzegovina region was part of Sanjak of Herzegovina.
Large portions fell under the control of the Ottoman Empire from 1496 to 1878. In the 16th century, Montenegro developed a unique form of autonomy within the Ottoman Empire permitting Montenegrin clans freedom from certain restrictions. Nevertheless, the Montenegrins were disgruntled with Ottoman rule, and in the 17th century, raised numerous rebellions, which culminated in the defeat of the Ottomans in the Great Turkish War at the end of that century.
Montenegro consisted of territories controlled by warlike clans. Most clans had a chieftain ("knez"), who was not permitted to assume the title unless he proved to be as worthy a leader as his predecessor. The great assembly of Montenegrin clans ("Zbor") was held every year on 12 July in Cetinje, and any adult clansman could take part.
Parts of the territory were controlled by Republic of Venice and the First French Empire and Austria-Hungary, its successors. In 1515, Montenegro became a theocracy led by the Metropolitanate of Montenegro and the Littoral, which flourished after the Petrović-Njegoš of Cetinje became the traditional prince-bishops (whose title was "Vladika of Montenegro"). However, the Venetian Republic introduced governors who meddled in Montenegrin politics. The republic was succeeded by the Austrian Empire in 1797, and the governors were abolished by Prince-Bishop Petar II in 1832.
People from Montenegro in this historical period have been described as Orthodox Serbs.
Under Nicholas I (ruled 1860-1918), the principality was enlarged several times in the Montenegro-Turkish Wars and was recognised as independent in 1878. Nicholas I established diplomatic relations with the Ottoman Empire. Minor border skirmishes excepted, diplomacy ushered in about 30 years of peace between the two states until the deposition of Abdul Hamid II in 1909.
The political skills of Abdul Hamid II and Nicholas I played a major role in the mutually amicable relations. Modernization of the state followed, culminating with the draft of a Constitution in 1905. However, political rifts emerged between the reigning People's Party, who supported the process of democratization and union with Serbia, and those of the True People's Party, who were monarchist.
In 1858 one of the major Montenegrin victories over the Ottomans occurred at the
Battle of Grahovac. Grand Duke Mirko Petrović, elder brother of Knjaz Danilo, led an army of 7,500 and defeated the numerically superior Ottomans (who had 15,000 troops) at Grahovac on 1 May 1858. This forced the Great Powers to officially demarcate the borders between Montenegro and Ottoman Empire, "de facto" recognizing Montenegro's independence. The Ottoman Empire recognized Montenegrin independence in the Treaty of Berlin in 1878.
The first Montenegrin constitution (also known as the Danilo Code) was proclaimed in 1855.
In 1910 Montenegro became a kingdom, and as a result of the Balkan wars in 1912 and 1913 (in which the Ottomans lost most of their Balkan lands), a common border with Serbia was established, with Shkodër being awarded to a newly-created Albania, though the current capital city of Montenegro, Podgorica, was on the old border of Albania and Yugoslavia.
Montenegro became one of the Allied Powers during World War I (1914–18). From 1916 to October 1918 Austria-Hungary occupied Montenegro. During the occupation, King Nicholas fled the country and a government-in-exile was set up in Bordeaux.
In 1922, Montenegro formally became the Oblast of Cetinje in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, with the addition of the coastal areas around Budva and Bay of Kotor. In a further restructuring in 1929, it became a part of a larger Zeta Banate of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia that reached the Neretva River.
Nicholas's grandson, the Serb King Alexander I, dominated the Yugoslav government. Zeta Banovina was one of nine banovinas which formed the kingdom; it consisted of the present-day Montenegro and parts of Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia.
In April 1941, Nazi Germany, the Kingdom of Italy, and other Axis allies attacked and occupied the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Italian forces occupied Montenegro and established it as a puppet Kingdom of Montenegro.
In May, the Montenegrin branch of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia started preparations for an uprising planned for mid-July. The Communist Party and its Youth League organised 6,000 of its members into detachments prepared for guerrilla warfare. The first armed uprising in Nazi-occupied Europe happened on 13 July 1941 in Montenegro.
Unexpectedly, the uprising took hold, and by 20 July, 32,000 men and women had joined the fight. Except for the coast and major towns (Podgorica, Cetinje, Pljevlja, and Nikšić), which were besieged, Montenegro was mostly liberated. In a month of fighting, the Italian army suffered 5,000 dead, wounded, and captured. The uprising lasted until mid-August, when it was suppressed by a counter-offensive of 67,000 Italian troops brought in from Albania. Faced with new and overwhelming Italian forces, many of the fighters laid down their arms and returned home. Nevertheless, intense guerrilla fighting lasted until December.
Fighters who remained under arms fractured into two groups. Most of them went on to join the Yugoslav Partisans, consisting of communists and those inclined towards active resistance; these included Arso Jovanović, Sava Kovačević, Svetozar Vukmanović-Tempo, Milovan Đilas, Peko Dapčević, Vlado Dapčević, Veljko Vlahović, and Blažo Jovanović. Those loyal to the Karađorđević dynasty and opposing communism went on to become Chetniks, and turned to collaboration with Italians against the Partisans.
War broke out between Partisans and Chetniks during the first half of 1942. Pressured by Italians and Chetniks, the core of the Montenegrin Partisans went to Serbia and Bosnia, where they joined with other Yugoslav Partisans. Fighting between Partisans and Chetniks continued through the war. Chetniks with Italian backing controlled most of the country from mid-1942 to April 1943. Montenegrin Chetniks received the status of "anti-communist militia" and received weapons, ammunition, food rations, and money from Italy. Most of them were moved to Mostar, where they fought in the Battle of Neretva against the Partisans, but were dealt a heavy defeat.
During the German operation Schwartz against the Partisans in May and June 1943, Germans disarmed large number of Chetniks without fighting, as they feared they would turn against them in case of an Allied invasion of the Balkans. After the capitulation of Italy in September 1943, Partisans managed to take hold of most of Montenegro for a brief time, but Montenegro was soon occupied by German forces, and fierce fighting continued during late 1943 and entire 1944. Montenegro was liberated by the Partisans in December 1944.
Montenegro became one of the six constituent republics of the communist Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY). Its capital became Podgorica, renamed Titograd in honour of President Josip Broz Tito. After the war, the infrastructure of Yugoslavia was rebuilt, industrialization began, and the University of Montenegro was established. Greater autonomy was established until the Socialist Republic of Montenegro ratified a new constitution in 1974.
After the dissolution of the SFRY in 1992, Montenegro remained part of a smaller Federal Republic of Yugoslavia along with Serbia.
In the referendum on remaining in Yugoslavia in 1992, the turnout was 66%, with 96% of the votes cast in favour of the federation with Serbia. The referendum was boycotted by the Muslim, Albanian, and Catholic minorities, as well as the pro-independence Montenegrins. The opponents claimed that the poll was organized under anti-democratic conditions with widespread propaganda from the state-controlled media in favour of a pro-federation vote. No impartial report on the fairness of the referendum was made, as it was unmonitored, unlike in a later 2006 referendum when European Union observers were present.
During the 1991–1995 Bosnian War and Croatian War, Montenegrin police and military forces joined Serbian troops in the attacks on Dubrovnik, Croatia. These operations, aimed at acquiring more territory, were characterized by a consistent pattern of large-scale violations of human rights.
Montenegrin General Pavle Strugar was convicted for his part in the bombing of Dubrovnik.
Bosnian refugees were arrested by Montenegrin police and transported to Serb camps in Foča, where they were subjected to systematic torture and executed.
In 1996, Milo Đukanović's government severed ties between Montenegro and its partner Serbia, which was led by Slobodan Milošević. Montenegro formed its own economic policy and adopted the German Deutsche Mark as its currency and subsequently adopted the euro, although not part of the Eurozone currency union. Subsequent governments pursued pro-independence policies, and political tensions with Serbia simmered despite the political changes in Belgrade. Targets in Montenegro were bombed by NATO forces during Operation Allied Force in 1999, although the extent of these attacks was very limited in both time and area affected.
In 2002, Serbia and Montenegro came to a new agreement for continued cooperation and entered into negotiations regarding the future status of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. This resulted in the Belgrade Agreement, which saw the country's transformation into a more decentralised state union named Serbia and Montenegro in 2003. The Belgrade Agreement also contained a provision delaying any future referendum on the independence of Montenegro for at least three years.
The status of the union between Montenegro and Serbia was decided by a referendum on Montenegrin independence on 21 May 2006. A total of 419,240 votes were cast, representing 86.5% of the total electorate; 230,661 votes (55.5%) were for independence and 185,002 votes (44.5%) were against. This narrowly surpassed the 55% threshold needed to validate the referendum under the rules set by the European Union. According to the electoral commission, the 55% threshold was passed by only 2,300 votes. Serbia, the member-states of the European Union, and the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council all recognised Montenegro's independence.
The 2006 referendum was monitored by five international observer missions, headed by an Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE)/ODIHR team, and around 3,000 observers in total (including domestic observers from CDT (OSCE PA), the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe (CLRAE), and the European Parliament (EP) to form an International Referendum Observation Mission (IROM). The IROM—in its preliminary report—"assessed compliance of the referendum process with OSCE commitments, Council of Europe commitments, other international standards for democratic electoral processes, and domestic legislation." Furthermore, the report stated that the competitive pre-referendum environment was marked by an active and generally peaceful campaign and that "there were no reports of restrictions on fundamental civil and political rights."
On 3 June 2006, the Montenegrin Parliament declared the independence of Montenegro, formally confirming the result of the referendum.
The Law on the Status of the Descendants of the Petrović Njegoš Dynasty was passed by the Parliament of Montenegro on 12 July 2011. It rehabilitated the Royal House of Montenegro and recognized limited symbolic roles within the constitutional framework of the republic.
In 2015, the investigative journalists' network OCCRP named Montenegro's long-time President and Prime Minister Milo Đukanović "Person of the Year in Organized Crime". The extent of Đukanović's corruption led to street demonstrations and calls for his removal.
In October 2016, for the day of the parliamentary election, a coup d'état was prepared by a group of persons that included leaders of the Montenegrin opposition, Serbian nationals and Russian agents; the coup was prevented. In 2017, fourteen people, including two Russian nationals and two Montenegrin opposition leaders, Andrija Mandić and Milan Knežević, were indicted for their alleged roles in the coup attempt on charges such as "preparing a conspiracy against the constitutional order and the security of Montenegro" and an "attempted terrorist act."
Montenegro formally became a member of NATO in June 2017, though "Montenegro remains deeply divided over joining NATO", an event that triggered a promise of retaliatory actions on the part of Russia's government.
Montenegro has been in negotiations with the EU since 2012. In 2018, the earlier goal of acceding by 2022 was revised to 2025.
2019 Montenegrin protests began in February 2019 against the incumbent President Milo Đukanović and the Prime Minister Duško Marković-led government of the ruling Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS), which has been in power since 1991.
As of late December 2019, the newly adopted Law on Religion, which de jure transfers the ownership of church buildings and estates built before 1918 from the Serbian Orthodox Church to the Montenegrin state, sparked a series of large protests followed with road blockages. Seventeen opposition Democratic Front MPs were arrested prior to the voting for violently disrupting the vote. Demonstrations continued into March 2020 as peaceful protest walks, mostly organised by the Metropolitanate of Montenegro and the Littoral in a number of Montenegrin municipalities.
Montenegro ranges from high peaks along its borders with Serbia, Kosovo, and Albania, a segment of the Karst of the western Balkan Peninsula, to a narrow coastal plain that is only wide. The plain stops abruptly in the north, where Mount Lovćen and Mount Orjen plunge into the inlet of the Bay of Kotor.
Montenegro's large karst region lies generally at elevations of above sea level; some parts, however, rise to , such as Mount Orjen (), the highest massif among the coastal limestone ranges. The Zeta River valley, at an elevation of , is the lowest segment.
The mountains of Montenegro include some of the most rugged terrain in Europe, averaging more than in elevation. One of the country's notable peaks is Bobotov Kuk in the Durmitor mountains, which reaches a height of . Owing to the hyperhumid climate on their western sides, the Montenegrin mountain ranges were among the most ice-eroded parts of the Balkan Peninsula during the last glacial period.
Internationally, Montenegro borders Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Kosovo, and Albania. It lies between latitudes 41° and 44°N, and longitudes 18° and 21°E.
