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Who wrote the book and presented the recent t.v. series 'The Diamond Queen'? | Andrew Marr recovering in hospital after suffering a stroke, BBC says - Telegraph
Andrew Marr recovering in hospital after suffering a stroke, BBC says
Andrew Marr is recovering in hospital after suffering a stroke.
Andrew Marr is responding to treatment in hospital after suffering a stroke Photo: REX FEATURES
By Gordon Rayner and James Kirkup
7:13AM GMT 10 Jan 2013
The 53–year–old BBC presenter was "responding to treatment", according to his doctors, and friends said he was conscious and able to speak – one of the most important indicators of a stroke victim's ability to make a good recovery.
Colleagues spoke of their shock last night that he had suffered a stroke at such a young age, considering he is a lifelong fitness fanatic.
Marr has been a keen distance runner since he was a schoolboy, though he has admitted to having "a few years of hard drinking and smoking" when he first began in journalism.
Jonathan Dimbleby said: "I'm very shocked that someone so energetic, fit and young should have a stroke.
"I just hope it's very mild and that he recovers from it swiftly."
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Andrew Neil, a fellow BBC political broadcaster, said he was "very distressed" by the news and wished Marr a "full and speedy recovery".
Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, was among the first of Marr's many interview subjects to wish him well, saying: "My thoughts are with Andrew and his family. I hope he gets well soon."
Marr became ill on Tuesday and was taken to hospital, where he was diagnosed as having suffered a stroke, according to a statement released by the BBC. His wife, Jackie Ashley, a political journalist at The Guardian, and their son and two daughters asked for their "privacy to be respected as he recovers".
The fact that he was able to speak was "encouraging", according to one friend who asked not to be named. The friend added that Marr's treatment and recovery was "still at a very early stage".
Born in Glasgow and educated at Cambridge, Marr took up distance running at school because he lacked "handeye co–ordination or courage", he once said. He has been running ever since, taking his training shoes with him wherever in the world he has worked.
Writing in The Daily Telegraph six years ago, after he ruptured an Achilles tendon following decades of wear and tear, he described how he once ran a marathon "more or less on the spur of the moment" and said running "was partly who I was" and "kept me sane" as he tackled a punishing workload.
Experts on strokes said high blood pressure was the most common cause of the condition.
Marr, a former editor of The Independent newspaper and the BBC's former political editor, is one of the BBC's busiest presenters.
As well as his regular Sunday morning show on BBC1, he presents Start the Week on Radio 4, and last year he hosted two major BBC series, Andrew Marr's History of the World and The Diamond Queen, about the life and reign of the Queen, which was shown just before the Diamond Jubilee celebrations.
He also wrote books that accompanied the series, and in recent years has presented two major series on the history of Britain in the 20th century, as well as Andrew Marr's Megacities.
In September last year he described himself as a "fool" after he was pictured embracing a female producer on his History of the World series with one of his hands down the back of her trousers, blaming a "state of utter exhaustion" at the end of the two–year project.
In 2011, it emerged that Marr had taken out a super–injunction gagging newspapers from reporting an extra–marital affair with a female journalist, which he allowed to lapse after discovering he was not, as he had first thought, the father of her child.
When he suffered his painful and debilitating ruptured Achilles tendon, Marr wrote that "medically, in the great run of things I'm a lucky sod" because "there are enough cancers, strokes and heart attacks around for us to keep our sympathy focused there".
The BBC said The Andrew Marr Show and Start the Week would continue with guest presenters until Marr was well enough to return to the screen.
| Andrew Marr |
In which event did Chris Hoy win a Gold Medal at the recent World Track Cycling Championships? | BBC One - The Andrew Marr Show - Andrew Marr
The Andrew Marr Show
Read more about sharing.
Andrew Marr
Since Andrew Marr took over the coveted Sunday morning slot on BBC One in 2005, 'The Andrew Marr Show' has become the place where top politicians make news, cultural icons inform and entertain and the UK's most influential commentators share their analysis and insights.
The Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition and other senior figures in public life frequently appear on the agenda-setting interview programme.
Memorable moments - which still resonate - include Gordon Brown announcing he would not hold an early election within months of taking office, and the Archbishop of York cutting up his dog collar in protest at the regime in Zimbabwe.
We have even broadcast the programme from the state rooms of 10 Downing Street and from the sitting room of David Cameron's London family home.
And there have been many other unforgettable appearances from stars such as Dame Helen Mirren, Annie Lennox, Robert Redford, Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese, Kate Winslet, Tom Jones, Art Garfunkel and Angelina Jolie.
Nearly two million viewers watch the show every week; its success has been recognised with awards from the media professionals of the Broadcasting Press Guild (Best Presenter), and the Plain English Campaign - which chose 'The Andrew Marr Show' as the Best National TV Programme.
Andrew also hosts BBC Radio 4's 'Start the Week' every Monday and wrote and presented his own 'History of Modern Britain' and 'The Making of Modern Britain' for BBC2, which were hugely popular with viewers and won prestigious awards from the Royal Television Society, the Broadcasting Press Guild and BAFTA.
More recent offerings include the 'Diamond Queen' documentary and he is also working on new series, 'History of the World'.
Born in Glasgow, Andrew went to school in Scotland and gained a first-class degree in English from Cambridge University.
He began his career in journalism on The Scotsman newspaper in 1981, later moving to London to become its political correspondent.
He was part of the team which launched The Independent in 1986 and returned as its editor, after a stint at The Economist magazine.
He was then a columnist for The Express and The Observer before making the move into television, as the BBC's Political Editor, in May 2000.
With his insight and unique style, Andrew quickly made his mark, winning awards from the RTS and BAFTA for this reporting, principally on the Ten O'Clock News.
He has written several books on politics and history but is modest about his achievements.
In his autobiography 'My Trade: a History of British Journalism' (Macmillan, 2004) he explained how he "stumbled" into his career:
"I couldn't sing, act, tell jokes, play any musical instrument, hit kick or catch a ball, run for more than a few yards without panting, speak another language, or assemble things without them falling apart immediately.
"I was a scientifically illiterate innocent with the entrepreneurial instincts of a thirteenth-century peasant and the iron determination of a butterfly.
"Journalism seemed the only option."
Andrew cites his hobbies as reading, cooking and painting.
He is married to the political journalist Jackie Ashley and they have three children.
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What is the two-word name of the airport at Yeadon in West Yorkshire? | Leeds Bradford Airport - yorkshire.travel
Leeds Bradford Airport
Location
Leeds Bradford Airport is located at Yeadon, in the City of Leeds Metropolitan District in West Yorkshire. It is a base for Jet2.com, Monarch Airlines and Ryanair. Thomson Airways is seasonally based at the airport, all departing to various locations across the globe.
Address
| Leeds Bradford Airport |
Who had the Christmas number one in 1990 with 'Saviour's Day'? | Leeds Bradford Airport Hotel - Parking in Yeadon | ParkMe
Leeds Bradford Airport Hotel
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Which Australian state capital is on the same longitude as Hong Kong? | Hong Kong - Geography
Economy l Geography l Government l History l People l Religion
Geography
Hong Kong island sits just south of the Tropic of Cancer on similar latitudes as Calcutta, Havana, and Hawaii, and sharing the same longitude as Wuhan in central China, Bali, and Perth. Surrounding the country's southern coast is the South China Sea.
The country consists of a peninsular protruding from southeastern China and hundreds of islands scattered off the coast. Kowloon and the New Territories make up the peninsular, while south off the mainland is Hong Kong Island and various other remote islands.
Deep waters surround Hong Kong, and with its wide harbors protected by mountains in the north and south, the region is favorable as a passing point for ships. Its geographical location between the Taiwan Straits, the South China Sea, and the Pacific Ocean make it a strategic channel for sea traffic in Asia and the world.
Size
Hong Kong is a small-sized island covering 1,095 sq. km (423 sq. miles). However, there are currently many reclamation projects at hand, thus expanding the land area. Hong Kong never used to be as big as it is now. From 1851 to 1997, the total area of land reclaimed from the sea measured to 60 sq. km (23 sq. miles). In area, the island of Hong Kong is 80 sq. km (31 sq. miles), Kowloon peninsular is 47 sq. km (18 sq. miles), the New Territories is 794 sq. km (306 sq. miles), and the remote islands total 175 sq. km (67 sq. miles).
Topography
Hong Kong stands on volcanic terra firma, with its landscape dominated by hills and mountains. A crest lining from the northeast to southwest forms the backbone of Hong Kong. Kowloon peninsular and the northwestern New Territories are mainly flat areas. Three percent of Hong Kong's total land area is agriculturally cultivated and this is mostly at the New Territories large alluvial plains.
A narrow piece of flat land between the mountains and the sea along the north shore in Hong Kong is vacated by most of the country's population, whereas the south shore has luxury residential buildings and some nice beaches, such as Stanley and Repulse Bays. There is a tunnel that was built through the mountains, which links the north and south shores.
The highest peak is Ta Mo Shan, located in central New Territories at 957 meters (3,140 ft) above sea level, while the lowest is Lo Chau Mun at 66 meters (217ft). Victoria Peak, or 'The Peak', is only 552 meters (1,811ft) but its spectacular view of Victoria Harbour, Kowloon, and the Central and Wan Chai strip of Hong Kong Island has made an international reputation for itself.
In total, there are about 234 outlying islands in the country, with the island of Hong Kong being the most famous and populated. Even then, Hong Kong is not reputed to be the largest island around. Lantau Island is by far the biggest of Hong Kong's islands. It has now surfaced from its remoteness to becoming the site of the new, high-tech Chek Lap Kok international airport.
Although Hong Kong dwells on volcanic plains, there are only minor seismic activities, occasionally causing tremors. To date, no major earthquakes have been reported, but the last that occurred in the region was back in 1874, with a magnitude of 5.75 on the Richter scale, which caused only minor damages.
Climate
Hong Kong has a subtropical climate because of the wide temperature range and cooler winters. Even though Hong Kong's latitude is within the tropics, its seasonal changes are greater than in most places at similar latitudes. Monsoons and seasonal alternation of winds often dominate the climatic system of the country.
Spring occurs in the months of March to the middle of May. Temperature rises ranges from 18� to 27�C (64�-80� F) and humidity averages up to 77 percent. Some, with fog, constant rain and showers, and only a few moments of sunshine, consider the transitional period from winter to summer miserable. The average annual rainfall is 2,200 millimeters, with about 80 percent of the total falling occurring at this period. Higher statures, such as west of the New Territories and the southern islands, receive more rainfall than any other areas.
From June to mid September, summer takes over. The weather becomes hot and humid, with temperatures ranging from 26� to 33�C (78�-91�F) and humidity level at above 86 percent. It is advisable to always carry an umbrella or to wear a hat to shield against intense sunshine.
The best times to visit Hong Kong would be during autumn and winter when the air is dry and cool. These times are between the months of mid September to February. In autumn, clear sunny days are usually expected and temperatures range from 18� to 28�C (64�-82�F). Humidity averages 72 percent. Winter, on the other hand, starts from mid December to February. January is normally the coldest month. Temperatures can drop from 20�C to about 10�C (50�F), with occasional chills.
Visitors to Hong Kong during the monsoon period should be wary and prepared with umbrellas at all times. Dress warmly, or carry along a jacket or sweater just in case there is a sudden change in weather.
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| Perth |
In 1742 Willian Pulteney was created the first Earl of which city? | Distance Calculator - How far is it from Perth – Western Australia – Australia...
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Which entertainer is married to 1975 'Miss World' Wilnelia Merced? | Miss World 1975 becomes ‘Lady’ | Global Beauties
Miss World 1975 becomes ‘Lady’
By Ed | News | 13 October 2011
Miss World 1975, Puerto Rican Wilnelia Merced-Forsyth, received the title of ‘Lady’ after her husband Sir Bruce Forsyth -long time British entertainer- received his knighthood by Queen Elizabeth on October 11th.
Bruce Forsyth received his long-awaited knighthood yesterday – and managed to surprise the Queen in the process. After the ceremony at Buckingham Palace, the 83-year-old said: ‘The Queen told me: “Thank you for entertaining the country for so long.”
The 85-year-old monarch – a fan of Strictly Come Dancing, which the entertainer hosts – awarded him the title of Sir Bruce Forsyth-Johnson, Knight Bachelor for services to entertainment and charity.
He was dubbed a knight by the Queen, who lightly touched him on the shoulder with a sword that belonged to her father, George VI. The king used the ceremonial weapon when he was colonel of the Scots Guards while Duke of York, before being crowned.
As he emerged from the ballroom, Sir Bruce called out ‘Good luck’ to honours recipients on their way to receive their awards.
One joked: ‘We were impressed to see you get off your knees’, to which the entertainer replied: ‘That was an effort, I can tell you.’
Lady Forsyth, who turned 54 yesterday, said: ‘I could not be more proud of him.’
Joined by his Puerto Rico-born former Miss World wife, their 24-year-old son Jonathan Joseph, known as JJ, and his daughters from previous marriages Charlotte, 34, and Laura, 48, were also there to witness the proud day.
The award also marks his charity work, something the star does privately.
Admitting he feared he might never receive the honour, when the knighthood was announced in the summer, a delighted Sir Bruce said he could not wait to call his wife ‘my lady’.
Lady Forsyth has acted as a judge in several Miss World contests. Her mother, Delia Cruz is currently the head organizer of the local leg of the pageant in her home, Puerto Rico. Courtesy of the Daily Mail
Forsyth, Knighted by Queen Elizabeth
The knight and his brood: Sir Bruce and Wilnelia pose for a family portrait with their son Jonathan and his daughters Charlotte and Louisa from his second marriage to Anthea Redfern.
Wilnelia Merced was crowned Miss World in 1975. In 1983 she married Bruce Forsythe and made the United Kingdom her official residence as of today.
2011-10-13T06:15:49+00:00
EdNews
Miss World 1975, Puerto Rican Wilnelia Merced-Forsyth, received the title of 'Lady' after her husband Sir Bruce Forsyth -long time British entertainer- received his knighthood by Queen Elizabeth on October 11th. Bruce Forsyth received his long-awaited knighthood yesterday – and managed to surprise the Queen in the process. After the...
| Bruce Forsyth |
What is the first letter on registration plates of cars registered in Wales? | About Lady Wilnelia Forsyth - Artist, Designer
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About the brand
Wilnelia Forsyth London is a luxury fashion and home accessories lifestyle brand. Influenced by the beauty of the multi-coloured colonial houses of the Old San Juan in Puerto Rico, Wilnelia has created an original artwork that she uses throughout her collection.
Inspired by her childhood, Wilnelia has drawn on the beautiful fragrances of the Caribbean for the creation of her range of perfumed candles; Wilnelia Forsyth London. Working in association with top creative fragrance designers, she has distilled the essence of tropical sunshine into beautiful jars that glow with evocative scenes of colonial Old San Juan – the design of which is taken from Wilnelia’s own artwork.
The vision we have here at Wilnelia Forsyth London, is to create a distinct and beautiful lifestyle brand, one which can bring comfort to homes, the reassurance of happy memories, and the warmth of family life.
About Wilnelia
Born in Caguas, Puerto Rico, Wilnelia was crowned the first and only Miss World from the island in 1975. Her life since has been entrenched in fashion, signed by Eileen Ford in New York and worked as a model for Haute Couture houses such as Dior and Yves Saint Laurent in Paris. In 1983, Wilnelia married the British entertainer Sir Bruce Forsyth and started a family.
Lady Forsyth has always been inspired by and worked in the world of art, fashion and beauty. She graduated from the Turabo University of Puerto Rico with a BA Degree in Humanities with a concentration in History of Art, as well as undertaking studies in painting, sculpture and interior design, exploring her creativity.
In 1994 she formed ‘The Wilnelia Merced Forsyth Foundation ‘, a non-profit organisation which aims to improve healthcare and education for children in her native Puerto Rico. A continuous project close to her heart.
Copyright © 2017 Wilnelia Forsyth
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Which Manchester building was home to the Halle Orchestra until 1996? | Heritage | Hallé Orchestra
Heritage
Our History
The Hallé gave its first concert on 30th January 1858 under the baton of its founder Sir Charles Hallé.
Until his death in 1895 Sir Charles conducted almost every concert, and performed as piano soloist at many. His sudden death shocked Manchester and the wider musical world, with his funeral procession bringing the city to a standstill. Three of his closest friends immediately set about securing the future of the Orchestra. The 1895-96 season had already been planned and so Henry Simon, Gustav Behrens and James Forsyth guaranteed it against loss. They renewed this commitment for a further three years whilst they set about forming and incorporating the Hallé Concerts Society. Under the guidance of such distinguished conductors as Hans Richter, Sir Hamilton Harty and Sir John Barbirolli the Orchestra continued to thrive and develop.
For the vast majority of its history the Hallé’s home in Manchester was the Free Trade Hall. When war broke out in 1939 the building was requisitioned and of course bombed in the Manchester Blitz. During the war period the Hallé performed concert series in the Albert Hall and Kings Hall Belle Vue, as well in various other venues in and around Manchester including a variety of cinemas. The Free Trade Hall was rebuilt, opening with a triumphant season of concerts in 1951. The Hallé performed its last concert there on 30th June 1996 before moving into its magnificent new home just a few minutes walk away at The Bridgewater Hall.
Hallé Concerts Society
The Hallé Concerts Society was formally incorporated on 28 June 1899, although plans for its formation had been formed almost immediately after Sir Charles Halle died in 1895. A properly constituted body of guarantors was seen as the best way of securing the future of the Hallé Concerts and the Orchestra. Originally there were 50 members, including the then Lord Mayor, Alderman Gibson, the four local MPs, who included Prime Minister Balfour, three members of the Forsyth and Behrens families and Miss Gaskell, daughter of the author. The Society elected a Committee of Management, later the Executive Committee and eventually the Board. The first members were E J Broadfield, Chairman; Adolph Brodsky, Henry Simon, James Forsyth & Gustav Behrens. J Aikman Forsyth was the Hon. Secretary.
The Hallé archive consists of a number of distinct collections. The largest of these is the records of the Hallé Concerts Society but there are also private collections including the Richter Archive, as well a complete collection of concert programmes for the Manchester series from 1858, a photographic and sound archive. The archive is open to researchers wishing to consult material by appointment only – please contact the archives staff on [email protected] to arrange access.
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Download The 2016-17 Season Brochure
Don’t want to view online? You can find all of our 2016-17 season concerts in one handy pdf brochure here.
Box office: 0161 907 9000
Hallé Concerts Society
| Free Trade Hall |
What relation was Richard II to his predecessor Edward III? | Hallé Orchestra | Little Bits of History
Little Bits of History
Posted in History by patriciahysell on January 30, 2012
Hallé Orchestra
January 30, 1858: The Hallé Orchestra performs for the first time. The Hallé is the oldest existing symphony orchestra in the world and the fourth orchestra to be assembled. Charles Hallé was a German pianist and conductor. Born in Germany in 1819, Hallé moved first to Paris then arrived in England in 1848 and settled in Manchester. He started a series of classical music concerts and gave performances throughout England. He was the first pianist in England to play all of Beethoven’s piano sonatas.
In May 1857 Hallé brought a group of musicians together to perform at the Manchester Arts Treasures Exhibition. They performed together for six months and disbanded. Hallé decided to formally organize an orchestra and they gave their first concert at the Free Trade Hall. They did well until 1861 when they only gave two concerts but they survived the lean times. Hallé was knighted in 1890 and died in 1895. The Orchestra’s leadership was taken over by Hans Richter from 1899 to 1911. The Orchestra thrived under his direction and was honored to be able to present Sir Edward Alger’s Symphony No 1 for its premiere performance.
The Orchestra was again in trouble by 1943 when membership had declined to thirty. Between 1943 and 1970 under the directorship of Sir John Barbirolli, the Orchestra returned to its former glory. They made many recordings and were the premiere performers for Symphony No 8 by Ralph Vaughn Williams. Today, the Orchestra’s Musical Director is Sir Mark Elder. The Principal Guest Conductor is Christian Mandeal. The orchestra is joined by the Hallé Choir, Hallé Youth Orchestra, and Hallé Youth Choir.
The Free Trade Hall served as the venue for concerts from the orchestra’s founding until 1996. The Free Trade Hall was built in 1853-56 near the site of the 1819 Peterloo Massacre. The building was a symbolic salute to free trade and was instrumental in bringing wealth to Manchester during the Industrial Revolution. The Bridgewater Hall, the new venue, cost £42 million to build and opened September 11, 1996. They hold over 250 performances annually. The auditorium seats 2,341 people and is home to a pipe organ with 5,500 pipes.
For better or worse, you must play your own little instrument in the orchestra of life. – Dale Carnegie
To me, the piano in itself is an orchestra. – Cecil Taylor
Music is the most important thing. I’m thinking of my future. There has to be something new, and I want to be part of it. I want to lead an orchestra with excellent musicians. I want to play music which draws pictures of the world and its space. – Jimi Hendrix
I conceived of an instrument that would create sound without using any mechanical energy, like the conductor of an orchestra. The orchestra plays mechanically, using mechanical energy; the conductor just moves his hands, and his movements have an effect on the music artistry – Leon Theremin
Also on this day:
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In which county can you walk the 15 mile Tennyson Trail? | Go Walking on the Isle of Wight - Wightlink Ferries
Walking on the Isle of Wight
Take a walk on the Wight side
The Isle of Wight is perfect walking country, whether you’re out for a family stroll, a jaunt down to the beach, picnic at the ready, or a more serious hike over high downs and along chalk cliffs. With over 500 miles of marked footpaths and routes through designated Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty, forests and wetlands, you’ll be amazed by the ever-changing views, the light and the clean, fresh air.
Remarkably all this freedom is just a short Wightlink Ferry crossing from the mainland. So you could easily pop over for the day, say to Yarmouth, and explore a little of the wildly beautiful scenery of West Wight. Or come for a week and find somewhere new to discover every day, take the exhilarating Tennyson Trail or even follow the coastal path right around the Island.
Many walks will take you close to Island attractions from theme parks and zoos to historic houses and sub-tropical gardens. And wherever you go, you’re never far from a welcoming country pub, teashop or restaurant, where you can recharge and refuel.
So come on over and walk where there’s room to breathe.
Looking for things to do on the Island during your walk?
You can pick up our Wightlife Magazine at the Wightlink Terminals or visit the Tourist Information Points on the Island:
Brading Tourist Information Point – Sandown
Address: Station Road, Brading, Sandown, Isle Of Wight, PO36 0EB
Opening hours: 10am – 4pm daily (closed Monday & Friday)
Brighstone Tourist Information Point – Newport
Address: Main Road, Brighstone, Newport, Isle Of Wight, PO30 4AH
East Cowes Tourist Information Point – East Cowes
Address: Valu 4 U, Castle Street, EAST COWES, Isle of Wight, PO32 6RD
Opening hours: 7.30am – 6pm daily (closed Sundays)
Freshwater Bay Tourist Information Point – Freshwater Bay
Address: Dimbola Museum and Galleries, Terrace Lane, FRESHWATER BAY, Isle Of Wight, PO40 9QE
Godshill Tourist Information Point – Ventnor
Address: Godshill Village Store, High Street, Godshill, Ventnor, Isle Of Wight, PO38 3HH
Havenstreet Tourist Information Point – Havenstreet
Address: Isle of Wight Steam Railway, The Railway Station, Station Road, HAVENSTREET, Isle Of Wight, PO33 4DS
Newport Tourist Information Point (IW County Press Shop) – Newport
Address: 123 Pyle Street, Newport, Isle Of Wight, PO30 1ST
Newport Tourist Information Point (Quay Arts Centre) – Newport
Address: Quay Arts Centre, 15 Sea Street, Newport Harbour, Newport, Isle Of Wight, PO30 5BD
Ryde Tourist Information Point – Ryde
Address: Kollective Gifts, 10 Esplanade, Ryde, Isle Of Wight, PO33 2DY
Sandown Tourist Information Point – Sandown
Address: Art 2 Artz Community Arts Studio & Gallery, 2 Albert Road, Sandown, Isle Of Wight, PO36 8AN
Shanklin Tourist Information Point – Shanklin
Address: 1 Eastcliff Road, Shanklin, Isle Of Wight, PO37 6AA
Opening hours: 10am – 11pm (Monday – Saturday); 11am – 10.30pm (Sunday)
Ventnor Tourist Information Point – Ventnor
Address: 8 – 10 High Street, Ventnor, Isle Of Wight, PO38 1RY
Opening hours: 7.30am – 5.30pm (Monday – Saturday); 9am – 12pm (Sunday)
Yarmouth Tourist Information Point – Yarmouth
Address: Harbour Office, The Quay, Yarmouth, Isle Of Wight, PO41 0NT
2 people found this faq useful.
Island walks
Wightlink knows the Isle of Wight inside out and when it comes to walking we can recommend the best routes to suit you, your interests and your energy levels.
It’s easy to find what will suit you best by clicking on your chosen categories:
Key to icons:
| Isle of Wight |
What is the cost of a second class stamp for a letter up to 100 grams? | Go Walking on the Isle of Wight - Wightlink Ferries
Walking on the Isle of Wight
Take a walk on the Wight side
The Isle of Wight is perfect walking country, whether you’re out for a family stroll, a jaunt down to the beach, picnic at the ready, or a more serious hike over high downs and along chalk cliffs. With over 500 miles of marked footpaths and routes through designated Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty, forests and wetlands, you’ll be amazed by the ever-changing views, the light and the clean, fresh air.
Remarkably all this freedom is just a short Wightlink Ferry crossing from the mainland. So you could easily pop over for the day, say to Yarmouth, and explore a little of the wildly beautiful scenery of West Wight. Or come for a week and find somewhere new to discover every day, take the exhilarating Tennyson Trail or even follow the coastal path right around the Island.
Many walks will take you close to Island attractions from theme parks and zoos to historic houses and sub-tropical gardens. And wherever you go, you’re never far from a welcoming country pub, teashop or restaurant, where you can recharge and refuel.
So come on over and walk where there’s room to breathe.
Looking for things to do on the Island during your walk?
You can pick up our Wightlife Magazine at the Wightlink Terminals or visit the Tourist Information Points on the Island:
Brading Tourist Information Point – Sandown
Address: Station Road, Brading, Sandown, Isle Of Wight, PO36 0EB
Opening hours: 10am – 4pm daily (closed Monday & Friday)
Brighstone Tourist Information Point – Newport
Address: Main Road, Brighstone, Newport, Isle Of Wight, PO30 4AH
East Cowes Tourist Information Point – East Cowes
Address: Valu 4 U, Castle Street, EAST COWES, Isle of Wight, PO32 6RD
Opening hours: 7.30am – 6pm daily (closed Sundays)
Freshwater Bay Tourist Information Point – Freshwater Bay
Address: Dimbola Museum and Galleries, Terrace Lane, FRESHWATER BAY, Isle Of Wight, PO40 9QE
Godshill Tourist Information Point – Ventnor
Address: Godshill Village Store, High Street, Godshill, Ventnor, Isle Of Wight, PO38 3HH
Havenstreet Tourist Information Point – Havenstreet
Address: Isle of Wight Steam Railway, The Railway Station, Station Road, HAVENSTREET, Isle Of Wight, PO33 4DS
Newport Tourist Information Point (IW County Press Shop) – Newport
Address: 123 Pyle Street, Newport, Isle Of Wight, PO30 1ST
Newport Tourist Information Point (Quay Arts Centre) – Newport
Address: Quay Arts Centre, 15 Sea Street, Newport Harbour, Newport, Isle Of Wight, PO30 5BD
Ryde Tourist Information Point – Ryde
Address: Kollective Gifts, 10 Esplanade, Ryde, Isle Of Wight, PO33 2DY
Sandown Tourist Information Point – Sandown
Address: Art 2 Artz Community Arts Studio & Gallery, 2 Albert Road, Sandown, Isle Of Wight, PO36 8AN
Shanklin Tourist Information Point – Shanklin
Address: 1 Eastcliff Road, Shanklin, Isle Of Wight, PO37 6AA
Opening hours: 10am – 11pm (Monday – Saturday); 11am – 10.30pm (Sunday)
Ventnor Tourist Information Point – Ventnor
Address: 8 – 10 High Street, Ventnor, Isle Of Wight, PO38 1RY
Opening hours: 7.30am – 5.30pm (Monday – Saturday); 9am – 12pm (Sunday)
Yarmouth Tourist Information Point – Yarmouth
Address: Harbour Office, The Quay, Yarmouth, Isle Of Wight, PO41 0NT
2 people found this faq useful.
Island walks
Wightlink knows the Isle of Wight inside out and when it comes to walking we can recommend the best routes to suit you, your interests and your energy levels.
It’s easy to find what will suit you best by clicking on your chosen categories:
Key to icons:
| i don't know |
What nationality was the mathematician Leonhard Euler (1707- 1783)? | Euler, Leonhard (1707-1783) -- from Eric Weisstein's World of Scientific Biography
Euler, Leonhard (1707-1783)
Swiss mathematician who was tutored by Johann Bernoulli . He worked at the Petersburg Academy and Berlin Academy of Science. He had a phenomenal memory, and once did a calculation in his head to settle an argument between students whose computations differed in the fiftieth decimal place. Euler lost sight in his right eye in 1735, and in his left eye in 1766. Nevertheless, aided by his phenomenal memory (and having practiced writing on a large slate when his sight was failing him), he continued to publish his results by dictating them. Euler was the most prolific mathematical writer of all times finding time (even with his 13 children) to publish over 800 papers in his lifetime. He won the Paris Academy Prize 12 times. When asked for an explanation why his memoirs flowed so easily in such huge quantities, Euler is reported to have replied that his pencil seemed to surpass him in intelligence. François Arago said of him "He calculated just as men breathe, as eagles sustain themselves in the air" (Beckmann 1971, p. 143; Boyer 1968, p. 482).
Euler systematized mathematics by introducing the symbols e
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Which female singing voice has a range between soprano and contralto? | Molecular Expressions: Science, Optics and You - Timeline - Leonhard Euler
Leonhard Euler
(1707-1783)
Leonhard Euler is best known as a prolific mathematician, but he also made notable contributions in optics and astronomy. He was born in Basel, Switzerland on April 15, 1707, the son of Paul Euler, a Protestant minister, and Margaret Brucker, the daughter of a Protestant minister. Accordingly, Leonhard Euler was raised to follow suit and join the ministry, but his father had sparked his interest in mathematics at a young age and this interest was further cultivated at the University of Basel, which he entered at the age of fourteen. His prodigious ability in the field impressed renowned mathematics professor Johann Bernoulli, who allowed Euler to visit with him on Sundays to discuss any difficulties the young scholar had in understanding the advanced books on mathematics that he had recommended. Yet, even in 1723, Euler still appeared to be set on a course that would lead him to the Church, having gained his Master�s in philosophy and embarked on studies of theology. Soon after, however, with the help of Bernoulli, Euler convinced his father to permit him to study mathematics instead.
In 1726, Euler completed his studies and began seeking an academic appointment, which he quickly received from the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. Though he would have preferred to stay at Basel and was hoping to be presented a post there before he left for Russia, none was offered to him, perhaps because he was still only nineteen years old. Thus, he arrived in St. Petersburg in 1727 and enlisted with the Russian navy, which he was required to remain a member of until 1730, when he was made a full member of the Academy. Three years later Euler�s fortune improved to an even greater extent when the senior chair of mathematics at the institution, Daniel Bernoulli, decided to return to Switzerland and his position was given to Euler. The additional income from this appointment made it possible for Euler to marry Katharina Gsell, the daughter of a Swiss artist. Over the course of their marriage the couple would have thirteen children, five of which would survive infancy. In 1741, when Russia was in a state of political flux, the family relocated to Germany so that Euler could take a position as professor of mathematics at the Berlin Academy of Sciences, but eventually returned to St. Petersburg in 1766 at the behest of Catherine the Great.
Euler�s mathematical achievements are numerous and varied. As an example, he established a set of equations (known as Euler equations) describing fluid mechanics that stemmed from Isaac Newton's laws of motion, formed the theory of trigonometric and logarithmic functions, and developed the important mathematical concept of a function. He also introduced many forms of mathematical notation that are still in use today, made significant contributions to number theory, and solved the famous seven bridges of K�nigsberg problem, which concerned whether or not the bridges connecting the two islands and the mainland of the city of K�nigsberg could be traversed in such a way that no bridge was crossed more than once and the starting point was also the ending point. Though most of his work was focused upon pure mathematics, he also applied his analytical skills to other areas. He was particularly interested in lunar motion and made significant improvements in the theory used to explain and predict such motion. His contributions to the area allowed the calculation of more accurate lunar tables, which were commonly used then by sailors to determine longitude. He also attempted to apply mathematics to music, but his ideas in this area were not well received.
In optics, Euler entered the debate on the nature of light and argued, contrary to the more popular view at the time, that light was not composed of particles. Instead, Euler�s theory of light was founded upon the existence of ether, which he believed served as a pervasive medium for light vibrations. As Euler and many other later scientists viewed the matter, the phenomenon of diffraction could be more readily explained by a wave theory of light. Though it was eventually proved in the late 1800s that ether does not exist, many of Euler�s other views on optics turned out to be correct. For example, although Isaac Newton had declared it theoretically impossible to produce achromatic lenses, Euler disagreed based on the fact that the eye is composed of lenses that can create a near- perfect image. Moreover, Euler proved his case that certain combinations of lenses with different refracting characteristics could correct aberration through analytical means, though he was never able to actually build the achromatic system he suggested. Much of Euler�s work on light was published in the three-part work Dioptrica, the first volume of which was published in 1769. Within Dioptrica, the properties of lenses are discussed, the groundwork for the calculation of optical systems is established, and descriptions of microscopes and telescopes are provided.
Euler�s output of mathematical and scientific works is practically unequaled by any other scholar in history. He published more than 500 works during his lifetime and at least another 400 were released after his death in 1783. Producing such an extensive body of scholarly material was somewhat detrimental to Euler�s health, and eyestrain is often considered to have greatly contributed to Euler losing his eyesight, first in one eye and then in the other as well, leaving him completely blind in his later years. The fact that his blindness did not hinder his work, which he continued to carry out with the help of family members and assistants, is a testament to his outstanding memory and exceptional ability to carry out complex calculations in his head. Up to the very day he died, on September 18, 1783, Euler pursued the solutions to mathematic and scientific questions with an uncommon insight and determination.
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In which decade did W B Yeats and G B Shaw win the Nobel Prize for Literature? | In Memoriam: Seamus Heaney(1939-2013) | Irish America
Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature
Lightenings viii
The annals say: when the monks of Clonmacnoise
Were all at prayers inside the oratory
A ship appeared above them in the air.
The anchor dragged along behind so deep
It hooked itself into the altar rails
And then, as the big hull rocked to a standstill,
A crewman shinned and grappled down the rope
And struggled to release it. But in vain.
‘This man can’t bear our life here and will drown,’
The abbot said, ‘unless we help him.’ So
They did, the freed ship sailed, and the man climbed back
Out of the marvellous as he had known it.
—This poem was cited specifically by the Nobel Prize Committee
Seamus Heaney was awarded the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature in Stockholm, Sweden last November, and all of Ireland was proud. It wasn’t that there hadn’t been Irish writers who had taken the prize before—W.B. Yeats, G.B. Shaw, and Samuel Beckett had all been honored—but the confirmation of Heaney was different. Such institutions as the New York Times who consistently refer to Shaw as British, who also subliminally lay claim to Yeats by labeling him Anglo-Irish and place Beckett outside the realm of Irish, could make no such claim of Heaney, as both the work and person are unmistakably of Ireland.
The award was given to Heaney “for works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past.” And as a poet he returns again and again to excavate the rural landscape of his upbringing.
Born on April 13, 1939, the eldest of nine children, to Margaret and Patrick Heaney, at the family farm in Mossbawn, County Derry, the poet remembered his upbringing in his Nobel acceptance speech:
In the 1940s, when I was the eldest child of an ever-growing family in rural County Derry, we crowded together in the three rooms of a traditional thatched farmstead and lived a kind of den-life which was more or less emotionally and intellectually proofed against the outside world. It was an intimate, physical, creaturely existence in which the night sounds of the horse in the stable beyond one bedroom wall mingles with the sounds of adult conversation from the kitchen beyond the other….
After attending the local school at Anahorish, Heaney studied at Queens University in Belfast—his father referred to him as a “scholarship boy”—and graduated with a degree in English in 1961. He earned a teaching certificate at St. Joseph’s College in Belfast the following year, and went on to lecture in English at the same school. It was during this time that he began to write, publishing in school magazines under the pseudonym Incertus.
In the mid-1960s, Heaney published Eleven Poems. He married Marie Devlin in 1965, and a year later became a lecturer in modern English literature at Queens University, the same year that Faber and Faber published his collection Death of a Naturalist, which won the E.C. Gregory Award, the Cholmondeley Award, the Somerset Maugham Award, and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize.
During this period Heaney and his wife had two sons, Michael (1965) and Christopher (1968).
Heaney struggled long and hard with the complexity of the situation in Northern Ireland at the time, and eventually decided to leave his home. “What I was longing for was not quite stability but an active escape from the quicksand of relativism, a way of crediting poetry without anxiety or apology,” he said.
In 1969, his second of ten volumes of poems, Door into the Dark, was published, and in 1970 Heaney and his family moved to Berkeley, California, where he was a guest lecturer at the University of California. He returned to the North in 1971, but a year later resigned his position at Queens University and moved to the Republic.
“So It was that I found myself in the mid-1970s in another small house, this time in County Wicklow, south of Dublin, with a young family of my own,” Heaney said.
In 1972, Heaney published Wintering Out, and the following year his daughter, Catherine, was born. During this period, Heaney won many awards, gave readings in England and the U.S., and edited two poetry anthologies. He began teaching at Dublin’s Carysfort College in 1975, and six years later took the position of visiting professor at Harvard University. Three more collections of his work were published during this time—Field Work, Selected Poems, and Preoccupations: Selected Prose.
By 1984, Heaney’s Station Island had been published, and he had been elected the Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard.
The deaths of his parents—his mother in 1984 and his father in 1987—had great influence on Heaney’s work, and were reflected in The Haw Lantern (1987) and Seeing Things (1991). His series of sonnets titled “Clearances” were written as a memorial to his mother.
Although Heaney has not lived in Northern Ireland for some 25 years, there has always been a link between his writings and the tragic situation which plays itself out there, and it seems only fitting that lines from his 1990 play, The Cure at Troy, should come to embody the hope of a nation in the wake of the IRA and loyalist cease-fires in 1994:
History says, Don’t hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme.
In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Heaney spoke of “poetry’s power to do the thing which always is and always be to poetry’s credit: the power to persuade that vulnerable part of our consciousness of its rightness in spite of the evidence of wrongness around it, the power to remind us that we are hunters and gatherers of values, that our very solitudes and distresses are creditable, in so far as they, too, are an earnest of our veritable human being.”
Seamus Heaney, for many years, has given voice to a struggling nation. Patricia Harty spoke with him in New York.
***
IRISH AMERICA: How has your winning the Nobel Prize affected your life?
SEAMUS HEANEY: It hasn’t changed my life, it has intensified aspects of it. Over the last ten years the demand to give lectures, to be present at cultural events, to open exhibitions, to do social and cultural duties—all of things that come with the business of being a writer—have multiplied drastically. So luckily I had got myself to set up to deal with all that. I have a place [in Wicklow] where I go to get away from it. Marie and I do have privacy at home [in Dublin] because the decorum of people is magnificent. There’s acknowledgement and recognition, but a minimum of intrusion.
Of course, something has changed because the word “Nobel” is a magic wand that is waved over you. But the actual day-to-day is just more busy, busy, busy.
IA: What does it mean to call yourself a poet?
SH: I think that if you call yourself a poet it means that you live by it, so to speak, and for it, in a very serious way. There’s a phrase of Ted Hughes which I like very much. He said that the true poem emerges from the place of ultimate suffering and decision in us, and I think if you call yourself a poet, you publicly consecrate yourself to living somehow by the places of suffering and decision.
IA: How does it feel to have the world reflect back at you that yes, indeed, you are a poet?
SH: I think the discipline which writers must perfect is the discipline of doubting the world, the discipline of self knowledge and self-castigation. Certainly the activity should induce a sense of vigilance—it’s a kind of spiritual exaction to be a writer. But the answer is that I accept the recognition in good faith.
IA: I find that reading your poetry can sometimes evoke painful memories. Is the creation itself painful?
SH: No, the creation of it is pleasurable. I’m sure that Beckett enjoyed doing his most painful work too. I think the sine qua non of the activity is some form of joy in the actual doing—it’s the bringing into alignment of the form, of delight and expression, bringing that together with the actual endured reality of life that gives you the balance. Take a novel by John McGahern where there is a kind of undertow of suffered life and a certain desolation, but there’s also the cello music of the writing itself. Composition is a pleasure when it’s going right, but when it’s not working it’s just sheer agony because then you’re having dry hoaks.
IA: Did you always have an instinct that this was what you wanted to do?
SH: I didn’t have an instinct, no. When I look back on that long ache that was my adolescence (and everybody else’s adolescence) I realize that I certainly had some artistic yearnings. I had a real desire to be able to play music, and I remember just wishing—there was no resentment here, by the way—wishing for access to music, to be able to play the piano, maybe. I was also in my late teens and early 20s working with marquetry—making pictures from wood and so on—so there was some desire for artistic expression.
Writing poems did give me a sense of myself, it verified something in me. There’s a psychic verification that artwork performs for the artist, and gradually I realized that writing was something that I could do.
IA: What was it that allowed this talent to flourish?
SH: Acceptance early on by editors I didn’t know when I was totally unknown myself. My first poems were written in—obscurity is the wrong word—just nowhere-ness. Obscurity somehow implies that you are being kept out of the light.
I was in Belfast, I had no literary contacts, but I had aspirations. And the fact that the poems were accepted by the Irish Times, Kilkenny Magazine, and the Belfast Telegraph in three months was terrific. Publication for a young writer is a crucial transition, it’s a rite of passage. You go from the unwritten state to the slight mystery of seeing your name in print. I was very lucky in that even my book was sent for, I didn’t have to tout it. Faber, before I had a manuscript ready, wrote to me.
IA: How did that change things for you?
SH: When your book is published and then well-received, you have created a textual creature with the same name as yourself and it’s recognized as a reflection of you, then you begin to be discussed as that creature out there. Now, in the beginning that is gratifying but gradually it becomes a haunting, and you have to develop a second relationship with that doppelganger, one of nonchalant indifference. In fact, you have to eventually discover a place to live completely separate from it—to let him continue his life in the world. That’s where I am now.
IA: Is it affecting you now?
SH: Yea, I have to continue in spite of it, you know? But it’s not, as my mother used to say about pregnancy, a killing condition.
IA: Can you tell me about your mother?
SH: My mother was very strong—very unruffable, steady on the emotional keel. Righteous and majestic and vulnerable, her McCann family were terrific, they had the volubility of protest—they were democrats. My father had a different kind of majesty, the country farmer’s silence and hauter.
My mother had an unbending thing which she shared with women of that generation, a child a year in eight, nine, ten years years. The giving-birth factor involved, I suppose, a wilful adherence to the compensations of Catholicism—the cult of the suffering mother of Jesus, the cult of the suffering Jesus, and the cult of St. Anne, the mother of Mary. These were actual real psychic resources for sublimation in the lives of women. In particular, for ones who were going through, without much consolation or understanding, the solitude and exhaustion of childbirth and child-rearing and the biological entrapment of being in a place with no birth control. Nowadays I remember that affirmative bold outcry of prayers from women in church as a cry of rage and defiance. My mother wouldn’t have put it that way—she would have seen it as a form of transport and endurance.
IA: Was it hard being a different type of man than your father?
SH: Well, I suppose there are two answers. It was not all hard socially, because there I was the scholarship boy, going to boarding school, and that path was mapped out. My father would just have said, “The teachers say he’s a smart chap.” Now, my father never, never advised me about anything, but I had a sense of his vigilance, his instinctive judgement not judgemental, more concerned and wise. He had a protective care. After I reached the age of 14 or 15 he just assumed I would choose my path, so there was no difficulty. Any difficulties were actually of the species rather than the biography—of sons growing up and fathers being there. It’s a Freudian generality I suppose.
IA: How did you manage to break with tradition and leave the farm?
SH: I never actually experienced it as a break. Whatever your background, poetry is going to be an extra-ness and a strangeness. Each poet is alone with his or her chances at the end as much as at the beginning. In some way, the farm background is like a mythic possession; you know what neolithic life was like if you have known rural life in pre-modern Ireland. And that is a great creative resource. A kind of dream-knowledge. I mean, creative is such a cant word, it’s just the ability to make something of the game—to keep moving it along, wakening it up and shifting it. Joseph Brodsky said a marvelous thing about poetry, that it wasn’t merely an art, it was an anthropological necessity because it prompted new possibilities for the destiny of the soul.
IA: Were you surprised at the Poem that was cited by the Nobel Committee, “Lightenings”?
SH: You mean the one about the monks at Clonmacnoise have the vision of a boat in the air above them? I was delighted with that, because the thing is a kind of image of poetry itself. It’s about the negotiation that goes on in everybody’s life between what is envisaged and what is endured—between the dream up there and the doings down here. It has the mysterious purchase of a good story but also it’s pregnant with suggestion. I think it’s about poetry, maybe that is why they cited it.
IA: There seems to be something in the Irish that makes them partial to poetry.
SH: There’s a tradition, a value system which is given, an historical myth or truth that predisposes us as a community and as individuals to trust in poetry. It’s a reality, there’s no doubt about it. If a poet published a poem in a newspaper in Ireland the judges will read it, the afternoon drinkers in the pub will read it, the Taoiseach will read it, the Protestant bishop will read it, the Catholic bishop will read it, the hostesses will read it, the gossip columnists will read it, and the name of the poet will be a possession. I think it’s a matter of some indifference whether they are equipped in any special literary way to read or judge poetry. We are talking about the actual role of the poet in society, and in Ireland there is no doubt that that role is alive and it contrasts vividly with what will happen in a poet publishes a poem in the Times of London, or in the New York Times. So fearful as I am of talking up romantic notions about Ireland, I think you have to concede that there is public, psychic and artistic reality in this which is a genuine positive cultural possession of the country.
IA: You are the first Irish Catholic to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. How important is Catholicism to you?
SH: I realize now that from the age of dawning of consciousness to the age of reason, or from about six months to age twelve, I was totally immersed in the religious sense of the world. In the world I grew up in, the mass was the social event of the week. The priest was one of the ruling class. And then when you went to college, you were already dealing with a mini-Maynooth. The whole sense of morality, right and wrong, everything was based on Catholicism, and it continued when you went to confession, weekly or monthly (in college it was communion daily), right through til your early 20s and the next drama of consciousness began as you started to secularize yourself in response to the world.
Obviously, I could talk until the cows come home about the minority status of Catholics in the North of Ireland, but that ground has been gone over a lot. I would say that the more important Catholic thing is the actual sense of eternal values and infamous vices which our education or formation gives us. There’s a sense of profoundness, a sense that the universe can be ashimmer with something, and Catholicism—even if I don’t like sentimentalizing it—was the backdrop to that whole thing. The world I grew up in offered me a sense that I was a citizen of the empyrean—the crystalline elsewhere of the world. But I think that’s gone from Catholicism now.
IA: You led a double life in that in addition to writing you also taught school. How did you manage both?
SH: I never conceived of a way of life where my writing vocations would actually be my whole life. This may have been a mistake—I’m talking now about a given ethic or attitude, one that didn’t deconstruct in myself. In the world I came out of—and it was inside me from the beginning and almost to the end—the general idea was that you worked for a living. You earned your keep, you asked for no special favors and you then prayed that grace would visit you. Laboring at your job doesn’t infuse you with the grace of poetry, but I thought of them as two separate things—one is the mystery of gift, and the other is getting on with it, conducting yourself as a citizen. I certainly didn’t think that if you were involved with the mystery of writing you had any right to expect better treatment or any special status as a citizen. That was a solidarity, I suppose, with the kind of unliterary life that I lived in the beginning. And then while I was teaching there was a desire to prove that poetry wasn’t effete or a betrayal of loyalty to humble origin. So my teaching at school was a defense of poetry as part of the fabric of the usual life. You demystified it, you toned it down and you called people towards it by saying, “look, it’s quite simple.”
I have now come to realize that this too is misrepresenting things and that you should stand up for strangeness, the otherness and the challenges of this stuff. Whereas at the beginning I was more interested in bringing an audience towards it and calming their nerves, now I’m more interested in saying, “Down on your knees, this is the goods!”
IA: Did you enjoy teaching?
SH: I never enjoyed thinking about it, but I actually enjoyed doing it. It takes a long time for teachers to get over their self-preoccupation—will I be able to do it? People underestimate the sickening dread that can be in somebody as they stand up on a podium to begin a class. It’s hard for me to do a lecture to this day. I’m tense and I’m worried and I’m up early preparing it. So the answer to the question is ambivalence. I enjoy doing it when I’m doing it, but I don’t enjoy thinking about it.
IA: In terms of your own writing, are you very disciplined or do you wait for the muse?
SH: I’m not very disciplined, no. I’m half disciplined. I’m not a person who gets up every morning at the same time and sits at a desk and plunges into it. Prose writers have to do that. On the other hand, the older I get the more I feel that you should peg out a pitch and provide space for the game to be played, mark out a landing place for the muse if she wants to come down. So time, time alone, when the pages are in front of you, or you’re reading, time is what’s important. In the beginning, I used to say to myself anything that’s worthwhile forces itself through. And to some extent that’s true. But my life has become so besieged with different responsibilities…
The last decade and a half of lecturing and teaching at Harvard and Oxford—it’s also just a matter of growing older—the world places many, many demands on you so you have to be wary and in resistance to it and secure a space where poetry can come through. My redemption has been Wicklow, the actual house is 45 minutes from my Dublin home—it’s both a physical reality and psychic image of retreat. When I go there I feel gathered and safe and under cover.
IA: After the ceasefire was announced you write that you felt 25 years younger, but you were angry also at the 25 years of loss. You mentioned the inroads that were being made before the violence, when both traditions were finding “room to rhyme”.
SH: I felt the whole set of nascent politics has been obliterated from memory by what happened. There had been something in the air—it was the 60s taking on a special shape in Northern Ireland. There was a political shifting. This much younger generation of unionists was coming along—God knows they wouldn’t have been ideologically soft—but they had a social conscience of a different sort.
But I think the other thing that happened to me after the ceasefire was some kind of anger that I had suppressed in myself for years. It wasn’t anger at any one person or group, it was just the conditions—there’s a poem in The Spirit Level called “Mycenae Lookout” which is written from the point of view of the watchman during the Trojan war, and it was written out of this feeling. I always wanted to write about the watchman and I now realize that this poem is angry.
IA: How do you feel now?
SH: Obviously I think that the British government has been thick-witted and caught in a cultural and political posture that they can’t shake. I thought that the two months after the ceasefire offered a moment of genuine historic possibility which everyone expected Major to grasp. Reynolds and Hume were grasping the hands of Adams—they actually deliberately and tactically said “Let’s go.” And of course, Major hesitated and then hesitation became a funk. But for a while a possibility that had lurked in the political unconscious of the unionists allowed itself into their consciousness. They were aware that some change might be about to happen, and if that moment had been grasped history would have moved along. Now all that is past and I think that is the real tragedy of it. Now we’re just in the realm of mess and while mess is admittedly preferable to atrocity, I think it’ll drag on tediously, demeaningly. It’s just the usual tactics of politics, hacking it out along party political lines; they harry each other from the touchlines of their own positions. It’s so exhausting for the citizens and it’s so unpromising, but it’s the usual. I don’t think anything will be quickly resolved, everything will be messily deferred and deferred.
IA: Do you have any regrets about leaving the North?
SH: No, I’ve no regrets. It was actually transitional at the time I left—I had to make a move.
IA: Do you feel like James Joyce who went off into exile?
SH: Well, he went off in dudgeon. I didn’t leave in any form of dudgeon or resentment; I left because of a desire to be freer within myself, or simply to be more alone. This was not political, this was artistic and domestic. Moving to Wicklow was a crucial moment. Our own lives (I mean Marie’s life as well as mine) were reconstituted emotionally by going into a lonely place together. And it was very fortifying for the two of us. You took the measure of things again and started up again.
IA: Tell me about California.
SH: They were the best years of our lives, 1970, 1971—very important. It was the first time we had lived outside of Ireland, and Berkeley was a place of great promise and merriment. A place of reorientation after Belfast—Belfast was so radical, so downbeat, so corrective of any form of flourish—it was great to go to California where flourish was encouraged, where instead of refusal and irony there was indulgence. It was like going into a hot-house for the spirit.
IA: Did you ever think of staying there?
SH: Never, no. But I loved California, partly because it was such a helpful year for us.
IA: Do you think it’s essential to your poetry to live in Ireland?
SH: I don’t think it’s essential but—I don’t know the answer. The last 25 years have been so stressful and crucial it would seem to me that I couldn’t have knit myself into something workable without staying in Ireland.
IA: Do you still see yourself as a citizen of the North?
SH: The image I have is of the ripple going out, which is an image you can find in Joyce’s work. For him it was Sallins, Kildare, Ireland, British Isles, Europe, the universe; for me it was Derry, St. Columb’s, Queens, Berkeley, Wicklow, Harvard, Oxford—it’s the same sort of ripple. There’s a part of you that’s still an extension of the original self moving at the circumference of your adult cognition and realization. There’s something out there that is actually continuous with your first awareness. Your consciousness is such a strange, strange thing; it’s hard to talk about the inwardness of it—it’s both fixed from the beginning and yet at the same time it’s capable of taking in experience and newness. So I see myself as a big set of ripples, because if you look at the ripples in a pool when the stone is first throne in you can see them going out in big rings, but then at a certain point it looks like they are also going in towards the center. The circumference represents some form of knowledge. On the other hand, you always have to work with that which was there at the core from the beginning. I’m still writing about that. It’s just your perspective on your imaginative possessions changes. Your perspective on your cultural and emotional possessions changes. This negotiation between the center and the circumference, that’s where I live anyway.
***
From Whatever You Say Say Nothing
‘Religion’s never mentioned here,’ of course.
‘You know them by their eyes,’ and hold your tongue.
‘One side’s as bad as the other,’ never worse.
Christ, it’s near time that some small leak was sprung
In the great dykes the Dutchman made
To dam the dangerous tide that followed Seamus.
Yet for all this art and sedentary trade
I am incapable. The famous
Northern reticence, the tight gag of place
And times: yes, yes. Of the ‘wee six’ I sing
Where to be saved you only must save face
And whatever you say, you say nothing.
Blackberry-Picking
Late August, given heavy rain and sun
For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate the first one and its flesh was sweet
Like thickened wide: summer’s blood was in it
Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger
Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam pots
Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.
Round hayfields, cornfields and potato drills
We trekked and picked until the cans were full,
Until the tinkling bottom had been covered
With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned
Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered
With thorn pricks, out palms sticky as Bluebeard’s.
We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.
But when the bath was filled we found a fur,
A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.
The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush
The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.
I always felt like crying. It wasn’t fair
That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.
Each year I hoped they’d keep, knew they would not.
Postscript
And some time to make the time to drive out west
Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore,
In September or October, when the wind
And the light are working off each other
So that the ocean on one side is wild
With foam and glitter, and inland among stones
The surface of a slate-grey lake is lit
By the unearthed lightning of a flock of swans,
Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white,
Their fully grown headstrong-looking heads
Tucked or cresting or busy underwater
Useless to think you’ll park and capture it
More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there,
A hurry through which known and strange things pass
As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways
And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.
One Response to “In Memoriam: Seamus Heaney
(1939-2013)”
Thank you for this precious article..what a good interview especially the question of what is a poet? This is the poem I wrote for Seamus.
Dear beloved soul brother as they lay you down to rest
I will take up pen and write a poem for you and yours
Bellagy boy man yellow bittern you will always sing
the soul song of the north of ireland for you are all it
you and your way with turn of phrase and wit of gem
you told us who we were and why between the lines
we breathe the fresh air of sheets blown in the wind
hung on your mammy’s clothes line outside in the yard
Seamus beloved soul brother there will be no goodbyes
for you have left the essence of yourself with us forever
for you have finished the book of life and now you get
to wake up to the big cosmic world of the one breath
I am sure they all came to meet you your mammy
your daddy and the little brother along with dogs
and maybe a cat or two and lots of birds and cows
for you are in heaven in eternal bliss where no words
are needed for you the very breath of life itself
I will see you everywhere now in wind and rain
in the dance before me of nature you will be there
as sure as day follows night you will be there and
you will visit all the freedom fighters who died
catholic protestant it never mattered to you anyway
trival things like that never did but death mattered
you never mentioned much about the war at all
you cared deeply and felt the sorrow of the years
you felt the bombs and the stench of death as only
a poet can do and you wrote them lines to help
to heal the sorrow of the past dear man of god
you put pen to paper so often in your name you did
you sent me a postcard years ago to say my poetry
did you good and I read and reread everyword
until it pestered me so much I threw in it the fire
and forgot to look at the picture of the frontside
you quoted thomas the rhymer and like he said
i will dance on your grave yes my soul brother
i will dance on your grave and drink a toast too
for you were my articultator always to the north
| 1920s |
Which 2008 Woody Allen directed film is set in Spain? | George Bernard Shaw | Penny's poetry pages Wiki | Fandom powered by Wikia
::: Socialism and Fabianism in the United Kingdom, Colin Wilson , Kurt Vonnegut
George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950) [1] was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics . Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism , in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism , his main talent was for drama , and he wrote more than 60 plays . Nearly all his writings address prevailing social problems, but have a vein of comedy which makes their stark themes more palatable. Shaw examined education, marriage, religion, government, health care, and class privilege.
An ardent socialist, Shaw wrote many brochures and speeches for the Fabian Society . He became an accomplished orator in the furtherance of its causes, which included gaining equal rights for men and women, alleviating abuses of the working class, rescinding private ownership of productive land, and promoting healthy lifestyles. For a short time he was active in local politics, serving on the London County Council .
He is the only person to have been awarded both a Nobel Prize for Literature (1925) and an Oscar (1938), for his contributions to literature and for his work on the film Pygmalion (adaptation of his play of the same name ), respectively. [2] Shaw wanted to refuse his Nobel Prize outright because he had no desire for public honours, but accepted it at his wife's behest: she considered it a tribute to Ireland. He did reject the monetary award, requesting it be used to finance translation of Swedish books to English. [3]
Contents
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George Bernard Shaw was born in Synge Street, Dublin, in 1856 to George Carr Shaw (1814–85), an unsuccessful grain merchant and sometime civil servant, and Lucinda Elizabeth Shaw, née Gurly (1830–1913), a professional singer. He had two sisters, Lucinda Frances (1853–1920), a singer of musical comedy and light opera, and Elinor Agnes (1855–76).
Education
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Shaw briefly attended the Wesley College, Dublin , a grammar school operated by the Methodist Church in Ireland , before moving to a private school near Dalkey and then transferring to Dublin's Central Model School. He ended his formal education at the Dublin English Scientific and Commercial Day School. He harboured a lifelong animosity toward schools and teachers, saying: "Schools and schoolmasters, as we have them today, are not popular as places of education and teachers, but rather prisons and turnkeys in which children are kept to prevent them disturbing and chaperoning their parents". [4] In the astringent prologue to Cashel Byron's Profession young Byron's educational experience is a fictionalized description of Shaw's own schooldays. Later, he painstakingly detailed the reasons for his aversion to formal education in his Treatise on Parents and Children. [5] In brief, he considered the standardized curricula useless, deadening to the spirit and stifling to the intellect. He particularly deplored the use of corporal punishment, which was prevalent in his time.
When his mother left home and followed her voice teacher, George Vandeleur Lee, to London , Shaw was almost sixteen years old. His sisters accompanied their mother [6] but Shaw remained in Dublin with his father, first as a reluctant pupil, then as a clerk in an estate office. He worked efficiently, albeit discontentedly, for several years. [7] In 1876, Shaw joined his mother's London household. She, Vandeleur Lee, and his sister Lucy, provided him with a pound a week while he frequented public libraries and the British Museum reading room where he studied earnestly and began writing novels. He earned his allowance by ghostwriting Vandeleur Lee's music column, [8] [9] which appeared in the London Hornet. His novels were rejected, however, so his literary earnings remained negligible until 1885, when he became self-supporting as a critic of the arts.
Personal life and political activism
File:Shaw's Corner1.jpg
Influenced by his reading, he became a dedicated Socialist and a charter member of the Fabian Society , [10] a middle class organization established in 1884 to promote the gradual spread of socialism by peaceful means. [7] In the course of his political activities he met Charlotte Payne-Townshend , an Irish heiress and fellow Fabian; they married in 1898. The marriage was never consummated, at Charlotte's insistence, though he had had a number of affairs with married women; [11] Shaw declined to stand as an MP, but in 1897 he was elected as a local councillor to the London County Council as a Progressive. [12]
In 1906 the Shaws moved into a house, now called Shaw's Corner , in Ayot St. Lawrence , a small village in Hertfordshire , England; it was to be their home for the remainder of their lives, although they also maintained a residence at 29 Fitzroy Square in London.
Shaw's plays were first performed in the 1890s. By the end of the decade he was an established playwright. He wrote sixty-three plays and his output as novelist, critic, pamphleteer, essayist and private correspondent was prodigious. He is known to have written more than 250,000 letters. [13] Along with Fabian Society members Sidney and Beatrice Webb and Graham Wallas , Shaw founded the London School of Economics and Political Science in 1895 with funding provided by private philanthropy, including a bequest of £20,000 from Henry Hunt Hutchinson to the Fabian Society. One of the libraries at the LSE is named in Shaw's honor; it contains collections of his papers and photographs. [14]
Final years
Edit
During his later years, Shaw enjoyed attending to the grounds at Shaw's Corner. He died at the age of 94, of renal failure precipitated by injuries incurred by falling while pruning a tree. [15] His ashes, mixed with those of his wife, Charlotte Payne-Townshend , were scattered along footpaths and around the statue of Saint Joan in their garden. [16]
Career
Edit
See Works by George Bernard Shaw for listings of his novels and plays, with links to their electronic texts, if those exist.
The International Shaw Society provides a detailed chronological listing of Shaw's writings. [17] See also George Bernard Shaw, Unity Theatre. [18]
Criticism
Edit
Shaw became a critic of the arts when, sponsored by William Archer , he joined the reviewing staff of the Pall Mall Gazette in 1885. [19] There he wrote under the pseudonym "Corno di Bassetto" (" basset horn ")—chosen because it sounded European and nobody knew what a corno di bassetto was. In a miscellany of other periodicals, including Dramatic Review (1885–86), Our Corner (1885–86), and the Pall Mall Gazette (1885–88) his byline was "GBS". [20] From 1895 to 1898, Shaw was the drama critic for Frank Harris' Saturday Review , in which position he campaigned brilliantly to displace the artificialities and hypocrisies of the Victorian stage with a theatre of actuality and thought. His earnings as a critic made him self-supporting as an author and his articles for the Saturday Review made his name well-known.
George Bernard Shaw was highly critical of productions of Shakespeare, and specifically denounced the dramatic practice of editing Shakespeare’s plays, whose scenes tended to be cut in order to create “acting versions”. He notably held famous 19th-century actor Sir Henry Irving in contempt for this practice, as he expressed in one of his reviews:
“In a true republic of art, Sir Henry Irving would ere this have expiated his acting versions on the scaffold. He does not merely cut plays; he disembowels them. In Cymbeline he has quite surpassed himself by extirpating the antiphonal third verse of the famous dirge. A man who would do that would do anything –cut the coda out of the first movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, or shorten one of Velasquez ’s Philips into a kitcat to make it fit over his drawing room mantelpiece.”
Shavian scholar John F. Matthews credits him, as a result, with the disappearance of the two-hundred-year-old tradition of editing Shakespeare into “acting versions”. [21]
He had a very high regard for both Irish stage actor Barry Sullivan 's and Johnston Forbes-Robertson 's Hamlets , but despised John Barrymore 's. Barrymore invited him to see a performance of his celebrated Hamlet, and Shaw graciously accepted, but wrote Barrymore a withering letter in which he all but tore the performance to shreds. Even worse, Shaw had seen the play in the company of Barrymore's then wife, but did not dare voice his true feelings about the performance aloud to her. [22]
Much of Shaw's music criticism, ranging from short comments to the book-length essay The Perfect Wagnerite , extols the work of the German composer Richard Wagner . [23] Wagner worked 25 years composing Der Ring des Nibelungen , a massive four-part musical dramatization drawn from the Teutonic mythology of gods, giants, dwarves and Rhine maidens; Shaw considered it a work of genius and reviewed it in detail. Beyond the music, he saw it as an allegory of social evolution where workers, driven by "the invisible whip of hunger", seek freedom from their wealthy masters. Wagner did have socialistic sympathies, as Shaw carefully points out, but made no such claim about his opus. Conversely, Shaw disparaged Brahms , deriding A German Requiem by saying "it could only have come from the establishment of a first-class undertaker". [24] Although he found Brahms lacking in intellect, he praised his musicality, saying "...nobody can listen to Brahms' natural utterance of the richest absolute music, especially in his chamber compositions, without rejoicing in his natural gift". In the 1920s, he recanted, calling his earlier animosity towards Brahms "my only mistake". [23] Shaw's writings about music gained great popularity because they were understandable to the average well-read audience member of the day, thus contrasting starkly with the dourly pretentious pedantry of most critiques in that era. [25] All of his music critiques have been collected in Shaw's Music. [26] As a drama critic for the Saturday Review, a post he held from 1895 to 1898, Shaw championed Henrik Ibsen whose realistic plays scandalized the Victorian public. His influential Quintessence of Ibsenism was written in 1891. [27]
Novels
File:George Bernard Shaw 1925.jpg
The first to be printed was Cashel Byron's Profession (1886), [28] which was written in 1882. Its eponymous character, Cashel, a rebellious schoolboy with an unsympathetic mother, runs away to Australia where he becomes a famed prizefighter. He returns to England for a boxing match, and falls in love with erudite and wealthy Lydia Carew. Lydia, drawn by sheer animal magnetism, eventually consents to marry despite the disparity of their social positions. This breach of propriety is nullified by the unpresaged discovery that Cashel is of noble lineage and heir to a fortune comparable to Lydia's. With those barriers to happiness removed, the couple settles down to prosaic family life with Lydia dominant; Cashel attains a seat in Parliament. In this novel Shaw first expresses his conviction that productive land and all other natural resources should belong to everyone in common, rather than being owned and exploited privately. The book was written in the year when Shaw first heard the lectures of Henry George who advocated such reforms.
Written in 1883, An Unsocial Socialist was published in 1887. [29] The tale begins with a hilarious description of student antics at a girl's school then changes focus to a seemingly uncouth laborer who, it soon develops, is really a wealthy gentleman in hiding from his overly affectionate wife. He needs the freedom gained by matrimonial truancy to promote the socialistic cause, to which he is an active convert. Once the subject of socialism emerges, it dominates the story, allowing only space enough in the final chapters to excoriate the idle upper class and allow the erstwhile schoolgirls, in their earliest maturity, to marry suitably.
Love Among the Artists was published in the United States in 1900 and in England in 1914, [30] but it was written in 1881. In the ambiance of chit-chat and frivolity among members of Victorian polite society a youthful Shaw describes his views on the arts, romantic love and the practicalities of matrimony. Dilettantes, he thinks, can love and settle down to marriage, but artists with real genius are too consumed by their work to fit that pattern. The dominant figure in the novel is Owen Jack, a musical genius, somewhat mad and quite bereft of social graces. From an abysmal beginning he rises to great fame and is lionized by socialites despite his unremitting crudity.
The Irrational Knot was written in 1880 and published in 1905. [31] Within a framework of leisure class preoccupations and frivolities Shaw disdains hereditary status and proclaims the nobility of workers. Marriage, as the knot in question, is exemplified by the union of Marian Lind, a lady of the upper class, to Edward Conolly, always a workman but now a magnate, thanks to his invention of an electric motor that makes steam engines obsolete. The marriage soon deteriorates, primarily because Marian fails to rise above the preconceptions and limitations of her social class and is, therefore, unable to share her husband's interests. Eventually she runs away with a man who is her social peer, but he proves himself a scoundrel and abandons her in desperate circumstances. Her husband rescues her and offers to take her back, but she pridefully refuses, convinced she is unworthy and certain that she faces life as a pariah to her family and friends. The preface, written when Shaw was 49, expresses gratitude to his parents for their support during the lean years while he learned to write and includes details of his early life in London.
Shaw's first novel, Immaturity, was written in 1879 but was the last one to be printed in 1931. [32] It relates tepid romances, minor misfortunes and subdued successes in the developing career of Robert Smith, an energetic young Londoner and outspoken agnostic. Condemnation of alcoholic behavior is the prime message in the book, and derives from Shaw's familial memories. This is made clear in the books's preface, which was written by the mature Shaw at the time of its belated publication. The preface is a valuable resource because it provides autobiographical details not otherwise available.
Short stories
File:George Bernard Shaw notebook.jpg
A collection of Shaw's short stories, The Black Girl in Search of God and Some Lesser Tales , was published in 1934. [33] The Black Girl, an enthusiastic convert to Christianity, goes searching for God. In the story, written as an allegory, somewhat reminiscent of Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress , Shaw uses her adventures to expose flaws and fallacies in the religions of the world. At the story's happy ending, the Black Girl quits her searchings in favor of rearing a family with the aid of a red-haired Irishman who has no metaphysical inclination.
One of the Lesser Tales is The Miraculous Revenge (1885), which relates the misadventures of an alcoholic investigator while he probes the mystery of a graveyard—full of saintly corpses—that migrates across a stream to escape association with the body of a newly buried sinner.
Plays
Edit
The texts of plays by Shaw mentioned in this section, with the dates when they were written and first performed can be found in Complete Plays and Prefaces. [34] Shaw began working on his first play destined for production, Widowers' Houses , in 1885 in collaboration with critic William Archer , who supplied the structure. Archer decided that Shaw could not write a play, so the project was abandoned. Years later, Shaw tried again and, in 1892, completed the play without collaboration. Widowers' Houses, a scathing attack on slumlords, was first performed at London's Royalty Theatre on 9 December 1892. Shaw would later call it one of his worst works, but he had found his medium. His first significant financial success as a playwright came from Richard Mansfield 's American production of The Devil's Disciple (1897). He went on to write 63 plays, most of them full-length.
Often his plays succeeded in the United States and Germany before they did in London. Although major London productions of many of his earlier pieces were delayed for years, they are still being performed there. Examples include Mrs. Warren's Profession (1893), Arms and the Man (1894), Candida (1894) and You Never Can Tell (1897).