Montenegro is a member of the International Commission for the Protection of the Danube River, as more than of the country's territory lie within the Danube catchment area.
The diversity of the geological base, landscape, climate, and soil, and the position of Montenegro on the Balkan Peninsula and Adriatic Sea, created the conditions for high biological diversity, putting Montenegro among the "hot-spots" of European and world biodiversity. The number of species per area unit index in Montenegro is 0.837, which is the highest index recorded in any European country.
The Constitution of Montenegro describes the state as a "civic, democratic, ecological state of social justice, based on the reign of Law." Montenegro is an independent and sovereign republic that proclaimed its new constitution on 22 October 2007.
The President of Montenegro (Montenegrin: "Predsjednik Crne Gore") is the head of state, elected for a period of five years through direct elections. The President represents the country abroad, promulgates laws by ordinance, calls elections for the Parliament, and proposes candidates for Prime Minister, president and justices of the Constitutional Court to the Parliament. The President also proposes the calling of a referendum to Parliament, grants amnesty for criminal offences prescribed by the national law, confers decoration and awards and performs other constitutional duties and is a member of the Supreme Defence Council. The official residence of the President is in Cetinje.
The Government of Montenegro (Montenegrin: "Vlada Crne Gore") is the executive branch of government authority of Montenegro. The government is headed by the Prime Minister, and consists of the deputy prime ministers as well as ministers.
The Parliament of Montenegro (Montenegrin: "Skupština Crne Gore") is a unicameral legislative body. It passes laws, ratifies treaties, appoints the Prime Minister, ministers, and justices of all courts, adopts the budget and performs other duties as established by the Constitution. Parliament can pass a vote of no-confidence in the Government by a simple majority. One representative is elected per 6,000 voters. The present parliament contains 81 seats, with 39 seats held by the Coalition for a European Montenegro after the 2012 parliamentary election.
In 2020, the Freedom House reported that years of increasing state capture, abuse of power, and strongman tactics employed by the President Đukanović have tipped his country over the edge — for the first time since 2003, Montenegro is no longer categorized as democracy and became hybrid regime.
After the promulgation of the Declaration of Independence in the Parliament of the Republic of Montenegro on 3 June 2006, following the independence referendum held on 21 May, the Government of the Republic of Montenegro assumed the competences of defining and conducting the foreign policy of Montenegro as a subject of international law and a sovereign state. The implementation of this constitutional responsibility was vested in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which was given the task of defining the foreign policy priorities and activities needed for their implementation. These activities are pursued in close cooperation with other state administration authorities, the President, the Speaker of the Parliament, and other relevant stakeholders.
Integration into the European Union is Montenegro's strategic goal. This process will remain in the focus of Montenegrin foreign policy in the short term.
The second strategic and equally important goal, but one attainable in a shorter time span, was joining NATO, which would guarantee stability and security for pursuing other strategic goals. Montenegro believes NATO integration would speed up EU integration. In May 2017 NATO accepted Montenegro as a NATO member starting 5 June 2017.
An official flag of Montenegro, based on the royal standard of King Nicholas I, was adopted on 12 July 2004 by the Montenegrin legislature. This royal flag was red with a silver border, a silver coat of arms, and the initials НІ, in Cyrillic script (corresponding to NI in Latin script), representing King Nicholas I. On the current flag, the border and arms are in gold and the royal cipher in the centre of the arms has been replaced with a golden lion.
The national day of 13 July marks the date in 1878 when the Congress of Berlin recognized Montenegro as the 27th independent state in the world and the start of one of the first popular uprisings in Europe against the Axis Powers on 13 July 1941 in Montenegro.
In 2004, the Montenegrin legislature selected a popular Montenegrin traditional song, "Oh, Bright Dawn of May", as the national anthem. Montenegro's official anthem during the reign of King Nicholas I was "Ubavoj nam Crnoj Gori" ("To Our Beautiful Montenegro").
The military of Montenegro is a fully professional standing army under the Ministry of Defence and is composed of the Montenegrin Ground Army, the Montenegrin Navy, and the Montenegrin Air Force, along with special forces. Conscription was abolished in 2006. The military currently maintains a force of 1,920 active duty members. The bulk of its equipment and forces were inherited from the armed forces of the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro; as Montenegro contained the entire coastline of the former union, it retained practically the entire naval force.
Montenegro was a member of NATO's Partnership for Peace program and then became an official candidate for full membership in the alliance. Montenegro applied for a Membership Action Plan on 5 November 2008, which was granted in December 2009. Montenegro is also a member of Adriatic Charter. Montenegro was invited to join NATO on 2 December 2015 and on 19 May 2016, NATO and Montenegro conducted a signing ceremony at NATO headquarters in Brussels for Montenegro's membership invitation. Montenegro became NATO's 29th member on 5 June 2017, despite Russia's objections. The government plans to have the army participate in peacekeeping missions through the UN and NATO such as the International Security Assistance Force.
Montenegro is divided into twenty-three municipalities ("opština"). This includes 21 District-level Municipalities and 2 Urban Municipalities, with two subdivisions of Podgorica municipality, listed below. Each municipality can contain multiple cities and towns. Historically, the territory of the country was divided into "nahije".
The economy of Montenegro is mostly service-based and is in late transition to a market economy. According to the International Monetary Fund, the nominal GDP of Montenegro was $5.424 billion in 2019. The GDP PPP for 2019 was $12.516 billion, or $20,083 per capita. According to Eurostat data, the Montenegrin GDP per capita stood at 48% of the EU average in 2018. The Central Bank of Montenegro is not part of the euro system but the country is "euroised", using the euro unilaterally as its currency.
GDP grew at 10.7% in 2007 and 7.5% in 2008. The country entered a recession in 2008 as a part of the global recession, with GDP contracting by 4%. However, Montenegro remained a target for foreign investment, the only country in the Balkans to increase its amount of direct foreign investment. The country exited the recession in mid-2010, with GDP growth at around 0.5%. However, the significant dependence of the Montenegrin economy on foreign direct investment leaves it susceptible to external shocks and a high export/import trade deficit.
In 2007, the service sector made up 72.4% of GDP, with industry and agriculture making up the rest at 17.6% and 10%, respectively. There are 50,000 farming households in Montenegro that rely on agriculture to fill the family budget.
The Montenegrin road infrastructure is not yet at Western European standards. Despite an extensive road network, no roads are built to full motorway standards. Construction of new motorways is considered a national priority, as they are important for uniform regional economic development and the development of Montenegro as an attractive tourist destination.
Current European routes that pass through Montenegro are E65 and E80.
The backbone of the Montenegrin rail network is the Belgrade–Bar railway, which provides international connection towards Serbia. There is a domestic branch line, the Nikšić-Podgorica railway, which was operated as a freight-only line for decades, and is now also open for passenger traffic after the reconstruction and electrification works in 2012. The other branch line from Podgorica towards the Albanian border, the Podgorica–Shkodër railway, is not in use.
Montenegro has two international airports, Podgorica Airport and Tivat Airport. The two airports served 1.1 million passengers in 2008. Montenegro Airlines is the flag carrier of Montenegro.
The Port of Bar is Montenegro's main seaport. Initially built in 1906, the port was almost completely destroyed during World War II, with reconstruction beginning in 1950. Today, it is equipped to handle over 5 million tons of cargo annually, though the breakup of the former Yugoslavia and the size of the Montenegrin industrial sector has resulted in the port operating at a loss and well below capacity for several years. The reconstruction of the Belgrade-Bar railway and the proposed Belgrade-Bar motorway are expected to bring the port back up to capacity.
Montenegro has both a picturesque coast and a mountainous northern region. The country was a well-known tourist spot in the 1980s. Yet, the Yugoslav wars that were fought in neighbouring countries during the 1990s crippled the tourist industry and damaged the image of Montenegro for years.
With a total of 1.6 million visitors, Montenegro is the 36th most visited country (out of 47 countries) in Europe. The Montenegrin Adriatic coast is long, with of beaches and many well-preserved ancient old towns. "National Geographic Traveler" (edited once a decade) ranks Montenegro among the "50 Places of a Lifetime", and the Montenegrin seaside Sveti Stefan was used as the cover for the magazine. The coast region of Montenegro is considered one of the great new "discoveries" among world tourists. In January 2010, "The New York Times" ranked the Ulcinj South Coast region of Montenegro, including Velika Plaza, Ada Bojana, and the Hotel Mediteran of Ulcinj, among the "Top 31 Places to Go in 2010" as part of a worldwide ranking of tourism destinations.
Montenegro was also listed by Yahoo Travel among the "10 Top Hot Spots of 2009" to visit, describing it as being "[c]urrently ranked as the second fastest growing tourism market in the world (falling just behind China)". It is listed every year by prestigious tourism guides like Lonely Planet as a top tourist destination along with Greece, Spain and other popular locations.
It was not until the 2000s that the tourism industry began to recover, and the country has since experienced a high rate of growth in the number of visits and overnight stays. The Government of Montenegro has declared the development of Montenegro as an elite tourist destination a top priority. It is a national strategy to make tourism a major contributor to the Montenegrin economy. A number of steps were taken to attract foreign investors. Some large projects are already under way, such as Porto Montenegro, while other locations, like Jaz Beach, Buljarica, Velika Plaža and Ada Bojana, have perhaps the greatest potential to attract future investments and become premium tourist spots on the Adriatic.
According to the 2003 census, Montenegro has 620,145 citizens. If the methodology used up to 1991 had been adopted in the 2003 census, Montenegro would officially have recorded 673,094 citizens. The results of the 2011 census show that Montenegro has 620,029 citizens.
Montenegro is a multiethnic state in which no ethnic group forms a majority. Major ethnic groups include Montenegrins (Црногорци/"Crnogorci") and Serbs (Срби/"Srbi"); others are Bosniaks ("Bošnjaci"), Albanians ("Albanci – Shqiptarët") and Croats ("Hrvati"). The number of "Montenegrins" and "Serbs" fluctuates widely from census to census due to changes in how people perceive, experience, or choose to express, their identity and ethnic affiliation.
Ethnic composition according to the 2011 official data:
The official language in Montenegro is Montenegrin. Also, Serbian, Bosnian, Albanian and Croatian are recognized in usage. Montenegrin, Serbian, Bosnian, and Croatian are mutually intelligible, all being standard varieties of Serbo-Croatian language. Montenegrin is the plurality mother-tongue of the population under 18 years of age. In 2013, Matica crnogorska announced the results of public opinion research regarding the identity attitudes of the citizens of Montenegro, indicating that the majority of the population claims Montenegrin as their mother tongue. Previous constitutions endorsed Serbo-Croatian as the official language in SR Montenegro and Serbian of Ijekavian standard during the 1992–2006 period.
According to the 2011 Census the following languages are spoken in the country:
Montenegro has been historically at the crossroads of multiculturalism and over centuries this has shaped its unique form of co-existence between Muslim and Christian populations. Montenegrins have been, historically, members of the Serbian Orthodox Church (governed by the Metropolitanate of Montenegro and the Littoral), and Serbian Orthodox Christianity is the most popular religion today in Montenegro. The Montenegrin Orthodox Church was recently founded and is followed by a small minority of Montenegrins although it is not in communion with any other Christian Orthodox Church as it has not been officially recognized.
Despite tensions between religious groups during the Bosnian War, Montenegro remained fairly stable, mainly due its population having a historic perspective on religious tolerance and faith diversity. Religious institutions from Montenegro all have guaranteed rights and are separate from the state. The second largest religion is Islam, which amounts to 19% of the total population of the country. One third of Albanians are Catholics (8,126 in the 2004 census) while the two other thirds (22,267) are mainly Sunni Muslims; in 2012 a protocol passed that recognizes Islam as an official religion in Montenegro, ensures that halal foods will be served at military facilities, hospitals, dormitories and all social facilities; and that Muslim women will be permitted to wear headscarves in schools and at public institutions, as well as ensuring that Muslims have the right to take Fridays off work for the Jumu'ah (Friday)-prayer.Since the time of Vojislavljević dynasty Catholicism is autochthonous in Montenegrin area. There is also a small Roman Catholic population, mostly Albanians with some Croats, divided between the Archdiocese of Antivari headed by the Primate of Serbia and the Diocese of Kotor that is a part of the Catholic Church in Croatia.