Shaw's plays, like those of Oscar Wilde , contained incisive humor, which was exceptional among playwrights of the Victorian era; both authors are remembered for their comedy. [35] However, Shaw's wittiness should not obscure his important role in revolutionizing British drama. In the Victorian Era , the London stage had been regarded as a place for frothy, sentimental entertainment. Shaw made it a forum for considering moral, political and economic issues, possibly his most lasting and important contribution to dramatic art. In this, he considered himself indebted to Henrik Ibsen , who pioneered modern realistic drama, meaning drama designed to heighten awareness of some important social issue. Significantly, Widowers' Houses — an example of the realistic genre — was completed after William Archer, Shaw's friend, had translated some of Ibsen's plays to English and Shaw had written The Quintessence of Ibsensism. [36]
As Shaw's experience and popularity increased, his plays and prefaces became more voluble about reforms he advocated, without diminishing their success as entertainments. Such works, including Caesar and Cleopatra (1898), Man and Superman (1903), Major Barbara (1905) and The Doctor's Dilemma (1906), display Shaw's matured views, for he was approaching 50 when he wrote them. From 1904 to 1907, several of his plays had their London premieres in notable productions at the Court Theatre, managed by Harley Granville-Barker and J. E. Vedrenne . The first of his new plays to be performed at the Court Theatre, John Bull's Other Island (1904), while not especially popular today, made his reputation in London when King Edward VII laughed so hard during a command performance that he broke his chair. [37]
By the 1910s, Shaw was a well-established playwright. New works such as Fanny's First Play (1911) and Pygmalion (1912), had long runs in front of large London audiences. Shaw had permitted a musical adaptation of Arms and the Man (1894) called The Chocolate Soldier (1908), but he had a low opinion of German operetta. He insisted that none of his dialogue be used, and that all the character names be changed, although the operetta actually follows Shaw's plot quite closely, in particular preserving its anti-war message. The work proved very popular and would have made Shaw rich had he not waived his royalties, but he detested it and for the rest of his life forbade musicalization of his work, including a proposed Franz Lehár operetta based on Pygmalion. Several of his plays formed the basis of musicals after his death—most famously the musical My Fair Lady —it is officially adapted from the screenplay of the film version of Pygmalion rather than the original stage play (keeping the film's ending), and librettist Alan Jay Lerner kept generous chunks of Shaw's dialogue, and the characters' names, unchanged.
Shaw's outlook was changed by World War I, which he uncompromisingly opposed despite incurring outrage from the public as well as from many friends. His first full-length piece, presented after the War, written mostly during it, was Heartbreak House (1919). A new Shaw had emerged—the wit remained, but his faith in humanity had dwindled. In the preface to Heartbreak House he said:
"It is said that every people has the Government it deserves. It is more to the point that every Government has the electorate it deserves; for the orators of the front bench can edify or debauch an ignorant electorate at will. Thus our democracy moves in a vicious circle of reciprocal worthiness and unworthiness." [38]
File:Shaw's writing hut.jpg
Shaw had previously supported gradual democratic change toward socialism, but now he saw more hope in government by benign strong men. This sometimes made him oblivious to the dangers of dictatorships. Near his life's end that hope failed him too. In the first act of Buoyant Billions (1946–48), his last full-length play, his protagonist asks:
"Why appeal to the mob when ninetyfive per cent of them do not understand politics, and can do nothing but mischief without leaders? And what sort of leaders do they vote for? For Titus Oates and Lord George Gordon with their Popish plots, for Hitlers who call on them to exterminate Jews, for Mussolinis who rally them to nationalist dreams of glory and empire in which all foreigners are enemies to be subjugated." [39]
In 1921, Shaw completed Back to Methuselah , his "Metabiological Pentateuch". The massive, five-play work starts in the Garden of Eden and ends thousands of years in the future; it showcases Shaw's postulate that a "Life Force" directs evolution toward ultimate perfection by trial and error. Shaw proclaimed the play a masterpiece, but many critics disagreed. The theme of a benign force directing evolution reappears in Geneva (1938), wherein Shaw maintains humans must develop longer lifespans in order to acquire the wisdom needed for self-government.
Methuselah was followed by Saint Joan (1923), which is generally considered to be one of his better works. Shaw had long considered writing about Joan of Arc , and her canonization in 1920 supplied a strong incentive. The play was an international success, and is believed to have led to his Nobel Prize in Literature. [40] The citation praised his work as "...marked by both idealism and humanity, its stimulating satire often being infused with a singular poetic beauty". At this time Prime Minister David Lloyd George was considering recommending to the King Shaw's admission to the Order of Merit , but the place was instead given to J. M. Barrie . [40] Shaw rejected a knighthood. [40] It was not until 1946 that the government of the day arranged for an informal offer of the Order of Merit to be made: Shaw declined, replying that "merit" in authorship could only be determined by the posthumous verdict of history. [40]
He wrote plays for the rest of his life, but very few of them are as notable—or as often revived—as his earlier work. The Apple Cart (1929) was probably his most popular work of this era. Later full-length plays like Too True to Be Good (1931), On the Rocks (1933), The Millionairess (1935), and Geneva (1938) have been seen as marking a decline. His last significant play, In Good King Charles Golden Days has, according to St. John Ervine, [41] passages that are equal to Shaw's major works.
Shaw's published plays come with lengthy prefaces. These tend to be more about Shaw's opinions on the issues addressed by the plays than about the plays themselves. Often his prefaces are longer than the plays they introduce. For example, the Penguin Books edition of his one-act The Shewing-up Of Blanco Posnet (1909) has a 67-page preface for the 29-page playscript.
Polemics
Edit
In a letter to Henry James dated 17 January 1909, [42] Shaw said:
"I, as a Socialist, have had to preach, as much as anyone, the enormous power of the environment. We can change it; we must change it; there is absolutely no other sense in life than the task of changing it. What is the use of writing plays, what is the use of writing anything, if there is not a will which finally moulds chaos itself into a race of gods." [43]
Thus he viewed writing as a way to further his humanitarian and political agenda. His works were very popular because of their comedic content, but the public tended to disregard his messages and enjoy his work as pure entertainment. He was acutely aware of that. His preface to Heartbreak House (1919) attributes the rejection to the need of post-World War I audiences for frivolities, after four long years of grim privation, more than to their inborn distaste of instruction. His crusading nature led him to adopt and tenaciously hold a variety of causes, which he furthered with fierce intensity, heedless of opposition and ridicule. For example, Common Sense about the War (1914) lays out Shaw's strong objections at the onset of World War I. [44] His stance ran counter to public sentiment and cost him dearly at the box-office, but he never compromised. [45]
Shaw joined in the public opposition to vaccination against smallpox , calling it "a particularly filthy piece of witchcraft", [46] [47] despite having nearly died from the disease when he contracted it in 1881. In the preface to Doctor’s Dilemma he made it plain he regarded traditional medical treatment as dangerous quackery that should be replaced with sound public sanitation, good personal hygiene and diets devoid of meat. Shaw became a vegetarian while he was twenty-five, after hearing a lecture by H.F. Lester. [48] In 1901, remembering the experience, he said "I was a cannibal for twenty-five years. For the rest I have been a vegetarian." [49] As a staunch vegetarian, he was a firm anti-vivisectionist and antagonistic to cruel sports for the remainder of his life. The belief in the immorality of eating animals was one of the Fabian causes near his heart and is frequently a topic in his plays and prefaces. His position, succinctly stated, was "A man of my spiritual intensity does not eat corpses." [50]
As well as plays and prefaces, Shaw wrote long political treatises, such as Fabian Essays in Socialism (1889), [51] and The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism (1912), [52] a 495-page book detailing all aspects of socialistic theory as Shaw interpreted it. Excerpts of the latter were republished in 1928 as Socialism and Liberty, [53] Late in his life he wrote another guide to political issues, Everybody's Political What's What (1944).
Correspondence
Edit
Shaw corresponded with an array of people, many of them well-known. His letters to and from Mrs. Patrick Campbell were adapted for the stage by Jerome Kilty as Dear Liar: A Comedy of Letters, [54] as was his correspondence with the poet Lord Alfred 'Bosie' Douglas (the intimate friend of Oscar Wilde), into the drama Bernard and Bosie: A Most Unlikely Friendship by Anthony Wynn . His letters to the prominent actress, Ellen Terry , [55] to the boxer Gene Tunney , [56] and to H.G. Wells , [57] have also been published. Eventually the volume of his correspondence became insupportable, as can be inferred from apologetic letters written by assistants. [58] Shaw campaigned against the executions of the rebel leaders of the Easter Rising , and he became a personal friend of the Cork -born IRA leader Michael Collins , whom he invited to his home for dinner while Collins was negotiating the Anglo-Irish Treaty with Lloyd George in London. After Collins's assassination in 1922, Shaw sent a personal message of condolence to one of Collins's sisters. He had an enduring friendship with G. K. Chesterton , the Roman Catholic-convert British writer. [59] Shaw also enjoyed a personal friendship with T.E. Lawrence , known most notably for his book Seven Pillars of Wisdom and his role as liaison for the Arab revolt during World War I. Lawrence even used the name "Shaw" as his nom de guerre when he joined the Royal Air Force as an aircraftman in the 1920s.
Another friend was the composer Edward Elgar . The latter dedicated one of his late works, Severn Suite, to Shaw; and Shaw exerted himself (eventually with success) to persuade the BBC to commission from Elgar a third symphony, though this piece remained incomplete at Elgar's death. Shaw's correspondence with the motion picture producer Gabriel Pascal , who was the first to bring Shaw's plays successfully to the screen and who later tried to put into motion a musical adaptation of Pygmalion, but died before he could realize it, is published in a book titled Bernard Shaw and Gabriel Pascal., [60] A stage play by Hugh Whitemore , The Best of Friends, provides a window on the friendships of Dame Laurentia McLachlan , OSB (late Abbess of Stanbrook) with Sir Sydney Cockerell and Shaw through adaptations from their letters and writings. A television adaptation of the play, aired on PBS , starred John Gielgud as Cockerell, Wendy Hiller as Laurentia, and Patrick McGoohan as Shaw. It is available on DVD.
Photography
Edit
Shaw bought his first camera in 1898 and was an active amateur photographer until his death in 1950. Before 1898 Shaw had been an early supporter of photography as a serious art form. His non-fiction writing includes many reviews of photographic exhibitions such as those by his friend Alvin Langdon Coburn .
The photographs document a prolific literary and political life – Shaw's friends, travels, politics, plays, films and home life. It also records his experiments with photography over 50 years and for the photographic historian provides a record of the development of the photographic and printing techniques available to the amateur photographer between 1898 and 1950.
The collection is currently the subject of a major project, Man & Cameraman [61] which will allow online access to thousands of photos taken by Shaw.
Politics
Edit
In his will, Shaw stated that his "religious convictions and scientific views cannot at present be more specifically defined than as those of a believer in creative revolution." [85] He requested that no one should imply that he accepted the beliefs of any specific religious organization, and that no memorial to him should "take the form of a cross or any other instrument of torture or symbol of blood sacrifice." [85]
Recognition
File:George Bernard Shaw Statue.jpg
In his old age, Shaw was a household name both in Britain and Ireland, and was famed throughout the world. His ironic wit endowed English with the adjective "Shavian", used to characterize observations such as: "My way of joking is to tell the truth. It's the funniest joke in the world." Concerned about the vagaries of English spelling, Shaw willed a portion of his wealth (probated at £367,233 13s) [86] to fund the creation of a new phonemic alphabet for the English language. [87] However, the money available was insufficient to support the project, so it was neglected for a time. This changed when his estate began earning significant royalties from the rights to Pygmalion after My Fair Lady—the musical adapted from Pygmalion by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe —became a hit. However, the Public Trustee found the intended trust to be invalid because its intent was to serve a private interest instead of a charitable purpose, and as a non-charitable purpose trust, it could not be enforced because it failed to satisfy the beneficiary principle. [88] In the end an out-of-court settlement granted only £8600 for promoting the new alphabet, which is now called the Shavian alphabet . The National Gallery of Ireland , RADA and the British Museum all received substantial bequests.
Shaw's home, now called Shaw's Corner , in the small village of Ayot St Lawrence , Hertfordshire is a National Trust property, open to the public. [89] The Shaw Theatre , Euston Road , London, opened in 1971, was named in his honour. [90] Near its entrance, opposite the new British Library , a contemporary statue of Saint Joan commemorates Shaw as author of that play.
The Shaw Festival , an annual theater festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake , Ontario, Canada began as an eight week run of Don Juan in Hell (as the long third act dream sequence of Man And Superman is called when staged alone) and Candida in 1962, and has grown into an annual festival with over 800 performances a year, dedicated to producing the works of Shaw and his contemporaries. The portrait of George Bernard Shaw located at Niagara-on-the-Lake was commissioned by hotelier Si Wai Lai and sculpted by Dr. Elizabeth Bradford Holbrook , CM (1913–2009). [91] [92]
He is also remembered as one of the pivotal founders of the London School of Economics , whose library is now called the British Library of Political and Economic Science . The Fabian Window , designed by Shaw, hangs in the Shaw Library in the main building of the LSE.
Publications
Peters, Sally. “Bernard Shaw: The Ascent of the Superman”. Yale University Press , 1996 ISBN 978-0300060973
Rider, Dan. “Adventures with Bernard Shaw”. Morley and Mitchell Kennerley Junior.
Smith, J. Percy. “Unrepentant Pilgrim: A study of the development of Bernard Shaw”. Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1965
Stone, Dan (2002). Breeding superman: Nietzsche, race and eugenics in Edwardian and interwar Britain. Liverpool, England: Liverpool University Press. ISBN 9780853239970 .
Strauss, E. “Bernard Shaw: Art and Socialism”. Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1942
Weintraub, Stanley. “Bernard Shaw 1914–1918: Journey to Heartbreak”. Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973
Weintraub, Stanley. “The Unexpected Shaw: Biographical approaches to G.B.S and his work”. Frederick Ungar Publishing Co, 1982 ISBN 080442974X
West, Alick. “A good man fallen among Fabians: A study of George Bernard Shaw” Lawrence and Wishart , 1974 ISBN 9780853152880
Watson, Barbara Bellow: “A Shavian Guide to the intelligent woman”. Chatto and Windus, 1964
Wilson, Colin . "Bernard Shaw: A Reassessment". Athenum, 1969.
Winsten, Stephen. “Jesting Apostle: The Life of Bernard Shaw”. Hutchinson and Co Ltd, 1956
Winsten, Stephen. “Salt and his circle: With a preface by Bernard Shaw”. Hutchinson and Co Ltd, 1951
Notes
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Who was the last Old Etonian Prime Minister before David Cameron? | Can an Etonian be Prime Minister? | The Spectator
Features
Can an Etonian be Prime Minister?
Vicki Woods says Eton is probably the best school in the world, and does her best to forgive OEs their grating charm and intimidating good manners
Email
The craze for internet spread-betting that has swept through City trading floors and the suburban housing market has finally gripped me; for three weeks I’ve been a slave to gambling websites. Up nights, tapping away…. Actually, it’s one website — Politicalbetting.com — which is not exactly a gambling site, more an online tipping service. And I’m not looking to bet, I’m looking for David Cameron.
I know, I know. Call me flighty. Back in May I was all for David Davis as opposition leader for the upcoming and possibly rather grim Brown years. Cameron, 38, was — well, a bit young. (What was I thinking? Etonians are made men at 18.) But on 9 June his rather appealingly 18th-century face was posted on the site alongside: ‘Can the Tories choose a toff? Does being an Old Etonian still disqualify you from being Tory leader?’ The accompanying post noted that this country’s last Etonian prime minister (out of 19 OEs) was Sir Alec Douglas-Home. Forty years ago, at the time when leaders were not voted in but simply ‘emerged’.
So, there’s Cameron, on my screen in his country-shabby navy jumper, looking inescapably toff-y, and I was curious to see how the punters would respond. Two hundred did vigorously, knowledgeably and politically. (Also coarsely.) The main thrust was a) it’s the parliamentary party that’s worried about supposed toffiness more than voters ever are, b) Cameron ‘looks nicer’ than Davis, and c) the dream ticket — for lots — would be Clarke and Cameron, if only Clarke were younger and Cameron older. They noticed his ‘youth’ but what mutterers call ‘David’s Eton thing’ passed them by.
Let’s deal with the Eton thing right now. Cameron’s name is never mentioned in print without the word ‘Old Etonian’ tagging it. (Neither is Humphrey Lyttelton’s, poor man, though it must be 60 years since he left Slough.) The tag implies upper-class privilege, moneyed ease, disdain, superiority, Lord Snootyness, dandyism, toffishness. And other, wilder things that end with baying for broken glass. Twenty years on, I can recall an Etonian dreamily recounting details of a perfect weekend: ‘Some people had swords …We were drinking champagne out of pint glasses …Turkeys were let into the room at midnight.’ Etonians are happy to recognise their renegades: Lord Lucan was an OE — oh, yes, Jonathan Aitken — yes, the Crown Prince of Nepal … (‘But none of them were SHITS. Shits go to Harrow’). The voiceover on Channel 4’s programme about the Foreign Legion last week explained that ‘all kinds’ of people joined its ranks ‘from crooks and murderers to …Old Etonians!’ Etonian is a global tag and universally understood. There are other tags to imply the same sort of thing (‘Champagne-quaffing’) or the opposite thing (‘lager-swilling’) but not many schools act as this kind of verbal portmanteau. ‘School’ in a crossword clue only ever means Eton.
I once read pages of Hansard from a late-night education debate in 1998: Oliver Letwin (on his feet) wrestles with two contradictory amendments to a Bill and insists the contradiction be resolved. Denis MacShane (seated) shouts: ‘He’s an Old Etonian!’ over and over. I put to Charles Moore (OE) that MacShane could never shout, ‘He’s an Old Carthusian!’, could he? ‘No,’ said Moore, ‘nor, “He’s a Jew.” Although he is.’ I’d meant that the recognition factor must be connected with its phonemic simplicity. Compared with Charterhouse, Wellington, Westminster, King Edward’s, Hamilton Academy, say, Eton is a simple little bisyllable containing the four commonest letters in British English. Trips off the tongue. Easy to understand why it stands in for ur-School, any school, all of non-state school? Moore meant that Eton is the best school in the world; the boys who go there know it is and are told that it is, and detect resentment from people who are jealous that it is. Category error there, I think.
It probably is the best school in the world. My friend who teaches EFL at Oxford sends groups of boys there for international summer schools. ‘It just has the best set of everything you could want in a school. Libraries, playing fields, university-level chemistry labs. Music schools. Even the school theatre seats 400 people and has a revolving stage, for heaven’s sake.’ Still, she says, the Italian boys always come back moaning. ‘No hair-dryers in the changing-rooms. They can’t understand it. And there are so many staff, and they’re such high-calibre.’ (We were speaking before the recent difficulties in the art department.) Eton has serious draw, too: a recent leaver skidded down a list of speakers: ‘Oh, Philip Pullman, Nicholas Hytner, Lord Sainsbury, who’s that bloke who used to be Blair’s flatmate? Falconer. And Will Self.’ Will Self? ‘Yes, but in a joint meeting with a local state school, he insisted on that.’
When I was growing up (in British army camps until I was 12 and then in Lancaster until I was 19), I already knew the Etonian tag but I didn’t know any Etonians. The first I met, working at Harpers & Queen, was probably Craig Brown, or perhaps it was Nicholas Coleridge, both supremely confident about offering bits of freelance work and both giddily well-mannered about its refusal. I began to realise that Eton wasn’t the same as other public schools — or any school — and that Etonians weren’t the same as anybody except other Etonians. How could they be? Craig wrote (in Tatler in 1986, ‘Eton Made Me’): ‘You cannot walk around two towns in tailcoats for five years without coming to some decision as to your importance in relation to the untailcoated pedestrians, and it would be a saint or madman who emerged from these five years with ideas of his own inferiority or even equality still instinctively intact.’
We did a teenage issue at Harpers (both Coleridge and Brown were too old to join in, but were invited to the party afterwards. I made them wear badges saying ‘Too Late At 20’, so they wouldn’t hog the invited diary editors. They hogged them anyway.) I did the preliminary interviews on the teen wannabes, some too shy to speak. Three godlike boys arrived together one morning, irritatingly early. I had to keep leaving my desk (to look at proofs) and each time I stood up they made a huge pantomime of hurling their chairs noisily backwards and half-rising. In unison. Etonians. Again from ‘Eton Made Me’: ‘It is often said that Etonians have better manners than anyone else. If this is true (I also think they have the worst manners, but can always choose which set to employ), then it is an indication of the control which they have grown to assume they can assert over their own lives and their own actions.’ Damn well stop that! I finally snapped. They slid sly eyes at each other, but controlled their smiles.
The 19 OE PMs (most of whose portraits gaze down from the debating hall in Upper School, to inspire) don’t include the last Etonian who tilted at the office. In 1990 the leadership choice was the perceived regicide Heseltine, the deeply curious Major and the stiff, patrician Hurd, who was felled by Jon Snow on Channel 4. What seemed blindingly obvious to Snow, faced with Hurd’s bearing, composure, his drawled vowels and crinkled-silver quiff (Mark Boxer always said the trick when drawing the upper classes was to get their hair down pat: ‘Crinkled. Look at Prince Charles’), was that Hurd was unelectable. ‘You went to Eton, for heaven’s sake!
217; Hurd offered some strangulated demurral against the charge of aristo-privilege (errrrgh — not at all — lowly scholarship boy — simple farmer’s son, etc.), but Snow’s jabbing, egalitarian finger is seared in my memory. I expect in Lord Hurd’s memory, too.
I don’t know if Cameron will get the job that Etonians think is their due. He might. I have a feeling that the historic resentment against Etonians is pretty nuanced, held to firmly by people old enough to have had to pick sides during the Battle of Orgreave Colliery but dwindling. No one I know in the age group 35 to 45 prosecutes class war. Or remembers it. ‘The miners’ strike was before my time, darling. There were candles — it was fun, I was a kid. Anyway, David Cameron’s gorgeous. A bit posh, underneath, but not a toff.’ He has what used to be called ‘grand connections’. His wife’s mother was Lady Sheffield, now Viscountess Astor, which makes him son-in-law to a Viscount. But his wife Samantha is a ‘working mum’ in the retail sector. As was her mother. But at the carriage trade end, not the high street.
I think the absolute golden age of Eton ended under the lash of Blairite league-table targeting. Basically, it used to be a comprehensive, catering to the very dim as easily as to the very bright. Now it’s had to become selective, and much more difficult to get into. Some of the people who would once have put their sons down in utero might choose Radley, Shrewsbury, Stowe. And while ‘the Eton thing’ might still be disadvantageous for Conservative politicians with leadership ambitions, it’s still kinda beyond fabulous and totally hip for the sons of London hairdressers and senior fashion PRs holding luxury-brand portfolios; people for whom the networking possibilities of the Fourth of June are too enticing to pass up. Mary Killen told me some people arrived on Harleys.
A (firmly anonymous) Eton mother told me, ‘The thing is, the masters are so incredibly good. They really do have the best teachers; they can afford them — and so many of them — and they can afford to have some with a more eccentric view of life. It’s not at all parent-centred, and I was really ambivalent about sending him, but I was pathetically grateful for the care they took; you get handwritten reports, pages and pages of careful analysis, not just Could Do Better — far from it, you feel they really know everything about your boy. His housemaster told me, “There’s room for everybody here. You don’t have to be a conformist.” And they do teach them … grace, really. I know I must sound pathetic, but when I went to take him home for the last time, I said goodbye to his housemaster and was trying to say thank you and how grateful I was, almost in tears. And we’d always had this terribly formal relationship, but he sprang forward and kissed me on b-both cheeks…’ (dissolves into tearful giggles).
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| Alec Douglas-Home |
Who is missing from this list of Artistic Directors of the National Theatre – Laurence Olivier, Peter Hall, Richard Eyre and Nicholas Hytner? | Can an Etonian be Prime Minister? | The Spectator
Features
Can an Etonian be Prime Minister?
Vicki Woods says Eton is probably the best school in the world, and does her best to forgive OEs their grating charm and intimidating good manners
Email
The craze for internet spread-betting that has swept through City trading floors and the suburban housing market has finally gripped me; for three weeks I’ve been a slave to gambling websites. Up nights, tapping away…. Actually, it’s one website — Politicalbetting.com — which is not exactly a gambling site, more an online tipping service. And I’m not looking to bet, I’m looking for David Cameron.
I know, I know. Call me flighty. Back in May I was all for David Davis as opposition leader for the upcoming and possibly rather grim Brown years. Cameron, 38, was — well, a bit young. (What was I thinking? Etonians are made men at 18.) But on 9 June his rather appealingly 18th-century face was posted on the site alongside: ‘Can the Tories choose a toff? Does being an Old Etonian still disqualify you from being Tory leader?’ The accompanying post noted that this country’s last Etonian prime minister (out of 19 OEs) was Sir Alec Douglas-Home. Forty years ago, at the time when leaders were not voted in but simply ‘emerged’.
So, there’s Cameron, on my screen in his country-shabby navy jumper, looking inescapably toff-y, and I was curious to see how the punters would respond. Two hundred did vigorously, knowledgeably and politically. (Also coarsely.) The main thrust was a) it’s the parliamentary party that’s worried about supposed toffiness more than voters ever are, b) Cameron ‘looks nicer’ than Davis, and c) the dream ticket — for lots — would be Clarke and Cameron, if only Clarke were younger and Cameron older. They noticed his ‘youth’ but what mutterers call ‘David’s Eton thing’ passed them by.
Let’s deal with the Eton thing right now. Cameron’s name is never mentioned in print without the word ‘Old Etonian’ tagging it. (Neither is Humphrey Lyttelton’s, poor man, though it must be 60 years since he left Slough.) The tag implies upper-class privilege, moneyed ease, disdain, superiority, Lord Snootyness, dandyism, toffishness. And other, wilder things that end with baying for broken glass. Twenty years on, I can recall an Etonian dreamily recounting details of a perfect weekend: ‘Some people had swords …We were drinking champagne out of pint glasses …Turkeys were let into the room at midnight.’ Etonians are happy to recognise their renegades: Lord Lucan was an OE — oh, yes, Jonathan Aitken — yes, the Crown Prince of Nepal … (‘But none of them were SHITS. Shits go to Harrow’). The voiceover on Channel 4’s programme about the Foreign Legion last week explained that ‘all kinds’ of people joined its ranks ‘from crooks and murderers to …Old Etonians!’ Etonian is a global tag and universally understood. There are other tags to imply the same sort of thing (‘Champagne-quaffing’) or the opposite thing (‘lager-swilling’) but not many schools act as this kind of verbal portmanteau. ‘School’ in a crossword clue only ever means Eton.
I once read pages of Hansard from a late-night education debate in 1998: Oliver Letwin (on his feet) wrestles with two contradictory amendments to a Bill and insists the contradiction be resolved. Denis MacShane (seated) shouts: ‘He’s an Old Etonian!’ over and over. I put to Charles Moore (OE) that MacShane could never shout, ‘He’s an Old Carthusian!’, could he? ‘No,’ said Moore, ‘nor, “He’s a Jew.” Although he is.’ I’d meant that the recognition factor must be connected with its phonemic simplicity. Compared with Charterhouse, Wellington, Westminster, King Edward’s, Hamilton Academy, say, Eton is a simple little bisyllable containing the four commonest letters in British English. Trips off the tongue. Easy to understand why it stands in for ur-School, any school, all of non-state school? Moore meant that Eton is the best school in the world; the boys who go there know it is and are told that it is, and detect resentment from people who are jealous that it is. Category error there, I think.
It probably is the best school in the world. My friend who teaches EFL at Oxford sends groups of boys there for international summer schools. ‘It just has the best set of everything you could want in a school. Libraries, playing fields, university-level chemistry labs. Music schools. Even the school theatre seats 400 people and has a revolving stage, for heaven’s sake.’ Still, she says, the Italian boys always come back moaning. ‘No hair-dryers in the changing-rooms. They can’t understand it. And there are so many staff, and they’re such high-calibre.’ (We were speaking before the recent difficulties in the art department.) Eton has serious draw, too: a recent leaver skidded down a list of speakers: ‘Oh, Philip Pullman, Nicholas Hytner, Lord Sainsbury, who’s that bloke who used to be Blair’s flatmate? Falconer. And Will Self.’ Will Self? ‘Yes, but in a joint meeting with a local state school, he insisted on that.’
When I was growing up (in British army camps until I was 12 and then in Lancaster until I was 19), I already knew the Etonian tag but I didn’t know any Etonians. The first I met, working at Harpers & Queen, was probably Craig Brown, or perhaps it was Nicholas Coleridge, both supremely confident about offering bits of freelance work and both giddily well-mannered about its refusal. I began to realise that Eton wasn’t the same as other public schools — or any school — and that Etonians weren’t the same as anybody except other Etonians. How could they be? Craig wrote (in Tatler in 1986, ‘Eton Made Me’): ‘You cannot walk around two towns in tailcoats for five years without coming to some decision as to your importance in relation to the untailcoated pedestrians, and it would be a saint or madman who emerged from these five years with ideas of his own inferiority or even equality still instinctively intact.’
We did a teenage issue at Harpers (both Coleridge and Brown were too old to join in, but were invited to the party afterwards. I made them wear badges saying ‘Too Late At 20’, so they wouldn’t hog the invited diary editors. They hogged them anyway.) I did the preliminary interviews on the teen wannabes, some too shy to speak. Three godlike boys arrived together one morning, irritatingly early. I had to keep leaving my desk (to look at proofs) and each time I stood up they made a huge pantomime of hurling their chairs noisily backwards and half-rising. In unison. Etonians. Again from ‘Eton Made Me’: ‘It is often said that Etonians have better manners than anyone else. If this is true (I also think they have the worst manners, but can always choose which set to employ), then it is an indication of the control which they have grown to assume they can assert over their own lives and their own actions.’ Damn well stop that! I finally snapped. They slid sly eyes at each other, but controlled their smiles.
The 19 OE PMs (most of whose portraits gaze down from the debating hall in Upper School, to inspire) don’t include the last Etonian who tilted at the office. In 1990 the leadership choice was the perceived regicide Heseltine, the deeply curious Major and the stiff, patrician Hurd, who was felled by Jon Snow on Channel 4. What seemed blindingly obvious to Snow, faced with Hurd’s bearing, composure, his drawled vowels and crinkled-silver quiff (Mark Boxer always said the trick when drawing the upper classes was to get their hair down pat: ‘Crinkled. Look at Prince Charles’), was that Hurd was unelectable. ‘You went to Eton, for heaven’s sake!
217; Hurd offered some strangulated demurral against the charge of aristo-privilege (errrrgh — not at all — lowly scholarship boy — simple farmer’s son, etc.), but Snow’s jabbing, egalitarian finger is seared in my memory. I expect in Lord Hurd’s memory, too.
I don’t know if Cameron will get the job that Etonians think is their due. He might. I have a feeling that the historic resentment against Etonians is pretty nuanced, held to firmly by people old enough to have had to pick sides during the Battle of Orgreave Colliery but dwindling. No one I know in the age group 35 to 45 prosecutes class war. Or remembers it. ‘The miners’ strike was before my time, darling. There were candles — it was fun, I was a kid. Anyway, David Cameron’s gorgeous. A bit posh, underneath, but not a toff.’ He has what used to be called ‘grand connections’. His wife’s mother was Lady Sheffield, now Viscountess Astor, which makes him son-in-law to a Viscount. But his wife Samantha is a ‘working mum’ in the retail sector. As was her mother. But at the carriage trade end, not the high street.
I think the absolute golden age of Eton ended under the lash of Blairite league-table targeting. Basically, it used to be a comprehensive, catering to the very dim as easily as to the very bright. Now it’s had to become selective, and much more difficult to get into. Some of the people who would once have put their sons down in utero might choose Radley, Shrewsbury, Stowe. And while ‘the Eton thing’ might still be disadvantageous for Conservative politicians with leadership ambitions, it’s still kinda beyond fabulous and totally hip for the sons of London hairdressers and senior fashion PRs holding luxury-brand portfolios; people for whom the networking possibilities of the Fourth of June are too enticing to pass up. Mary Killen told me some people arrived on Harleys.
A (firmly anonymous) Eton mother told me, ‘The thing is, the masters are so incredibly good. They really do have the best teachers; they can afford them — and so many of them — and they can afford to have some with a more eccentric view of life. It’s not at all parent-centred, and I was really ambivalent about sending him, but I was pathetically grateful for the care they took; you get handwritten reports, pages and pages of careful analysis, not just Could Do Better — far from it, you feel they really know everything about your boy. His housemaster told me, “There’s room for everybody here. You don’t have to be a conformist.” And they do teach them … grace, really. I know I must sound pathetic, but when I went to take him home for the last time, I said goodbye to his housemaster and was trying to say thank you and how grateful I was, almost in tears. And we’d always had this terribly formal relationship, but he sprang forward and kissed me on b-both cheeks…’ (dissolves into tearful giggles).
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Which country became landlocked as a result of the War of the Pacific (1879 to 1883)? | Why did Bolivia Lose Access to the Pacific Ocean | Actforlibraries.org
Paleontology
Why did Bolivia Lose Access to the Pacific Ocean
Today the country of Bolivia, in South America, is landlocked. This was not always the case. Before 1879 the Pacific coast province of Antofagasta was part of Bolivia. As a result of the War of the Pacific (1879-1883), however, Bolivia lost Antofagasta to Chile and became a landlocked country.
Treaties and Disputes Over Nitrate Deposits (1865-1879):
The war that caused Bolivia to lose its access to the sea was precipitated by a dispute between Bolivia, Chile, and Peru over control of nitrate deposits near the Pacific coast. In the 1870s Chile faced an economic crisis as the prices of its major exports, wheat and copper, declined. As other exports declined, Chile became increasingly dependent on the growth of nitrate mining in the Atacama Desert. Nitrate production doubled between 1865 and 1875.
The area of nitrate deposits straddled what were then the Chilean, Peruvian, and Bolivian borders, including the Bolivian Pacific province of Antofagasta and the Peruvian province of Tarapaca. Most of the nitrate deposits lay in Bolivian and Peruvian territory, but the major nitrate mining companies that operated in these areas were owned by British and/or Chilean nationals.
An 1866 treaty between Chile and Bolivia had stipulated that the border between the two nations would be along the 24th parallel in the Atacama Desert. This treaty also gave Chile and Bolivia equal rights to exploit resources between the 23rd and 25th parallels and guaranteed that both governments would share equally in the revenues from the export of minerals from either side of the border area.
This border region was soon developed as a major nitrate producing region by Anglo-Chilean investors and companies. In 1874 Bolivia and Chile signed another treaty. Under the terms of the new treaty Chile gave up its rights to its share of tax revenues from mineral exports on the Bolivian side of the border. In return Bolivia promised that it would not increase taxes on Chilean companies in its province of Antofagasta for the next 25 years.
Chilean mining interests soon extended their operations into the Peruvian province of Tarapaca. By 1875 Chilean companies in Peruvian nitrate fields were employing more than 10,000 people. At this time, however, the Peruvian government decided to intervene and expropriate foreign companies in Tarapaca, replacing them with a state monopoly over the production and sale of nitrates. At the time the Peruvian government was on the brink of bankruptcy and desperate for money.
Shortly before nationalizing its nitrate industry, Peru had formed a secret military alliance with Bolivia against Chile. In this 1874 treaty both nations agreed to support each other in the event of a war with Chile.
In 1878, Bolivia, bolstered by its secret alliance with Peru, imposed higher taxes on nitrate exports from Antofagasta. This violated its 1874 treaty with Chile, in which Bolivia had promised not to increase taxes for a 25 year period. Chilean companies refused to pay the new taxes and the Bolivian government threatened to expropriate the companies.
The Bolivian government proceeded to reject two Chilean offers to submit the dispute to arbitration. In February 1879 the Bolivian government ordered the seizure of Chilean properties in Antofagasta. On the day set for the seizure of the properties, however, Chilean troops invaded and occupied Antofagasta without any resistance.
At this time Peru was completely unprepared for war, and made a failed attempt to mediate between Chile and Bolivia. The Chileans, however, became aware of the secret Peruvian-Bolivian military alliance against them and declared war on both Peru and Bolivia on April 5, 1879.
The War of the Pacific and its Aftermath (1879-1913):
Although Peru and Bolivia’s combined population was more than twice that of Chile, they faced some serious disadvantages. Compared to Peru and Bolivia, Chile had a fairly stable national government. The Chilean population had a far stronger sense of national identity than their Peruvian or Bolivian counterparts. Chile’s military was also better trained and disciplined than those of its rivals.
Chile also enjoyed the geographic advantage of being closer to the war zone. Peru’s army had to cross the Atacama Desert and the Bolivian army had to cross the Andes Mountains to reach the theater of operations.
Economically all three nations were facing serious difficulties, but Chile was slightly better off in this regard as well. Chile also enjoyed the support of influential British economic interests. British capitalists had cooperated closely with Chileans in the exploitation of the Pacific nitrate deposits. Bolivia and Peru, on the other hand, were not on as good terms with British economic interests. The Peruvian expropriation of Anglo-Chilean nitrate companies had hurt British investors, and both Peru and Bolivia had suspended the repayment of British loans.
With British help, then, Chile defeated Peru and Bolivia in 1883. Under the Treaty of Ancon, which ended the War of the Pacific on October 20, 1883, Peru ceded the province of Tarapaca to Chile. In April 1884 Bolivia and Chile signed an armistice that gave Chile control over the Bolivian province of Antofagasta. The loss of the coastal Pacific province of Antofagasta made Bolivia a landlocked country.
It was not until 1904, however, that the Bolivians formally acknowledged Chilean control over Antofagasta. In return Chile agreed to pay an indemnity and build a railroad connecting the Bolivian capital of La Paz with the port of Arica. This railroad was completed in 1913.
Reference:
Benjamin Keens and Keith Haynes. A History of Latin America. Volume 2: Independence to the Present. 7th Ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004., p. 230-231.
| Bolivia |
By which two words is the chemical compound with the formula KMnO4 known? | Bolivia’s Landlocked Navy » Twelve Mile Circle » maps, geography, travel
Bolivia’s Landlocked Navy
On January 25, 2009 · 2 Comments
Bolivia’s is landlocked. It is hemmed in from every side within the South American continent by Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina, Chile, and Perú. There is no way for Bolivia to reach the sea without crossing through the territory of one of its neighbors. Yet, somewhat inexplicably, Bolivia has a robust Navy with upwards of 5,000 sailors.
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It’s not all that uncommon for a landlocked country to have a navy even though it sounds like a bad punchline to a stale joke. Generally these forces use smaller boats to patrol rivers or lakes, similar to how the United States assigns Coast Guard vessels to the Great Lakes or the Mississippi River. These forces can play a vital role in public safety, border patrol or smuggling abatement where roads may be uncommon or unavailable. What sets Bolivia apart, however is the oversized scale and aspirations of its naval forces.
SOURCE: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Guerra-del-pacifico-01-a.svg under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version
Bolivia hasn’t always been landlocked. It lost a coastline as a result of the 1879-1883 " War of the Pacific " and through ensuing treaties and negotiations. Bolivia found itself on the losing side of the conflict, and as a result lost sovereignty over large chunks of its former territory. This has been a sore spot and a thorn in their national pride ever since.
Bolivia is not a wealthy country and their is a general belief that prosperity might be just around the corner if only they could regain their seacoast. It is a nationalistic theme that remains a permanent fixture of its political system. Bolivia even holds an annual Dia Del Mar (Day of the Sea) where they ask Chile to return the coastline. Their Navy figures into this equation. It’s not an artifact or a holdover from the nineteenth century however, rather, it came into existence in 1963 both as a symbol of territorial aspirations and as an actual patrolling force.
View Larger Map
The Navy operates primarily out of their base at Copacabana on Lake Titicaca (interestingly this is situated on a peninsula separated from the rest of Bolivia and can be approached over land only through Perú). It’s a worthy body of water that would justify a patrolling force regardless — the largest lake in South America by volume — but it’s not the ocean.
No, Bolivia’s aspirations go much further. Interestingly the home port of one of their ships is Rosario, Argentina, nearly 200 miles upriver from Buenos Aires. Additionally Bolivia participates in international naval exercises, with their sailors training side-by-side with those of more traditional seafaring nations. They await the day they can return to open water, and feel they need to be ready for the eventual return of their coastline.
The Bolivian Navy gets a surprising amount of mainstream press attention both in the UK and the USA, probably because the thought of such a thing sounds like such a contradiction. Here are a few fairly recent articles on the subject if you’d like go into more depth:
2 Responses to “Bolivia’s Landlocked Navy”
Oskar Altpapier
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How many ossicles are there in each human ear? | How many pairs of ear ossicles are there? | Socratic
How many pairs of ear ossicles are there?
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3 pairs. Each ear has three ossicles : Malleus, Incus, Stapes.
Explanation:
There are three ossicles in each ear : Malleus, Incus, Stapes. As we have a pair of ears, so in total there are 6 ossicles, or 3 pairs of ossicles.
This diagram shows a section through ear. We can see the ear ossicles inside the middle ear.
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| David's Mighty Warriors |
Who rowed the Atlantic in 1966 with John Ridgway? | Ear Diseases & Disorders
Hearing loss
Sometimes facial paralysis
Cause: Unknown—but may be more common in adults with history of discharge from ears for long periods of time.
Treatment of people with cancer of the middle ear includes surgery and radiation, which targets rays of energy at small areas of cancer cells that might not have been removed during surgery.�
Otosclerosis
Otosclerosis is the buildup of spongy or bone-like tissue in the middle ear that prevents the ossicles, namely the stapes in the middle ear, from working properly.� The impaired movement and function reduces the sound that actually reaches the ear. Otosclerosis usually results in� conductive hearing loss , a hearing loss caused by a problem in the outer or middle ear. �
If the buildup of tissue spreads to the inner ear, it is called Cochlear Otosclerosis.� This can cause permanent� sensorineural hearing impairment due to interference with how the nerves in this part of the ear work.�
Scientists aren’t sure about the exact cause but there is some research suggesting a relationship between otosclerosis and the hormonal changes associated with pregnancy and also with viruses.
Treatment for people who are diagnosed with otosclerosis depends on the extent of hearing loss and may include surgery to replace some or all of the ossicles with artificial ones. It is important to discuss the risks and possible complications of this and any procedure, as well as the benefits, with a doctor and a surgeon.
If the hearing loss is mild, surgery may not be an option but a properly fitted hearing aid may help some people with otosclerosis. A hearing aid is designed to compensate for a hearing loss by amplifying sound.
M�ni�re's disease�
M�ni�re's disease affects the inner ear and the vestibular system, which is the system that helps to maintain balance. In this disease, a part of the cochlea called the organ of Corti becomes swollen, leading to a loss of hearing that may come and go over time. It can also cause severe dizziness, lack of balance, tinnitus (ringing/buzzing sound in the ears), ear pain, and pressure. The disease can exist in mild or severe forms.
Approximately 615,000 individuals have been diagnosed with M�ni�re's disease in the United States. Another 45,500 are newly diagnosed each year. Diagnosis is based on symptoms and results of hearing tests. Unfortunately, doctors don’t know what causes M�ni�re's disease, and there is no cure. Researchers think that it may have to do with fluid levels in the inner ear.
Treatment for people with M�ni�re's disease includes medicines to help control dizziness and fluid retention in the body, and devices that deliver air pulses to the middle ear. Surgery may also be required. Estimates suggest that 6 out of 10 people will get better on their own or can control the symptoms with diet, drugs, or devices. �
Ear Infections
Germs such as bacteria and viruses can get into the ear and cause an infection. In particular, the middle ear cavity behind the eardrum can fill up with fluid. Treatment may include managing the pain and taking antibiotics, which are medications that fight infections. Ongoing fluids in the middle ear and ongoing infections over time may cause hearing problems or other difficulties.
Otitis Media
Infections of the middle ear are one of the most common reasons for children to see a doctor. Three out of 4 children experience ear infection (otitis media) by the time they are 3 years old. Children are more likely to have ear infections like otitis media that come from bacteria or viruses than adults because of their developing ear anatomy. The middle ear is connected to the back of the nose by the auditory tube (also called the eustachian tube) and its location allows easier access to germs. This may lead to a buildup of fluid and pressure, painful infections, and even hearing loss. Infections in children can affect early speech and language development. �
If the infection is due to bacteria, treatment is possible with antibiotics but if the infection is viral, antibiotics won’t work. Surgery is another treatment option, especially for children with ongoing infections. Small tubes placed inside of childrens' ears help fluid drainage and relieve pressure in the ears so that hearing improves.
Chronic otitis media can affect adults, too. It is a long-lasting middle ear infection that can damage the ossicles (middle ear bones), and even lead to a perforation in the eardrum. Perforations can heal but when a chronic infection is present this is less likely and hearing loss can occur.
If you're experiencing hearing difficulties and aren't sure where to turn, schedule a consultation with your local hearing healthcare professional.
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Which band is composed of three brothers and their cousin, all called Followill? | Kings of Leon | EllenTV.com
Genre: Rock
Kings of Leon
Kings of Leon is an American rock band that formed in Nashville, Tennessee in 1999. The band is comprised of brothers Anthony Followill, Ivan Followill and Michael Followill, plus their cousin, Cameron Matthew Followill.
The band's early music was an upbeat blend of Southern rock and blues influences, but has gradually expanded throughout the years to include a variety of genres and a more alternative, arena rock sound. Kings of Leon achieved initial success in the UK with nine Top 40 singles, two BRIT Awards in 2008, and all three of the band's albums peaked in the top five of the UK Albums Chart. Their third album, "Because of the Times," also reached the #1 spot.
After the release of "Only by the Night" in September 2008, the band achieved chart success in the United States. The singles "Sex on Fire," "Use Somebody" and "Notion" all peaked at #1 on the Hot Modern Rock Tracks chart. The album was their first platinum-selling album in the US, and was also the best-selling album of 2008 in Australia, being certified platinum nine times. The band's fifth album, "Come Around Sundown," was released on October 18, 2010. Their sixth album, "Mechanical Bull," was released on September 24, 2013 and reached #2 on the Billboard Top 200, and was also nominated for Best Rock Album at the 56th Annual Grammy Awards.
After the band's 2014-2015 Mechanical Bull tour, they revealed that they were already working on a follow-up album. In late 2016, they released their seventh studio album, "WALLS." The album was produced in Los Angeles with help from the likes of Florence + the Machine, Arcade Fire, and Mumford & Sons.
Keep in Touch with Kings of Leon
| Kings of Leon |
Under what title has the series of fantasy novels A Song of Ice and Fire been adapted for TV? | In a Family Way: 10 Bands of Brothers (and Sisters, and Cousins)
In a Family Way: 10 Bands of Brothers (and Sisters, and Cousins)
Russell Hall
|
05.05.2011
The family that plays together, stays together. It’s likely the person who coined that phrase wasn’t thinking of bands, but a number of groups consisting of sisters, brothers, cousins and the like have risen to great heights in the music world. For the purposes of the following list, we’ve defined “family bands” as those comprised of more than two members who are related (no Black Crowes, for instance). Feel free to chime in with those we missed, but please, no Partridge Family.
10. Cowboy Junkies
Although they’ve been rarely been credited as pioneers, Cowboy Junkies helped launch the alternative-country movement with the release of their breakthrough album, The Trinity Session, in 1988. Composed of singer Margo Timmins, her brothers Michael (guitar) and Peter (drums), and family friend Alan Anton (bass), the Canadian band has gone on to craft a stunning body of work. Languid, ethereal and enchanting, the group’s best songs plumb an unlikely musical vein shared by classic country artists and slow-core alternative bands.
9. The Isley Brothers
Groups don’t get much more family-oriented than the Isley Brothers. Starting out in the ’50s doing gospel, the group consisted of O'Kelly Isley Jr., Rudolph Isley, Ronald Isley and Vernon Isley. Vernon was tragically killed in 1955 and the group they switched to doo-wop and hit the big time with the single “Shout” in 1959. After some duds they bounced back in the ’60s with “Twist and Shout” (covered, of course, by The Beatles). In 1969, they added Ernie Isley on bass and phased themselves into the new funk movement and scored a hit with “It’s Your Thing.”
They brought in new blood in the form of younger brother Marvin Isley and brother-in-law Chris Jasper.
In the early 1980s, the younger Isleys went their own way with the Isley-Jasper-Isley group. In 1990, Marvin and Ernie decided to rejoin the Isley Brothers. In 1992, the biggest family act of them all was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
8. Sly and The Family Stone
As their band name implies, Sly and The Family Stone included three siblings: guitarist Freddie Stone, keyboardist and backup singer Rose Stone and the inimitable Sly himself. But the “family” tag was also a figurative term meant to convey the united front presented by the group’s racially integrated, multi-gender lineup. Rounded out by trumpet player Cynthia Robinson, drummer Gregg Errico, sax player Jerry Martini and bassist Larry Graham, Sly and The Family Stone established a template – both musically and philosophically – that had a powerful impact on Prince and other soul-pop maestros.
7. The Jackson 5
A pop phenomenon in the late ’60s and early ’70s, The Jackson 5 were the first group in music history to see their first four singles reach #1 on the charts. The band’s glory years began winding down when Jermaine and Michael decided to stake out solo careers, but as late as 1984, on the heels of their Victory comeback album, the Jacksons proved they could still pack arenas. Randy, Tito and Jackie went on to be become in-demand sessions musicians.
6. The Bee Gees
The Bee Gees will forever be known as the group who led the charge during the disco era. In fact, however, brothers Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb were supremely talented artists equally capable of dazzling pop-rock (“Lonely Days,” “Morning of My Life”) and, yes, wildly infectious dance-funk (“Jive Talkin’,” “Stayin’ Alive”). Maurice’s tragic death in 2003 triggered a lengthy sabbatical, but Barry and Robin have performed together in recent years. Steven Spielberg is said to be making a movie about the group’s rise to stardom.
5. Kings of Leon
The sons of a former Pentecostal evangelist, brothers Caleb, Nathan and Jared Followill, along with their first cousin Matthew Followill, were at first tagged as a “southern Strokes” due to their roots-tinged, uptempo pop style. But beginning with their 2007 album, Because of the Times, Kings of Leon started to explore varied sonic textures and a more expansive approach to songwriting. Achieving massive success in the U.K. in 2008, the band has since earned a huge, well-deserved American following.
4. Bob Marley and The Wailers
Every Wailers fan knows that Bob Marley’s wife, Rita, represented one-third of the group’s backing vocal trio, The I-Threes. What’s sometimes forgotten, however, is that brothers Aston “Family Man” Barrett and his brother, drummer Carlton Barrett, together comprised The Wailers’ phenomenal rhythm section. Were it not for the rock-solid foundation provided by the Barrett brothers, Marley’s pioneering reggae rhythms may well have taken a different turn.
3. The Beach Boys
Initially comprised of brothers Brian, Dennis and Carl Wilson, plus their cousin Mike Love and close friend Al Jardine, The Beach Boys were, for a time, America’s preeminent pop band. Centered on intricate vocal harmonies, classic melodies, and breathtaking arrangements, the group’s material hit a stunning peak with “Good Vibrations,” a “pocket symphony” composed by Brian Wilson that’s considered by some to be the greatest pop song ever written. The band’s 1966 album, Pet Sounds, had a profound impact on the making of The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s album.
2. Van Halen
One of the greatest guitar bands of all time, Van Halen were started in California by brothers Eddie and Alex and went on to re-define metal in the ’70s and beyond. But Van Halen went from brother band to family band when Eddie Van Halen’s son Wolfgang (usually just Wolfie) started playing with the band in 2004. Young Wolfie, then just 13 years old, played “316” (the instrumental named after Wolfie’s birthday) with his father on stage. In 2006, the band announced that Wolfie would replace the departing Michael Anthony on bass.
1. The Allman Brothers Band
The saga of one of the great southern rock bands has been a family affair since the beginning. The band was formed in in 1969 by the Allman brothers Duane and Gregg, alongside Dickey Betts, Berry Oakley, Butch Trucks and Jai Johanny “Jaimoe” Johanson. After the death of both Duane Allman and Berry Oakley in the ’70s, the band dissolved, later reforming in 1989. Another family connection was made 10 years later when Derek Trucks, nephew of drummer Butch, joined on guitar.
| i don't know |
Who is the regular Chairman of “Any Questions?” on BBC Radio 4? | BBC Radio 4 - Any Questions? - Hosting
Any Questions?
Read more about sharing.
Hosting
If you would like to invite the BBC Radio 4 programme Any Questions? to your venue, hall or space, please find here an outline of what we would need from you.
We are keen to receive invitations from as many different kinds of venues as possible from around the UK. If you'd like to host us but are concerned you don't have the experience or facilities, please contact us and we can advise: [email protected] .
Some Background On The Show
Any Questions? is the flagship political panel programme that goes out live on Friday evenings at 8pm on BBC Radio 4 (repeated on Saturday afternoons at 1.10pm). It was first broadcast in October 1948 and its current chair is Jonathan Dimbleby. Each week Any Questions? visits a different part of the country with a diverse panel of four speakers who answer questions from the audience. The programme provides the opportunity for people to challenge leading politicians, policy makers, writers and thinkers.
Approximate Time Guide to the evening
- 18:30 Doors open to the public
- 19:25 The venue's welcome followed by the BBC's warm-up at 19:30
- 19:45 The BBC producer calls the questioners to the front row
- 20:00 BBC Radio 4 News
- 20:02 Live broadcast of Any Questions? (ends 8.50pm)
Guide to Hosting Any Questions
1. THE AUDIENCE
One of the chief responsibilities for you, the organiser, is the distribution of the tickets.
Admission to the programme is free. We will send the tickets to you directly from the printers approximately 10 weeks ahead of the programme.
Members of your organisation will want to have first call on the tickets, but at least one third of the tickets must be made available to the general public on a first come, first served basis.
Please offer a number of tickets to the local political parties in your area. We suggest you let them know you are hosting the programme and that you will hold approximately 10 tickets for each of them. It can of course be less or more depending on the total number of seats in your venue. Please ask our advice if you wish. We will be in touch before the broadcast to discuss take up.
Any tickets that haven't been taken up 1 week before broadcast can be released to the general public.
2. HEALTH AND SAFETY
Housekeeping: We will ring you in advance to ask you who (from your venue) will be responsible in emergencies - fire, first aid, 999 calls, and security.
Please nominate someone to introduce your venue to the live audience, who will point out fire exits and explain evacuation and emergency procedures.
First aid: One trained First Aider and a suitably equipped First Aid box should be on site for the evening.
Fire exits: The location of all fire exits together with evacuation procedures will be checked with you on the day.
Security: Please nominate an experienced person(s) to be present in the hall before and during the broadcast.
Wheelchair access: Please ensure there is easy wheelchair access for anyone attending with disabilities. Please make us aware of your disabled access when we arrive.
Hearing aids: Please note we can provide an Induction Loop facility for anyone using a hearing aid.
3. PUBLICITY
Posters: We will send you BBC Radio 4 Any Questions? posters approximately 10 weeks in advance. The best places to hang these will be where a broad cross-section of the local community can see them: e.g. public libraries, town halls, sports and leisure centres. We may be able to indicate the names of some of the panellists in advance but please be aware that they can change up to the last minute.
Local Media: You should contact the nearest BBC Local Radio stations and the editorial offices of both your local and regional newspapers to let them know that Any Questions? is coming to your venue. You may like to give an interview to tell their audiences about the event.
Photography: There is an opportunity for press photographs to be taken of the panel before the programme during the 'warm up' question. Please be aware that no photographs can be taken during the broadcast because of the disturbance it causes.
4. THE QUESTIONS
The quality of the questions that the audience ask is crucial to the success of the programme. We look for questions on the most stimulating moral, political and social issues of the day - the current issues that will get people talking.
Questions are submitted on the night, and people can submit questions on any topic they like. We will provide you with an aide memoire on what's been in the week's news.
Questions can be submitted up to the last minute and there is no limit on the numbers of questions each person can put in.
The programme strives to achieve a varied choice of subjects from week to week while keeping an eye on the week's news' agenda, and we cannot guarantee what subjects we will cover. As the programme broadcasts to a UK-wide audience, we will not select questions on purely local issues unless they raise matters of genuine national interest.
Questions cannot be put by proxy; each questioner must be present in the hall for their question to be included.
5. YOUR VENUE
We would like to ask you to draw a rough sketch of the space intended for use, indicating the seating area; the stage/platform; the entrances and exits; and the location of two rooms which will become the production room and the green room (see information further down).
6. SET-UP
On the day of broadcast, the venue space must be available from 12pm - 10pm to allow time for our sound engineers to set up, test and take down their equipment.
The hall: By 3pm, please ensure the hall is set up with stage carpeted, 3 tables and 6 chairs (on stage) and audience chairs (in hall) set out.
The platform: Please provide a platform or stage with adequate top-lighting. The overall size of the stage should be a minimum of 25 feet x 15 feet, preferably at least 2 feet from the floor.
The tables: Three tables, measuring a minimum of 4 feet by 2 feet should be arranged end to end on the platform, along with six chairs.
The programme's producer and chairman will sit at the centre table, with two panellists on either side.
We ask you to provide carpeting or matting for the tables and chairs to rest on to prevent our microphones from picking up sounds of scraping chairs or shuffling feet during the broadcast. We will provide BBC Radio 4 branded cloths to cover the tables.
The audience chairs: In the audience seating, please allocate 15 seats in the centre of the front row for production purposes (10 for those members of the audience whose questions have been selected and who will be called down to the front just before the programme starts and 5 more slotted among these for the Production Coordinator to use.)
We will provide reserved notices for this seating (and any others that are required).
NB The total number of seats in your hall must comply with local fire regulations and with your hall's public liability insurance.
The two backstage rooms: We need the use of two backstage rooms near the hall. Both rooms need access to the stage without going through the audience: one of these will be the Production Office for the production team to work in. This is where the questions should be brought. We ask you to provide two large tables, three chairs, plus an easily accessible power supply. We bring our own computer for typing questions, but it would be very helpful if you could identify a convenient computer and printer we could use for internet access.
The second room - the Green Room - should be reasonably close to the stage and will be where the panellists sit before they go on stage. This room does not need to be large as they will only be there for approximately 10 minutes.
We hope they won't have to walk through the audience before reaching the stage.
7. COSTS
The BBC pays a £100 facility fee to cover use of the hall and administration costs.
We occasionally pay for extra advertising if it is necessary and other costs such as the necessary hire of additional chairs. Please call us to discuss.
Unfortunately, we are not able to cover any costs that have not been cleared in advance with us.
8. SITE SURVEY
The BBC's engineers will visit your venue some weeks before the broadcast as they will need to assess its technical capacity. They will contact you directly to arrange a convenient time.
Nearer the date, BT may also visit to install and test temporary lines for carrying the broadcast.
9. CHAIR AND PANEL
The chair arrives at approx. 7.10pm and the panellists arrive at 7.40pm
Before they come to the venue, we like to organise some pre-programme hospitality at a nearby restaurant.
We would appreciate any advice you can give us on where we can best find reasonably priced good local food, open from 5pm.
10. STEWARDS ON THE NIGHT
Please provide a small team of stewards on the night to help supervise the evening. They should guide and seat the audience as they arrive, monitor parking arrangements and help collect questions.
After 6.30pm two of the stewards should act as runners to carry the questions in batches to the production office where they will be sorted. We ask that they do this as frequently as possible.
A steward should also be allocated to meet the chair when s/he arrives (approx 7.10pm) and take him/her to the production office where the producer is working.
A steward should also be allocated to meet the panellists when they arrive (approx 7.35pm or 9.40pm) to take them directly to their green room (backstage room 2).
After the programme, if you are intending to provide hospitality, it is helpful to nominate four stewards (one per panellist) to escort the panel to the room you have chosen.
11. CAR PARKING
The Outside Broadcast van needs ONE large parking space all day. We may need a second space next to it if a second van is required on the night.
Please reserve a minimum of three and a maximum of eight car parking spaces for our production cars - we can confirm the exact numbers on the day of broadcast if your car parking is limited.
12. HOSPITALITY
Some venues like to provide light refreshments after the programme as it is a chance to meet and chat with the panellists and chair. It is up to you what you provide and who you invite.
Thank you in advance for all your help and co-operation, and we look forward to producing a successful evening with you.
13. BBC CHILD PROTECTION POLICY
We work in compliance with the BBC’s Child Protection Policy which means we treat children and young people with respect and dignity; we do not offer our own or ask for personal details from any child or young person. We would not place ourselves in a supervisory position regarding any children, and we would report any concerns we had about a child or young person to our contact in the school or venue.
| Jonathan Dimbleby |
What type of jet aircraft is a VLJ? | Any Questions? cancelled for first time in its history - Telegraph
BBC
Any Questions? cancelled for first time in its history
Radio 4’s topical debate programme Any Questions? was cancelled last night for what is believed to be the first time in its 60-year history.
Jonathan Dimbleby hosts Any Questions? in 1997. Any Questions? was first broadcast in October 1948 Photo: BBC
By Laura Roberts
7:00AM BST 16 Apr 2011
Three of the show’s guest panellists were unable to make the live recording, which was taking place near Durham, because of train cancellations and traffic problems.
Chris Grayling, Minister for the Department for Work and Pensions, Labour peer Lord Malloch-Brown and Rita Clifton, UK Chairwoman of Interbrand, had their 4pm train from Kings Cross in central London cancelled after a man was struck by a train travelling from Kings Cross to Leeds earlier in the afternoon.
They experienced further delays at Grantham but it was decided that taxis were not a viable option to complete the journey.
Although Jonathan Dimbleby, the chairman, and fourth panellist historian Prof Richard Grayson were present at the National Rail Museum in Shildon, the show was cancelled.
A BBC spokesperson, said: “Due to unforeseen circumstances some panellists due to appear on Any Questions from Durham this evening were severely held up on their journeys. As a consequence there will be no Any Questions on Friday night or Saturday and no edition of Any Answers.”
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Which College of Oxford University, founded in 1438, is the first alphabetically? | University of Oxford | university, Oxford, England, United Kingdom | Britannica.com
University of Oxford
university, Oxford, England, United Kingdom
Written By:
William Richard Morris, Viscount Nuffield
University of Oxford, English autonomous institution of higher learning at Oxford , Oxfordshire , England , one of the world’s great universities. It lies along the upper course of the River Thames (called by Oxonians the Isis), 50 miles (80 km) north-northwest of London .
Aerial view of the University of Oxford, Oxfordshire, England.
Wallace Wong
A brief introduction to Oxford, England’s oldest university.
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
Sketchy evidence indicates that schools existed at Oxford by the early 12th century. By the end of that century, a university was well established, perhaps resulting from the barring of English students from the University of Paris about 1167. Oxford was modeled on the University of Paris, with initial faculties of theology , law, medicine , and the liberal arts.
In the 13th century the university gained added strength, particularly in theology, with the establishment of several religious orders, principally Dominicans and Franciscans , in the town of Oxford. The university had no buildings in its early years; lectures were given in hired halls or churches. The various colleges of Oxford were originally merely endowed boardinghouses for impoverished scholars. They were intended primarily for masters or bachelors of arts who needed financial assistance to enable them to continue study for a higher degree. The earliest of these colleges, University College, was founded in 1249. Balliol College was founded about 1263, and Merton College in 1264.
University College, Oxford, Oxfordshire, England.
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During the early history of Oxford, its reputation was based on theology and the liberal arts. But it also gave more-serious treatment to the physical sciences than did the University of Paris: Roger Bacon , after leaving Paris, conducted his scientific experiments and lectured at Oxford from 1247 to 1257. Bacon was one of several influential Franciscans at the university during the 13th and 14th centuries. Among the others were Duns Scotus and William of Ockham . John Wycliffe (c. 1330–84) spent most of his life as a resident Oxford doctor.
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Clemson University
Beginning in the 13th century, the university was strengthened by charters from the crown, but the religious foundations in Oxford town were suppressed during the Protestant Reformation . In 1571 an act of Parliament led to the incorporation of the university. The university’s statutes were codified by its chancellor , Archbishop William Laud , in 1636. In the early 16th century, professorships began to be endowed. And in the latter part of the 17th century, interest in scientific studies increased substantially. During the Renaissance , Desiderius Erasmus carried the new learning to Oxford, and such scholars as William Grocyn , John Colet , and Sir Thomas More enhanced the university’s reputation. Since that time Oxford has traditionally held the highest reputation for scholarship and instruction in the classics, theology, and political science .
Chapel Quad, Pembroke College, Oxford, Oxfordshire, England.
Djr xi
In the 19th century the university’s enrollment and its professorial staff were greatly expanded. The first women’s college at Oxford, Lady Margaret Hall, was founded in 1878, and women were first admitted to full membership in the university in 1920. In the 20th century Oxford’s curriculum was modernized. Science came to be taken much more seriously and professionally, and many new faculties were added, including ones for modern languages, political science, and economics. Postgraduate studies also expanded greatly in the 20th century.
The colleges and collegial institutions of the University of Oxford include All Souls (1438), Balliol (1263–68), Brasenose (1509), Christ Church (1546), Corpus Christi (1517), Exeter (1314), Green (1979), Harris Manchester (founded 1786; inc. 1996), Hertford (founded 1740; inc. 1874), Jesus (1571), Keble (founded 1868; inc. 1870), Kellogg (1990), Lady Margaret Hall (founded 1878; inc. 1926), Linacre (1962), Lincoln (1427), Magdalen (1458), Mansfield (founded 1886; inc. 1995), Merton (1264), New (1379), Nuffield (founded 1937; inc. 1958), Oriel (1326), Pembroke (1624), Queen’s (1341), St. Anne’s (founded 1879; inc. 1952), St. Antony’s (1950), St. Catherine’s (1962), St. Cross (1965), St. Edmund Hall (1278), St. Hilda’s (founded 1893; inc. 1926), St. Hugh’s (founded 1886; inc. 1926), St. John’s (1555), St. Peter’s (founded 1929; inc. 1961), Somerville (founded 1879; inc. 1926), Templeton (founded 1965; inc. 1995), Trinity (1554–55), University (1249), Wadham (1612), Wolfson (founded 1966; inc. 1981), and Worcester (founded 1283; inc. 1714). Among the university’s private halls are Blackfriars (founded 1921; inc. 1994), Campion (founded 1896; inc. 1918), Greyfriars (founded 1910; inc. 1957), Regent’s Park College (founded 1810; inc. 1957), St. Benet’s (founded 1897; inc. 1918), and Wycliffe (founded 1877; inc. 1996).
Merton College, Oxford, Oxfordshire, England.
iStockphoto/Thinkstock
| All Souls |
Which was the third country after Australia and England to play test cricket? | Oxford, University of | Article about Oxford, University of by The Free Dictionary
Oxford, University of | Article about Oxford, University of by The Free Dictionary
http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Oxford%2c+University+of
Oxford, University of
Oxford, University of,
at Oxford, England, one of the oldest English-language universities in the world. The university was a leading center of learning throughout the Middle Ages; such scholars as Roger Bacon Bacon, Roger,
c.1214–1294?, English scholastic philosopher and scientist, a Franciscan. He studied at Oxford as well as at the Univ. of Paris and became one of the most celebrated and zealous teachers at Oxford.
..... Click the link for more information. , Duns Scotus Duns Scotus, John
[Lat. Scotus=Irishman or Scot], c.1266–1308, scholastic philosopher and theologian, called the Subtle Doctor. A native of Scotland, he became a Franciscan and taught at Oxford, Paris, and Cologne.
..... Click the link for more information. , John Wyclif Wyclif, Wycliffe, Wickliffe, or Wiclif, John
, c.1328–1384, English religious reformer. A Yorkshireman by birth, Wyclif studied and taught theology and philosophy at Oxford.
..... Click the link for more information. , and Bishop Grosseteste Grosseteste, Robert
, c.1175–1253, English prelate. Educated at Oxford and probably also at Paris, he became one of the most learned men of his time. He taught at Oxford and later, as rector, made the university an important center of learning.
..... Click the link for more information. were associated with it. It has maintained an outstanding reputation, especially in the classics, theology, and political science.
Colleges
Oxford has its beginnings in the early 12th cent. in groups of young scholars who gathered around the learned monks and teachers of the town. The system of residential colleges began with Merton College (1264), although University College and Balliol had been founded earlier. Consisting of a corporation of scholars and masters, having its own statutes, property, buildings, and customs, the medieval college maintained almost complete autonomy within the university, as it does today.
The present colleges, with their dates of founding, include University (1249), Balliol (1263), Merton (1264, for men), St. Edmund Hall (1269), Exeter (1314), Oriel (1326, for men), Queen's (1340), New (1379), Lincoln (1427), All Souls (1438, for male fellows), Magdalen (1458; pronounced môd`lĭn), Brasenose (1509; pronounced brāz`nōz), Corpus Christi (1516), Christ Church (1546, for men), Trinity (1554), St. John's (1555), Jesus (1571), Wadham (1610, charter received 1612), Pembroke (1624), Worcester (1714), Keble (1871), Hertford (1874), Lady Margaret Hall (1878, charter received 1926), Somerville (1879, charter received 1926, for women), St. Hugh's (1886, charter received 1926, for women), St. Hilda's (1893, charter received 1926, for women), St. Anne's (1893, charter received 1952), St. Peter's (1929, charter received 1961), St. Catherine's (1962), and Rewley House (1990). Nuffield (1937, charter received 1958), St. Antony's (1948, charter received 1953), Linacre (1962), St. Cross (1965), Wolfson (1965), and Green (1979) are postgraduate colleges of men and women. Most of the undergraduate colleges were founded as either men's or women's colleges and later became coeducational.
Faculties, Instruction, and Facilities
Oxford's faculties include theology, law, medicine, literae humaniores, modern history, English language and literature, modern languages, Oriental studies, Japanese studies, modern Middle Eastern studies, Slavonic and East European Studies, mathematics, physical sciences, biological sciences, physiological sciences, psychological studies, social studies, music, fine arts, archaeology and the history of art, and anthropology and geography.
Instruction at Oxford is by lectures and the tutorial system, by which each student writes a weekly paper on a prescribed subject and discusses it with his tutor. Women first received degrees in 1920, but they were not admitted to full university status until 1959. A large sum was left for scholarships for foreign students by Cecil Rhodes Rhodes, Cecil John
, 1853–1902, British imperialist and business magnate. Business Career
The son of a Hertfordshire clergyman, he first went to South Africa in 1870, joining his oldest brother, Herbert, on a cotton plantation in Natal.
..... Click the link for more information. .
The Ashmolean Museum (see under Ashmole, Elias Ashmole, Elias
, 1617–92, English archaeologist and antiquary. He made exhaustive antiquarian studies, especially The Institution, Laws and Ceremonies of the Order of the Garter (1672) and The Antiquities of Berkshire (3 vol., 1719).
..... Click the link for more information. ) and the Bodleian Library Bodleian Library
, at the Univ. of Oxford. The original library, destroyed in the reign of Edward VI, was replaced in 1602, chiefly through the efforts of Sir Thomas Bodley, who gave it valuable collections of books and manuscripts and in his will left a fund for maintenance.
..... Click the link for more information. are notable features of the university. Oxford Univ. Press was established by 1478, and the Oxford Union is a world-famous debating society. Until 1948 the university had two representatives in Parliament.