Religious determination according to the 2011 census:
Education in Montenegro is regulated by the Montenegrin Ministry of Education and Science.
Education starts in either pre-schools or elementary schools. Children enroll in elementary schools (Montenegrin: "Osnovna škola") at the age of 6; it lasts 9 years. The students may continue their secondary education (Montenegrin: "Srednja škola"), which lasts 4 years (3 years for trade schools) and ends with graduation (Matura). Higher education lasts with a certain first degree after 3 to 6 years. There is one public university (University of Montenegro) and two private ones (Mediterranean University and University of Donja Gorica).
Elementary education in Montenegro is free and compulsory for all the children between the ages of 7 and 15 when children attend the "eight-year school".
Various types of elementary education are available to all who qualify, but the vocational and technical schools (gymnasiums), where the students follow four-year course which will take them up to the university entrance, are the most popular. At the secondary level there are a number of art schools, apprentice schools and teacher training schools. Those who have attended the technical schools may pursue their education further at one of two-year post-secondary schools, created in response to the needs of industry and the social services.
Secondary schools are divided in three types, and children attend one depending on choice and primary school grades:
Tertiary level institutions are divided into "Higher education" (Više obrazovanje) and "High education" (Visoko obrazovanje) level faculties.
Higher schools (Viša škola) lasts between two and four years.
Post-graduate education (post-diplomske studije) is offered after tertiary level and offers Masters' degrees, PhD and specialization education.
The culture of Montenegro has been shaped by a variety of influences throughout history. The influence of Orthodox, Ottoman (Turk), Slavic, Central European, and seafaring Adriatic cultures (notably parts of Italy, like the Republic of Venice) have been the most important in recent centuries.
Montenegro has many significant cultural and historical sites, including heritage sites from the pre-Romanesque, Gothic and Baroque periods. The Montenegrin coastal region is especially well known for its religious monuments, including the Cathedral of Saint Tryphon in Kotor (Cattaro under the Venetians), the basilica of St. Luke (over 800 years), Our Lady of the Rocks (Škrpjela), the Savina Monastery and others. Medieval monasteries contain a number of artistically important frescoes.
A dimension of Montenegrin culture is the ethical ideal of "Čojstvo i Junaštvo", "Humaneness and Gallantry". The traditional folk dance of the Montenegrins is the Oro, the "eagle dance" that involves dancing in circles with couples alternating in the centre, and is finished by forming a human pyramid by dancers standing on each other's shoulders.
Montenegro's capital, Podgorica, and the former royal capital of Cetinje are the two most important centres of culture and the arts in the country.
The American author Rex Stout wrote a long series of detective novels featuring his fictional creation Nero Wolfe, who was born in Montenegro. His Nero Wolfe novel "The Black Mountain" was largely set in Montenegro during the 1950s.
The media of Montenegro refers to mass media outlets based in Montenegro. Television, magazines, and newspapers are all operated by both state-owned and for-profit corporations which depend on advertising, subscription, and other sales-related revenues. The Constitution of Montenegro guarantees freedom of speech.
As a country in transition, Montenegro's media system is under transformation.
Montenegrin cuisine is a result of Montenegro's long history. It is a variation of Mediterranean and Oriental. The most influence is from Italy, Turkey, Byzantine Empire/Greece, and Hungary. Montenegrin cuisine also varies geographically; the cuisine in the coastal area differs from the one in the northern highland region. The coastal area is traditionally a representative of Mediterranean cuisine, with seafood being a common dish, while the northern represents more the Oriental.
The Sports in Montenegro revolves mostly around team sports, such as football, basketball, water polo, volleyball, and handball. Other sports involved are boxing, tennis, swimming, judo, karate, athletics, table tennis, and chess.
The most popular sport is football. Notable players from Montenegro are Dejan Savićević, Predrag Mijatović, Mirko Vučinić, Stefan Savić and Stevan Jovetić. Montenegrin national football team, founded at 2006, played in playoffs for UEFA Euro 2012, which is the biggest success in the history of national team.
Water polo is often considered the national sport. Montenegro's national team is one of the top ranked teams in the world, winning the gold medal at the 2008 Men's European Water Polo Championship in Málaga, Spain, and winning the gold medal at the 2009 FINA Men's Water Polo World League, which was held in the Montenegrin capital, Podgorica. The Montenegrin team PVK Primorac from Kotor became a champion of Europe at the LEN Euroleague 2009 in Rijeka, Croatia.
The Montenegro national basketball team is also known for good performances and had won a lot of medals in the past as part of the Yugoslavia national basketball team. In 2006, the Basketball Federation of Montenegro along with this team joined the International Basketball Federation (FIBA) on its own, following the Independence of Montenegro. Montenegro participated on two Eurobaskets until now.
Among women sports, the national handball team is the most successful, having won the 2012 European Championship and finishing as runners-up at the 2012 Summer Olympics. ŽRK Budućnost Podgorica won two times EHF Champions League.
Chess is another popular sport and some famous global chess players, like Slavko Dedić, were born in Montenegro.
At the 2012 Olympic Games in London, Montenegro women's national handball team won the country's first Olympic medal by winning silver. They lost in the final to defending World, Olympic and European Champions, Norway 26–23. Following this defeat the team won against Norway in the final of the 2012 European Championship, becoming champions for the first time.
*2020 dates – exact dates vary each year according to the Orthodox calendar | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=20760 |
Michael Crichton
John Michael Crichton (; October 23, 1942 – November 4, 2008) was an American author and filmmaker. His books have sold over 200 million copies worldwide, and over a dozen have been adapted into films. His literary works are usually within the science fiction, techno-thriller, and medical fiction genres, and heavily feature technology. His novels often explore that technology and failures of human interaction with it, especially resulting in catastrophes with biotechnology. Many of his novels have medical or scientific underpinnings, reflecting his medical training and scientific background.
Crichton received an M.D. from Harvard Medical School in 1969 but did not practice medicine, choosing to focus on his writing instead. Initially writing under a pseudonym, he eventually wrote 26 novels, including "The Andromeda Strain" (1969), "The Great Train Robbery" (1975), "Congo" (1980), "Sphere" (1987), "Jurassic Park" (1990), "Rising Sun" (1992), "Disclosure" (1994), "The Lost World" (1995), "Airframe" (1996), "Timeline" (1999), "Prey" (2002), "State of Fear" (2004), and "Next" (2006). Several novels, in various states of completion, were published after his death in 2008.
Crichton was also involved in the film and television industry. In 1973, he wrote and directed "Westworld", the first film to utilize 2D computer-generated imagery. He also wrote and directed "Coma" (1978), "The First Great Train Robbery" (1979), "Looker" (1981), and "Runaway" (1984). He was the creator of the television series "ER" (1994–2009) and several of his novels were adapted into movies, most notably the "Jurassic Park" franchise.
John Michael Crichton was born on October 23, 1942, in Chicago, Illinois, to John Henderson Crichton, a journalist, and Zula Miller Crichton, a homemaker. He was raised on Long Island, in Roslyn, New York, and showed a keen interest in writing from a young age; at 14, he had an article about a trip he took to Sunset Crater published in "The New York Times".
Crichton later recalled, "Roslyn was another world. Looking back, it's remarkable what wasn't going on. There was no terror. No fear of children being abused. No fear of random murder. No drug use we knew about. I walked to school. I rode my bike for miles and miles, to the movie on Main Street and piano lessons and the like. Kids had freedom. It wasn't such a dangerous world... We studied our butts off, and we got a tremendously good education there."
Crichton had always planned on becoming a writer and began his studies at Harvard College in 1960. During his undergraduate study in literature, he conducted an experiment to expose a professor who he believed was giving him abnormally low marks and criticizing his literary style. Informing another professor of his suspicions, Crichton submitted an essay by George Orwell under his own name. The paper was returned by his unwitting professor with a mark of "B−". He later said, "Now Orwell was a wonderful writer, and if a B-minus was all he could get, I thought I'd better drop English as my major." His differences with the English department led Crichton to switch his undergraduate concentration. He obtained his bachelor's degree in biological anthropology "summa cum laude" in 1964 and was initiated into the Phi Beta Kappa Society. He received a Henry Russell Shaw Traveling Fellowship from 1964 to 1965 and was a visiting lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom in 1965. Crichton later enrolled at Harvard Medical School. By this time, he had become exceptionally tall, by his own account, approximately tall as of 1997. Crichton later said "about two weeks into medical school I realized I hated it. This isn't unusual since everyone hates medical school – even happy, practicing physicians."
In 1965, while at Harvard Medical School, Crichton wrote a novel, "Odds On". "I wrote for furniture and groceries", he said later. "Odds On" is a 215-page paperback novel which describes an attempted robbery in an isolated hotel on Costa Brava. The robbery is planned scientifically with the help of a critical path analysis computer program, but unforeseen events get in the way. Crichton submitted it to Doubleday, where a reader liked it but felt it was not for the company. Doubleday passed it on to New American Library, which published it in 1966. Crichton used the pen name John Lange because he planned to become a doctor and did not want his patients to worry he would use them for his plots. The name came from fairy tale writer Andrew Lang. Crichton added an "e" to the surname and substituted his own real first name, John, for Andrew. The novel was successful enough to lead to a series of John Lange novels. Film rights were sold in 1969, but no movie resulted.
The second Lange novel, "Scratch One" (1967), relates the story of Roger Carr, a handsome, charming, privileged man who practices law, more as a means to support his playboy lifestyle than a career. Carr is sent to Nice, France, where he has notable political connections, but is mistaken for an assassin and finds his life in jeopardy. Crichton wrote the book while traveling through Europe on a travel fellowship. He visited the Cannes Film Festival and Monaco Grand Prix, and then decided, "any idiot should be able to write a potboiler set in Cannes and Monaco", and wrote it in eleven days. He later described the book as "no good". His third John Lange novel, "Easy Go" (1968), is the story of Harold Barnaby, a brilliant Egyptologist who discovers a concealed message while translating hieroglyphics informing him of an unnamed pharaoh whose tomb is yet to be discovered. Crichton later said the book earned him $1,500. Crichton later said, "My feeling about the Lange books is that my competition is in-flight movies. One can read the books in an hour and a half, and be more satisfactorily amused than watching Doris Day. I write them fast and the reader reads them fast and I get things off my back."
Crichton's fourth novel was "A Case of Need" (1968), a medical thriller. The novel had a different tone to the Lange books; accordingly, Crichton used the pen name "Jeffrey Hudson", based on Sir Jeffrey Hudson, a 17th-century dwarf in the court of queen consort Henrietta Maria of England. The novel would prove a turning point in Crichton's future novels, in which technology is important in the subject matter, although this novel was as much about medical practice. The novel earned him an Edgar Award in 1969. He intended to use the "Jeffrey Hudson" for other medical novels but ended up using it only once. It would later be adapted into the film "The Carey Treatment" (born 1972).
Crichton says after he finished his third year of medical school "I stopped believing that one day I'd love it and realised that what I loved was writing." He began publishing book reviews under his name. In 1969, Crichton wrote a review for "The New Republic" (as J. Michael Crichton), critiquing "Slaughterhouse Five" by Kurt Vonnegut. He also continued to write Lange novels: "Zero Cool" (1969), dealt with an American radiologist on vacation in Spain who is caught in a murderous crossfire between rival gangs seeking a precious artifact. "The Venom Business" (1969) relates the story of a smuggler who uses his exceptional skill as a snake handler to his advantage by importing snakes to be used by drug companies and universities for medical research.
The first novel that was published under Crichton's name was "The Andromeda Strain" (1969), which would prove to be the most important novel of his career and establish him as a bestselling author. The novel documented the efforts of a team of scientists investigating a deadly extraterrestrial microorganism that fatally clots human blood, causing death within two minutes. Crichton was inspired to write it after reading "The IPCRESS File" by Len Deighton while studying in England. Crichton says he was "terrifically impressed" by the book – "a lot of "Andromeda" is traceable to "Ipcress" in terms of trying to create an imaginary world using recognizable techniques and real people." He wrote the novel over three years. The novel became an instant hit, and film rights were sold for $250,000. It was adapted into a 1971 film by director Robert Wise.