Bibliography
See C. E. Mallet, History of the University of Oxford (3 vol., 1924–27, repr. 1968); F. Markham, Oxford (1967); J. P. V. D. Balsdon, Oxford Now and Then (1970).
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In which town is the Great Yorkshire Showground? | Hotels near Great Yorkshire Showground | Harrogate | lastminute.com
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Hotels near Great Yorkshire Showground, Harrogate
Check out our superb range of Great Yorkshire Showground hotels on lastminute.com and make your trip to Harrogate an unforgettable one. Book one of the hotels near Great Yorkshire Showground up until midnight and you can stay the same night.
We offer big savings on all kinds of hotels in some of the best locations Harrogate has to offer so use our search box to find one that meets your requirements. Whether you're travelling with your family, alone or with your partner, we have a superb selection to choose from. Book now and make some great savings - also don't forget our Price Match Guarantee
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Complete the slogan used in a 1960s US Presidential Election – ‘All the Way with ___'. | Location Map | Harrogate Flower Show
Show address:
Great Yorkshire Showground, Harrogate, North Yorkshire, HG2 8NZ.
Please note: Some route planner maps and sat nav equipment direct traffic from the M62, M1 and A1 motorways to Harrogate via the small market town of Wetherby. This may be the shortest route, but it is not the easiest! The most straight forward route for motorway traffic is to use the A1 and exit onto the A59, signposted to Harrogate. Follow the yellow signs to the showground.
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Viti Levu is the largest island in which Pacific nation? | Fiji Travel Guide | Travel Nation
Fiji Travel Guide
A traditional Kava ceremony is a highlight of any Fijian trip
Discover the outer Yasawa Islands
Wander amongst traditional Fijian bures and villages
Hop between Fiji's stunning islands
Relax on a hammock and take in a Fijian sunset
Explore world class dive sites in the Mamanuca Islands
Head to the Coral Coast for adventure fueled experiences
Buy delicious fresh produce at the local markets
Wander aimlessly along the spectacular beaches
Meet the locals at a Sunday church service
Hundreds of volcanic islands, glittering atolls and uninhabited islets pepper the South Pacific, creating an island nation that promises tropical escapism and sheer seclusion. While the main island of Viti Levu gives an essential introduction to daily Fijian life, the swaying palms, kaleidoscope corals and emerald peaks of the Mamanuca and Yasawa islands are what real Fijian dreams are made of.
Viti Levu
The largest island and hub of the archipelago, most Fijian adventures start and finish on Viti Levu. Close to the airport, the town of Nadi is where it all begins, being a hotel hotspot and the hopping-off point for exploring offshore islands. Stretch out on a hotel lounger and get to grips with Fijian life, start exploring the island or nip across the bridge to Port Denarau and sail into the sunset.
Head to the Coral Coast on Viti Levu’s southern shores to meet backpackers in Mango Bay, detour inland to the Namosi Highlands or visit the adventure capital of Pacific Harbour for shark diving, jet skiing and white-water rafting. In the capital city of Suva you can meet locals and expats in the shopping malls and sari shops, or if city life doesn’t suit, escape to the rural region of Rakiraki, home to green mountains, ancient villages and ancestral tombs.
Mamanuca Islands
West of Viti Levu, more than thirty islands make up the Mamanucas – a popular group of islands blessed with some of Fiji’s finest weather and best beaches. Travelling via water taxi or seaplane, you could visit on a daytrip from Viti Levu but for the fullest experience, stay a few nights and hop between the coral cays, backpacker hangouts and classy retreats.
Learn to scuba-dive in sheltered lagoons or soar over WWII wrecks, kayak across crystal bays and visit marine sanctuaries where Hawksbill turtles hatch their eggs. Stay on the intimate shores of the smallest islands and sunbathe beneath thatched parasols. Swim beside dolphins in nutrient-rich waters and parasail over the Pacific, or relish the surreal serenity of the calmest islands and snorkel straight off the sand or windsurf in the warm breeze.
Yasawa Islands
Sail north to the Yasawa Islands, which stretch across the South Pacific for 80km. Starting at the southern tail, the volcanic islands of Kuata, Wayasewa and Waya are home to dramatic cliffs, knife edge ridges and beautiful bays, where you can snorkel with sharks or hike up the summits at sunrise.
Further north, you can swim with manta rays or fish for marlin near the largest island of Naviti. For more testing adventures, take a week long kayak trip around lesser visited bays and uninhabited islets, camping beneath the stars and cooking on open fires. Continue north to the islands of Tavewa and Nanuya Lailai, which are bathed by the turquoise waters of the famous Blue Lagoon.
Vanua Levu
Adventure to Vanua Levu and reap the rewards of Fiji’s second largest island, where golden fields of sugar cane blanket the north and rugged green hills, rich forests and rushing waterfalls decorate the south. Rumble along rutted dirt roads past remote villages and coconut groves to find sacred monoliths and wild beaches. Fish for mahi-mahi, tour the coastal communities and take care not to scald yourself on the hot springs.
Watch the yachts bobbing in Savusavu Bay, or hire a windsurf board and whizz across the water. Hike through untouched rainforest at Wasali Nature Reserve, visit Snake Temple near the main town of Labasa and scuba dive over soft corals. Journey past pristine rainforest on the Hibiscus Highway and swim with bottle-nose dolphins in Natewa Bay.
Which South Pacific island?
Flight time from UK:
26 Hours
To plan your trip to Fiji call us on +44 1273 320 580 or contact any of our team who’ve been there:
| Fiji (disambiguation) |
Founded in 1584, which is the only Cambridge College that starts with the letter E? | Fiji High Commission :: About Fiji
Gallery
There are 333 islands and 522 smaller islets making up the archipelago, approximately 106 are permanently inhabited.The largest island Viti Levu, covers about 57% of the nation’s land area and has the two largest metropolitan areas (the capital Suva, and Lautoka). It also hosts and most of the other major towns, ie, Ba, Nasinu, and Nadi (the site of the international airport), and contains some 69% of the population. The second largest island, Vanua Levu, is 64 km to the north of Viti Levu, covers just over 30% of the land area and is home to some 15% of the population. The two main towns are Labasa and Savusavu.
Other islands and island groups make up only 2.5 % of the land area. These include Taveuni and Kadavu (the third and fourth largest islands respectively), the Mamanuca Group (just off Nadi), and Yasawa Group (north of the Mamanucas), the Lomaiviti Group (located geographically in the center of the archipelago), and the distant Lau Group which is seldom visited by tourists. The only major town on any of the smaller islands is Fiji’s former capital Levuka, located on the island of Ovalau.
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Which England cricket captain was born in Madras in 1968? | Nasser Hussain - Biography - IMDb
Nasser Hussain
Jump to: Overview (2) | Mini Bio (1) | Trivia (2)
Overview (2)
Nasser Hussain was born on March 28, 1968 in Madras, India.
Trivia (2)
He was born in India and went on to become the Essex and England cricket captain from 1999 to 2003. He retired his England career just short of 100 caps and finished in style, scoring 100 at Lords against New Zealand in 2004. In June 2004 he became a cricket pundit for Sky Television.
He was awarded the OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) in the 2002 Queen's New Years Honours List for his services to Cricket.
See also
| Nasser Hussain |
Who commanded the Spanish Armada in 1588? | NRI News- Naseer Hussain, I am British but proud of my Indian roots
Nabanita Sirca
Hindustan Times
The former captain of the English cricket team is proud of his Indian roots. In his forthcoming autobiography Playing With Fire he introduces himself as: "A guy born in India called Nasser Hussain, with all the racial connotations and accusations of divided loyalty that it has brought... It would have been unheard of not many years ago but I did it. I achieved it and I am proud of that. It was down to Dad." He remains proud of his Indian roots but maintains he is a 100 per cent English.
Hussain, who brought English cricket back from the brink, writes: "Cricket was never just a game to me, it was far more important than that." And he owes it all to his father. "I always had the fear of not living up to my dad's expectations".
He admits: "My life was mapped out for me from a young age by my dad. My Indian father and English mother took the gamble of leaving their prosperous life in India, where I was born in Madras, to start afresh in England in 1975 when I was seven."
He reveals in his quite candid autobiography, to be published on October 14, that when his mother learnt he was writing the book she sent him a letter explaining a lot of things he was unaware of. It was through the letter that he discovered he was born premature and that his parents almost lost him. "Mum and Dad already had two boys Mel and Abbas, but they had been through the traumatic experience of losing a daughter through cot death at six months. Mum plunged into depression and the only way she could cope with that was to try to fall pregnant again as quickly as she could."
"So she did, but there were problems. The doctors in India told her on several occasions that I had died within her. She was even told, brutally, that I would have to be flushed down the toilet." But his mum fought "to give me a chance to live and she believes that I am the way I am, a fighter, because of this."
He writes it was his father (Jawad by name but known as Joe) who decided to move to England with his family. "It sums up everything he always stood for." He gave up his home and job in India to give his children an English education. "I have always considered myself to be 100 per cent English. Everything I do, everything I am, my accent, my upbringing, is totally English. I love the country and have always considered it home. But I've always been proud of my Indian roots."
He writes that having considered himself English he has never thought of himself as a role model for British Asians. "I have always felt second and third generation Asians were still clinging to their sub-continental roots, whereas I feel they should embrace their Britishness and start swapping their Tendulkar shirts for Flintoff or Harmison ones."
"It's a delicate subject, but I do feel that there's a huge amount to gain by the Asian community nailing their colours to England's mast, both as players and supporters. No part of the English public follows cricket with more passion than the Asian community and the potentially deep well of talent they provide is not something future England teams can afford to ignore."
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Which 2011 Woody Allen directed film is set in France? | Midnight in Paris (2011) - IMDb
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While on a trip to Paris with his fiancée's family, a nostalgic screenwriter finds himself mysteriously going back to the 1920s everyday at midnight.
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Title: Midnight in Paris (2011)
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Won 1 Oscar. Another 24 wins & 96 nominations. See more awards »
Videos
Two girlfriends on a summer holiday in Spain become enamored with the same painter, unaware that his ex-wife, with whom he has a tempestuous relationship, is about to re-enter the picture.
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An American journalism student in London scoops a big story, and begins an affair with an aristocrat as the incident unfurls.
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A romantic comedy about an Englishman brought in to help unmask a possible swindle. Personal and professional complications ensue.
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A tormented philosophy professor finds a will to live when he commits an existential act.
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A pair of young lovers flee their New England town, which causes a local search party to fan out to find them.
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Storyline
Gil and Inez travel to Paris as a tag-along vacation on her parents' business trip. Gil is a successful Hollywood writer but is struggling on his first novel. He falls in love with the city and thinks they should move there after they get married, but Inez does not share his romantic notions of the city or the idea that the 1920s was the golden age. When Inez goes off dancing with her friends, Gil takes a walk at midnight and discovers what could be the ultimate source of inspiration for writing. Gil's daily walks at midnight in Paris could take him closer to the heart of the city but further from the woman he's about to marry. Written by napierslogs
Rated PG-13 for some sexual references and smoking | See all certifications »
Parents Guide:
10 June 2011 (USA) See more »
Also Known As:
Midnight in Paris See more »
Filming Locations:
$599,003 (USA) (20 May 2011)
Gross:
Did You Know?
Trivia
Apparently, Cary Grant almost came out of retirement in the 1970s to make this film when the script was at a very early stage. He was very keen to work with Allen and even visited Michaels' Pub unannounced, where Allen would play the clarinet every Monday night, to discuss the role. See more »
Goofs
In a scene set in the 1920s, the small bollards lining the kerbs to prevent cars from parking with two wheels on the pavement can be seen - they were installed in the 1990s. See more »
Quotes
[first lines]
Gil : This is unbelievable! Look at this! There's no city like this in the world. There never was.
Inez : You act like you've never been here before.
Gil : I don't get here often enough, that's the problem. Can you picture how drop dead gorgeous this city is in the rain? Imagine this town in the '20s. Paris in the '20s, in the rain. The artists and writers!
Inez : Why does every city have to be in the rain? What's wonderful about getting wet?
| Midnight in Paris |
Excerpts from The Nutcracker Suite are included in Disney’s Fantasia. Which work by Paul Dukas features Mickey Mouse attempting magic tricks? | Colin Firth to star in Woody Allen's next film, alongside Emma Stone | Film | The Guardian
Movies
Colin Firth to star in Woody Allen's next film, alongside Emma Stone
The King's Speech actor has a busy schedule right now: Allen's next, France-set movie is one of four projects he is linked with
Pause for breath … Colin Firth. Photograph: Mario Anzuoni/Reuters
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This article is 3 years old
Colin Firth is to join Emma Stone in Woody Allen's latest film, an untitled comedy set in the south of France, according to the Hollywood Reporter .
Stone's potential involvement was revealed by Deadline last week, when the Easy A actor was said to be in talks. She and Firth are now officially on board the new film, which will mark Allen's return to the fertile French soil where he shot 2011 acclaimed time-travel fantasy Midnight in Paris . It will be the veteran director's eighth movie in his ongoing late-era European cruise, which began with London-set Match Point in 2005 and has also seen him travel to Italy and Spain for films such as 2008's Vicky Cristina Barcelona and last year's To Rome with Love . Few further details are known about the new French project, other than that it will shoot this summer.
Allen is currently readying his most recent film, Blue Jasmine, for a July 2013 release in the US. It stars Cate Blanchett in "the story of the final stages of an acute crisis and a life of a fashionable New York housewife", according to the official synopsis.
Firth was recently revealed to be in talks to play a supporting role in Matthew Vaughn's James Bond-style comic book movie The Secret Service . He is also due to appear in literary biopic Genius for Michael Grandage and second world war drama The Railway Man for director Jonathan Teplitzky.
Stone is currently working on The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and the Alejandro González Iñárritu comedy Birdman. She is also due to join Guillermo del Toro's haunted house flick Crimson Peak and will star in an as yet untitled romantic comedy directed by Cameron Crowe.
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Kenneth Clark, Neil MacGregor, Charles Saumarez Smith and currently Nicholas Penny have been Directors of which art museum? | charles saumarez smith : definition of charles saumarez smith and synonyms of charles saumarez smith (English)
4 External links
Biography
A great-grandson of the 19th-century Archbishop of Sydney William Saumarez Smith and son of William Hanbury Saumarez Smith, a former Indian civil servant, Charles Saumarez Smith was born in an old rectory in the Wiltshire village of Redlynch , near Salisbury . He was educated at Marlborough College , where a Gainsborough portrait belonging to the school first awakened his interest in art. [2] He then studied history and history of art at King's College, Cambridge , gaining a double first, and, following graduation, was awarded a Henry Fellowship to study at the Fogg. Art Museum in Cambridge Massachusetts. He studied for his doctorate under Michael Baxandall at the Warburg Institute , London, and his thesis was entitled " Charles Howard, 3rd Earl of Carlisle and the architecture of Castle Howard " was awarded a PhD in 1986. Meanwhile, he was appointed Christie's Research Fellow in the History of Applied Arts at Christ's College, Cambridge and taught part-time in the Department of Art History and Theory at the University of Essex.
In 1982, Saumarez Smith was appointed by Sir Roy Strong as an Assistant Keeper at the Victoria and Albert Museum, where he helped to establish the V&A/RCA MA Course in the History of Design and was a contributor to The New Museology, published in 1989. In 1990, his PhD thesis was published by Faber and Faber under the title The Building of Castle Howard and was awarded the Alice David Hitchcock medallion. In the same year, he was appointed as Head of Research at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London . In 1994 he published a book on 18th century interior design, before becoming director of the National Portrait Gallery . There he more than doubled visitor figures by staging exhibitions by contemporary photographers, including Annie Leibovitz , Richard Avedon , Bruce Weber and the fashion photographer Mario Testino . He also presided over the building of an extension to the NPG in 2000, the Ondaatje Wing designed by Sir Jeremy Dixon and Edward Jones. From 2001 to 2002 Saumarez Smith held the Slade Professorship at Oxford University , where he lectured on "The State of the Museum". [3]
Saumarez Smith was a candidate to be Director at the V&A, the Tate Gallery and the British Museum [2] before becoming the director of the National Gallery in 2002. The main success of his directorship was the purchase of Raphael 's Madonna of the Pinks in 2004 for £22 million, raised by a successful public appeal. However, few other major acquisitions were made by the National Gallery under Saumarez Smith due to the inflated prices now commanded by Old Master paintings. He was a vocal critic of Tony Blair 's government for giving too little money towards museum funding, and for not creating tax incentives for potential donors to museums. [4]
2006 saw the opening of a new ground-floor entrance hall at the National Gallery designed, like the Ondaatje Wing by Dixon Jones architects although this project was begun under Saumarez Smith's predecessor Neil MacGregor . In 2007, news broke of a power struggle between Peter Scott, head of the Gallery's board of trustees, and the director; [5] at the same time it became known that Saumarez Smith was applying for the newly-created post of Secretary and Chief Executive at the Royal Academy . He resigned from the National Gallery on 26 July 2007, and was succeeded by Martin Wyld, head conservator at the Gallery, as acting director until Nicholas Penny was appointed permanent director in the spring of 2008. [6]
He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2008 New Year Honours .
Portraits of Charles Saumarez Smith
There are thirteen portraits of Saumarez Smith in the National Portrait Gallery Collection [8] including two photographs by Mario Testino and an oil painting by Tom Phillips . A 2010 painting by Royal Academician Leonard McComb exists. [9] [10]
References
| National Gallery |
Which capital city stands on the shore of the Caspian Sea? | » The Sistine Chapel Restorations, Part III: Cutting Michelangelo Down to Size Artwatch
“Judging by Past Experience, it is Perilous to Suggest Restoration…”
~ Charles Heath Wilson, 1881, “The Life and Works of Michelangelo Buonarroti”. Publisher: John Murray, London.
“I once barged into a correspondence in The Times when the National Gallery was under fire from the ‘anti-cleaners’. I was ticked off very severely by Lord Crawford, the Chairman of the Trustees. I had, mildly I thought, criticised the authorities for ignoring the sincerely held views of the opposition…I was later restored to favour in high places when I made it clear in an article in The Studio that I was convinced that our National Treasures were in the keeping of qualified responsible people.”
T. J. Honeyman, 1971, “Art and Audacity”. Publisher: Collins, London.
It is not widely appreciated how inherently dangerous art restoration practices remain, or how culturally deranging restoration changes can be. At the bottom end of the trade, restorers often advertise their services on a promise to leave pictures “as good as new – or better”. The restoration of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling was – on the accounts of its own restorers and initiators – the biggest, the best, the most scientifically advanced and “radically transforming” top-end restoration ever undertaken. This “Restoration of the Century” left one of the world’s greatest artistic accomplishments so profoundly unlike its former self that enthusiasts could announce the discovery of a “New Michelangelo” who was “very different from the one art experts thought they knew”. At the same time, the chief restorer thrilled in 1982 that the frescoes looked as good as new: “as though they were executed yesterday”. In the midst of this commonplace restorers’ confusion between “recoveries” and “discoveries” (or sometimes, “revelations”), some surprising expressions of support materialised. In 1987, a top-end art historian writing in the magazine Apollo [Endnote 1] announced the demolition of the “Darkness Fallacy and the Sculptural Fallacy” within Michelangelo scholarship, and predicted that the then concurrent restorations of the Sistine and Brancacci chapels would leave both Michelangelo and Masaccio as “less isolated geniuses” who would be “returned to their respective periods” (i.e. confined within designated art historical boxes). In 1991, a newspaper art critic exulted in the displacement of “doomy outpourings of religious angst” by colours as “bright as Opal Fruits” – which colours reflected the workings of a “much more rational mind” [2]. Unsurprisingly, such professional pleasure-taking in chemical transformations that could cut artistic Titans down to size alarmed those who had been happy with the surviving Michelangelo, and an enormous controversy arose. Unsurprisingly, the criticised characterised the criticisers as instances of “the magnitude of the shock to entrenched opinion” that had been unleashed by a triumphant restoration. (As will be seen, the expression of sincerely held citicisms can be harshly punished when substantial vested conservation interests are challenged.)
Behind this interpretive culture war, the effects of the restoration on Michelangelo’s art were material and aesthetic. Those changes are forever. Although bad scholarship can be remedied by good scholarship, the latter cannot undo damage to unique, historic works. What remains to be done, a third of a century after the restoration’s 1980 launch, is a proper, disinterested aesthetically informed analysis of the restoration-induced changes, item by item, figure by figure, photograph by photograph; and, a frank evaluation and acknowledgement of their cultural and art historical consequences. Had this restoration’s profound transformation been accepted without challenge, we would be in a world today where technicians enjoyed unfettered licence to rewrite (or as they sometimes prefer, “to re-present”) history itself. Even tacit endorsements of injurious restorations can damage scholarship and falsify history.
The restoration of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling was well and publicly defended from 1980 until the mid 1990s. At that period, a seismic shift occurred. What follows is an examination from a British perspective of the restoration’s defences up to 1995 (in which year implicit art historical support for the restoration resulted in a seriously misleading exhibition at the National Gallery); and, a further presentation of visual proofs of the restoration’s injurious consequences. We note here how many supporters have admitted entertaining doubts about the restoration’s probity.
A new cleaning method, and the selling of a “New Michelangelo”
In the 1980s, at the height of an international restoration mania, a supposedly “advanced” “scientific” cleaning material was used on Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling. It was ferocious in its effects and mechanistic in its application which was expressly designed to thwart personal and allegedly “subjective” and “unscientific”, aesthetic appraisals. The most sophisticated imagery on an immensely important historic work of art was thus subjected to a “treatment” that derived not from the complexities of picture restoration and its necessary acts of discrimination and constant evaluation but, rather, from architectural stone cleaning techniques. This cleaning method altered the ceiling’s centuries old artistic/historic continuity to such a degree that the restorers and their supporters ventured that history would need to be rewritten. The changes, for sure, were dramatic: depictions of figures that had been archetypally and transcendentally alive were brightened, flattened, rendered more abstract, more “on the picture surface” and left with an altogether more modernist and imaginatively impoverished aspect. Contrary to official claims this (demonstrably) was not a liberation or recovery of the ceiling’s original condition and appearance – see, particularly, Figs. 1 and 60.
When Michelangelo’s ceiling was unveiled in 1512 the world was stunned by the grandeur, pictorial audacity and, above all, by figural inventions that had rendered the divine corporeal and vividly alive within our own space and time. Michelangelo had not so much made depictions-on-surfaces as conjured perceived spaces adjacent to the ceiling’s imperfect forms. His optically “sculpted” spaces – which opened vistas beyond the ceiling’s surfaces while simultaneously projecting figures in front of them – had been realised through powers of draughtsmanship and modelling with utter disregard for the “integrity” of the architectural surfaces. Seemingly palpable space was necessary to situate Michelangelo’s monumental programme of over three hundred figures – figures that ran from depicted carved stone sculptures (his architecture-adorning putti), through living, space-occupying young sculptural Adonis’s (his contorted, anxious ignudi) and, more prosaically, through the historical ancestors of Christ, to the divinely gifted Prophets and Sibyls, and finally to God Himself and his celestial supporters. This was immediately acclaimed as a dazzling artistic and illusionistic advance. Its eventual influence was to carry mural painting into the Baroque and beyond. Although artistic fashions and modes of description change constantly, for nearly five centuries this “stupendous” work’s vital relationships endured, as the many copies made throughout its existence testify (see Fig. 1b).
How Doubts became Denials
With the restoration of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling, while some art world players were galvanized into opposition, many others were excited and swept along by the presumptuous magnitude of the transformation. As mentioned, many of the supporters of the restoration have disclosed moments of doubt. We cited in our post of March 4th that the co-director and chief restorer of the ceiling, Gianluigi Colalucci, had said in 1990: “I must confess I harbour a lingering almost subconscious fear that someday someone will come, unexpectedly, with a really intelligent observation that will show all of us to have been blind.” The following year the Sunday Times art critic, Waldemar Januszczak, produced a celebratory book (“Sayonara Michelangelo”) in which he asked in the face of the transition:
“Who among us looking up for the first time at this new, bright, clear Sistine ceiling, perfectly rational, a light-filled work, was not tempted by the doubt: it can’t be so.”
This temptation was throttled by the sheer spectacle of the restoration as an art-changing performance:
“The thin and neat scaffolding bridge moved elegantly along the ceiling like a very slow windscreen wiper. In front of it lay the old Michelangelo, the great tragedian, all basso profundo and crescendo. Behind it the colourful new one, a lighter touch, a more inventive mind, a higher pitch, alto and diminuendo. It was being able to see both of them at once – Beethoven turning into Mozart before your eyes – that made this restoration such a memorable piece of theatre.”
Even the National Gallery’s thoughtful and scholarly (then) curator of Renaissance painting, Nicholas Penny, who recognised (“White Coats v. Bow Ties”, London Review of Books, 11 February 1993) that “The most terrifying thing about the restoration of old paintings and sculpture, as distinct from the editing of texts, is that something might be lost altogether”, swallowed his own moment of anxiety:
“But perhaps one should admit that something is lost however much is gained by any intervention – some possibility of interpretation if not some actual pigment or glaze or polish.” [Emphasis added.] With a seeming acceptance of such material and interpretive losses, the greater gains in the Sistine Chapel were said by Penny to have emerged as follows:
“Study of the ceiling now that it has been cleaned tends to distance Michelangelo from the art of recent centuries – and from the work of artists who were inspired by the ceiling – and reveals a far closer connection with the dazzling colours favoured by artists in his immediate following and also evident in some of the better-preserved 15-century Florentine panel paintings.”
Note the cultural role being served by “restoration” changes: even when their legitimacy is vehemently challenged, restorations facilitate through “study”, new interpretations and a certain re-shuffling of scholarly furniture. Scholars and restorers invariably say that they have duly considered and rejected the criticisms as ill-informed, but the fact remains that eventually all restorations themselves come to be rejected and undone by later restorers. Indeed the alleged need to undo previous restorations is one of the commonest justifications for a restoration. The net consequence of repeated restorations is not a return to an original condition each time, but a daisy chain of altered alterations, with each successive restoration leaving the given work looking unlike its previously “restored” state. With accumulating alterations, works get thinner and thinner. Insofar as such abraded appearances are acknowledged, they are attributed to previous “rubbing”, or other euphemisms. Losses of original material during restorations (as Penny conceded) are to some degree inevitable. This is because while painters work from supporting canvases or panels upwards, restorers work downwards with their solvents and abrasives towards or beyond pictures’ finished surfaces. Collisions are inevitable.
The “New Michelangelo”
The art historical revisionism that advanced with this restoration might have been plausible had changes of colouring been the only changes, and had any of Michelangelo’s contemporaries noted dazzling colours. By any properly visually alert appraisal, however, the changes were less ones of enhanced chromatic power than of debilitating losses to the ceiling’s initially celebrated dramatic modelling and lighting (see Fig. 60). Although Nicholas Penny acknowledged such objections to the received critical consensus, he nonetheless caricatured them:
“Polemics against the restoration appeal repeatedly to the ideas of chiaroscuro and harmony as artistic absolutes.” The implication that critics were in the grip of a fetishized false artistic consciousness was underscored: “It is painful but important to acknowledge that the inspiration one artist draws from another, earlier one is often inseparable from misunderstanding.” It is a common defence against critics to allege some “misunderstanding” of the “facts” because of ingrained or entrenched prejudices but with this restoration the objections stemmed not from misapprehensions or misplaced adherence to ahistorical idée fixes, but from the fact of the concrete, demonstrable and historically verifiable injuries to the painting.
Further Material Evidence of Injury
Having shown many directly comparative pairs of “before” and “after” restoration photographs as proofs of injury – we further present seven single photographs (Figs. 1 to 6 and 48b), each of which alone testifies to the destruction of the final stages of Michelangelo’s painting. To pinpoint the unsoundness of the restoration’s theoretical underpinning, we also show two other works, one drawn (Fig. 41), one painted (Fig. 47) that seem emblematic of serious critical neglect. It will be argued that insufficient respect for the artistic and documentary records (particularly in the form of graphic copies and related paintings) facilitated an initial misdiagnosis of Michelangelo’s painting methods. In addition, we examine the “macro” consequences in terms of changes to the previous relationships between the broad and differentiated zones of the Sistine Chapel’s consecutively decorated surfaces.
Selling the Restoration and Blocking the Critics
In December 1987 two articles that acknowledged the intensity of the controversy were published in Britain. One was a work of journalism by a leading cultural writer with strong interests in science, Brian Appleyard. The other was a full-blown and frankly declared Public Relations Apologia by Kathleen Weil-Garris Brandt, a professor of art history at New York University, a consultant member of the Vatican’s Scientific Advisory Committee on the restoration, and the Vatican’s spokesman on “scholarly and general information” for the public relations firm Arts and Communications Counsellors, which had been retained to handle the crisis.
To take the former first: on 20 December 1987 the Sunday Times magazine carried an article on the restoration – “Lost or Found?”. Its author, Brian Appleyard, acknowledged that he had been “carefully and elaborately briefed” by the co-directors of the restoration, Fabrizio Mancinelli, the curator of the Vatican Museums’ modern paintings, and Gianluigi Colalucci, the head restorer, and by Professor Carlo Pietrangeli, the director of the Vatican Museums, and that the next day he had been “scientifically persuaded” by the Vatican’s chemist, Nazzareno Gabrielli. Nonetheless, Appleyard gave a fair and balanced account, citing the arguments of James Beck, a professor of art history at Columbia University, New York. Even while recognising that “the vast majority of art historians are on the side of the Vatican”, Appleyard concluded “So far the Vatican have been troubled by Beck but have been secure behind the battery of art historians prepared to stand up and oppose him. But his fury and energy are beginning to pay off. More and more awkward questions are beginning to be asked and he warns of more home-grown opposition in Italy.”
An Artist Thwarted
The article itself prompted controversy in Britain by including directly comparative before and after restoration photographs of sections of the frescoes. To this artist’s eyes, those photo-comparisons showed instantly that the “cleaning” was damaging and that the protests were well founded (see Figs. 9 to 11b). Working then as the principal illustrator of the Independent, a new and fashionable newspaper with excellent arts coverage, I asked the arts editor if I might write a short article demonstrating the ways in which the ceiling was being damaged. He declined on grounds that the newspaper’s art critic, Andrew Graham Dixon, had (like Beck) visited the scaffolding, and had been persuaded (like many art historians and critics) that all was fine.
Thus, the first lesson in this controversy was that an artist who had trained for four years in a junior art school, for five years in a fine art college and for three post-graduate years at the Royal Academy Schools – and who afterwards had taught and practised drawing and sculpture for fifteen years – could be unvoiced in a debate about the treatment of a work of art in deference to the views of someone sixteen years younger who had read English at university and art history at the Courtauld Institute (- on which institution’s restorations see “Taking Renoir, Sterling and Francine Clark to the Cleaners” ).
An Artist Heeded
When the Independent launched a Sunday edition in 1990, its arts editor invited an article on the Sistine Chapel restoration. In preparation, I contacted James Beck who put me in touch with many key critics. These included, in Italy, Professor Alessandro Conti, Venanzo Crocetti, the sculptor who had worked on the previous restoration of the Sistine ceiling in the 1930s, the restorer Mirella Simonetti; and, in the US, the critic and writer Alexander Eliot and the painter Frank Mason. From the Independent on Sunday I spoke directly to Professor Brandt, Dr Fabrizio Mancinelli, Professor John Shearman, (an advisor to the restoration who viciously attacked Beck on the record and then threatened to sue if I published his grossly defamatory comments), and wrote to Gianluigi Colalucci. The second lesson had thus been that critics of restorations, however prestigious, could find themselves victims of scurrilous attacks from professional peers.
Shooting the Messengers
When surveying the restoration’s then decade long literature, Brandt’s 1987 Apollo article emerged as a seminal document. Its declared purpose had precisely been to defend the “transformation of Michelangelo’s mysterious dark frescoes…into [the] blazing colouristic pyrotechnics that is attracting the most public attention and controversy” (this was despite the fact that Michelangelo had been praised at his own funeral for “the fleeting and sombre colours with which he had formed such rare and lofty shapes”). Most striking of all was Brandt’s assaults on the restoration’s critics, whether they were scholars, restorers, traditionalist artists or fashionably modish artists:
“But, a tiny, heterogeneous and vociferous cadre emerged with the dramatic charge that Vatican conservators are ruining one of the great icons of western civilisation. “Convinced of the urgency of their mission, the critics conducted their campaign in the international press and television and achieved a remarkable degree of public visibility. A letter by a well-meaning group of American master painters of the Pop generation, calling for a halt to the cleaning of the Sistina (as well as the Last Supper) was one index of their success. An interview with one of the American Sistina critics in People Magazine was, however, another… “To the ears of most art historians and conservation experts, however, the critics claims sounded more and more like the wild cries of some ferocious mutant of Chicken Little. Many believe that the critics, like that benighted bird, were misunderstanding insufficient evidence to draw mistaken conclusions to the alarm of the neighbours. Still the issue is a serious one. Are the critics merely opportunists, body-surfing on a wave of publicity they would never otherwise have enjoyed? Or should we be hearing in their polemics a warning that the cleaning of major works of art is another of those matters too important to be left to the experts?” “If the critics’ questions have such detailed answers, what is the continuing public fuss about? Why has the criticism been so remarkably vague, shifting and misinformed? Why have the critics been so reluctant to make the frequent visits to the Sistine Chapel scaffolding…Why does criticism remain invulnerable to the abundant available information. How could such a small group of people, none of whom is – in a professional sense – an expert on Michelangelo and conservation, attract so much publicity and even some well-intentioned adherents? (The original nucleus of nay-sayers consists of only five persons: two painters, one former art critic and two art historians, distributed in Italy and the USA; connexions between them exist but are hard to define.)”
In addition to an insinuation of some underlying conspiracy, Brandt appended an imputation of political motivations that served as platforms for personal opportunism:
“It is easy to see how any hint that the Vatican might be hurting Michelangelo could fuel political fires while providing a chance for professional power play among factions of the intellectual establishment.”
If political motivations combined with personal power play might exist among critics in Italy, Brandt maintained, the situation was different in the United States where:
“The continuing publicity has, of course, also become a phenomenon in itself with a life and fascination of its own. All the more significant that only one American scholar has been tempted to join the public furore. “None of this grandstanding matters much – although one doesn’t like to see an important issue distorted and people misled. I do not believe that a tenacious campaign of ill-informed criticism and personal attacks on the conservators will stop the careful cleaning of the Ceiling.”
Traditional Slurs
At this historical point Brandt’s past abuse of the critics might best be taken to have been self-answering. Her assurance that “the cleaning chemicals do not actually come into contact with the fresco surface” has not worn well and, besides, was at odds with the chief restorer’s earlier admission that if left on a minute too long the chemicals began devouring the fresco surface and Michelangelo’s shading with it. Similarly, her claim that the restoration had been “spurred by the alarming discovery that the glue layers were contracting as they aged , and were pulling flakes of plaster and pigment away from the surface of Michelangelo’s frescoes” proved an impermanent position. As was later reported in “Art Restoration, The Culture, the Business and the Scandal” (James Beck and Michael Daley, 1993), it had been claimed in 1986 (six years into the restoration) that “various checks [had] ascertained that in several places minute flecks of colour were lifting” and that this had “necessitated an immediate restoration.” In 1987 it was said that extensive areas of flaking were progressively worsening and threatening an imminently “uncontrollable situation”. By 1988 Vatican spokesmen were claiming that the weight of encrustations upon the paint surface was causing it to break away from its ground. By 1989 it was said that the glues had “shrunk and puckered” causing “scabs” to fall away “pulling pigment with them”. It was said that this “slow destruction by glue-pox” was “the Vatican’s principle motivation for cleaning the ceiling”. When we asked Brandt in 1990 how big the puckerings were, she replied “Oh! Some are as big as your hand.” Soon after, in 1991, the problem de-escalated: initial investigations were acknowledged, once more, to have encountered “minute desquamations and loss of pigment.”
Brandt’s patronising claim that “the so-called ‘controversy’ is not actually about facts and issues but is a reflection of culture shock” lamely echoed charges made in earlier restoration controversies. During the National Gallery cleaning controversy in London in the late 1940s the critics were said by the art critic, Eric Newton of the Daily Telegraph, to be suffering from the “shocked eye”, a condition which afflicted “the connoisseur and the artist – the visually sensitive man with a quick eye and profound reverence for what he had seen”. Just as at the Sistine Chapel, Newton’s dismissal of the expertise of creative players was made on the claimed authority of restoration “science”. Such generalised appeals to the authority of science often prove to be empty incantation and Newton volunteered no more than “The purely scientific and technical aspects of the process, however are too complex to describe here.”
In 1857 picture cleanings at the Louvre were defended on the grounds that “It is understandable that the romantic amateur loves the rust and the haze of the varnish, for it has become a veil behind which he can see whatever he desires” (Horsin Déon). One critic of the Louvre’s restorations, Edgar Degas, threatened to produce a pamphlet that would be “a bomb”. When Brandt dismissed the Sistine Chapel critics on the grounds that the controversy was “rather unreal since the arguments against cleaning are mainly nostalgically emotional [while] those on the other side are chemical and scientific” she presented her role as being to “dissolve some of the murky argument and preserve a few facts”. As will be seen, artists and art historians can have distinctly differing views as to what constitutes a “fact” and what a blind prejudice.
The Evidence of Restoration Injuries – and the Surprising Reactions To It
When the Independent on Sunday’s picture desk obtained high-quality colour transparencies from the Vatican in 1990 we examined the image of the Erythraean Sybil, part of which had been shown in Appleyard’s Sunday Times article, and encountered among many losses the restoration-mangled foot seen at Figs. 2 and 3. Those losses and losses to a figure on one of the lunettes were first published in the Independent on Sunday of 25 March 1990 (see Figs. 12, 13 and 14) and then later in the Independent of 20 March 1991, where the arguments against the restoration were put by Daley, Beck, Conti, Eliot and the art historian Bruce Boucher, and balanced by three counter arguments.
Of the latter, Ernst Gombrich was harshest on the critics: “No one is infallible, but I have not the slightest doubt that the overall impression and operation is right, and the critics talk absolute nonsense.” The Courtauld Institute-trained editor of The Art Newspaper, Anna Somers Cocks, condescended that some people liked things to look “romantic and old, and can’t cope with the clarity and brilliance of what the Sistine Chapel looks like now it has been cleaned”. The Courtauld Institute-trained Nicholas Penny said “It’s one of the great revelations of our time but the transformation is so absolutely amazing that it is bound to give some people a shock and I am sympathetic to them being shocked”.
Brandt’s 1987 Apollo account had fallen on well-worked ground in Britain where even art world players with strong track records of being critical of restorations had become supportive of this restoration. The Courtauld Institute-trained restorer Sarah Walden, who had implicitly criticised many of her peers and predecessors in her 1985 book “The Ravished Image ~ Or How to Ruin Masterpieces by Restoration”, was one such and she offered this (simplistic) technical distinction in defence of the restoration’s results:
“Unlike easel paintings, frescos are not a film of paint on a surface but impregnate their own support and need no varnish. Given an intact, dry wall, they are spared many of the rigours of restoration, except for the removal of dust and dirt. As the recent cleaning of Raphael’s Galatea in the Farnesina in Rome has shown, and as the present work on Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel seems to confirm, this is one area where impressive results can be had with far less risk.”
As shown on 28 April 2012 , the restorer Leonetto Tintori had discovered on examining the ceiling that it had been covered by what he termed “Michelangelo’s auxilliary techniques” which included not just glue or size painting but also oils. Walden, whose principle critical complaints had been against the “Anglo-Saxon” schools of restoration in Germany, Britain and the US, as opposed to the “Latin” restorations of France and Italy [3], had evidently accepted the restorers’ claims that Michelangelo had simply coloured successive patches of wet and drying plaster at great speed and thereafter accepted whatever disparities and inequalities of value emerged on drying without making any unifying or enriching interventions with glue-based painting a secco on his fresco surfaces when dry, as was customary and as had been noted by his contemporaries. She had further accepted the restorers’ (revisionist and unsupported) claims that the large amounts of glue-based material on Michelangelo’s frescoes had been applied by restorers as a “varnish” to a work which, on her own account, would have required no varnish, and despite the fact that previous Vatican restorers had attributed that very material to Michelangelo. Gombrich, who had played a prominent role in the post-war cleaning controversies at the National Gallery in London – and who had written the Foreword to Walden’s book – was similarly persuaded by the present Vatican restorers’ well disseminated technical account.
Gombrich’s Startling Lapse of Scholarship and Visual Acuity
In 1995 Gombrich presented an exhibition, “Shadows: The Depiction of Cast Shadows in Western Art”, at the National Gallery (London) on the thesis that an avoidance of cast shadows had been “widespread among painters of the High Renaissance”. He did so without reference to the paintings of Michelangelo or Raphael. (When pressed on these omissions he replied “I never meant [the catalogue] to be an encyclopaedia of all cast shadows, though some of my readers seem to assume so.” – Letter to Michael Daley, 10 June 1995.) As will be shown, in a curious fashion, Gombrich’s pictorial amnesia constituted the logical terminus of a more general denial by art historians of the distinctive artistic relationships that had survived on the pre-restoration ceiling, and of the connections between those relationships and the art forms of the period and immediately afterwards. Defending this restoration became an exercise in not-seeing what was and what had been. Gombrich’s position on this restoration was a great disappointment to us given his outstanding earlier contributions.
Gombrich on the Sanctity of Scholarship
In 1978 as the Vatican Museums’ curators, restorers and scientists were moving towards restoring the Sistine Chapel ceiling, Gombrich had discussed one of Michelangelo’s prophets – his Ezekiel – in the context of problems of art connoisseurship and medical practices (and with no reference to colour) [4]. He pointed out that just as with placebos “suggestibility plays a part in our response to works of art”. Demonstrating by a comparison between Jeremiah and Ezekiel that the latter was uncharacteristic of Michelangelo but characteristic of Raphael, he firmly attributed its execution to Raphael (see Fig. 25). Of all the prophets on the ceiling, he contended, this one alone lacked Michelangelo’s profound stylistic traits: “he always negates the picture plane. Jonah being the most famous example of this space-creating and surface-denying imagination, which so aroused the admiration of Renaissance writers.” How could it have been overlooked, Gombrich continued, that the Ezekiel, far from denying the picture plane, asserted it: “Instead of being self-enclosed it impetuously moves to the right, addressing an unseen partner in what looks like a violent argument. It is this implied movement which tears the cohesion to pieces and introduces a shrill note of drama entirely absent from the other creations. The composition is only superficially Michelangelesque…” Further, what the Ezekiel betrayed in its agitated gestures was Raphael’s own great indebtedness to Leonardo: “Indeed it is hardly too much to say that Ezekiel would fit comfortably into the groups of the apostles in the Last Supper of S. Maria delle Grazie.”
This was vintage Gombrich, learned, conceptually adroit, visually acute and boldly re-attributing a Michelangleo to Raphael through Leonardo. Except that here his elegant arguments and persuasive stylistic “evidence” amounted to no more than a plausible contrivance – a conceit that was, he confessed, an art connoisseur’s equivalent of the medical practitioner’s placebo. He hoped that connoisseurs “will not take offence and that the spirits of Michelangelo and Raphael will forgive me this harmless fabrication.” (Was that jest to become a maquette for a far greater and undisclosed prank on those two great artists seventeen years later?)
Gombrich and the Guardians of Memory
Two decades earlier, in a moving 1957 essay “Art and Scholarship”, Gombrich had championed the scholar as “the guardian of memories”. It seemed that he had been stung to do so by the painter Wyndham Lewis who had recently written:
“When I see a writer, a word man, among a number of painters, I shake my head. For I know he would not be there unless he was up to something. And I know that he will do them no good…”
Gombrich’s retort was: “Why should the artist bother about that spoilsport the scholar and his past? The brief answer to this question, I fear, may sound moralistic. Because truth is better than lies.”
Indeed it is – but this leaves his own later omissions in the National Gallery exhibition the more perplexing: How could so great a scholar make so seriously misleading and unfounded a claim in (seeming) defence of such an unsupportable restoration? Spicing this mystery is the fact, as shown below, that Gombrich’s faith in the Sistine ceiling restoration was not absolute and that he, too, like Colalucci, Januszczak and Penny, had once acknowledged a moment of doubt.
Gombrich’s Moment of Doubt
As mentioned, Gombrich was as one with the views of the restorer Sarah Walden on this restoration. Walden was to persist with her endorsement of the restoration until at least 2004 when, in a revised edition of her book (now titled “The Ravished Image ~ An Introduction to the Art of Picture Restoration & Its Risks”), she pressed Gombrich into a swipe at critics of the Sistine ceiling restoration:
“The subject of restoration tends to attract cranks and fanatics, but to suggest that the world’s foremost art historian was one of those would be absurd. He approved for example of the cleaning of the Sistine Chapel, and wrote to me about an Italian who opposed it and was seeking his support: ‘Of course he wants to use [my writings] as ammunition against the cleaning of the Sistine Chapel, but I do think the problems of cleaning are different…I have been up the scaffold…I have no doubt that the team are aware of the many problems…I am even fairly happy about the work on the Sistine ceiling.’” [Walden’s ellipses.]
While Walden tactfully refrained from identifying the Italian critic, by publishing a letter she received from Gombrich in 1987 in the revised book, she revealed an intriguingly confessional remark:
“Last week I was sent a book from Italy violently attacking the ‘cleaning’ of the Sistine ceiling. It may contain some exaggerations but it is still disquieting. Michelangelo e la Pittoria a Fresco, by Alessandro Conti (La Casa Usher, Florence 1986). If you read Italian and have a little time during the next few weeks I’ll gladly lend it to you to look at.”
That unsettling book was later described by Penny in the LRB as “the most sustained polemic against the restoration”. Charles Hope, an authority on Titian and then the Senior Lecturer in Renaissance Studies at the Warburg Institute, London, wrote (in a letter of 1994 to the restorer Helen Glanville – see below) that “The scholar who has done most to draw attention to the relevant texts is of course Conti; and whatever you think of his book (he is not a restorer, by the way), I am sure we can agree that it is obligatory reading for anyone interested in the controversy surrounding the ceiling. Yet […] and so on not only pass over his arguments in silence instead of addressing them, they seem never to cite his book at all…” Gombrich, too, would seem to have suppressed his own disquiet and passed over Conti’s arguments even though he must have appreciated that Conti was a very considerable authority on restoration having taught the History and Techniques of Restoration at the University of Bologna; the History of Modern Art at the state university in Milan; and, the History of Art Criticism at the University of Siena. In his 1988 “History of the Restoration and Conservation of Works of Art” (republished by Butterworth in a 2007 English translation by Helen Glanville) Conti spoke of the alien “material and chromatic robe” with which the Sistine ceiling paintings had been invested “during the present restoration” and identified “the various media” Michelangelo had used on the ceiling as “fresco, lime and secco”. (For Conti’s further comments in that book on Domenico Carnevale’s repairs to Michelangelo’s ceiling, see the caption at Figs. 48a and 48b. That his now very scarce Michelangelo e la Pittoria a Fresco has yet to be published in English might itself be thought something of a scandal.)
The Context of Gombrich’s National Gallery Exhibition
Gombrich’s 1995 exhibition came not just towards the end of his long and distinguished career but at the end of a brief period of intense discussions in Britain on the restorations at the Sistine Chapel and the National Gallery. We had been at pains to show that extreme as the Sistine Chapel restoration was, it was part of a wider radically transforming international assault by restorers acting on historic works of art in the name of their “conservation”. (Between 1990 and 1995, this author alone had published twenty-three times on those subjects – see Fig. 12.) Such discussions greatly accelerated with the publication of the 1993 Beck/Daley book “Art Restoration ~ The Culture, the Business and the Scandal” which, in addition to two chapters on the Sistine Chapel carried a chapter on the National Gallery’s restorations. Responses to the book were various and sometimes startling. They prompted an additional chapter, “The Establishment Counterattacks”, in the revised 1996 American paperback edition. We should acknowledge here that the National Gallery, under its present director, Nicholas Penny, as initially under its previous director, Charles Saumarez Smith, has given ArtWatch UK full and most generously helpful access to all conservation and archival records, and that we have drawn heavily on the compendious material on the Gallery’s conservation practices that is provided in the annual Technical Bulletins. Moreover, since 2012 the Gallery has placed much archival material online .
Responses to “Art Restoration, the Culture, the Business and the Scandal”
After his initially even-handed coverage, Brian Appleyard now characterised Beck in the Independent as being “litigious” – even though he had brought no legal actions but had been sued (unsuccessfully) for criminal slander by an Italian sculpture restorer and had faced a possible prison sentence of three years. Appleyard compared the Beck/Daley book unfavourably before its publication – and before he had read it – with Walden’s book of 1985, specifically dismissing its unseen chapters on the Sistine ceiling on a Waldenesque insistence that “The fact that it was largely pure fresco made the cleaning process straightforward.”
On 18 November 1993 the New York Review of Books carried an essay by Charles Hope, on “Art Restoration ~ The Culture, the Business and the Scandal”. Hope (who was later to become, as Gombrich had been, the director of the Warburg Institute), recalled that “like many other art historians” his initial response to the cleaning had been “entirely favourable”, but which confidence, he now confessed, had been “entirely misplaced”. Viewed in their entirety, the cleaned frescoes create “a decidedly disagreeable impression: the colours are gaudy…the figures look crude and often flat and the architecture seems insubstantial and pedantic.” In short, “Restrained grandeur has been replaced by garish confusion” and it was “difficult to believe that the right procedure was adopted.” Worse followed for the restoration establishment. “Restorers are not always particularly well-informed about the history of art nor especially interested in it”, while, for their part, art historians “seldom have the scientific training to judge the full implication of the courses of action proposed to them.”
Perhaps most disturbing to the Sistine Chapel restoration supporters was Hope’s acknowledgement that when “Talking to friends I find that my unease is widely shared; and it is certainly noticeable that the completion of the restoration has not attracted the kind of acclaim that greeted the unveiling of the lunettes.” After the publication of his review, Hope told Beck in a letter (20 November 1993) “You’ll be cheered to know that several art historians have told me, by letter or in person, how glad they were that I had said what I did.” This greatly amplified a note of caution that had already been present in Nicholas Penny’s observations in the LRB nine months earlier:
“I have met few art historians, even among those who are nervous about the cleaning of paintings, who believe that a mistake was made in cleaning the ceiling. Nevertheless, many art lovers were shaken by what has been published on the subject and some have been no less alarmed by what they have seen in the chapel itself.”
A Restorer’s Response
Temperatures rose after Hope’s review. The Art Newspaper allotted four pages in its May 1994 issue for the counter arguments of Helen Glanville, a Courtauld Institute-trained picture restorer who had read Modern Languages at Oxford. Like Brandt seven years earlier in Apollo, Glanville struck a combative tone and a tendentious note by producing accounts of our “Accusations” against which she provided lawyerish “Defences” written in consultation with the authorities. In 1963 Gombrich had complained “Nobody who criticizes the policy of a great institution expects such criticism to be accepted without further argument. What one has the right to expect, however, is that the answer should concern itself with the substance of the criticism.” In language eerily reminiscent of that used against Beck by Shearman, Glanville challenged not only our character but the judgement of those who had supported us: “The most disturbing aspect is that reviews of the book (including that by Charles Hope in the New York Review of Books of 18 November 1993) appear to indicate that even respected members of the art world accept Daley’s presentation of ‘facts’ at face value”.
Hope’s Riposte
Hope sent a letter to Glanville explaining that he had been “particularly careful not to take Daley at his word”, that he had checked what I had written on Sebastiano was in accordance with the monograph on the artist by Professor Michael Hirst (of the Courtauld Institute, and a member of the Vatican’s Pontifical Commission for the Restoration of the Sistine Chapel ceiling), and also with “the account of the [Sebastiano] restoration in the National Gallery’s Annual Report”. In further reproach, he added “I would have thought it was fairly obvious to anyone familiar with the recent literature that I had done my homework, not least because there are various arguments and texts used in the review which do not figure in the Beck-Daley book at all. [5] In my review I have tried very hard to be fair to both sides…Having read your article I see nothing that ought to be changed; indeed it would be difficult to see what you actually found objectionable in it…Before I began working on the review my scholarly sympathies were entirely on side of the defenders of the recent restoration, and I was hoping indeed expecting, to be persuaded that my unease at the present appearance of the ceiling was unjustified. But the reverse has happened, and not just because Beck and Daley produced such compelling arguments…” Hope then set out with great clarity the scholarly import of the material evidence we had supplied and which he had found persuasive:
“I was disappointed that you did not discuss directly what seemed to me the most important single type of evidence in the whole controversy, the drawing by Clovio of Jonah [see Fig. 1] and the one at Windsor showing the whole ceiling. Both of these, as you will remember, can be securely dated to no later than 1534, and they both show very specific, well-defined areas of shadow also recorded in the engravings of the sixteenth century and later, which have now disappeared. The important thing is that the drawings predate the engravings, that they were manifestly produced independently of one another, yet they are consistent. If they are misleading in the same way, we need to have some explanation of why this is so, because if Michelangelo did paint shadows of the kind they show, and in the places they show, then Beck and Daley would seem to be vindicated.”
Gombrich’s Denial of Historical Realities
Coming so soon after Hope’s generous and substantial support, Gombrich’s claim, as a scholar with an impeccable record as a critic of restorations, that cast shadows had popped out of existence for the duration of the High Renaissance might have seemed like manna to the National Gallery and the Vatican. Did his historical account not implicitly constitute a most authoritative rebuttal of the Beck-Daley, Hope-supported, central claim that the destruction of Michelangelo’s cast shadows had given historically corroborated proof of injury to the Sistine Chapel ceiling? In so doing, did he not also provide express relief to the restorers themselves? If the shadows had never existed during the High Renaissance, as he was claiming, how could they possibly have been harmed in restoration?
In May 1994 The Art Newspaper published my letter of reply to Glanville’s article. It concluded: “this concern [over restorations] is shared by others. The current director of the Prado, Calvo Serrraller, has condemned the Sistine Chapel restoration as a misguided ‘face-lift’. A restorer in St Petersburg complains of the ‘perniciousness of radical British restoration techniques’. A curator of New York’s Metropolitan Museum condemns the ‘strident tones’ produced by ‘the exuberant cleaning of paint surfaces, for which the National Gallery has unfortunately become famous’. It is a pity that the National Gallery staff are not prepared to debate these matters directly. It is a pity that discussion should be necessary at all when, to educated eyes, the evidence of injury contained in before and after cleaning photographs is so unmissable.” It would seem, (on Gombrich’s recollection – “In the shadow of the masters”, interview, The Art Newspaper, May 1995) that that very month, the National Gallery’s director, Neil MacGregor, approached Gombrich to ask whether he would do an exhibition in the “The Artist’s Eye” series (in which artists assembled and discussed selections of paintings made from within the Gallery’s collection).
Mr MacGregor’s Choice
Gombrich submitted five or six proposals from which, he said, MacGregor “selected shadows”. Thus the National Gallery had obtained an exhibition that purported to explain why the masters of the High Renaissance had opted to “show us a shadowless world”. If the content was helpful to the Gallery, the fact of Gombrich’s participation might have been a greater boon still. As a critic of the Gallery’s restorations during the 1950s and 1960s he had been a dangerous foe. Before becoming the National Gallery’s director, MacGregor, as editor of the Burlington Magazine, had himself been a partisan of restorations and was well aware of Gombrich’s standing in these disputes. In a Burlington editorial in January 1985, MacGregor had written:
“Cleaning controversies are probably the liveliest, and they are certainly the hardiest, of the art world’s perennial topics of discussion. Of course, thefts and exports make bigger headlines, but they lack conversational staying power, just as new record prices slip faster and faster from the memory. But debates on cleaning run and run, this Magazine having been the forum for one of the most celebrated jousts in the early 1960s.”
MacGregor then drew a distinction that marked a crucial advance that picture restorers had made by the 1980s: “Then the key question was how, or even whether, to clean. Now it is more likely to focus on what can be learnt through cleaning about the picture itself.” This rebranding of art restoration, despite all of its inherent risks, as an aid to scholarship had seemed a spectacular professional coup. By the late 1980s museum restorers had forged a common professional alliance with curators in which “discoveries” made in the course of a restoration could be presented to the world through professional journals, museum press releases, and newspaper/television interviews. The National Gallery laid claim for having pioneered the new hybrid discipline known as Technical Art History, in which curators, restorers and scientists pool efforts so as to fly in tight professional formations. In reality, museums and galleries had set themselves a trap – and Gombrich had chosen the worst possible moment to flip sides in the Great Restoration Battles: to talk about what has been learned/discovered requires the production of material, visual evidence and such evidence becomes fair game for examination.
Gombrich’s Case Against the National Gallery’s Restoration Methods
In 1950 Gombrich had drawn attention in a letter to the Burlington Magazine, to a passage in Pliny which described wondrous effects achieved by the legendary painter Apelles when he finished off his pictures with a thinly spread dark coating or “varnish”. How could we be sure, Gombrich asked, that no Renaissance masters had ever emulated the great painter of antiquity by applying similarly toned varnishes to their own works? He received no reply from the National Gallery. Ten years later, he put the question again in his book “Art and Illusion”, this time provoking Helmut Ruhemann, the Gallery’s pioneering exponent of “Total Cleaning”, into a categorical insistence that “there is no evidence for anything so inherently improbable as that a great old master should cover his whole picture with a ‘toning down layer.'”
Gombrich returned to the fray in 1962 in a Burlington Magazine article (“Dark varnishes – Variations on a Theme from Pliny”) contending that even a single instance of tinted overall varnish would undermine the philosophy of the Gallery’s intrusive restorers who presumed to discern and recover originally “intended” effects among the complex, variously degraded, many times altered material layers of old paintings. Gombrich had cited Pliny’s remarkable technically eloquent account of Apelles’ method: “He used to give his pictures when finished a dark coating so thinly spread that, by reflecting, it enhanced the brilliance of the colour while, at the same time, it afforded protection from dust and dirt and was not itself visible except at close quarters. One main purpose was to prevent the brilliance of the colours from offending the eye, since it gave the impression as if the beholder were seeing them through a window of talc, so that he gave from a distance an imperceptible touch of severity to excessively rich colours.” To the National Gallery the suggestion that colour might be suppressed in any degree by an artist was an affronting heresy, and the idea that a dark toning layer might simultaneously render colours individually more brilliant while collectively more unified was an oxymoron.
The Gallery’s then head of conservation science, Joyce Plesters, responded with a long, witheringly dismissive rebuttal in the Burlington (“Dark Varnishes – Some Further Comments”). Professor Gombrich, she insisted, lacked “technical knowledge” and his scholarship was incomplete and misinterpreted. The entire documented history technical history of art – much of which she appeared to quote – showed that “no convincing case” could be made for a single artist ever having emulated Apelles’ tinted varnish. The passage from Pliny, she sniffed, was but a matter of “academic rather than practical importance” – a charge that was echoed by the director, Philip Hendy, in the Gallery’s Annual Report where he disparaged technically ignorant “university art historians”. Plesters grandly offered to “sift” and “throw light” upon any further historical material that Gombrich or others might care to present in future directly to the National Gallery. Once again, a moment of high political danger for the Gallery’s restorers and curators passed: if no evidence existed of artists having used glazes and varnishes in the manner alleged by critics, how could restorers possibly be damaging them?
The controversy slowly subsided into isolated protests such as that of the painter Pietro Annigoni who painted “MURDERERS” onto the doors of the National Gallery, one night in 1970, in protest against what he had described in a 1956 letter to the Times as “atrocious results [that] reveal an incredible absence of sensibility”. But by 1977 it was “game-over”, so to speak. That year the National Gallery felt confident enough to launch its Technical Bulletin in which restoration methods would be described and illustrated. In it, Plesters mused complacently that “one or two readers may recall the furore when the cleaning of discoloured varnishes from paintings…began to find critics”. (On Plesters’ own technical incompetence, see our post of 27 January 2011 .) In the same year a former director of the Gallery, Kenneth Clark, pronounced picture cleaning “a battle won” and claimed responsibility for the victory by having installed a “scientific department with all the latest apparatus” at the National Gallery. He had done so, he said, not because he believed in the “application of science to picture cleaning”, but rather because “until quite recently the cleaning of pictures used to arouse extraordinary public indignation, and it was therefore advisable to have in the background what purported to be scientific evidence to ‘prove’ that every precaution had been taken.”
Gombrich’s Vindication
Joyce Plesters died in October 1996. Earlier that year the National Gallery’s Technical Bulletin carried reports of the cleaning of two paintings by Leonardo’s follower Giampietrino. One, his Salome, had suffered the usual weakening of modelling and shading. The other, his Christ carrying his Cross (Fig. 45) had not. Intriguingly, the latter was said to enjoy both “intensity of colour” and a “restrained overall effect” – the very paradoxical effect the Gallery had dismissed as inherently improbable. Even more remarkably, Giampietrino had first built up an “illusion of relief” with “dark translucent glazes”, and then – just like Apelles – had deliberately “restricted his own range of values” with “a final extremely thin overall toning layer consisting of warm dark pigments and black [!] in a medium essentially of walnut oil with a little resin”. The “varnish” was thus virtually identical as a material to the painting itself – which may explain why it had survived for so long. Many, more soluble, resin varnishes with warm dark pigments had been judged to be earlier restorers’ attempt to impart a deceiving “old masters’ glow” after a harsh cleaning…and removed as alien disfigurements.
Conspicuously, the Technical Bulletin reports made no reference to the Burlington Magazine’s celebrated joust of the early 1960s. Had the Gallery privately informed its recently honoured guest exhibitor of his belated vindication, we wondered? It had not. When we informed Gombrich of this technical corroboration, he replied:
“Many thanks for your letter. I happen to have a birthday these days (87, alas!) and I could hardly have a nicer present than the information you sent me. I don’t ever see the N. G. Technical Bulletin and would have missed their final conversion to an obvious truth! Better late, than never. There is more joy in heaven (or Briardale gardens)…”
We published an account of the National Gallery’s remarkable discovery, and of Gombrich’s response to it, in the November 1998 Art Review (“The Unvarnished Truth”). Three years later in a prefatory remark for the revised 2004 edition of Walden’s book “The Ravished Image”, Gombrich announced: “It is now clear that the position I took forty nine years ago in this matter has been vindicated”. As, indeed, it had been, but curiously, Gombrich declined to mention the fact that an exact analogue of Apelles’ reported practice had been discovered on the work of an associate of Leonardo’s within the conservation studios of the Gallery which had originally dismissed his claims but recently honoured him with an “autograph” exhibition. Instead, he attributed his vindication to research reported five years later in a Burlington Magazine article of January 2001 on work conducted in the conservation studios of the Getty Museum. The article, “‘Amber Varnish’ and Orazio Gentileschi’s ‘Lot and His Daughters'”, by Mark Leonard, Narayan Khandekar and Dawson W. Carr, was certainly an important document. It reported that underneath a thick recent, disfiguring but easily soluble varnish, an older thinner much tougher (but still soluble) varnish “remained directly on the paint surface in many areas.” Examinations of paint samples established that “in some areas at least”, this varnish layer had been applied “very early in the life of the painting”, if not originally.
It had been found that in areas where sections of this early, possibly original varnish had been removed in earlier cleanings, the artistic consequences had been devastating: “One particularly prominent loss was in the neck of the daughter at the left. The older varnish remained intact throughout the face, yet at the line of the chin it had been broken through, and removed throughout the rest of the neck. To the naked eye, it looked as if the final layer of modelling in the neck had been ripped from the surface. Although the preparatory flesh tones were still intact, the carefully nuanced sculptural solidity found throughout the rest of the face was missing.” Although no one noticed it, this last remark echoed and corroborated Annigoni’s Times complaint of 1956 that restorers at the National Gallery pronounce “miracles” when “brilliant colours begin to appear“. Unfortunately, he continued, “what they have found are nothing but the preparative tones, sometimes even of the first sketch, on which the artist has worked carefully, giving the best that is in him, in preparation for the execution of the finished work.”
Welcome as such recent confirmations of longstanding claims by artist and art historian critics of restorations are, it should be noted to how great an extent they are arising after the horse had bolted. The National Gallery has yet to disown any of its post-war restorations – in which period it has restored and often re-restored almost its entire collection and often to seriously deleterious effects (see Figs. 55 to 59b by way of example). As the unwisdom of stripping off old varnishes finally begins to gain acceptance in restoration and curatorial circles, the fact remains that had artists’ testimony been heeded, not only would the ponderous and hugely expensive particle accelerators and other “diagnostic” apparatuses of modern museum conservation departments not have been needed, but that much of our visual cultural patrimony could far sooner have been spared mistreatment. Even before Gombrich’s first 1950 letter to the Burlington, in 1946, a painter, Laura Knight, had explained the intrinsic dangers of picture cleaning with perfectly calm “hands-on” knowledge and clarity in a letter to the Times (27 November):
“With the exception of direct painting, a comparatively modern method, a painter builds his pigment onto canvas or panel – always with the final effect in view. The actual surface of a picture is the picture as it leaves the artist’s hand. The varnish which finally covers the work for protection to a varying extent amalgamates with the paint underneath. Therefore drastic cleaning – the removal of the covering varnish – is bound to remove also this surface painting and should never be undertaken.”
Although Gombrich might well once again have been feeling that “There is more joy in heaven…” this early or original Getty Museum Varnish had not corroborated his Apelles’ thesis to the same degree as the National Gallery’s research on the Giampietrino. There, the surviving original “varnish” layer was not simply naturally discoloured but had been deliberately loaded with “warm dark pigments and black”.
Had Gombrich learned of his own vindication on this point a decade sooner, he might perhaps have been less censorious of those who claimed that Michelangelo, too, had toned down his own colours with black pigment on the Sistine Chapel ceiling. He might even have been less easily persuaded that Michelangelo had confined himself to painting into wet plaster with waterbound pigments. For that matter, even as late as 1993, had Gombrich heeded (as had done his successor at the Warburg Institute, Charles Hope), the hard evidence we presented in “Art Restoration” that the most massively extensive applications of original dark toning layers had occurred on the greatest masterpiece of the High Renaissance – Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling – he might have enjoyed his sense of vindication sooner [6]. He might also then have appreciated that the very technical proof of the antiquity of the discoloured layer on the Orazio Gentileschi painting (the fact that this layer had not run into pre-existing age cracks) had been observed more than a century earlier on the surface of Michelangelo’s Sistine ceiling; that the ceiling’s controversially removed a secco passages had, in fact, precisely passed the Getty Cracks Test. As Charles Heath Wilson had discovered and reported when examining the ceiling within touching distance: “There can be no doubt that nearly all of this work is contemporary, and in one part only was there evidence of a later and incapable hand. The size colour has cracked as the plaster has cracked, but apart from this appearance of age, the retouchings have all the characteristics of original work.” Where Brandt had reported in her influential Apollo article that while the restorers had been on the lookout for “the famous secchi”… “they were surprised not find a secco passages”, Wilson had found it without any difficulty (and without any hi-tech apparatus) because: “Retouches in size-colour are easily recognised. Pure fresco has a metallic lustre, but the retouches are opaque. They are also necessarily painted differently from the fresco, have a sketchy appearance, with hard edges, or are hatched [see Fig. 34] where an attempt is made to graduate them.”
Perhaps, even after twenty further years of campaigning, we might need to re-emphasize that earlier testimony of Wilson’s: the size colour had cracked as the plaster had cracked. The glue/size had not run into any pre-existing cracks. That is to say, the size colour had been applied before the plaster had cracked. The plaster is known to have cracked before any restorers went near the ceiling. Ergo, the size colour could only have been applied when the ceiling was new – and therefore Michelangelo alone could have been the author of the secco painting that lay so clearly to view on the dry surface of his frescoes. This hard technical proof cross-links with the even earlier artistic corroboration of Michelangelo’s authorship of the shading and the cast shadows that was found in Clovio’s beautiful hand-drawn sketch of the Jonah shown at Fig. 1. Moreover, had Gombrich heeded our 1993 account, he would also have appreciated that Wilson had, a century earlier, precisely confirmed his Apelles’ dark toning thesis, insofar as Michelangelo’s extensive secco paintwork had been observed to have “consisted of a finely ground black, mixed with a size”.
By accepting Wilson’s firsthand testimony, Gombrich would further have appreciated, pace Mrs Walden, that Michelangelo had put this secco work to the following extensive artistic ends:
“The shadows of the draperies have been boldly and solidly retouched with this size colour, as well as the shadows on the backgrounds. This is the case not only in the groups of the Prophets and Sibyls, but also in the ancestors of Christ in the lunettes and the ornamental portions are retouched in the same way. The hair of the heads and the beards of many of the figures are finished in size colour, whilst the shadows are also thus strengthened, other parts are glazed with the same material, and even portions of the fresco are passed over with the size, without any admixture of colour, precisely as the force of watercolour drawings is increased with washes of gum…These retouchings, as usual with all the masters of the art at the time, constituted the finishing process or as Condivi expresses it, alluding to it in the history of these frescoes, ‘l’ultima mano’. They were evidently all done at the same time and therefore when the scaffold was in place.” And not only! He would have seen an anticipation of the Getty Museum Optical Identification of Aesthetic Injuries Method. That is, Wilson had testified precisely that the faces of the Prophets Daniel and Jeremiah had “undoubtedly been injured by rude hands, suggesting that glazing has been partially or entirely swept away”. Specifically: “The face of Jeremiah seems colourless and painted in black and white only: that the face of Daniel is blotched with brown marks.”
Gombrich had thus been magnificently vindicated twice over on his Apelles Thesis: once on the testimony of a close follower of Leonardo, and once on the testimony of the mighty Michelangelo. He had very graciously accepted news from us of the (lesser) confirmation from within the National Gallery. How sad it is that he had left himself unable to lay rightful claim to the vastly more substantial example of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling paintings. How sad, too, that in defending his error of judgement on Michelangelo, he should have obliged himself to unperson the artistic legacy of the twin giants Michelangelo and Raphael in order to mount an incoherent untenable shabby little exhibition at the National Gallery.
CODA:
Sad as this all is, even now, it is not yet the end of the tragedy. Art historians and their (reversible) tribulations aside, how terrifying it remains that the consequence of the destruction of the precious historic/artistic material that comprised the finishing stages of Michelangelo’s own paintings (and which had protected the fresco surfaces for hundreds of years) is that the remaining now stripped-bare surfaces have been left prey to a persisting polluted atmospheric stew for which no solution has been found by the Vatican’s technical and scientific wizards after two decades of assurances – and twenty-six years after Prof. Brandt disclosed in Apollo that “I have urged repeatedly that problems of climate and pollution control in the Sistine Chapel be given higher priority.” In our post of 21 January, “Setting the Scene, Packing Them In” we cited reports that as many as 20,000 visitors a day were being run through the Chapel. Already, we are outdated. More recent reports put the daily total as high as 30,000 – and report a new pestilence: pickpockets operating within the Pope’s private chapel.