During his clinical rotations at the Boston City Hospital, Crichton grew disenchanted with the culture there, which appeared to emphasize the interests and reputations of doctors over the interests of patients. He graduated from Harvard, obtaining an MD in 1969, and undertook a post-doctoral fellowship study at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, from 1969 to 1970. He never obtained a license to practice medicine, devoting himself to his writing career instead. Reflecting on his career in medicine years later, Crichton concluded that patients too often shunned responsibility for their own health, relying on doctors as miracle workers rather than advisors. He experimented with astral projection, aura viewing, and clairvoyance, coming to believe that these included real phenomena that scientists had too eagerly dismissed as paranormal.
1970 saw the publication of three more Crichton books under pseudonyms. Two were Lange novels, "Drug of Choice" and "Grave Descend". "Grave Descend" earned him an Edgar Award nomination the following year. There was also "" written with his younger brother Douglas Crichton. "Dealing" was written under the pen name "Michael Douglas", using their first names. Crichton wrote it "completely from beginning to end". Then his brother rewrote it from beginning to end, and then Crichton rewrote it again. This novel was . Around this time Crichton also wrote and sold an original film script, "Morton's Run". He also wrote the screenplay "Lucifer Harkness in Darkness".
Aside from fiction, Crichton wrote several other books based on medical or scientific themes, often based upon his own observations in his field of expertise. In 1970, he published "Five Patients", which recounts his experiences of hospital practices in the late 1960s at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. The book follows each of five patients through their hospital experience and the context of their treatment, revealing inadequacies in the hospital institution at the time. The book relates the experiences of Ralph Orlando, a construction worker seriously injured in a scaffold collapse; John O'Connor, a middle-aged dispatcher suffering from fever that has reduced him to a delirious wreck; Peter Luchesi, a young man who severs his hand in an accident; Sylvia Thompson, an airline passenger who suffers chest pains; and Edith Murphy, a mother of three who is diagnosed with a life-threatening disease. In "Five Patients", Crichton examines a brief history of medicine up to 1969 to help place hospital culture and practice into context, and addresses the costs and politics of American healthcare. In 1974, he wrote the a pilot script for a medical series, "24 Hours", based on his book "Five Patients", however, networks were not enthusiastic.
As a personal friend of the artist Jasper Johns, Crichton compiled many of his works in a coffee table book, published as "Jasper Johns". It was originally published in 1970 by Harry N. Abrams, Inc. in association with the Whitney Museum of American Art and again in January 1977, with a second revised edition published in 1994. The psychiatrist Janet Ross owned a copy of the painting "Numbers" by Jasper Johns in Crichton's later novel "The Terminal Man". The technophobic antagonist of the story found it odd that a person would paint numbers as they were inorganic.
In 1972, Crichton published his last novel as John Lange: "Binary", relates the story of a villainous middle-class businessman, who attempts to assassinate the President of the United States by stealing an army shipment of the two precursor chemicals that form a deadly nerve agent.
"The Terminal Man" (1972), is about a psychomotor epileptic sufferer, Harry Benson, who, in regularly suffering seizures followed by blackouts, conducts himself inappropriately during seizures, waking up hours later with no knowledge of what he has done. Believed to be psychotic, he is investigated and electrodes are implanted in his brain. The book continued the preoccupation in Crichton's novels with machine-human interaction and technology. The novel was adapted into a 1974 film directed by Mike Hodges and starring George Segal. Crichton was hired to adapt his novel "The Terminal Man" into a script by Warner Bros. The studio felt he had departed from the source material too much and had another writer adapt it for the 1974 film.
ABC TV wanted to buy the film rights to Crichton's novel "Binary". The author agreed on the proviso that he could direct the film. ABC agreed provided someone other than Crichton wrote the script. The result, "Pursuit" (1972) was a ratings success. Crichton then wrote and directed the 1973 science fiction western-thriller film "Westworld" about robots that run amok, which was his feature film directorial debut. It was the first feature film using 2D computer-generated imagery (CGI). The producer of "Westworld" hired Crichton to write an original script, which became the erotic thriller, "Extreme Close-Up" (1973). Directed by Jeannot Szwarc, the movie disappointed Crichton.
In 1975, Crichton wrote "The Great Train Robbery", which would become a bestseller. The novel is a recreation of the Great Gold Robbery of 1855, a massive gold heist, which takes place on a train traveling through Victorian era England. A considerable portion of the book was set in London. Crichton had become aware of the story when lecturing at Cambridge University. He later read the transcripts of the court trial and started researching the historical period.
In 1976, Crichton published "Eaters of the Dead", a novel about a 10th-century Muslim who travels with a group of Vikings to their settlement. "Eaters of the Dead" is narrated as a scientific commentary on an old manuscript and was inspired by two sources. The first three chapters retell Ahmad ibn Fadlan's personal account of his journey north and his experiences in encountering the Rus', the early Ukrainian peoples, whilst the remainder is based upon the story of Beowulf, culminating in battles with the 'mist-monsters', or 'wendol', a relict group of Neanderthals.
Crichton wrote and directed the suspense film "Coma" (1978), adapted from the 1977 novel of the same name by Robin Cook, a friend of his. There are other similarities in terms of genre and the fact that both Cook and Crichton had medical degrees, were of similar age, and wrote about similar subjects. The film was a popular success. Crichton then wrote and directed an adaptation of his own book, "The Great Train Robbery" (1978) starring Sean Connery and Donald Sutherland. The film would go on to be nominated for Best Cinematography Award by the British Society of Cinematographers, also garnering an Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Motion Picture by the Mystery Writers Association of America.
In 1979 it was announced that Crichton would direct a movie version of his novel "Eaters of the Dead" for the newly formed Orion Pictures. This did not occur. Crichton pitched the idea of a modern day "King Solomon's Mines" to 20th Century Fox who paid him $1.5 million for the film rights to the novel, a screenplay and directorial fee for the movie, before a word had been written. He had never worked that way before, usually writing the book then selling it. He eventually managed to finish the book and it became a best seller. Crichton did the screenplay for "Congo" after he wrote and directed "Looker" (1981). "Looker" was a financial disappointment. Crichton came close to directing a film of "Congo" with Sean Connery but the film did not happen. Eventually a film version was made in 1995 by another director. In 1984 Telarium released a graphic adventure based on "Congo". Because Crichton had sold all adaptation rights to the novel, he set the game—named "Amazon"—in South America, and Amy the gorilla became Paco the parrot. That year Crichton also wrote and directed "Runaway" (1984), a police thriller set in the near future which was a box office disappointment.
Crichton had begun writing "Sphere" in 1967 as a companion piece to "The Andromeda Strain". His initial storyline began with American scientists discovering a 300-year-old spaceship underwater with stenciled markings in English. However, Crichton later realized that he "didn't know where to go with it" and put off completing the book until a later date. The novel was published in 1987. It relates the story of psychologist Norman Johnson, who is required by the U.S. Navy to join a team of scientists assembled by the U.S. Government to examine an enormous alien spacecraft discovered on the bed of the Pacific Ocean, and believed to have been there for over 300 years. The novel begins as a science fiction story, but rapidly changes into a psychological thriller, ultimately exploring the nature of the human imagination. The novel was adapted into the 1998 film directed by Barry Levinson and starring Dustin Hoffman.
Crichton worked as a director only on "Physical Evidence" (1989), a thriller originally conceived as a sequel to "Jagged Edge".
In 1988, Crichton was a visiting writer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
A book of autobiographical writings, "Travels" was published in 1988.
In 1990, Crichton published the novel "Jurassic Park". Crichton utilized the presentation of "fiction as fact", used in his previous novels, "Eaters of the Dead" and "The Andromeda Strain". In addition, chaos theory and its philosophical implications are used to explain the collapse of an amusement park in a "biological preserve" on Isla Nublar, a fictional island to the west of Costa Rica. The novel began as a screenplay Crichton wrote in 1983, about a graduate student who recreates a dinosaur. Eventually, given his reasoning that genetic research is expensive and "there is no pressing need to create a dinosaur", Crichton concluded that it would emerge from a "desire to entertain", leading to a wildlife park of extinct animals. Originally, the story was told from the point of view of a child, but Crichton changed it as everyone who read the draft felt it would be better if told by an adult.
Crichton originally had conceived a screenplay about a graduate student who recreates a dinosaur, but decided to put off exploring his fascination with dinosaurs and cloning until he began writing the novel. Steven Spielberg learned of the novel in October 1989 while he and Crichton were discussing a screenplay that would become the television series "ER". Before the book was published, Crichton demanded a non-negotiable fee of $1.5 million as well as a substantial percentage of the gross. Warner Bros. and Tim Burton, Sony Pictures Entertainment and Richard Donner, and 20th Century Fox and Joe Dante bid for the rights, but Universal eventually acquired the rights in May 1990 for Spielberg. Universal paid Crichton a further $500,000 to adapt his own novel, which he had completed by the time Spielberg was filming "Hook". Crichton noted that, because the book was "fairly long", his script only had about 10% to 20% of the novel's content. The film, directed by Spielberg, was released in 1993. The film was extremely successful; Spielberg’s third movie to become the highest grossing of all time and the earliest to receive $1 billion at the box office.
In 1992, Crichton published the novel "Rising Sun", an international bestselling crime thriller about a murder in the Los Angeles headquarters of Nakamoto, a fictional Japanese corporation. The book was adapted into the 1993 film directed by Philip Kaufman and starring Sean Connery and Wesley Snipes, released the same year as the adaption of "Jurassic Park".
His next novel, "Disclosure", published in 1994, addresses the theme of sexual harassment previously explored in his 1972 "Binary". Unlike that novel however, Crichton centers on sexual politics in the workplace, emphasizing an array of paradoxes in traditional gender functions by featuring a male protagonist who is being sexually harassed by a female executive. As a result, the book has been criticized harshly by feminist commentators and accused of anti-feminism. Crichton, anticipating this response, offered a rebuttal at the close of the novel which states that a "role-reversal" story uncovers aspects of the subject that would not be seen as easily with a female protagonist. The novel was made into a film the same year, directed by Barry Levinson and starring Michael Douglas and Demi Moore.
Crichton was the creator and an executive producer of the television drama "ER" based on his 1974 pilot script "24 Hours". Spielberg helped develop the show, serving as an executive producer on season one and offering advice (he insisted on Julianna Margulies becoming a regular, for example). It was also through Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment that John Wells was contacted to be the show's executive producer. In 1994, Crichton achieved the unique distinction of having a No. 1 movie, "Jurassic Park", a No. 1 TV show, "ER", and a No. 1 book, "Disclosure".
Crichton then published "The Lost World" in 1995 as the sequel to "Jurassic Park". The title was a reference to Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Lost World" (1912). It was made into the two years later, again directed by Spielberg. In March 1994, Crichton said there would probably be a sequel novel as well as a film adaptation, stating that he had an idea for the novel's story.
Then, in 1996, Crichton published "Airframe", an aero-techno-thriller. The book continued Crichton's overall theme of the failure of humans in human-machine interaction, given that the plane worked perfectly and the accident would not have occurred had the pilot reacted properly.
He also wrote "Twister" (1996) with Anne-Marie Martin, his wife at the time.
In 1999, Crichton published "Timeline", a science fiction novel in which experts time travel back to the medieval period. The novel, which continued Crichton's long history of combining technical details and action in his books, addresses quantum physics and time travel directly and received a warm welcome from medieval scholars, who praised his depiction of the challenges in studying the Middle Ages. In 1999, Crichton founded Timeline Computer Entertainment with David Smith. Despite signing a multi-title publishing deal with Eidos Interactive, only one game was ever published, "Timeline". Released by Eidos Interactive on November 10, 2000, for the PC, the game received negative reviews. A 2003 film based on the book was directed by Richard Donner and starring Paul Walker, Gerard Butler and Frances O'Connor.
"Eaters of the Dead" was adapted into the 1999 film "The 13th Warrior" directed by John McTiernan, who was later removed with Crichton himself taking over direction of reshoots.
In 2002, Crichton published "Prey", about developments in science and technology; specifically nanotechnology. The novel explores relatively recent phenomena engendered by the work of the scientific community, such as artificial life, emergence (and by extension, complexity), genetic algorithms, and agent-based computing.
In 2004, Crichton published "State of Fear", a novel concerning eco-terrorists who attempt mass murder to support their views. Global warming serves as a central theme to the novel. A review in "Nature" found the novel "likely to mislead the unwary". The novel had an initial print run of 1.5 million copies and reached the No. 1 bestseller position at Amazon.com and No. 2 on "The New York Times" Best Seller list for one week in January 2005.