Michael Daley
ENDNOTES:
1. “The Sistine ceiling and the Critics”, David Ekserdjian, December 1987. 2. Wldemar Januszczak, “Sayonara Michelangelo”, 1991. Publisher: Bloomsbury, London. 3. The force of this distinction masked certain inconsistencies. For example, even in Britain during the early post-war period when national schools or tendencies were most pronounced, two highly successful German restorers represented polar opposites in picture restoration’s “ideological” wars. While Helmut Ruhemann lead the controversial school of “Total Cleaning” from within the National Gallery, Johannes Hell championed the philosophy of gradualist and minimalist restorations in which an overall appraisal of the aesthetic consequences of cleaning was maintained at all times. Hell, whose work was admired by members of the Royal Academy, including its painter-president, Gerald Kelly, did so from a successful career within the private sector but his disciples were to gain influential positions in the US museum world. Today, the linkage of competing restoration philosophies to national practices has lost almost all force. All museums – like the Louvre, like the Getty – now sport increasingly powerful science departments and engage nationally and internationally in the kind of professional collaborations between restorers, scientists and curators that operate under the new umbrella discipline know as Technical Art History – and there is scarcely a Technical Art Historian today who would subscribe to a “Total Cleaning” philosophy. Virtually to a person, restorers nowadays declare themselves to be minimalists. 4. Originally published under the title “Rhétorique de l’attribution (Reductio ad absurdum)” in Revue de l’Art, 42, October 1978. Republished as “The rhetoric of attribution – a cautionary tale” in Reflections on the history of art, 1987. (We are indebted to Charles Hope for locating the sources of this vividly recalled but utterly misplaced text.) 5. Charles Hope wrote to Helen Glanville: “The Fichard passage, for example, was not mentioned by them, but by Mancinelli, and I had to consult to Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft for 1891 to discover the full context; and it was Conti who drew attention to Michelangelo’s purchase of lake in 1508…” In the third James Beck Memorial Lecture, in London, June 2011, Hope discussed the Sistine Chapel ceiling restoration in the context of the National Gallery’s post-war restoration policies. He warned how misunderstandings of key art historical terms such as sfumato and colorito had carried grave and irreversible consequences for much art “as it did in the case of the Sistine ceiling”. Hope’s lecture has been published in full in the ArtWatch UK members’ Journal No. 28. (For membership subscription details, contact Helen Hulson, Membership and Events Secretary, ArtWatch UK, at: [email protected]) 6. …or, even sooner still, had he read Alexander Eliot’s essay “The Sistine Cleanup: Agony or Ecstasy” in the March 1987 Harvard Magazine. In an interview with Einav Zamir on the Artwatch International website ( “Evidence of the Eyes” ), Eliot recalls: “Frank Mason said ‘We’ve got to protest and stop the cleaning’ to which I responded ‘You can’t buck city hall, let alone the Vatican.’ Then Frank said, ‘Yes, but think of how awful you’ll feel if you don’t try,’ and so he recruited me. I then wrote a piece for Harvard Magazine on the subject, which Jim Beck told me helped persuade him to join us. At that point, the Vatican became noticeably upset.” For more of Eliot and Mason’s views on the Sistine Chapel ceiling restoration, see A Light in the Dark: The Art & Life of Frank Mason and “ Divine Light” .
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By which two words is the chemical compound with the formula NH4NO3 known? | Chemical Compounds at EssayPedia.com
The name of the chemical I was assigned to research is ammonium nitrate, a chemical of
many uses. Its chemical formula is NH4NO3 that exists as colorless, rhombohedral crystals at
room temperature but changes to monoclinic crystals when heated above 32°C. It is extremely
soluble in water and soluble in alcohol and liquid ammonia. . Its main uses are as an explosive
and is used in chemical fertilizers, but is also known to be used as a rocket propellant.
Ammonium Nittrate was first discovered in 1659, with is true abilities as an explosive
not being recognized until the end of WWI, with the person discovering the synthesis process,
Fritz Haber, winning the 1918 nobel prize. It was used throughout the war to supply Germany
with explosives. In 1931, a chemist by the name of Carl Bosch discovered a way to industrialize
it, in a process combining hydrogen and nitrogen under extreme high pressure to form ammonia.
hydrogen and nitrogen under extreme high pressure to form ammonia. At the end of the war, a
large surplus of ammonium nitrate was left when the first ammonia synthesis plant was closed
down. A huge pile of the compound was stored in an open field; in attempts to break apart the
pile for removal, explosives were drilled into holes in the pile. Contrary to what was expected,
the whole mound detonated with a blast of 4,500 tons, killing 600 people. One incident in
recent memory that is an example of its destructive power is the bombing of the Alfred P.
Murrah Federal building on April 19th, 1995. This bombing was commited by Timothy
McVeigh, and killed 168 people and injured hundreds more. The last famous example on April
16th 1947,when a French freighter named the SS Grandcamp attempted to dock in Texas
City, Texas on the Galveston Bay. The ship was making a delivery of ammonium nitrate fertilizer
when the deck of the ship...
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| Ammonium nitrate |
Who is the only female driver to win a race in the IndyCar Series, the 2008 Indy Japan 300 - she also has the highest finishing place for a female in the Indianapolis 500 race when she was third in 2009? | What is (NH4)20? | Reference.com
What is (NH4)20?
A:
Quick Answer
The chemical formula (NH4)20 represents 20 ions of the compound for the ammonium cation. NH4 is the chemical formula for ammonium, and the 20 after the parenthesis indicates that there are 20 ammonium ions.
Full Answer
Ammonium can be produced through a reaction of hydrogen and ammonia. It is a common component in salts such as ammonium carbonate, which is represented by the formula (NH4)2CO3. Similarly, ammonium chloride is represented by the formula NH4Cl, and ammonium nitrate is represented by the formula NH4NO3. It can also be found in the compound ammonium oxide, which is represented by the chemical formula (NH4)2O, which looks similar to the formula (NH4)20.
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In the Harry Potter series what is the name of Harry’s pet owl? | Hedwig | Harry Potter Wiki | Fandom powered by Wikia
— Tom comments on Hedwig's intelligence [src]
Hedwig (d. 27 July , 1997 ) was Harry Potter 's pet Snowy Owl (Bubo scandiacus). [3] In August 1991 Hedwig was purchased from Eeylops Owl Emporium and was gifted to Harry from Rubeus Hagrid on his eleventh birthday. Owls are used by wizards to deliver mail, but Hedwig was also an important companion as Harry was initiated into the wizarding world . She continued to be one of his closest companions until her death in the Battle of the Seven Potters in 1997.
Contents
Biography
Purchase
"Harry now carried a large cage that held a beautiful snowy owl, fast asleep with her head under her wing."
—Harry Potter after receiving Hedwig as a gift [src]
Hagrid introduces Hedwig to Harry in 1991
Rubeus Hagrid , who was in assisting Harry Potter in buying his school supplies bought Hedwig as a birthday present for Harry when they went to Diagon Alley together. Harry was delighted and couldn't thank Hagrid enough, while Hedwig had already fallen asleep after leaving the shop. [2] This was the first birthday present Harry had ever received, as the Dursleys did not celebrate his brithday. He became quickly attached to her.
Harry Potter's pet
Harry decided on her name after finding it in A History of Magic . Before attending his first year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry , Harry routinely stayed in his bedroom with Hedwig, away from the Dursleys , since she was his only friend at 4 Privet Drive . [4] Throughout her life, Hedwig provided Harry with mail service, as well as loyal companionship. Hedwig often showed Harry her affection by gently nibbling his ears and fingers, and seemed fully capable of understanding his wishes (as she faithfully followed Harry's orders to peck Ronald Weasley and Hermione Granger until they responded to him).
Hedwig with Harry Potter and Ron Weasley
Hedwig was also highly intelligent, as she flew to France completely of her own accord while Hermione was on holiday there with her parents, just to ensure that Harry received a gift from her for his thirteenth birthday, later arriving at the Leaky Cauldron shortly after Harry stormed out of Privet Drive after a particularly bad argument despite the fact that she had been away and allegedly staying with the Weasleys when Harry left the Dursleys. According to the landlord, Tom , she arrived five minutes after he did. [5] She was also able to deliver letters even though there was no specific address given(only a name). Hedwig was a proud creature, and had a habit of staring or hooting "reproachfully," and showing Harry her tail, cuffing him with a wing, or even nipping him a little harder than usual if she was offended by his words or actions. She also seemed fairly disdainful of the hyperactive behaviour of Ron Weasley 's pet owl Pigwidgion (Pig, as Ron called him)
Harry having Hedwig deliver a message to Sirius Black
While living with the Dursleys , Hedwig was locked in her cage for months at a time to prevent Harry from sending messages to his "freaky little friends." As a result, the first holidays after Hogwarts were a frustrating and boring time for her, as much as for Harry. When Harry was rescued by the Weasley brothers in 1992 , Hedwig was freed from her cage and flew along following behind the flying Ford Anglia all the way to The Burrow . In 1992 when Harry thought his friends had forgotten him, he mused that Hedwig was the only reason he knew that discovering the wizarding world had not just been a dream. Fortunately, her frustrated hooting during her first year with them convinced the Dursleys to subsequently let Harry let Hedwig out for flights so long as he didn't use her to send messages, though Harry sometimes ignored this rule and possibly began ignoring it entirely after meeting Sirius Black and gaining leverage with the Dursleys.
Snowy Owls are not native to Great Britain , and this caused some inconvenience, as she could not always perform tasks for Harry. Specifically, when Sirius Black was in hiding from the Ministry of Magic in 1994 , Harry could not send Hedwig to deliver messages to him, as onlookers would remember a Snowy Owl always going to and from a specific location, prompting a brief disagreement between the two when Hedwig resented being neglected in such a manner. During 1995 , she was attacked by associates of Dolores Umbridge when Umbridge tried to intercept Harry's mail, requiring Dobby and Professor Grubby-Plank to nurse her back to health.
Battle of the Seven Potters and death
"No... NO! Hedwig... Hedwig..."
| Hedwig |
Ian Fletcher, played by Hugh Bonneville, formerly the Head of the Olympic Deliverance Commission, has taken up the position of Head of Values at the BBC in which recent BBC2 comedy series? | Meet Harry Potter's Animals
Meet Harry Potter's Animals
Last Modified: December 10, 2014
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Read by: 25,182 pet lovers
In the world of Muggles, an owl isn't the first choice for a pet bird. But in the world of wizards, owls are the "in" companion pet, at least according to Harry Potter's friend, Hagrid – they are not only good company, but they deliver the mail.
On the set of the film "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone," there were a lot of owls – 16 of them in fact. Some were snowies, some were great grays, and others were tawnies. They played the magical mail-carrying birds seen throughout the film. Seven were needed to play Hedwig, the owl Hagrid purchased for the young wizard prodigy: named Gizmo, Kasper, Oops, Swoops, Oh Oh, Elmo and Bandit.
All of the animals that appear in the movie were handled safely and responsibly, according to the American Humane Association, which supervised their handling. Scenes that were deemed risky or potentially harmful to the animals were carefully shot using computer animation or even puppets.
Neither Sleet nor Hail nor the Dursleys ...
In the book and the movie, Harry's irascible Uncle Vernon Dursley tries his best to thwart delivery of the wizard's letter inviting him to study at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. But more and more dedicated owls flock outside the Dursley home. Nothing stops the owls from making their appointed rounds.
In reality, only a few real owls were used to film the scenes, along with some fancy photography and computer-generated special effects. The real owls were well trained to fly from one area to another on cue, to be rewarded with a treat.
Some of the flying sequences were filmed with an owl perched on a trainer's arm, with a wind machine blowing on them to simulate flight. These scenes were later added to other special effects that made it appear as if the owls flew at great heights.
The scene in which scores of owls perched on power lines, the lawn and the roof – all waiting to make sure the letter had been delivered – was filmed using fake or computer generated owls. The owl that delivered Harry's Nimbus 2000 broom was real – but the broom was actually made of paper.
Although throughout the movie, it appears the owls carry messages and even the broom, they didn't actually hold the objects. Instead, they were attached to the birds using an invisible harness. When they reached the right point, a trainer pulled a cord, which released the message or object.
Dogs, Cats, Rats and Toads
Animals received royal treatment. In many cases, the animals received better treatment than the human actors – such as the scenes with the cats Mrs. Norris and Professor McGonagall. Many of the scenes take place in a real castle, which was actually quite drafty and cold. For the cats' comfort, they were provided heated floors to keep their paws and their bodies warm. The human actors had no such comforts.
Mrs. Norris was a scrawny, ill-kept and matted creature who constantly patrolled the corridors, looking to catch even the smallest student infraction. Three Maine coons played the part of Mrs. Norris. The unkempt appearance was achieved using a collar with fake fur attached. In addition, hair was spiked up using a non-toxic hair gel. Mrs. Norris' malevolent red eyes were achieved using digital effects, not contact lenses. Three Maine coons were used to play the role.
Rats and toads are also featured in the film. Twelve real rats, a puppet and a mechanical rat were used to portray Scabbers – Ron Weasley's fat critter. During the candy-box scene on Hogwarts Express, the crew relied on the mechanical rat for most of the scenes.
Four toads played the scenes with Trevor. Trevor was a toad that belonged to student Neville Longbottom. When a toad was required, he was placed on an armchair or handed to an actor then retrieved when the scene was over and placed back into a heated terrarium.
Fang, Hagrid's imposing but sweet-tempered "boarhound," was actually played by four Neapolitan mastiffs. One of the mastiffs, named Bully, had been rescued from a junkyard. After the film was over, one of the trainers adopted him.
Mythical Beasts
When Harry ventures out into the Forbidden Forest, he meets a centaur, a creature that has the head and arms of a man and the body of a horse. Although the centaur was computer generated, the special effects crew used a real horse to get the movements perfect. They photographed horses running, jumping and rearing.
Alas, the special effects department did not have a ferocious three-headed dog available to use for reference. Fortunately, they were able to make do without the real-life examples.
(?)
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Which band, active from 1990 to 2006 was composed of three sisters and their brother Jim? | Karaoke Lounge » Brothers and Sisters: The Harmony and Rivalry of Singing Siblings
Brothers and Sisters: The Harmony and Rivalry of Singing Siblings
Posted by Teresa on September 28, 2009 at 11:02 am
25 Comments
Often our brothers and sisters are the first people we sing and play music with, so if it works well, it’s only natural to continue to sing and play with them. The tonal similarity of siblings’ voices allows for the building of beautiful harmonies, which can explain the success of the music made by siblings. Not surprisingly, many musical siblings have grown up in musical families and have gone on to great success. Here are a few examples of siblings who sing really well together, some more famous than others. Of course just like the rest of us, their sibling relationships mix harmony with rivalry. And tragically, sometimes it is death that irrevocably splits the siblings up rather than rivalry.
The Jackson 5
The Jackson 5 , Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, Marlon and Michael were the 5 brothers who took their motown harmonies and grooves to the top of the charts in the late 60s and 70s. Their first single I Want You Back, reached #1 on both the pop and R&B charts, as did the next two singles ABC and The Love You Save. Although Jermaine left the group for personal reasons and Michael began releasing solo albums, the six brothers released their 1978 album Destiny and the 1984 album Victory as a group. Despite Michael’s enormously successful solo career, rivalry would not stop the brothers from regrouping to record and release the 1989 album 2300 Jackson Street. Michael’s death in 2009 makes a reunion of the original members of The Jackson 5 impossible, but his legend lives on as people around the world sing his karaoke songs online .
Who’s Loving You, the B side of I Want You Back shows off the perfect vocal harmony that the brothers achieved:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGVvIh5NFXs[/youtube]
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Kings of Leon
Smash hit machines Kings of Leon recently broke into the mainstream and are currently enjoying many #1 spots on charts across the globe. Based out of Nashville, brothers Anthony, Ivan, Cameron and cousin Michael have been on a tear mixing a southern rock style with with an alternative garage band sound. Although they haven’t had any problems since the band was founded in 1999, they did have to “kidnap” their cousin Michael in order to begin touring and recording. Michael was in Junior High at the time and the Followill brothers had to lie to Michael’s mother in order to have her agree to taking her son out of school for a week. That week turned into several months.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugpjfYA1hZ4[/youtube]
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The Brothers Gibb, aka The Bee Gees
It was the reunion of The Bee Gees, brothers Barry, Robin, and Maurice Gibb in the 70s, that launched them to superstardom, with their disco hits from Saturday Night Fever. The 1977 Rolling Stone article, How Can You Mend a Broken Group , details how the brothers had performed together in the 60s as a trio, but split up in 1969 when Robin wanted to go solo and the others wanted to sue him. Two years later they reunited to achieve great success during the disco era going on to sell millions of albums. Their pop appeal, with their close high harmonies have carried their success past the disco phase. Younger brother Andy, was also a successful recording artist, who had hit songs on the charts at the same time as his brothers. Andy composed songs with his brothers, recorded songs written by them, but did not record with the group. Tragically, Andy died at the early age of 30. Maurice passed away in 2003. Barry and Robin are planning a reunion this year.
Only the Bee Gees can sing Stayin’ Alive the way it should be sung, with high falsetto harmonies:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHWeuQyFouo[/youtube]
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The Osmond Brothers (and sister)
The Osmond Brothers, Alan, Wayne, Merrill, Jay, Donny and Jimmy and sister Marie, have been performing harmoniously as a vocal group in varying styles and combinations for 50 years. Starting off as a barbershop quartet, Alan, Wayne, Merrill and Jay, performed at Disneyland in the late 50s and on The Andy Williams’ show in the early 60s. They learned to play musical instruments and performed mostly popular songs before turning to rock ‘n’ roll to see them through the 70s. Donny and Marie were able to launch solo careers but would still perform as a duo or with the other brothers. The four original Osmond Brothers made the move to country music, resulting with a few top 40 country hits. The Osmonds have garnered more than 30 gold records and have sold more than 77 million records. They continue to perform throughout the United States and Europe.
The Osmond Brothers, show their vocal stylings and dance moves in One Bad Apple:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96HqPpjI3UY[/youtube]
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The Everly Brothers
Don Everly and his younger brother Phil were born in the 30s in Chicago, to musical parents. The Everly family toured and had their own radio show in the 40s on which the brothers first performed. The Everly Brothers have had a successful career as a duo, singing similar melody lines, but often not more than a third apart, to create close harmonies, that many groups have since imitated. After Bye-Bye Love, their first hit in 1958, they continued to release many other hits (When Will I Be Loved, Wake Up Little Suzie, Cathy’s Clown) until 1973 when the duo had a very public breakup on stage at a performance. Reunited in 1983, they’ve continued to perform together, up until as recently as 2005, although they haven’t recorded any albums since the late 1980s. Their harmonic styling has been noted by Rolling Stone to have influenced The Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel and others. Ritchie Unterberger, writing for The Vocal Group Hall of Fame writes “they set unmatched standards for close, two-part harmonies and infused early rock & roll with some of the best elements of country and pop music.”
The Everly Brothers perform their first hit Bye Bye Love while on tour in 1985:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_129ZFctDk[/youtube]
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The Boswell Sisters
Martha, Connee and Vet Boswell grew up in New Orleans and began their singing career performing in local theatres and on radio programs before moving to New York in the 30s to record numerous successful vocal jazz albums. Martha and Vet would retire from the group in 1935, Connee continued with a solo career performing and recording into the 60s. John Bush’s biography of The Boswell sisters, from The Vocal Group Hall of Fame states they are “Definitely the most talented and arguably the all-around best jazz vocal group of all time, the Boswell Sisters parlayed their New Orleans upbringing into a swinging delivery that featured not only impossibly close harmonies, but countless maneuvers of vocal gymnastics rarely equalled on record.”
The Boswell Sisters influenced many other vocalists and groups, including The Andrews Sisters and Ella Fitzgerald. Their close vocal harmonies are shown off in this performance of Heebie Jeebies, filmed for the movie The Big Broadcast (1932):
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9Afn3Z-BWI[/youtube]
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Heart, sisters Ann and Nancy Wilson
Rocking the charts in the 70s and 80s, sisters Ann and Nancy Wilson, formed the group Heart , sold more than 30 million albums, with more than 20 top 40 hits including Dreamboat Annie, Crazy on You, Magicman, Dog & Butterfly, and sold out stadium shows. They briefly broke up in the 90s to have families but reunited in 2004 with original material and have been performing together since. Ann has released a solo album, but the group Heart continues to tour.
Heart’s 1976 hit Dreamboat Annie shows their amazing harmonized vocals:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQ6K7eUEpj8[/youtube]
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New Kids on The Block, brothers Jonathan and Jordan Knight
Jonathan and Jordan Knight, are brothers who sang with the ultra-successful boy band, New Kids on the Block, in the 80s and 90s, along with Joey McIntyre, Donnie Wahlberg and Danny Wood. Their second album, Hangin’ Tough and the release of their single Didn’t I (Blow Your Mind), resulted in their first self-titled album, to be certified 3 times platinum. The band went their separate ways in 1994, but reunited in 2007, releasing a new album The Block, and to tour in 2008.
Donnie Wahlberg’s brother Mark, was one of the original members of New Kids on The Block, but left to pursue his own rap music career as Marky Mark, releasing the #1 hit song Good Vibrations, produced by his brother Donnie.
Here are the New Kids on The Block, singing Step by Step:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziDtEPCFM0I[/youtube]
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The Corrs
Three sisters, Andrea, Sharon, Caroline and their brother Jim, made up the Irish Celtic group The Corrs. Their parents Gerry and Jean, played in a music group called Sound Affair, introduced their children to the music of ABBA and the Eagles. The Corrs reached international success after performing at the 1996 Summer Olympics and went on to play as part of Celine Dion’s Falling into You worldwide tour. They continued to record and perform, until 2006 when Sharon, Jim and Caroline took a step back from music to raise their families. Andrea continues to pursue her solo career. Rolling Stone refers to their harmonies as “sparkling, sisterly harmonies”.
The Corrs, unplugged version of Runaway, showing their unique voices that blend so well together:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A87Mqo_yDV4[/youtube]
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All Saints, sisters Nathalie and Nicole Appleton
Sisters, Natalie and Nicole Appleton, were members of the British/Canadian group All Saints along with Melanie Blatt and Shaznay Lewis. Natalie and Nicole formed their own duo Appleton after All Saints broke up. Fantasy their first single reached the #2 position for UK Singles, while their second Don’t Worry reached #5. All Saints reunited to release an album titled Studio 1 in 2006, with the single Rock Steady charting at #3 in the UK, but have split up again to pursue individual interests. Time will tell if they’ll reunite.
Here’s a live version of Fantasy, showing off their harmonies:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQjX3w2ueAc[/youtube]
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Wilson Phillips, sisters Carnie and Wendy Wilson
The vocal trio, Wilson Philipps, is made up of sisters Carnie and Wendy Wilson (daughters of Beach Boy, Brian Wilson and Marilyn Wilson-Rutherford of The Honeys) and Chynna Phillips (daughter of The Mama’s and The Pap’s John and Michelle Philipps). Their self-titled debut album, released in 1990, sold over 10 million copies, and their second album, Shadows and Light, released in 1992, sold more than 2 million copies. The following years would see them split up to record solo and duo albums, get married, have kids and pursue other artistic endeavours. The trio re-united in 2003 to record California, an album of 60s and 70s California songs with their harmonious voices.
Go On Your Own Way, reached #13 on Billboard’s Adult Contemporary Chart:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNrJ0gg_8tY[/youtube]
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Jonas Brothers
Love them or not, The Jonas Brothers are brothers who grew up singing together and have made a successful career of it. Kevin, Joe and Nick, debuted their first album, It’s About Time in 2006, their second self-titled album in 2007, which featured their first top 20 hit S.O.S., a third album A Little Bit Longer in 1008 and their most recent and fourth album Lines, Vines and Trying Times, which was to debut at #1 on the Billboard Top 200 Chart. All of their songs showing off their sweet vocal harmonies in a pop style way.
Fly With Me, Official Video:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=un-KTpvCPXo[/youtube]
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The Veronicas, twin sisters
Twin sisters Jessica and Lisa Origliasso, from Brisbane, Australia are pop/rock singers whose 2005 debut album The Secret Life of… reached the # 4 spot on the Australian charts and garnered the twins three Top 10 singles. Their second album, Hook Me Up released in 2007 peaked at #2, with the title track reaching #1.
Untouched Official Music Video, perfect blending and timing of the twins voices:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKIENj-NeW8[/youtube]
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Yes, there are other sibling vocal groups out there that have survived harmoniously or not that we have failed to mention. If we didn’t mention your favorite group of brothers and sisters singers please let us know!
| The Corrs |
Who presented the BBC Radio 4 quiz Counterpoint until 2006? | Sharon Corr Pics - Sharon Corr Photo Gallery - 2017 - Magazine Pictorials. Movie Stills. Event Photos. Red Carpet Pictures
1
Profile Bio Text
Sharon Helga Corr MBE (born March 24, 1970 in Dundalk, Ireland) is a musician and member of the Irish pop-rock band The Corrs. She plays the violin and sings backing vocals. Sharon Corr began learning the violin when she was 6 years old. Her sister, Caroline Corr, was originally meant to learn it but was not interested, so Sharon began learning it instead. She has played in an orchestra and is qualified to teach the violin. The Corr siblings were awarded honorary MBEs in 2005 by Queen Elizabeth II, in recognition of their musical talents and also their charitable work which has raised money for Freeman Hospital in Newcastle, victims of the Omagh Bombing and other charities. In 2001, she married Belfast barrister Gavin Bonnar. They met when Sharon was shooting the video of Runaway, their very first single. They welcomed their first child, a boy named Cathal Robert Gerard Bonnar, on March 31, 2006. Sharon gave birth to their second child, a girl, Flori Jean Elizabeth Bonnar on the 18th of July 2007. Sharon Corr has also written singles such as "Runaway," " So Young," "Radio," "Long Night" and "Goodbye" which helped the band establish success within the music industry. At 5`5", Sharon is the tallest of the three sisters, and the second tallest of the four siblings, after her elder brother Jim Corr. As well as No Frontiers with Caroline, Sharon sings Dimming of the Day and her own version of Goodbye. In 1999 she recorded violin parts for the Jean Michel Jarre track "Rendez-vous à Paris", which was released in 2000 on the album Metamorphoses. Sharon Corr performed the track at the Man Ray club in Paris along with Jarre and other musicians in January 2000, to promote the album to media and celebreties.
Couple Profile Source
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In which county can you walk the 35 mile Wherryman’s Way? | Walking and cycling routes | South Norfolk Council
Walking and cycling routes
Walking and cycling routes
For a great way to discover the beauty of South Norfolk, why not put on your walking boots and explore on foot or jump on your bike and follow one of our cycling routes.
Walking routes
South Norfolk has plenty of walks that you can enjoy with the family, if you’re looking to get fit or if you just want somewhere to take your dog for a walk. You can create your own fun walking routes in your area or download maps of suggested routes from the websites below:
| Norfolk |
What was the name of the home ground of Stoke City FC from 1878 until 1997? | The Wherryman's Web
The Wherryman's Web
Loddon: Anger at WW public meeting
MORE than 100 people packed into a public meeting tonight to hear a grim assessment of the costs required to repair a section of the Wherryman's Way footpath along the Chet near Loddon.
The stretch between Loddon and Hardley Flood has been closed since last summer. This evening representatives from Norfolk County Council and the Broads Authority made it clear they thought the cost of repairs meant the present route should be abandoned for good. Many villagers at the Lecture Hall in George Lane, Loddon thought otherwise and made their feelings known forcefully.
Russell Wilson, senior trails officer with the county, told the meeting that the footpath between Loddon and Chedgrave Common would reopen by June, with the old matting surface being replaced with a more hard-wearing one made from granite. But further downstream he painted a picture of a path all but washed away. Bridges were unsound, entire banks had disappeared and the situation was getting worse almost day by day. There were, he said, no quick fixes. Providing a new footpath would cost at least £250,000 but providing the firm foundations beneath it would require extensive piling and that would cost between £1.5m and £2m.
Adrian Clarke from the Broads Authority was even more blunt; telling an occasionally bad-tempered meeting that "the grim reality is that the money we are talking about here is astronomical". It wasn't the Broads Authority's responsibility to maintain footpaths, he said, and because the path itself wasn't on a flood defence, the Environment Agency could walk away too.
The best alternative, said Mr Wilson, was to work with the local landowner to provide an alternative route on the other side of Hardley Flood, while still offering views across it. Negotiations here appear to be at a very early stage.
Loddon's boatyard owners were well represented at the meeting. They insisted that breaches in the wall between the Chet and the Flood were already affecting the level of the river - and therefore the viability of their businesses. Mr Clarke promised that the Broads Authority would "maintain navigation" but said they had no plans to repair breaches.
Other villagers talked of the impact on tourism and the sheer beauty of the Hardley Flood section of the walk. "You are writing off two communities," said one. Some also questioned the figures. There was also criticism for a perceived lack of maintenance. "You spent all this money setting up the Wherryman's Way, how have you allowed it to get this bad?" was a typical comment.
I asked about the total budget of the two organisations. The Broads Authority income is approximately £7m a year, I was told, the footpaths department of the county council about £500,000. Faced with such massive potential repair bills, there are certainly no easy answers.
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Wherryman's "No Way"
IT GETS worse on the Wherryman's Way in the Loddon area. The closure I mentioned back in July has now been extended all the way back to Chedgrave. And it's the fact that the council is not going to even look at the problem until the early summer of 2016 which is really annoying local people. What follows is verbatim from this week's Beccles and Bungay Journal. You can find the full article here:
"The area around Hardley Flood, which forms part of The Wherryman’s Way - a 35-mile footpath running between Norwich and Great Yarmouth - has been closed by Norfolk County Council due to the erosion of two bridges and the path becoming unstable.
The council has said work to assess the problem will not start until early summer, causing frustration among residents, councillors and businesses which are losing trade as a result of the closure.
Andrew Milner, who lives in Chedgrave and has been walking the route for the past 25 years, said: “Last winter two of the four bridges at Hardley Flood started to collapse because the bank washed away.
“In the summer they extended the closure back to Chedgrave Common and now they have extended it all the way back to Chedgrave itself.
“They have closed off a huge section of the footpath which means that the circular walk is now closed off, as well as the short walk people do from Chedgrave to the common and to the bird hide on Hardley Flood, which brings lots of tourists in."
* To complain about any Norfolk footpath. Follow this link.
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Wearily waiting for a weir
Hardley Flood
SO when is one of Norfolk’s major footpaths not a major footpath? When it’s the Wherryman’s Way and there are pricy repairs waiting to be done, it seems.
I haven’t been down there myself recently, but word reaches me that a bridge over a weir next to Hardley Flood still hasn’t been replaced months after problems first arose.
That means we’re in peak season and you can’t complete the Wherryman’s Way without taking a diversion which seems to be barely publicised on the route itself. Responsibility seems to lie somewhere between the Broads Authority and the county council. All you get on the Wherryman’s Way website is “We are currently investigating solutions to this and will post details of timescales here when we have them”.
Call me a pessimist, but that feels like early 2016 ...at least.
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Hardley Mill: Rockley’s reflections
HAS Hardley Mill ever looked this good? This beautiful photo from Hardley Windmill Trust chairman Richard Rockley shows the big changes on the landward side of the mill. New drainage works here have changed the landscape quite dramatically. In Richard’s words: “at last it is possible to get the iconic ‘Broads mill reflected in water’ shot.”
Work continues apace on the Wherryman’s Way’s only working windmill. Of course the team have had the sails on for some time now, but it’s only this spring that the restored Appold turbine pump has begun working. In other words the windmill’s sails have actually been used to drain water for the first time since the mill’s demise, we think in 1947. At which point I love to quote Loddon octagenarian Cecil Nicholls (pictured above). He knows this stretch of the WW like the back of his hand and has a fantastic memory for the late 1940s:
“I got home about 4.30 and suddenly this storm started to brew up from nowhere,” he told me. “I’ve never seen thunder and lightning like it.”
“A little while later my father came back and said the mill’s sails had been wrenched off. The newspapers said they had been struck by lightning, but I think they were blown off.”
Whatever the precise cause, those particular sails would never turn again. The mill was quickly abandoned and later replaced by an electrical drainage pump.
Of course the real work of keeping these fields drained will continue to be done via electricity. But that doesn’t take away from the considerable engineering achievement on the ground. Or - for that matter – from the beauty of seeing a pukka windmill in the Yare Valley and knowing that it actually works.
* More from Hardley Windmill Trust’s own website here.
* Lots more on the mill from this blog’s archive here.
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Name the only Colombian to win a Nobel Prize. | Spanish Literature - Nobel Prize Winners | donQuijote
don Quixote Museum
Nobel Prize Winners
Find out more about the Spanish and Latin American literature Nobel Prize Winners - Pablo Neruda, Mario Vargas Llosa, Gabriela Mistral, Camilo Jose Cela
Literature Nobel Prize Winners
1904 Jose Echegaray (Spain)
Echegaray was a truly multitalented man: engineer, playwright, politician and mathematician. In mathematics, he introduced Chasles geometry, the Galois Theory and elliptic functions into Spain. As a politician, Echegaray worked in the Ministry of Finance and Development. However, h received the Nobel Prize for his work as a playwright, having written 67 plays such as The Great Galeotti (1881). The choice to award the Literature Nobel Prize to Jose Echegaray was widely criticized by other Spanish writers such as Leopoldo Alas (Clarin) and Emilia Pardo Bazan.
1922 Jacinto Benavente (Spain)
Jacinto Benavente was one of the most important playwrights of the early twentieth century. He also worked as a director, writer and producer in the Spanish film industry. His sharp pen told the stories of all types of human tragedies, comedies, dramas and skits. Jacinto Benavente's theatrical works were realistic, natural and plausible, albeit with certain ironic touches that livened up each play. This Spanish playwright was well appreciated in Spain during the first half of the 20th century, overshadowing the fame of Jose Echegaray.
1945 Gabriela Mistral (Chile)
Lucila de Maria del Perpetuo Socorro Godoy Alcayaga, known simply as Gabriela Mistral, was a poet, diplomat and educator. She also played an important role as a feminist activist in Chile. She established a very important diplomatic career in both European and American countries. The news that she had been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature came when the Chilean poet was serving as a consul in the city of Petropolis, Brazil. In 1945, Gabriela Mistral became the first Latin American to ever win the Nobel Prize for Literature.
1956 Juan Ramon Jimenez (Spain)
Juan Ramon Jimenez was a great Spanish poet, author of the magnificent lyrical narrative called Platero and I. He was an influential author to the avant-garde youth who revered Juan Ramon as their master. When the Spanish Civil War broke out, the author found himself in exile, first in the United States and later in Puerto Rico. It was here that he became a university professor and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Three days after learning that he had won the coveted award, Jose Ramon's wife passed away, a loss he would never fully recover from. The Spanish poet would die two years later, in the same clinic as his wife, while suffering from a deep depression.
1967 Miguel Angel Asturias (Guatemala)
Miguel Angel Asturias is an important writer who emerged during the Latin American Literary Boom alongside figures like Garcia Marquez and Mario Vargas Llosa. Among his many important novels, some of the highlights are Mr. President (1946) about a Latin American dictator and Men of Maize(1949), considered to be a masterpiece of the Magic Realism genre that achieves a perfect balance between language and narration. Miguel Angel Asturias, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, died in Madrid at the age of 74 and was buried in the famous Parisian cemetery Père Lachaise.