The last novel published while he was still living was "Next" in 2006. The novel follows many characters, including transgenic animals, in the quest to survive in a world dominated by genetic research, corporate greed, and legal interventions, wherein government and private investors spend billions of dollars every year on genetic research.
In 2006, Crichton clashed with journalist Michael Crowley, a senior editor of the magazine "The New Republic". In March 2006, Crowley wrote a strongly critical review of "State of Fear", focusing on Crichton's stance on global warming. In the same year, Crichton published the novel "Next", which contains a minor character named "Mick Crowley", who is a Yale graduate and a Washington, D.C.-based political columnist. The character was portrayed as a child molester with a small penis. The character does not appear elsewhere in the book. The real Crowley, also a Yale graduate, alleged that by including a similarly named character Crichton had libeled him.
Several novels that were in various states of completion upon Crichton's death have since been published. The first, "Pirate Latitudes", was found as a manuscript on one of his computers after his death. It centers on a fictional privateer who attempts to raid a Spanish galleon. It was published in November 2009 by HarperCollins.
Additionally, Crichton had completed the outline for and was roughly a third of the way through a novel titled "Micro", a novel which centers on technology that shrinks humans to microscopic sizes. "Micro" was completed by Richard Preston using Crichton's notes and files, and was published in November 2011.
On July 28, 2016, Crichton's website and HarperCollins announced the publication of a third posthumous novel, titled "Dragon Teeth", which he had written in 1974. It is a historical novel set during the Bone Wars, and includes the real life characters of Othniel Charles Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope. The novel was released in May 2017.
In addition, some of his published works are being continued by other authors. On February 26, 2019, Crichton's website and HarperCollins announced the publication of "The Andromeda Evolution", the sequel to "The Andromeda Strain", a collaboration with CrichtonSun LLC. and author Daniel H. Wilson. It was released on November 12, 2019.
In 1983, Crichton wrote "Electronic Life", a book that introduces BASIC programming to its readers. The book, written like a glossary, with entries such as "Afraid of Computers (everybody is)", "Buying a Computer", and "Computer Crime", was intended to introduce the idea of personal computers to a reader who might be faced with the hardship of using them at work or at home for the first time. It defined basic computer jargon and assured readers that they could master the machine when it inevitably arrived. In his words, being able to program a computer is liberation: "In my experience, you assert control over a computer—show it who's the boss—by making it do something unique. That means programming it. ... If you devote a couple of hours to programming a new machine, you'll feel better about it ever afterward." In the book, Crichton predicts a number of events in the history of computer development, that computer networks would increase in importance as a matter of convenience, including the sharing of information and pictures that we see online today which the telephone never could. He also makes predictions for computer games, dismissing them as "the hula hoops of the '80s", and saying "already there are indications that the mania for twitch games may be fading." In a section of the book called "Microprocessors, or how I flunked biostatistics at Harvard", Crichton again seeks his revenge on the teacher who had given him abnormally low grades in college. Within the book, Crichton included many self-written demonstrative Applesoft (for Apple II) and BASICA (for IBM PC compatibles) programs.
"Amazon" is a graphical adventure game created by Crichton and produced by John Wells. Trillium released it in the United States in 1984, and the game runs on Apple II, Atari 8-bit, Atari ST, Commodore 64, and DOS. "Amazon" sold more than 100,000 copies, making it a significant commercial success at the time. It featured plot elements similar to those previously used in "Congo".
Crichton started a company selling a computer program he had originally written to help him create budgets for his movies. He often sought to utilize computing in films, such as "Westworld", which was the first film to employ computer-generated special effects. He also pushed Spielberg to include them in the "Jurassic park" films. For his pioneering use of computer programs in film production he was awarded the Academy Award for Technical Achievement in 1995.
In November 2006, at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., Crichton joked that he considered himself an expert in intellectual property law. He had been involved in several lawsuits with others claiming credit for his work.
In 1985, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit heard "Berkic v. Crichton", 761 F.2d 1289 (1985). Plaintiff Ted Berkic wrote a screenplay called "Reincarnation Inc.", which he claims Crichton plagiarized for the movie "Coma". The court ruled in Crichton's favor, stating the works were not substantially similar.
In the 1996 case, "Williams v. Crichton", 84 F.3d 581 (2d Cir. 1996), Geoffrey Williams claimed that "Jurassic Park" violated his copyright covering his dinosaur-themed children's stories published in the late 1980s. The court granted summary judgment in favor of Crichton.
In 1998, A United States District Court in Missouri heard the case of "Kessler v. Crichton" that actually went all the way to a jury trial, unlike the other cases. Plaintiff Stephen Kessler claimed the movie "Twister" (1996) was based on his work "Catch the Wind". It took the jury about 45 minutes to reach a verdict in favor of Crichton. After the verdict, Crichton refused to shake Kessler's hand.
Crichton later summarized his intellectual property legal cases: "I always win."
Crichton became well known for criticizing the science behind global warming. He testified on the subject before Congress in 2005.
His views would be contested by a number of scientists and commentators. An example is meteorologist Jeffrey Masters's review of Crichton's 2004 novel "State of Fear":
Crichton's novels, including "Jurassic Park", have been described by "The Guardian" as "harking back to the fantasy adventure fiction of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Jules Verne, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Edgar Wallace, but with a contemporary spin, assisted by cutting-edge technology references made accessible for the general reader". According to "The Guardian", "Michael Crichton wasn't really interested in characters, but his innate talent for storytelling enabled him to breathe new life into the science fiction thriller". Like "The Guardian", "The New York Times" has also noted the boys' adventure quality to his novels interfused with modern technology and science. According to "The New York Times",
Crichton's works were frequently cautionary; his plots often portrayed scientific advancements going awry, commonly resulting in worst-case scenarios. A notable recurring theme in Crichton's plots is the pathological failure of complex systems and their safeguards, whether biological ("Jurassic Park"), militaristic/organizational ("The Andromeda Strain"), technological ("Airframe"), or cybernetic ("Westworld"). This theme of the inevitable breakdown of "perfect" systems and the failure of "fail-safe measures" strongly can be seen in the poster for "Westworld", whose slogan was, "Where nothing can possibly go worng" , and in the discussion of chaos theory in "Jurassic Park". His 1973 movie "Westworld" contains one of the earlier references to a computer virus and the first mention of the concept of a computer virus in a movie. Crichton believed, however, that his view of technology had been misunderstood as
The use of author surrogate was a feature of Crichton's writings from the beginning of his career. In "A Case of Need", one of his pseudonymous whodunit stories, Crichton used first-person narrative to portray the hero, a Bostonian pathologist, who is running against the clock to clear a friend's name from medical malpractice in a girl's death from a hack-job abortion.
Crichton has used the literary technique known as the false document. "Eaters of the Dead" is a "recreation" of the Old English epic" Beowulf" presented as a scholarly translation of Ahmad ibn Fadlan's 10th century manuscript. "The Andromeda Strain" and" Jurassic Park "incorporate fictionalized scientific documents in the form of diagrams, computer output, DNA sequences, footnotes, and bibliography. "The Terminal Man" and "State of Fear" include authentic published scientific works which illustrate the premise point.
Crichton often employs the premise of diverse experts or specialists assembled to tackle a unique problem requiring their individual talents and knowledge. The premise was used for "The Andromeda Strain", "Sphere", "Jurassic Park", and, to a lesser extent, "Timeline". Sometimes the individual characters in this dynamic work in the private sector and are suddenly called upon by the government to form an immediate response team once some incident or discovery triggers their mobilization. This premise or plot device has been imitated and used by other authors and screenwriters in several books, movies and television shows since.
As an adolescent Crichton felt isolated because of his height (6 ft 9 in, or 206 cm). During the 1970s and 1980s, he consulted psychics and enlightenment gurus to make him feel more socially acceptable and to improve his karma. As a result of these experiences, Crichton practiced meditation throughout much of his life. He is often regarded as a deist; however, he never publicly confirmed this. When asked in an online Q&A if he were a spiritual person, Crichton responded with "Yes, but it is difficult to talk about."
Crichton was a workaholic. When drafting a novel, which would typically take him six or seven weeks, Crichton withdrew completely to follow what he called "a structured approach" of ritualistic self-denial. As he neared writing the end of each book, he would rise increasingly early each day, meaning that he would sleep for less than four hours by going to bed at 10 p.m. and waking at 2 a.m.
In 1992, Crichton was ranked among "People" magazine's 50 most beautiful people.
He married five times. Four of the marriages ended in divorce: with Joan Radam (1965–1970), Kathleen St. Johns (1978–1980), Suzanna Childs (1981–1983), and actress Anne-Marie Martin (1987–2003), the mother of his daughter Taylor Anne (born 1989). At the time of his death, Crichton was married to Sherri Alexander (2005–2008), who was six months pregnant with their son, John Michael Todd Crichton, born on February 12, 2009.
According to Crichton's brother Douglas, Crichton was diagnosed with lymphoma in early 2008. In accordance with the private way in which Crichton lived, his cancer was not made public until his death. He was undergoing chemotherapy treatment at the time of his death, and Crichton's physicians and relatives had been expecting him to recover. He died at age 66 on November 4, 2008.
Crichton had an extensive collection of 20th-century American art, which Christie's auctioned in May 2010.
Most of Crichton's novels address issues emerging in scientific research fields. In a number of his novels ("Jurassic Park", "The Lost World", "Next", "Congo"), genomics plays an important role. Usually, the drama revolves around the sudden eruption of a scientific crisis, revealing the disruptive impacts new forms of knowledge and technology may have, as is stated in "The Andromeda Strain", Crichton's first science novel: "This book recounts the five-day history of a major American scientific crisis" (1969, p. 3).
In 2002, a genus of ankylosaurus, "Crichtonsaurus," was named in his honor. His properties continue to be adapted into films, making him the 20th highest grossing story creator of all time. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=20762 |
Minor scale
In music theory, the term minor scale refers to three scale patterns – the natural minor scale (or Aeolian mode), the harmonic minor scale, and the melodic minor scale (ascending or descending) – rather than just one as with the major scale.
\override Score.TimeSignature #'stencil = ##f
\relative c' {
\override Score.TimeSignature #'stencil = ##f
\relative c' {
\override Score.TimeSignature #'stencil = ##f
\relative c' {
In each of these scales, the first, third, and fifth scale degrees form a minor triad (rather than a major triad, as in a major scale). In some contexts, "minor scale" is used to refer to any heptatonic scale with this property (see Related modes below).
A natural minor scale (or Aeolian mode) is a diatonic scale that is built by starting on the sixth degree of its relative major scale. For instance, the A natural minor scale can be built by starting on the 6th degree of the C major scale:
\override Score.TimeSignature #'stencil = ##f
\relative c' {
\override NoteHead.color = #red a \override NoteHead.color = #black b c2 \bar "||"
Because of this, the key of A minor is called the "relative minor" of C major. Every major key has a relative minor, which starts on the 6th scale degree or step. For instance, since the 6th degree of F major is D, the relative minor of F major is D minor.
A natural minor scale can also be constructed by altering a major scale with accidentals. In this way, a natural minor scale is represented by the following notation:
Each degree of the scale, starting with the tonic (the first, lowest note of the scale), is represented by a number. Their difference from the major scale is shown. Thus, a number without a flat represents a major (or perfect) interval. A number with a flat represents a minor interval. In this example, the numbers mean:
Thus, for instance, the A natural minor scale can be built by lowering the third, sixth, and seventh degrees of the A major scale by one semitone:
\override Score.TimeSignature #'stencil = ##f
\relative c' {
Because of this, the key of A minor is called the "parallel minor" of A major.
The intervals between the notes of a natural minor scale follow the sequence below:
where "whole" stands for a whole tone (a red u-shaped curve in the figure), and "half" stands for a semitone (a red broken line in the figure).
The natural minor scale is maximally even.
The harmonic minor scale (or Aeolian 7 scale) has the same notes as the natural minor scale except that the seventh degree is raised by one semitone, creating an augmented second between the sixth and seventh degrees.
\override Score.TimeSignature #'stencil = ##f
\relative c' {
Thus, a harmonic minor scale is represented by the following notation:
Thus, a harmonic minor scale can be built by lowering the 3rd and 6th degrees of the parallel major scale by one semitone.
Because of this construction, the 7th degree of the harmonic minor scale functions as a leading tone to the tonic because it is a "semitone" lower than the tonic, rather than a "whole tone" lower than the tonic as it is in natural minor scales. The intervals between the notes of a harmonic minor scale follow the sequence below:
The scale is called the "harmonic" minor scale because it is a common foundation for harmonies (chords) in minor keys. For example, in the key of A minor, the dominant (V) chord (the triad built on the 5th scale degree, E) is a minor triad in the natural minor scale. But when the seventh degree is raised from G to G, the triad becomes a major triad.
Chords on degrees other than V may also include the raised 7th degree, such as the diminished triad on VII itself (vii), which has a dominant function, as well as an augmented triad on III (III), which is not found in any "natural" harmony (that is, harmony that is derived from harmonizing the seven western modes, which include "major" and "minor"). This augmented fifth chord (5 chord) played a part in the development of modern chromaticism.
The triads built on each scale degree follow a distinct pattern. The roman numeral analysis is shown below.
\override Score.TimeSignature #'stencil = ##f
An interesting property of the harmonic minor scale is that it contains two chords that are each generated by just one interval:
Because they are generated by just one interval, the inversions of augmented triads and diminished seventh chords introduce no new intervals (allowing for enharmonic equivalents) that are absent from its root position. That is, any inversion of an augmented triad (or diminished seventh chord) is enharmonically equivalent to a new augmented triad (or diminished seventh chord) in root position. For example, the triad E–G–B in first inversion is G–B–E, which is enharmonically equivalent to the augmented triad G–B–D. One chord, with various spellings, may therefore have various harmonic functions in various keys.
While it evolved primarily as a basis for chords, the harmonic minor with its augmented second is sometimes used melodically. Instances can be found in Mozart, Beethoven (for example, the finale of his String Quartet No. 14), and Schubert (for example, in the first movement of the "Death and the Maiden Quartet"). In this role, it is used while descending far more often than while ascending.
The harmonic minor is also occasionally referred to as the "Mohammedan scale" as its upper tetrachord corresponds to the Hijaz jins, commonly found in Middle Eastern music. The harmonic minor scale as a whole is called "Nahawand" in Arabic nomenclature, as "Bûselik Hicaz" in Turkish nomenclature, and as an Indian raga, it is called Keeravani/Kirwani.
The Hungarian minor scale is similar to the harmonic minor scale but with a raised 4th degree. This scale is sometimes also referred to as "Gypsy Run", or alternatively "Egyptian Minor Scale", as mentioned by Miles Davis who describes it in his autobiography as "something that I'd learned at Juilliard".
In popular music, examples of songs in harmonic minor include Katy B's "Easy Please Me", Bobby Brown's "My Prerogative", and Jazmine Sullivan's "Bust Your Windows". The scale also had a notable influence on heavy metal, spawning a sub-genre known as neoclassical metal, with guitarists such as Yngwie Malmsteen, Ritchie Blackmore, and Randy Rhoads employing it in their music.
The distinctive sound of the harmonic minor scale comes from the augmented second between its sixth and seventh scale degrees. While some composers have used this interval to advantage in melodic composition, others felt it to be an awkward leap, particularly in vocal music, and preferred a whole step between these scale degrees for smooth melody writing. To eliminate the augmented second, these composers either raised the sixth degree by a semitone or lowered the seventh by a semitone.
The melodic minor scale is formed by using "both" of these solutions. In particular, the raised sixth appears in the ascending form of the scale, while the lowered seventh appears in the descending form of the scale. Traditionally, these two forms are referred to as:
The ascending and descending forms of the A melodic minor scale are shown below:
\override Score.TimeSignature #'stencil = ##f\relative c' {
The ascending melodic minor scale can be notated as
while the descending melodic minor scale is
Using these notations, the two melodic minor scales can be built by altering the parallel major scale.
Composers have not been consistent in using the two forms of the melodic minor scale. Just as often, composers choose one form or the other based on whether one of the two notes is part of the most recent chord (the prevailing harmony). Composers frequently require the lowered 7th degree found in the natural minor in order to avoid the augmented triad (III) that arises in the ascending form of the scale.
In jazz, only the ascending form of the scale is termed as "melodic minor".
In Indian Carnatic music, this melodic minor scale corresponds to Gourimanohari.
Examples of the use of melodic minor in rock and popular music include Elton John's "Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word", which makes, "a nod to the common practice... by the use of F [the leading tone in G minor] as the penultimate note of the final cadence."
In modern notation, the key signature for music in a minor key is typically based on the accidentals of the "natural" minor scale, not on those of the harmonic or melodic minor scales. For example, a piece in E minor will have one sharp in its key signature because the E natural minor scale has one sharp (F).
Major and minor keys that share the same key signature are "relative" to each other. For instance, F major is the relative major of D minor since both have key signatures with one flat. Since the natural minor scale is built on the 6th degree of the major scale, the tonic of the relative minor is a major sixth above the tonic of the major scale. For instance, B minor is the relative minor of D major because the note B is a major sixth above D. As a result, the key signatures of B minor and D major both have two sharps (F and C).
Sometimes scales whose root, third, and fifth degrees form a minor triad are considered "minor scales". In the Western system, derived from the Greek modes, the principal scale that includes the minor third is the Aeolian mode (the natural minor scale), with the minor third also occurring in the Dorian mode and the Phrygian mode. The Dorian mode is a minor mode with a major sixth, while the Phrygian mode is a minor mode with a minor second. The Locrian mode (which is "very" rarely used) has a minor third but not the perfect fifth, so its root chord is a diminished triad.
Although various hemitonic pentatonic scales might be called "minor", the term is most commonly applied to the relative minor pentatonic scale, derived as a mode of the major pentatonic scale, using scale tones 1, 3, 4, 5, and 7 of the natural minor scale. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=20765 |
Menachem Begin
Menachem Begin ( "Menaḥem Begin" (); ; "Menakhem Volfovich Begin"; 16 August 1913 – 9 March 1992) was an Israeli politician, founder of Likud and the sixth Prime Minister of Israel. Before the creation of the state of Israel, he was the leader of the Zionist militant group Irgun, the Revisionist breakaway from the larger Jewish paramilitary organization Haganah. He proclaimed a revolt, on 1 February 1944, against the British mandatory government, which was opposed by the Jewish Agency. As head of the Irgun, he targeted the British in Palestine. Later, the Irgun fought the Arabs during the 1947–48 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine and its chief Begin was also noted as "leader of the notorious terrorist organisation" by British government and banned from entering United Kingdom.
Begin was elected to the first Knesset, as head of Herut, the party he founded, and was at first on the political fringe, embodying the opposition to the Mapai-led government and Israeli establishment. He remained in opposition in the eight consecutive elections (except for a national unity government around the Six-Day War), but became more acceptable to the political center. His 1977 electoral victory and premiership ended three decades of Labor Party political dominance.
Begin's most significant achievement as Prime Minister was the signing of a peace treaty with Egypt in 1979, for which he and Anwar Sadat shared the Nobel Prize for Peace. In the wake of the Camp David Accords, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) withdrew from the Sinai Peninsula, which was captured from Egypt in the Six-Day War. Later, Begin's government promoted the construction of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Begin authorized the bombing of the Osirak nuclear plant in Iraq and the invasion of Lebanon in 1982 to fight PLO strongholds there, igniting the 1982 Lebanon War. As Israeli military involvement in Lebanon deepened, and the Sabra and Shatila massacre, carried out by Christian Phalangist militia allies of the Israelis, shocked world public opinion, Begin grew increasingly isolated. As IDF forces remained mired in Lebanon and the economy suffered from hyperinflation, the public pressure on Begin mounted. Depressed by the death of his wife Aliza in November 1982, he gradually withdrew from public life, until his resignation in October 1983.
Menachem Begin was born to Zeev Dov and Hassia Biegun in what was then Brest-Litovsk in the Russian Empire (today Brest, Belarus). He was the youngest of three children. On his mother's side he was descended from distinguished rabbis. His father, a timber merchant, was a community leader, a passionate Zionist, and an admirer of Theodor Herzl. The midwife who attended his birth was the grandmother of Ariel Sharon.
After a year of a traditional cheder education Begin started studying at a "Tachkemoni" school, associated with the religious Zionist movement. In his childhood, Begin, like most Jewish children in his town, was a member of the Zionist scouts movement Hashomer Hatzair. He was a member of Hashomer Hatzair until the age of 13, and at 16, he joined Betar. At 14, he was sent to a Polish government school, where he received a solid grounding in classical literature.
Begin studied law at the University of Warsaw, where he learned the oratory and rhetoric skills that became his trademark as a politician, and viewed as demagogy by his critics. During his studies, he organized a self-defense group of Jewish students to counter harassment by anti-Semites on campus. He graduated in 1935, but never practiced law. At this time he became a disciple of Vladimir "Ze'ev" Jabotinsky, the founder of the nationalist Revisionist Zionism movement and its youth wing, Betar. His rise within Betar was rapid: at 22, he shared the dais with his mentor at the Betar World Congress in Kraków. The pre-war Polish government actively supported Zionist youth and paramilitary movements. Begin's leadership qualities were quickly recognised. In 1937 he was the active head of Betar in Czechoslovakia and became head of the largest branch, that of Poland. As head of Betar's Polish branch, Begin traveled among regional branches to encourage supporters and recruit new members. To save money, he stayed at the homes of Betar members. During one such visit, he met his future wife Aliza Arnold, who was the daughter of his host. The couple married on 29 May 1939. They had three children: Binyamin, Leah and Hassia.
Living in Warsaw in Poland, Begin encouraged Betar to set up an organization to bring Polish Jews to Palestine. He unsuccessfully attempted to smuggle 1,500 Jews into Romania at the end of August 1939. Returning to Warsaw afterward, he left three days after the German 1939 invasion began, first to the southwest and then to Wilno.
In September 1939, after Germany invaded Poland, Begin, in common with a large part of Warsaw's Jewish leadership, escaped to Wilno (today Vilnius), then eastern Poland, to avoid inevitable arrest. The town was soon occupied by the Soviet Union, but from 28 October 1939, it was the capital of the Republic of Lithuania. Wilno was a predominately Polish and Jewish town; an estimated 40 percent of the population was Jewish, with the YIVO institute located there. As a prominent pre-war Zionist and reserve status officer-cadet, on 20 September 1940, Begin was arrested by the NKVD and detained in the Lukiškės Prison. In later years he wrote about his experience of being tortured. He was accused of being an "agent of British imperialism" and sentenced to eight years in the Soviet gulag camps. On 1 June 1941 he was sent to the Pechora labor camps in Komi Republic, the northern part of European Russia, where he stayed until May 1942. Much later in life, Begin recorded and reflected upon his experiences in the interrogations and life in the camp in his memoir "White Nights".
In July 1941, just after Germany attacked the Soviet Union, and following his release under the Sikorski–Mayski agreement because he was a Polish national, Begin joined the Free Polish Anders' Army as a corporal officer cadet. He was later sent with the army to Palestine via the Persian Corridor, where he arrived in May 1942.
Upon arriving in Palestine, Begin, like many other Polish Jewish soldiers of the Anders' Army, faced a choice between remaining with the Anders' Army to fight Nazi Germany in Europe, or staying in Palestine to fight for establishment of a Jewish state. While he initially wished to remain with the Polish army, he was eventually persuaded to change his mind by his contacts in the Irgun, as well as Polish officers sympathetic to the Zionist cause. Consequently, General Michał Karaszewicz-Tokarzewski, the second-in-command of the Army issued Begin with a "leave of absence without an expiration" which gave Begin official permission to stay in Palestine. In December 1942 he left Ander's Army and joined the Irgun. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=20767 |
Mergers and acquisitions
Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are transactions in which the ownership of companies, other business organizations, or their operating units are transferred or consolidated with other entities. As an aspect of strategic management, M&A can allow enterprises to grow or downsize, and change the nature of their business or competitive position.
From a legal point of view, a merger is a legal consolidation of two entities into one, whereas an acquisition occurs when one entity takes ownership of another entity's stock, equity interests or assets. From a commercial and economic point of view, both types of transactions generally result in the consolidation of assets and liabilities under one entity, and the distinction between a "merger" and an "acquisition" is less clear. A transaction legally structured as an acquisition may have the effect of placing one party's business under the indirect ownership of the other party's shareholders, while a transaction legally structured as a merger may give each party's shareholders partial ownership and control of the combined enterprise. A deal may be euphemistically called a "merger of equals" if both CEOs agree that joining together is in the best interest of both of their companies, while when the deal is unfriendly (that is, when the management of the target company opposes the deal) it may be regarded as an "acquisition".
An acquisition/takeover is the purchase of one business or company by another company or other business entity. Specific acquisition targets can be identified through myriad avenues including market research, trade expos, sent up from internal business units, or supply chain analysis. Such purchase may be of 100%, or nearly 100%, of the assets or ownership equity of the acquired entity. Consolidation/amalgamation occurs when two companies combine to form a new enterprise altogether, and neither of the previous companies remains independently. Acquisitions are divided into "private" and "public" acquisitions, depending on whether the acquiree or merging company (also termed a "target") is or is not listed on a public stock market. Some public companies rely on acquisitions as an important value creation strategy. An additional dimension or categorization consists of whether an acquisition is "friendly" or "hostile".
Achieving acquisition success has proven to be very difficult, while various studies have shown that 50% of acquisitions were unsuccessful. "Serial acquirers" appear to be more successful with M&A than companies who make an acquisition only occasionally (see Douma & Schreuder, 2013, chapter 13). The new forms of buy out created since the crisis are based on serial type acquisitions known as an ECO Buyout which is a co-community ownership buy out and the new generation buy outs of the MIBO (Management Involved or Management & Institution Buy Out) and MEIBO (Management & Employee Involved Buy Out).
Whether a purchase is perceived as being a "friendly" one or "hostile" depends significantly on how the proposed acquisition is communicated to and perceived by the target company's board of directors, employees and shareholders. It is normal for M&A deal communications to take place in a so-called "confidentiality bubble" wherein the flow of information is restricted pursuant to confidentiality agreements. In the case of a friendly transaction, the companies cooperate in negotiations; in the case of a hostile deal, the board and/or management of the target is unwilling to be bought or the target's board has no prior knowledge of the offer. Hostile acquisitions can, and often do, ultimately become "friendly", as the acquiror secures endorsement of the transaction from the board of the acquiree company. This usually requires an improvement in the terms of the offer and/or through negotiation.
"Acquisition" usually refers to a purchase of a smaller firm by a larger one. Sometimes, however, a smaller firm will acquire management control of a larger and/or longer-established company and retain the name of the latter for the post-acquisition combined entity. This is known as a reverse takeover. Another type of acquisition is the reverse merger, a form of transaction that enables a private company to be publicly listed in a relatively short time frame. A reverse merger occurs when a privately held company (often one that has strong prospects and is eager to raise financing) buys a publicly listed shell company, usually one with no business and limited assets.
The combined evidence suggests that the shareholders of acquired firms realize significant positive "abnormal returns" while shareholders of the acquiring company are most likely to experience a negative wealth effect. The overall net effect of M&A transactions appears to be positive: almost all studies report positive returns for the investors in the combined buyer and target firms. This implies that M&A creates economic value, presumably by transferring assets to management teams that operate them more efficiently (see Douma & Schreuder, 2013, chapter 13).
There are also a variety of structures used in securing control over the assets of a company, which have different tax and regulatory implications:
The terms "demerger", "spin-off" and "spin-out" are sometimes used to indicate a situation where one company splits into two, generating a second company which may or may not become separately listed on a stock exchange.
As per knowledge-based views, firms can generate greater values through the retention of knowledge-based resources which they generate and integrate. Extracting technological benefits during and after acquisition is ever challenging issue because of organizational differences. Based on the content analysis of seven interviews authors concluded five following components for their grounded model of acquisition:
An increase in acquisitions in the global business environment requires enterprises to evaluate the key stake holders of acquisition very carefully before implementation. It is imperative for the acquirer to understand this relationship and apply it to its advantage. Employee retention is possible only when resources are exchanged and managed without affecting their independence.
Corporate acquisitions can be characterized for legal purposes as either "asset purchases" in which the seller sells business assets to the buyer, or "equity purchases" in which the buyer purchases equity interests in a target company from one or more selling shareholders. Asset purchases are common in technology transactions where the buyer is most interested in particular intellectual property rights but does not want to acquire liabilities or other contractual relationships. An asset purchase structure may also be used when the buyer wishes to buy a particular division or unit of a company which is not a separate legal entity. There are numerous challenges particular to this type of transaction, including isolating the specific assets and liabilities that pertain to the unit, determining whether the unit utilizes services from other units of the selling company, transferring employees, transferring permits and licenses, and ensuring that the seller does not compete with the buyer in the same business area in the future.
Structuring the sale of a financially distressed company is uniquely difficult due to the treatment of non-compete covenants, consulting agreements, and business goodwill in such transactions.
Mergers, asset purchases and equity purchases are each taxed differently, and the most beneficial structure for tax purposes is highly situation-dependent. One hybrid form often employed for tax purposes is a triangular merger, where the target company merges with a shell company wholly owned by the buyer, thus becoming a subsidiary of the buyer.
In a "forward triangular merger", the buyer causes the target company to merge into the subsidiary; a "reverse triangular merger" is similar except that the subsidiary merges into the target company. Under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code, a forward triangular merger is taxed as if the target company sold its assets to the shell company and then liquidated, whereas a reverse triangular merger is taxed as if the target company's shareholders sold their stock in the target company to the buyer.
The documentation of an M&A transaction often begins with a letter of intent. The letter of intent generally does not bind the parties to commit to a transaction, but may bind the parties to confidentiality and exclusivity obligations so that the transaction can be considered through a due diligence process involving lawyers, accountants, tax advisors, and other professionals, as well as business people from both sides.
After due diligence is complete, the parties may proceed to draw up a definitive agreement, known as a "merger agreement", "share purchase agreement" or "asset purchase agreement" depending on the structure of the transaction. Such contracts are typically 80 to 100 pages long and focus on five key types of terms:
Post-closing, adjustments may still occur to certain provisions of the purchase agreement, including the purchase price. These adjustments are subject to enforceability issues in certain situations. Alternatively, certain transactions use the 'locked box' approach where the purchase price is fixed at signing and based on seller's equity value at a pre-signing date and an interest charge.
A business is held by two categories of owners, shareholders and debt holders. The value of a pure business which accrues to both categories of owners is called the Enterprise Value (EV), whereas the value which accrues just to shareholders is the Equity Value (also called market capitalization for publicly listed companies). Companies are compared using the Enterprise Value instead of the Equity Value as debt and cash levels may vary significantly between companies. The five most common ways to find the enterprise value of a business are:
Professionals who value businesses generally do not use just one method, but a combination.
Most often value is expressed in a Letter of Opinion of Value (LOV) when the business is being valued informally. Formal valuation reports generally get more detailed and expensive as the size of a company increases, but this is not always the case as the nature of the business and the industry it is operating in can influence the complexity of the valuation task.
Objectively evaluating the historical and prospective performance of a business is a challenge faced by many. Generally, parties rely on independent third parties to conduct due diligence studies or business assessments. To yield the most value from a business assessment, objectives should be clearly defined and the right resources should be chosen to conduct the assessment in the available timeframe.
As synergy plays a large role in the valuation of acquisitions, it is paramount to get the value of synergies right. Synergies are different from the "sales price" valuation of the firm, as they will accrue to the buyer. Hence, the analysis should be done from the acquiring firm's point of view. Synergy-creating investments are started by the choice of the acquirer, and therefore they are not obligatory, making them essentially real options. To include this real options aspect into analysis of acquisition targets is one interesting issue that has been studied lately.
Mergers are generally differentiated from acquisitions partly by the way in which they are financed and partly by the relative size of the companies. Various methods of financing an M&A deal exist:
Payment by cash. Such transactions are usually termed acquisitions rather than mergers because the shareholders of the target company are removed from the picture and the target comes under the (indirect) control of the bidder's shareholders.
Payment in the form of the acquiring company's stock, issued to the shareholders of the acquired company at a given ratio proportional to the valuation of the latter. They receive stock in the company that is purchasing the smaller subsidiary. See Stock swap, Swap ratio.
There are some elements to think about when choosing the form of payment. When submitting an offer, the acquiring firm should consider other potential bidders and think strategically. The form of payment might be decisive for the seller. With pure cash deals, there is no doubt on the real value of the bid (without considering an eventual earnout). The contingency of the share payment is indeed removed. Thus, a cash offer preempts competitors better than securities. Taxes are a second element to consider and should be evaluated with the counsel of competent tax and accounting advisers. Third, with a share deal the buyer's capital structure might be affected and the control of the buyer modified. If the issuance of shares is necessary, shareholders of the acquiring company might prevent such capital increase at the general meeting of shareholders. The risk is removed with a cash transaction. Then, the balance sheet of the buyer will be modified and the decision maker should take into account the effects on the reported financial results. For example, in a pure cash deal (financed from the company's current account), liquidity ratios might decrease. On the other hand, in a pure stock for stock transaction (financed from the issuance of new shares), the company might show lower profitability ratios (e.g. ROA). However, economic dilution must prevail towards accounting dilution when making the choice. The form of payment and financing options are tightly linked. If the buyer pays cash, there are three main financing options:
M&A advice is provided by full-service investment banks- who often advise and handle the biggest deals in the world (called bulge bracket) - and specialist M&A firms, who provide M&A only advisory, generally to mid-market, select industries and SBEs.
Highly focused and specialized M&A advice investment banks are called boutique investment banks.
The dominant rationale used to explain M&A activity is that acquiring firms seek improved financial performance or reduce risk. The following motives are considered to improve financial performance or reduce risk:
Megadeals—deals of at least one $1 billion in size—tend to fall into four discrete categories: consolidation, capabilities extension, technology-driven market transformation, and going private.
However, on average and across the most commonly studied variables, acquiring firms' financial performance does not positively change as a function of their acquisition activity. Therefore, additional motives for merger and acquisition that may not add shareholder value include:
The M&A process itself is a multifaceted which depends upon the type of merging companies.
The M&A process results in the restructuring of a business' purpose, corporate governance and brand identity.
An arm's length merger is a merger:
″The two elements are complementary and not substitutes. The first element is important because the directors have the capability to act as effective and active bargaining agents, which disaggregated stockholders do not. But, because bargaining agents are not always effective or faithful, the second element is critical, because it gives the minority stockholders the opportunity to reject their agents' work. Therefore, when a merger with a controlling stockholder was: 1) negotiated and approved by a special committee of independent directors; and 2) conditioned on an affirmative vote of a majority of the minority stockholders, the business judgment standard of review should presumptively apply, and any plaintiff ought to have to plead particularized facts that, if true, support an inference that, despite the facially fair process, the merger was tainted because of fiduciary wrongdoing.″
A Strategic merger usually refers to long term strategic holding of target (Acquired) firm. This type of M&A process aims at creating synergies in the long run by increased market share, broad customer base, and corporate strength of business. A strategic acquirer may also be willing to pay a premium offer to target firm in the outlook of the synergy value created after M&A process.
The term "acqui-hire" is used to refer to acquisitions where the acquiring company seeks to obtain the target company's talent, rather than their products (which are often discontinued as part of the acquisition so the team can focus on projects for their new employer). In recent years, these types of acquisitions have become common in the technology industry, where major web companies such as Facebook, Twitter, and Yahoo! have frequently used talent acquisitions to add expertise in particular areas to their workforces.
Merger of equals is often a combination of companies of a similar size. Since 1990, there have been more than 625 M&A transactions announced as mergers of equals with a total value of US$2,164.4 bil. Some of the largest mergers of equals took place during the dot.com bubble of the late 1990s and in the year 2000: AOL and Time Warner (US$164 bil.), SmithKline Beecham and Glaxo Wellcome (US$75 bil.), Citicorp and Travelers Group (US$72 bil.). More recent examples this type of combinations are DuPont and Dow Chemical (US$62 bil.) and Praxair and Linde (US$35 bil.).
An analysis of 1,600 companies across industries revealed the rewards for M&A activity were greater for consumer products companies than the average company. For the period 2000–2010, consumer products companies turned in an average annual TSR of 7.4%, while the average for all companies was 4.8%.
Given that the cost of replacing an executive can run over 100% of his or her annual salary, any investment of time and energy in re-recruitment will likely pay for itself many times over if it helps a business retain just a handful of key players that would have otherwise left.
Organizations should move rapidly to re-recruit key managers. It's much easier to succeed with a team of quality players that one selects deliberately rather than try to win a game with those who randomly show up to play.
Mergers and acquisitions often create brand problems, beginning with what to call the company after the transaction and going down into detail about what to do about overlapping and competing product brands. Decisions about what brand equity to write off are not inconsequential. And, given the ability for the right brand choices to drive preference and earn a price premium, the future success of a merger or acquisition depends on making wise brand choices. Brand decision-makers essentially can choose from four different approaches to dealing with naming issues, each with specific pros and cons:
The factors influencing brand decisions in a merger or acquisition transaction can range from political to tactical. Ego can drive choice just as well as rational factors such as brand value and costs involved with changing brands.
Beyond the bigger issue of what to call the company after the transaction comes the ongoing detailed choices about what divisional, product and service brands to keep. The detailed decisions about the brand portfolio are covered under the topic brand architecture.
Most histories of M&A begin in the late 19th century United States. However, mergers coincide historically with the existence of companies. In 1708, for example, the East India Company merged with an erstwhile competitor to restore its monopoly over the Indian trade. In 1784, the Italian Monte dei Paschi and Monte Pio banks were united as the Monti Reuniti. In 1821, the Hudson's Bay Company merged with the rival North West Company.
The Great Merger Movement was a predominantly U.S. business phenomenon that happened from 1895 to 1905. During this time, small firms with little market share consolidated with similar firms to form large, powerful institutions that dominated their markets, such as the Standard Oil Company, which at its height controlled nearly 90% of the global oil refinery industry. It is estimated that more than 1,800 of these firms disappeared into consolidations, many of which acquired substantial shares of the markets in which they operated. The vehicle used were so-called trusts. In 1900 the value of firms acquired in mergers was 20% of GDP. In 1990 the value was only 3% and from 1998 to 2000 it was around 10–11% of GDP. Companies such as DuPont, U.S. Steel, and General Electric that merged during the Great Merger Movement were able to keep their dominance in their respective sectors through 1929, and in some cases today, due to growing technological advances of their products, patents, and brand recognition by their customers. There were also other companies that held the greatest market share in 1905 but at the same time did not have the competitive advantages of the companies like DuPont and General Electric. These companies such as International Paper and American Chicle saw their market share decrease significantly by 1929 as smaller competitors joined forces with each other and provided much more competition. The companies that merged were mass producers of homogeneous goods that could exploit the efficiencies of large volume production. In addition, many of these mergers were capital-intensive. Due to high fixed costs, when demand fell, these newly merged companies had an incentive to maintain output and reduce prices. However more often than not mergers were "quick mergers". These "quick mergers" involved mergers of companies with unrelated technology and different management. As a result, the efficiency gains associated with mergers were not present. The new and bigger company would actually face higher costs than competitors because of these technological and managerial differences. Thus, the mergers were not done to see large efficiency gains, they were in fact done because that was the trend at the time. Companies which had specific fine products, like fine writing paper, earned their profits on high margin rather than volume and took no part in the Great Merger Movement.
One of the major short run factors that sparked the Great Merger Movement was the desire to keep prices high. However, high prices attracted the entry of new firms into the industry.
A major catalyst behind the Great Merger Movement was the Panic of 1893, which led to a major decline in demand for many homogeneous goods. For producers of homogeneous goods, when demand falls, these producers have more of an incentive to maintain output and cut prices, in order to spread out the high fixed costs these producers faced (i.e. lowering cost per unit) and the desire to exploit efficiencies of maximum volume production. However, during the Panic of 1893, the fall in demand led to a steep fall in prices.
Another economic model proposed by Naomi R. Lamoreaux for explaining the steep price falls is to view the involved firms acting as monopolies in their respective markets. As quasi-monopolists, firms set quantity where marginal cost equals marginal revenue and price where this quantity intersects demand. When the Panic of 1893 hit, demand fell and along with demand, the firm's marginal revenue fell as well. Given high fixed costs, the new price was below average total cost, resulting in a loss. However, also being in a high fixed costs industry, these costs can be spread out through greater production (i.e. higher quantity produced). To return to the quasi-monopoly model, in order for a firm to earn profit, firms would steal part of another firm's market share by dropping their price slightly and producing to the point where higher quantity and lower price exceeded their average total cost. As other firms joined this practice, prices began falling everywhere and a price war ensued.
One strategy to keep prices high and to maintain profitability was for producers of the same good to collude with each other and form associations, also known as cartels. These cartels were thus able to raise prices right away, sometimes more than doubling prices. However, these prices set by cartels provided only a short-term solution because cartel members would cheat on each other by setting a lower price than the price set by the cartel. Also, the high price set by the cartel would encourage new firms to enter the industry and offer competitive pricing, causing prices to fall once again. As a result, these cartels did not succeed in maintaining high prices for a period of more than a few years. The most viable solution to this problem was for firms to merge, through horizontal integration, with other top firms in the market in order to control a large market share and thus successfully set a higher price.
In the long run, due to desire to keep costs low, it was advantageous for firms to merge and reduce their transportation costs thus producing and transporting from one location rather than various sites of different companies as in the past. Low transport costs, coupled with economies of scale also increased firm size by two- to fourfold during the second half of the nineteenth century. In addition, technological changes prior to the merger movement within companies increased the efficient size of plants with capital intensive assembly lines allowing for economies of scale. Thus improved technology and transportation were forerunners to the Great Merger Movement. In part due to competitors as mentioned above, and in part due to the government, however, many of these initially successful mergers were eventually dismantled. The U.S. government passed the Sherman Act in 1890, setting rules against price fixing and monopolies. Starting in the 1890s with such cases as Addyston Pipe and Steel Company v. United States, the courts attacked large companies for strategizing with others or within their own companies to maximize profits. Price fixing with competitors created a greater incentive for companies to unite and merge under one name so that they were not competitors anymore and technically not price fixing.
The economic history has been divided into "Merger Waves" based on the merger activities in the business world as:
During the third merger wave (1965–1989), corporate marriages involved more diverse companies. Acquirers more frequently bought into different industries. Sometimes this was done to smooth out cyclical bumps, to diversify, the hope being that it would hedge an investment portfolio.
Starting in the fifth merger wave (1992–1998) and continuing today, companies are more likely to acquire in the same business, or close to it, firms that complement and strengthen an acquirer's capacity to serve customers.
In recent decades however, cross-sector convergence has become more common. For example, retail companies are buying tech or e-commerce firms to acquire new markets and revenue streams. It has been reported that convergence will remain a key trend in M&A activity through 2015 and onward.
Buyers aren't necessarily hungry for the target companies’ hard assets. Some are more interested in acquiring thoughts, methodologies, people and relationships. Paul Graham recognized this in his 2005 essay "Hiring is Obsolete", in which he theorizes that the free market is better at identifying talent, and that traditional hiring practices do not follow the principles of free market because they depend a lot upon credentials and university degrees. Graham was probably the first to identify the trend in which large companies such as Google, Yahoo! or Microsoft were choosing to acquire startups instead of hiring new recruits, a process known as acqui-hiring.
Many companies are being bought for their patents, licenses, market share, name brand, research staff, methods, customer base, or culture. Soft capital, like this, is very perishable, fragile, and fluid. Integrating it usually takes more finesse and expertise than integrating machinery, real estate, inventory and other tangibles.
The top ten largest deals in M&A history cumulate to a total value of 1,118,963 mil. USD. (1.118 tril. USD).
In a study conducted in 2000 by Lehman Brothers, it was found that, on average, large M&A deals cause the domestic currency of the target corporation to appreciate by 1% relative to the acquirer's local currency. Until 2018, around 280.472 cross-border deals have been conducted, which cumulates to a total value of almost 24,069 bil. USD.
The rise of globalization has exponentially increased the necessity for agencies such as the Mergers and Acquisitions International Clearing (MAIC), trust accounts and securities clearing services for Like-Kind Exchanges for cross-border M&A. On a global basis, the value of cross-border mergers and acquisitions rose seven-fold during the 1990s. In 1997 alone, there were over 2,333 cross-border transactions, worth a total of approximately $298 billion.
The vast literature on empirical studies over value creation in cross-border M&A is not conclusive, but points to higher returns in cross-border M&As compared to domestic ones when the acquirer firm has the capability to exploit resources and knowledge of the target's firm and of handling challenges.
In China, for example, securing regulatory approval can be complex due to an extensive group of various stakeholders at each level of government. In the United Kingdom, acquirers may face pension regulators with significant powers, in addition to an overall M&A environment that is generally more seller-friendly than the U.S. Nonetheless, the current surge in global cross-border M&A has been called the "New Era of Global Economic Discovery".
In little more than a decade, M&A deals in China increased by a factor of 20, from 69 in 2000 to more than 1,300 in 2013.
In 2014, Europe registered its highest levels of M&A deal activity since the financial crisis. Driven by U.S. and Asian acquirers, inbound M&A, at $320.6 billion, reached record highs by both deal value and deal count since 2001.
Approximately 23 percent of the 416 M&A deals announced in the U.S. M&A market in 2014 involved non-U.S. acquirers.
For 2016, market uncertainties, including Brexit and the potential reform from a U.S. Presidential election, contributed to cross-border M&A activity lagging roughly 20% behind 2015 activity.
In 2017, the controverse trend which started in 2015, decreasing total value but rising total number of cross border deals, kept going. Compared on a year on year basis (2016-2017), the total number of cross border deals decreased by -4.2%, while cumulated value increased by 0.6%.
Even mergers of companies with headquarters in the same country can often be considered international in scale and require MAIC custodial services. For example, when Boeing acquired McDonnell Douglas, the two American companies had to integrate operations in dozens of countries around the world (1997). This is just as true for other apparently "single-country" mergers, such as the 29 billion-dollar merger of Swiss drug makers Sandoz and Ciba-Geigy (now Novartis).
M&A practice in emerging countries differs from more mature economies, although transaction management and valuation tools (e.g. DCF, comparables) share a common basic methodology. In China, India or Brazil for example, differences affect the formation of asset price and on the structuring of deals. Profitability expectations (e.g. shorter time horizon, no terminal value due to low visibility) and risk represented by a discount rate must both be properly adjusted. In a M&A perspective, differences between emerging and more mature economies include: i) a less developed system of property rights, ii) less reliable financial information, iii) cultural differences in negotiations, and iv) a higher degree of competition for the best targets.
If not properly dealt with, these factors will likely have adverse consequences on return-on-investment (ROI) and create difficulties in day-to-day business operations. It is advisable that M&A tools designed for mature economies are not directly used in emerging markets without some adjustment. M&A teams need time to adapt and understand the key operating differences between their home environment and their new market.
Despite the goal of performance improvement, results from mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are often disappointing compared with results predicted or expected. Numerous empirical studies show high failure rates of M&A deals. Studies are mostly focused on individual determinants. A book by Thomas Straub (2007) "Reasons for frequent failure in Mergers and Acquisitions" develops a comprehensive research framework that bridges different perspectives and promotes an understanding of factors underlying M&A performance in business research and scholarship. The study should help managers in the decision making process. The first important step towards this objective is the development of a common frame of reference that spans conflicting theoretical assumptions from different perspectives. On this basis, a comprehensive framework is proposed with which to understand the origins of M&A performance better and address the problem of fragmentation by integrating the most important competing perspectives in respect of studies on M&A. Furthermore, according to the existing literature, relevant determinants of firm performance are derived from each dimension of the model. For the dimension strategic management, the six strategic variables: market similarity, market complementarities, production operation similarity, production operation complementarities, market power, and purchasing power were identified as having an important effect on M&A performance. For the dimension organizational behavior, the variables acquisition experience, relative size, and cultural differences were found to be important. Finally, relevant determinants of M&A performance from the financial field were acquisition premium, bidding process, and due diligence. Three different ways in order to best measure post M&A performance are recognized: synergy realization, absolute performance, and finally relative performance.
Employee turnover contributes to M&A failures. The turnover in target companies is double the turnover experienced in non-merged firms for the ten years after the merger. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=20769 |
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