1971 Pablo Neruda (Chile)
Pablo Neruda was a Chilean author who wrote romantic poetry and won the Literature Nobel Prize in 1971.. He dedicated himself to classical writing and avoided the avant-garde movements of the time. Neruda's political activism in the Chilean Communist Party led him to exile. When he returned to Chile, he was appointed as the ambassador to France by Salvador Allende in 1970. In 1973, Pablo Neruda resigned from the position due to health problems. That same year, the Chilean author died in the Santa Maria Clinic of Santiago, when the Allende government had already been overthrown by the coup of Augusto Pinochet. In fact, some theories suggest that Neruda had been assassinated via lethal injection.
1977 Vicente Aleixandre (Spain)
Vicente Aleixandre was a poet of the famous Generation of '27, one of the most famous Spanish literary groups of the 20th Century with other important authors such as Federico Garcia Lorca and Miguel Hernandez. Aleixandre was a member of the Spanish Royal Academy since 1950 and held the "O" chair. Throughout his life, the Spanish poet's work would adopt different styles, from surrealistic poetry to anthropocentric and social poetry. One notable example of his surrealistic work was Destruction or Love (1935).
1982 Gabriel García Marquez (Colombia)
Gabriel Garcia Marquez was without doubt the most important Latin American author of the 20th century due to his masterpiece One Hundred Years of Solitude. He was born in Aracataca, Colombia in 1972 and was a writer, novelist, short story writer, screenwriter and journalist whose work exemplified the genre of Magical Realism. One Hundred Years of Solitude is considered a classic in Latin American literature and is probably the second most translated Hispanic work after Cervante's Don Quixote.
1989 Camilo Jose Cela (Spain)
Camilio Jose Cela was one of the most prolific Spanish writers of the second half of the 20th century. His career took off with the jarring novel The Family of Pascual Duarte, a terrifying portrait of Spain after the Spanish Civil War. Cela's work as a writer includes long novels, short stories, essays, travel books, literary magazine pieces and more. His Majesty Juan Carlos I bestowed Camilio Cela with the title of Marquis of Iria Flavia (his birthplace). In addition to having won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1989, Cela also received the Cervante's Prize in 1995 and the Prince of Asturias Prize in Literature in 1987. In addition to all this, the Spanish writer was a member of the Royal Spanish Academy.
1990 Octavio Paz (Mexico)
Octavio Paz was a writer, essayist, diplomat and, most importantly, Mexican poet. He first came into contact with literature as a young boy through his grandfather. By adolescence, the future writer had discovered European poetry, especially from Spain. These poets, such as Juan Ramon Jimenez (mentioned above), would influence Octavio Paz throughout his career. During the Spanish Civil War, Paz visited Spain with an Antifascist Mexican delegation to show their support for the Republican cause. As time passed, the writer lost hope in the idea of a Marxist utopia and eventually denounced Stalin's Soviet concentration camps. Later, Octavio Paz was the Mexican Ambassador to India but resigned from his position in 1968 after the Tlateloco massacre. The Mexican author then moved to the United States where he became a university professor. Octavio Paz died in Mexico City in 1998. Paz is known for producing poetry that is difficult to classify but, as he himself admitted, his work was greatly influenced by Surrealism.
2010 Mario Vargas Llosa (Peru)
Mario Vargas Llosa, a Spanish language writer and latest Spanish speaking winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, is also one of the most prolific novelists of all time. His very experimental prose envelops readers with the contradictions of the individual in the fight for survival. Llosa's novels are carefully structured, which the titles of his works imply: Conversation in the Cathedral, The Green House, The Time of the Hero; structures that encase the individual. They are also works that investigate history, from his own past in Lima (Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter) to more general history (The Feast of the Goat or The Dream of the Celt), but they are always centered around the individual. Mario Vargas Llosa is also a member of the Royal Spanish Academy.
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The Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood, built on the site of the assassination of Tsar Alexander II, is in which Russian city? | Six Latin American Nobel Prize Winners in Literature | Living Language
Six Latin American Nobel Prize Winners in Literature
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Did you know that Latin America boasts six Nobel Prize in Literature winners?
Gabriela Mistral in the 1950w
1. Gabriela Mistral, Chile (1945)
Mistral wrote several volumes of poetry, including “Sonetos de la muerte” (Death sonnets) (1914), “Desolación” Disolation (1922) and “Ternura” (Tenderness) (1924). Mistral won “for her lyric poetry which, inspired by powerful emotions, has made her name a symbol of the idealistic aspirations of the entire Latin American world.”
2. Miguel Angel Asturias, Guatemala (1967) The Academy awarded Asturias the Nobel Prize “for his vivid literary achievement, deep-rooted in the national traits and traditions of Indian peoples of Latin America.”
3. Pablo Neruda, Chile (1971) He won “for a poetry that with the action of an elemental force brings alive a continent’s destiny and dreams.”
Gabriel García Márquez in 2009.
4. Gabriel García Márquez, Colombia (1982) He received the nobel prize “for his novels and short stories, in which the fantastic and the realistic are combined in a richly composed world of imagination, reflecting a continent’s life and conflicts.” His main novel is Cien años de soledad (One Hundred Years of Solitude).
1990 Nobel Prize winner Octavio Paz.
5. Octavio Paz, Mexico (1990) Paz won the Nobel Prize “for impassioned writing with wide horizons, characterized by sensuous intelligence and humanistic integrity.”
6. Mario Vargas Llosa (2010) Vargas Llosa’s varied work “embraces a multiplicity of styles but can best be described as deeply political, with a focus on questions of power and its dangers.” One of his main novels is La ciudad y los perros (The City and the Dogs).
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How is an oxbow lake known in Australia? | Oxbow Lakes - Information and Examples
Oxbow Lakes
Oxbow Lakes
Oxbow Lakes Are Part of Meandering Streams and Rivers
The left side of this image of the Amazon River shows an oxbow lake. wigwam press/Getty Images
By Matt Rosenberg
Updated February 19, 2016.
Rivers flow across wide, river valleys and snake across flat plains, creating curves called meanders. When a river carves itself a new channel, some of these meanders get cut off, thus creating oxbow lakes that remain unconnected but adjacent to their parent river.
How Does a River Make a Loop?
Interestingly, once a river begins to curve, the stream begins to move more rapidly on the outside of the curve and more slowly on the inside of the curve. This then causes the water to cut and erode the outside of the curve and deposit the sediment on the inside of the curve. As the erosion and deposition continues, the curve becomes larger and more circular.
The outer bank of the river where erosion takes place is known as the concave bank. The name for the bank of the river on the inside of the curve, where sediment deposition takes place, is called the convex bank.
Cutting Off the Loop
Eventually, the loop of the meander reaches a diameter of approximately five times the width of the stream and the river begins to cut the loop off by eroding the neck of the loop.
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Eventually, the river breaks through at a cutoff and forms a new, more efficient path.
Sediment is then deposited on the loop side of the stream, cutting off the loop from the stream entirely. This results in a horseshoe-shaped lake that looks exactly like an abandoned river meander. Such lakes are called oxbow lakes because they look like the bow part of the yoke formerly used with teams of oxen.
An Oxbow Lake Is Formed
Oxbow lakes are still lakes, generally no water flows in or out of oxbow lakes. They rely on local rainfall and, over time, can turn into swamps. Often, they ultimately evaporate in just a few years after having been cut off from the main river.
In Australia, oxbow lakes are called billabongs. Other names for oxbow lakes include horseshoe lake, a loop lake, or cutoff lake.
The Meandering Mississippi River
The Mississippi River is an excellent example of a meandering river that curves and winds as it flows across the Midwest United States toward the Gulf of Mexico.
Take a look at a Google Map of Eagle Lake on the Mississippi - Louisiana border. It was once part of the Mississippi River and was known as Eagle Bend. Eventually, Eagle Bend became Eagle Lake when the oxbow lake was formed.
Notice that the border between the two states used to follow the curve of the meander. Once the oxbow lake was formed, the meander in the state line was no longer needed; however, it remains as it was originally created, only now there is a piece of Louisiana on the east side of the Mississippi River.
The length of the Mississippi River is actually shorter now than in the early nineteenth century because the U.S. government created their own cutoffs and oxbow lakes in order to improve navigation along the river.
Carter Lake, Iowa
There's an interesting meander and oxbow lake situation for the city of Carter Lake, Iowa. This Google Map shows how the city of Carter Lake was cut off from the rest of Iowa when the channel of the Missouri River formed a new channel during a flood in March 1877, creating Carter Lake. Thus, the city of Carter Lake became the only city in Iowa west of the Missouri River.
The case of Carter Lake made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court in the case Nebraska v. Iowa, 143 U.S. 359. The court ruled in 1892 that while state boundaries along a river should generally follow the natural gradual changes of the river, when a river makes an abrupt change, the original border remains.
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Who wrote the song Easter Parade? | Oxbow lake
Oxbow lake
2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection . Related subjects: Geology and geophysics
Songhua River, northeast China. Swirls and curves, showing paths the river once took, as well as oxbow lakes, are easily seen in this satellite photo.
An oxbow lake is a type of lake which is formed when a wide meander from a stream or a river is cut off to form a lake. They are called oxbow lakes due to the distinctive curved shape that results from this process. In Australia , an oxbow lake is called a billabong.
Formation
A Horseshoe or oxbow lake near Hughes, Arkansas, USA .
The bulges in the border reflect changes in the course of the river; when the river shifted its course and cut off the former channel, the border did not change.
When a river reaches a low-lying plain in its final course to the sea or a lake, it meanders widely. Deposition occurs on the convex bank because of the ‘slack water’, or water at low velocity. In contrast, both lateral erosion and undercutting occur on the concave bank where the stream’s velocity is the highest. Continuous erosion of a concave bank and deposition on the convex bank of a meandering river cause the formation of a very pronounced meander with two concave banks getting closer. The narrow neck of land between the two neighbouring concave banks is finally cut through, either by lateral erosion of the two concave banks or by the strong currents of a flood . When this happens, a new straighter river channel is created and an abandoned meander loop, called a cut-off, is formed. When deposition finally seals off the cut-off from the river channel, an oxbow lake is formed.
Some rivers shift in this way on a time scale from a few years to several decades whereas others are essentially static.
Examples
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Whose picture (beside the Queen’s) will be on the new £5 note in 2016? | Paper £5 Note (Elizabeth Fry) - Design Features | Bank of England
Paper £5 Note (Elizabeth Fry) - Design Features
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Security Features | Design Features
We currently have two £5 notes in circulation: the paper £5 note featuring Elizabeth Fry and the polymer £5 note featuring Sir Winston Churchill. You can continue to spend paper £5 notes as usual until 5 May 2017. After this they will cease to be legal tender.
The paper £5 note, with a portrait of Elizabeth Fry on the back, is the lowest denomination in value and the smallest in size (approx. 135mm x 70mm).
Denomination numeral - there is a large number 5 and £ symbol in the top left corner of the front of the note to assist easy recognition of its value. There is also a slightly smaller number 5 in the top right corner.
Recognition symbol – for the partially sighted, the £5 note has a densely coloured turquoise circle on the front.
Unique numbering – a unique number is printed horizontally and vertically on the front of the £5 note. The horizontal number is in the top left corner and consists of multicoloured letters and numbers, increasing in height from left to right. The vertical number runs down the right side and has letters and numbers that are the same height and colour.
Copyright symbols –the international copyright symbol is included on the front and the back of the £5 note, around the edge of the watermark area.
Historical character - Elizabeth Fry (1780-1845). The images on the back of the note are related to the life and work of this social reformer. The main illustration shows Elizabeth Fry reading to prisoners at Newgate. In recognition of her work she was awarded the key to the prison and this is used in the design of the banknote.
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Andrew Lincoln plays deputy sheriff Rick Grimes in which TV horror drama series? | 14 Photographs That Shatter Your Image of Famous People
14 Photographs That Shatter Your Image of Famous People
NFL Reviewing Touchdown Celebration Penalty Rules
When you step out the door, you're playing a role. Whether you're a hippie, stock broker, police officer or biker, you dress the way the world expects you to dress, you act the way the world expects you to act. So you can imagine how much more intense this is for celebrities, whose very careers depend on managing a public image down to the molecule.
But even they can't keep the occasional image-shattering photo from leaking out to the public ...
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Via Biography.com
There are two kinds of people in the world: those who, when seeing this photo, immediately hear "Werewolves of London" in their heads , and those who do not. That is Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Chicago, showboating in a pool match with local civil rights leader Al Raby.
And no, this isn't one of those photo ops where a public figure poses with a prop to look like regular folk. King was a hell of a pool player -- he took up the game in college almost 20 years earlier , and in the early days of the civil rights movement allegedly won the respect of local gang members by playing (and presumably beating) them at it .
Which is amazing, considering that a man who would attempt a shot like that in the middle of a match is probably something of a sore winner. "Looks like you lose again, Johnny Switchblade! Now pardon me while I do a victory lap around your pool hall while riding my cue like a horse."
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Via Hawking.org.uk
On one hand, none of us probably thought that Stephen Hawking was born in a wheelchair. But as a pop culture figure, his wheelchair and electronic voice are his thing, and against all logic you find it hard to think of him any other way, like how you can't think of Hulk Hogan without the tan and mustache.
That photo up there is from 1965, when a 23-year-old Hawking married Jane Wilde. That was after his diagnosis with ALS, the disease that would put him in the wheelchair (note the cane). But just a couple of years before that, he had no idea he had a degenerative disease -- he was a healthy, active, drinking college student at Oxford:
Via Stephen Hawking: Master of the Universe
Seconds after this picture was snapped, his pants hit the floor.
Then, one day he noticed he was having trouble keeping his hands steady, and once fell down a flight of stairs. Hey, best to go get it checked out, right? Could be, like, an ear infection or something throwing off his balance. That's when the 21-year-old (now studying for his Ph.D. at Cambridge) was told he'd be bedridden soon, and dead within a few years, a prognosis that is true for almost every ALS patient. Hawking, somehow, is still alive 50 years after his diagnosis.
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Via Nytimes.com
Tell me that man's beard is not full of Cheetos dust. That is an early 1970s Bill Clinton in his Yale days, with Hillary. Only I'm 99 percent sure that nobody called him "Bill" back then. No, a guy like that would have a nickname like "Meat" or "Boner" or "The Dude." Seriously, tell me you can find any difference between the future president in the above photo and Jeff Bridges in The Big Lebowski:
Photos.com
Both of them look like the kind of man who would interrupt a night of desperate last-minute cramming with "Dude, put down the book, I just had the best idea. It's gonna make us all rich, man. Now, just hear me out, OK? What if you could make a taco shell out of Doritos?"
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Via Mister Rogers' Neighborhood
If you see this photo out of context, your jaded mind will immediately assume you're seeing either 1) a young Mister Rogers goofing around with his producer off-air or 2) a " F*&@-IT, WE'LL DO IT LIVE! "-type meltdown.
"Now kids, you never do this with your wheel hand unless they've just merged without signaling."
... knowing that it is going to be screen capped and shared on the Internet 45 years later.
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Via Qty.se
What's hilarious about this one is that Hitler still looks ominous. From that children's snow sled he is going to conquer the world! Also, think of how different your impression of Hitler would be if he had worn that hat all the time. This looks like a particularly stupid Photoshop, but there are other pics of this from other angles and they're all equally silly (they're apparently scanned from a 1955 book by Hitler's personal photographer ).
But honestly, though, did the man ever smile? Yes, he did:
"Oh heil no, you didn't just say that!"
And he also sometimes put on a suit and tie and posed awkwardly with his girlfriend:
Via Evabraun.dk
"Did I blink that time? I think I blinked. Let's do one more. What do I do with my hands? What if I ... does this look natural? OK. Wait, I think I blinked again."
And here he is hugging his pet dog:
Via Eva Braun Home Movies
"Who's the dog of the devil? Huh? Who's a fluffy little devil dog?"
By the way, if you wonder why Hitler hated the Soviet Union so much, check out his terrifyingly sexy competition ...
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Via Wikimedia Commons -- U.S. Public Domain
That's right, ladies. The next time you're at a party and you see a guy who looks like a rugged, more handsome Keanu Reeves with Johnny Depp hair, playing a guitar and staring at you with his big, soulful eyes, keep in mind that in 40 years he could very easily turn into this guy ...
You can just hear panties hitting the ground.
... brutal Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.
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Via Sports Illustrated
No matter how it might seem when you're in high school, sometimes the line between jock and nerd is razor thin. Their genes might make those guys tall and give them the ability to dunk from the free throw line, but behind closed doors they're going to hike their pants way up and dance with an umbrella, as MJ was doing here in this 1983 photograph by Lane Stewart for Sports Illustrated.
There is a whole gallery of these , you can judge which one is the most embarrassing.
But, seriously, it's this one.
Yet that is not the dorkiest teenage celebrity photo we have. That would be ...
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Via Eminemworld.com
I've linked to this picture, oh, seven or eight times in my career at Cracked, as it is my favorite celebrity photo of all time. I don't want to say that Eminem's claims of an impoverished life as an abused child aren't true -- I think everyone agrees that they are. To an extent. Still, sometimes he had a birthday and a cake and wore a pink T-shirt depicting Alf wearing X-ray glasses saying, "Hey, nice underwear!"
Still, brooding celebrities who build their career on their dark past do it at the risk of becoming caricatures. For instance, the same can be said of Kurt Cobain -- nobody is going to deny his depression or addiction. However ...
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Via Flavorwire.com
... it's still a shock to realize sometimes the man just sat down and ate an entire pizza like Shaggy from Scooby-Doo.
This is something everybody should understand about depression, by the way. Tell me you haven't at least once heard somebody say, "I refuse to believe it was suicide, I was just out with Mike two weeks ago. He was laughing and joking and eating an entire pizza like it was a video game power-up."
Via Flavorwire.com
Then later played "Cat Puppet" with his daughter while doing a high-pitched cat voice.
Well, depression works that way. Movies have given us a skewed idea of how it works, because there, when a character enters his "dark period," it's with a montage full of sad music and drinking and moping in dim rooms. Real life isn't like that. Not only do moods fluctuate, but even when you're at your lowest you find yourself in social situations where you're not allowed to show it. If you're in a dark place but can't get out of your nephew's birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese's, you're going to put on a smile for the camera. You feel selfish bringing everybody else down. You put on a cheerful mask.
Then, ironically, if you start playing the role of the tortured artist later, you have to worry about the opposite -- being photographed in a moment of being goofy and carefree. On a similar note ...
5
Via Life
If you're considered the smartest man in the world, do you feel self-conscious about taking off your shirt and kicking back in a lawn chair with a goofy hat?
This is Albert Einstein getting some sun in Palm Springs, in 1932. Note his wild hair stuffed vertically into said hat. Still kept the slacks on, though, rather than breaking out the Speedo. You'll be thankful for that, once you see ...
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Via Anorak.co.uk
"I'm Prime Minister and inspirational wartime leader Winston Churchill, and this is my junk. Go ahead, take a picture, it's fine. I made the military invent Lycra just so I could show it off without getting arrested again."
What I enjoy most about that photo is how it's about 10 times more disturbing than if he were simply nude. I'm imagining an alternate history where World War II broke out and he had to be pulled off the beach to go address the nation, with no time to change clothes. So he's standing there before the press and talking about courage and perseverance and everyone is trying not to stare at his shrink-wrapped penis as he slowly becomes more and more visibly aroused.
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Via Reviewermag.com
... the Manson Family, that is.
Charles Manson is the most famous serial killer of all time, and maybe the most famous criminal of all time. This is despite the fact that he didn't carry out the killings himself -- the "family" was a cult-slash-hippie commune that he formed that carried out at least a half dozen brutal killings on his orders. Look at how happy these freaks are!
See, you were right to be skeptical about hippies all this time -- they're all peace and love, but give them one charismatic dude in a loud shirt and they'll do whatever he says.
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Via Cbc.ca
Yep, that's Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek as a smooth, hip 23-year-old hosting a show called Music Hop in 1963 on the CBC in Canada. He appears to be calling to a young lady to come sit on his lap. This link has video of the young MC in action.
This wouldn't be shocking if it were, say, a young Pat Sajak or Bob Barker. But the difference between Alex Trebek and other game show hosts is that Trebek always comes off like he's a wizard who somehow knows the answer to every single question on every subject. When a contestant gets one wrong, he doesn't look down and read it off the card; he makes sympathetic eye contact with the loser and says, "Ooh, I'm sorry, the Council of Pereiaslav treaty was of course signed in 1654, not 1655." And he has this look on his face like "I know you're kicking yourself for missing that one, we all have our moments of intellectual weakness."
Via Kymx.radio.com
"Don't worry, there's nothing wrong with being average. Or even stupid, for that matter."
So it's easy to assume he came out of academia somewhere, a genius with unfathomable encyclopedic knowledge who was chosen as the only man smart enough to host a quiz show where he routinely talks down to Ph.D.s like they're kindergarteners. But, no, he's just a TV guy, one who didn't hesitate to use his smooth TV hosting gig to charm the ladies:
"Don't try to hide your arousal, honey. It's not possible."
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Via Annalsofamericus.com
First of all, how many of you kids thought that "Colonel Sanders" was just a drawing on the KFC logo rather than a real person? He was a real guy, and I don't mean that in the sense that the chain had a dude dress up as him the way McDonald's has guys in Hamburglar costumes running around. He invented the KFC recipe and started the restaurant chain ( at age 65, no less ). And here he is talking to heavy metal legend Alice Cooper.
After hours of searching, I still have no idea whatsoever how a young rock star from Detroit and a fried chicken magnate from Kentucky wound up in the same room, or what they would possibly have had to talk about. And I guess I don't want to know, that's what makes it a classic in the Awesome People Hanging Out Together genre.
Via APHOT
Seriously, you can get lost for hours in there.
What I do know is that these are two men who both knew exactly how important it is to your "brand" to maintain a unique, consistent visual presentation in public. For the last 20 years of Sanders' life, he would not leave the house without wearing the trademark white suit, black tie and Southern-style beard that made his image so memorable on the franchise's logo. Likewise, you never saw the menacing rocker Alice Cooper in, say, a huge Hawaiian shirt and bicycle shorts. It's all just part of the game.
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Name the Scottish island where granite for curling stones is quarried. | World Curling Federation - From Island to Ice: a Journey of Curling Stones
From Island to Ice: a Journey of Curling Stones
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By Mike Haggerty
September 2013
Ailsa Craig. Down the ages it has stood in magnificent, rugged isolation - a one-mile long volcanic plug island rising out of the Firth of Clyde, ten miles off Ayrshire on Scotland's west coast.
Ailsa Craig Photo: Richard Gray/World Curling Federation
It is, according to the RSPB, one of Britain's most important bird sanctuaries, being home to a colony of as many as 75,000 gannets at certain times, as well as other species, including a rejuvenated settlement of puffins that are gradually re-instating themselves following the eradication of rats from the island. It also stands as an iconic backdrop to the Open Championship and other major golf events when they are staged at the famous Turnberry links course.
But more than this, the granite that makes up most of the island is the source material for the stones used in the game of curling. The prized high-density blue hone variety is found nowhere else in reasonable quantities apart from the island's north quarry, and it is used as the running band - the section in contact with the ice - on every curling stone in the world.
Known affectionately as "Paddy's Milestone" because it sits at the halfway mark of the sea-ferry route between Belfast and Glasgow, Ailsa Craig has been uninhabited since the middle of the last century, but in recent weeks, its isolation has been disturbed by a team of craftsmen from Kays of Scotland - the world's leading manufacturer of curling stones - who have been harvesting 2,000 tons of the precious granite to be used in the making of the next ten years' supply of curling stones.
In a painstaking operation, Kays have been gathering seven-ton boulders from the two quarries on the island, shifting them to a temporary loading dock and then transporting them on the open boat 'Jodiann', some 75 tons at a time, to Girvan harbour, from where they have been transported to secure storage near the Kays factory in Ayrshire.
A family business, Kays have been making curling stones for almost two centuries, and years ago they negotiated the exclusive right of access to Ailsa granite with the island's owner, the 8th Marquis of Ailsa, who, incidentally has put the island up for sale, with a current asking price of one and a half million pounds.
Up until the 1950s, the Girvan family, and other relatives involved in Kays, lived and worked at the island's quarries, but now there are no permanent residents and the old houses and facilities, which incredibly included a commercial tea-room, have been left to their fate. Even the lighthouse is automated and solar-powered now.
The last time Kays lifted granite was in 2002 and the timetable of this year's operation - being carried out under the watchful eye of the RSPB and Scottish Natural Heritage - was adjusted for fear of disturbing fledging gannets during what has been a late breeding season.
Ian Morton was one of the last quarrymen to live on the island, and he recalls a working regime there that would have made current health and safety officials faint. In those days, the quarries had to be dynamited.
"We used to blast the granite pillars down and then work on them in the quarry", he explains, recalling, "I got blown five yards away onto my backside once". One of his jobs was to transport explosives round the island. " We'd be moving round 300 pounds of gunpowder, gelignite and detonators, but the danger didn't bother us " he said.
Curling - called "chess on ice" by some - is an ancient Scottish game whose written history goes back as far as 1541. It shot to prominence in the UK when Rhona Martin's team kept a bleary-eyed Britain up well after midnight as they battled for gold medals at the 2002 Olympic Winter Games in Salt Lake City.
Now, with the next Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia just six months away, curling is set for centre stage again, with the British teams - yet to be formally announced - liable to be led by current women's world champion Eve Muirhead from Pitlochry in Perthshire, while the men are likely to be skipped by two-times world champion, Lockerbie's David Murdoch. And they will be using Kays-produced Ailsa Craig stones, which have already been despatched to the curling venue.
Each of these stones weighs 20 kilograms, is 278 millimetres wide and 136 millimetres high. To buy one would cost around £400, while a complete set of 16 matched stones - the number needed for a game between two teams - is priced at almost £6,400.
Kays' Field Sales and Service Manager Mark Callan gives some background to their production. "we have six craftsmen in our factory and we produce five stones a day, meaning that it takes almost two hours from start to finish to make a stone". He estimates that this harvest will eventually yield 10,000 stones.
Ailsa Craig stones are exported to places as far apart as Canada, Iceland and New Zealand, as well as more unexpected locations, including Hawaii, Brazil and Dubai.
The current project has received the backing of the World Curling Federation and their President Kate Caithness said, "we are pleased to support this project as it has ensured the supply for years to come of high-quality granite for curling stones that can be used by Olympic champions and club players alike".
Once the project is finally completed, the Kays team will remove everything that they have brought onto the island - the diggers, the dumper trucks, the porta-cabins, and even the last crisp packet. They will also reinstate to a natural state the temporary roads and landing slip they created to shift the granite slabs from the quarries to the loading point. Then, Ailsa Craig will return to its isolation for at least another decade, having played its part in securing the future of what is acknowledged to be the world's fastest-growing Winter Olympic sport.
By Mike Haggerty
an edited version of this article appeared in the UK’s ‘Mail on Sunday’ newspaper on Sunday 1st September 2013
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| Ailsa Craig |
Which 2014 Tom Cruise film had the tagline Live, Die, Repeat? | Ailsa Craig-this ghost island is the world’s major supplier of curling stones and is up for sale ...
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This tiny island, with its head poking out of the Firth of Clyde, is around 16 kilometers from mainland Scotland. The island has the nickname “Paddy’s Milestone,” thought to have come about as the island is halfway on the sea-ferry route between Glasgow and Belfast. This route was followed by Irish laborers (paddy being an informal, sometimes derogatory, term for an Irishman) going to Glasgow to seek work.
Formed as a plug in an ancient volcano, the small island has had a rather checkered history, especially considering its size. In the 16th century, the Hamilton family built a castle, the ruins of which stand on the eastern side of the island, to protect it from being invaded by King Philip II of Spain.
Ailsa Craig Photo Credit
During the Scottish Reformation, in 1597, Hugh Barclay, a Catholic supporter, took possession of the island intending to use it as a station for the invasion of Scotland by the Spanish, the purpose of which was to re-establish Scotland as a Catholic nation under the jurisdiction of the Pope. Andrew Knox, a Protestant minister, uncovered the plot and it is thought that Barclay committed suicide by drowning in the waters off the island. The island then fell into disuse until the 18th and 19th centuries when it was used as a prison. In 1831, the Earl of Cassilis was made a marquis, and he took his name from the island, which was his property, becoming the First Marquis of Ailsa.
Thomas Stevenson built the island’s lighthouse from 1883 to 1886, and it is now in possession of the Northern Lighthouse Board. In 1990 the lighthouse was automated, removing the need for a permanent lighthouse keeper on the island, and in 2001 the lighthouse was converted to solar power. Since the last lighthouse keeper left in 1990, the island has been uninhabited by humans.
Ailsa Craig has been a haven for sea birds for millennia, but a plague of rats decimated the young of many seabirds, especially puffins, and gulls. It is not known exactly how the rats arrived on the island, but they could have come on the boats resupplying the lighthouse, or there have been several shipwrecks around the island, and the rats could have swum ashore from any of these. In 1991, tons of rat poison were distributed around the island, and the entire rat population was destroyed. The last live rat was seen on the island on 15th April 1991, near the summit. Since then no rats have been seen on the island.
Men curling in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, in 1909. Photo Credit
The other claim to fame that the island has is that almost two-thirds of all the curling stones used in the world today have been carved from the granite that occurs on the island. The granite, known as Ailsite, a type of riebeckite, is used to make the 20-kilogram curling stones used by all the top level players and all the stones used at the Winter Olympics since 2006 have been made from the Ailsa granite.
The granite is quarried on the island by a company called Kays of Scotland, who have exclusive rights to island’s primary resource. They are only permitted to quarry once in ten years and removed 2,000 tons of granite in 2013. This infrequent harvest is to ensure that the nesting birds are disturbed as little as possible. The best quality stones are manufactured from Blue Hone granite, which absorbs very little water, so it does not erode quickly by water freezing and melting thus damaging the stone. Ailsa Craig Common Green granite is of a lower quality and stones manufactured from it are not as robust as those manufactured from Blue Hone.
Curling is a game played on flat ice. It consists of two teams, each with four players, who each get a turn to push the 20 kilo stone along the ice to try and place it as close as possible to the center of a target painted onto the ice. The target consists of four concentric circles with the center circle being a solid dot. Points are scored by the team who’s ‘stones’ lie closest to the center. It requires considerable skill to judge the amount of pressure to apply when pushing the stone as the ice offers little resistance, and the stones slide very easily. Curling is one of the fastest growing ice sports.
An old-style curling stone Photo Credit
In May 2001, the Marquis put the island up for sale at £2,500,000, but with no takers, the price was lowered to £1,500,000. The island has been leased to a British conservation charity, the RSPB, and is now a haven for sea birds. With the eradication of the rats, puffins and gulls are returning in huge numbers to breed on the island.
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Which European won the 2014 U.S Open Golf Championship? | By David Shefter, USGA
Kaymer Completes U.S. Open Victory Lap
VILLAGE OF PINEHURST, N.C. – Martin Kaymer made sure that the final round of the 2014 U.S. Open on Sunday at Pinehurst Resort & Country Club’s Course No. 2 would amount to little more than a victory lap.
The 29-year-old German, who grabbed the championship by its throat on Thursday and never relinquished his grip, continued the recent domination of golfers from Europe, who have won four of the past five U.S. Opens.
After a week full of clutch putting – his 110 putts ranked third for the championship – Kaymer fittingly rolled in a 12-footer for par on the 72nd hole for a 1-under-par 69 and a 72-hole total of 9-under 271 to complete an eight-stroke victory over Rickie Fowler and Erik Compton, which tied the fourth-largest winning margin in championship history.
Just how good was Kaymer’s Sunday finale? The other 15 golfers in the last eight pairings were a combined 52 over par. Only 11 golfers, including Kaymer, posted sub-70 scores Sunday on a 7,349-yard layout that featured two par 4s that were drivable and several accessible hole locations.
Kaymer, the 2010 PGA champion, also became the first German – and first from Continental Europe – to claim the U.S. Open. He joins countryman Bernhard Langer, a two-time Masters winner, as a multiple major champion. He became the eighth player to lead the U.S. Open wire to wire and is now one of only five players to win the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and The Players Championship, joining the impressive quartet of Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus, Raymond Floyd and Lee Trevino.
Once the final par putt dropped, Kaymer was congratulated on the 18th green by several PGA European Tour players, including countryman Marcel Siem (T-12), as well as LPGA Tour player Sandra Gal, who, like Kaymer, was born in Dusseldorf and will compete in this week’s U.S. Women’s Open at Pinehurst.
“I didn’t make many mistakes,” said Kaymer, who had four birdies against three bogeys on Sunday. “The last two wins that I had in America, especially this week, I played very solid the first two days and that gave me a very nice cushion for the weekend. But to shoot only 1 over par [at] Pinehurst on Saturday and Sunday is good. The way I played I was very happy, the way I kept it together yesterday. And that gave me a good cushion for today.”
Kaymer took a huge step toward his second major on Thursday and Friday, when he posted the first consecutive 65s in any major championship to set a 36-hole U.S. Open scoring record of 130, besting Rory McIlroy’s total of 131 at Congressional in 2011. The six-stroke lead matched the efforts of Tiger Woods (2000) and McIlroy (2011), both of whom went on to win the championship.
Despite decidedly tougher conditions on the weekend, Kaymer never strayed too far from the tracks. Any mistake was covered up by another brilliant shot. Case in point was on Saturday when he took an unplayable lie after an errant drive on the fourth hole, only to convert a 20-footer for bogey. One hole later, he drilled a 202-yard approach from the sandy area to within 4 feet to set up an eagle 3.
On Sunday, Kaymer had a hiccup at the par-4 seventh, but then birdied the par-3 ninth, sticking his tee shot to 4 feet. He then bogeyed the par-5 10th, only to convert consecutive birdies at 13 and 14 from 15 feet.
“He’s a guy that is really tough,” said Keegan Bradley, the 2011 PGA champion who played with Kaymer the first two rounds. “If you got him in a Ryder Cup match or coming down the end of a tournament, he’s probably a guy you would rather not face. He’s tough and he’s very, very good.”
Four years ago, such a performance might have been expected from Kaymer. He became the world’s No. 1-ranked player for eight weeks and defeated Bubba Watson in a three-hole playoff at Whistling Straits for the PGA Championship.
But he began tinkering with his swing, trying to hit more draws, and his game faded. Outside of a clutch 1-up victory over Steve Stricker that clinched the remarkable Ryder Cup comeback victory for Europe in 2012 at Medinah (Ill.) Country Club, Kaymer quietly slipped out of the top 50 in the Official World Golf Ranking.
He didn’t win on any major tour in 2012 or 2013.
The 10-time winner on the PGA European Tour broke through in May, shooting an opening-round 63 at TPC Sawgrass and held off Jim Furyk for a one-stroke victory at the weather-delayed Players Championship.
With most of the attention this week on six-time U.S. Open runner-up Phil Mickelson trying to complete the career Grand Slam and Australian Adam Scott playing his first major as the world No. 1, Kaymer came to the North Carolina Sandhills decidedly under the radar.
Then he just ran and hid from everyone in the field.
“He kind of killed the event in the first two days,” said Henrik Stenson of Sweden, whose tie for fourth was his best U.S. Open finish in eight appearances. “And then it was more a question of if he would keep it under control. He held everyone off and then went out and played a solid round today. So very impressive and a very deserving champion.”
Starting the round five strokes back, Fowler and Compton, the two-time heart transplant recipient who became the feel-good story of the championship, never applied any sustainable pressure on Kaymer.
A double-bogey 6 at No. 4 by Fowler ended his chances. Compton missed a 3-foot par putt at No. 7 and despite making birdie at the difficult eighth hole – one of five on the hole on Sunday – the 34-year-old from Miami, Fla., lost any hopes of a late rally with consecutive bogeys at Nos. 11 and 12, and another bogey at 15.
“Today, I hit the ball extremely well,” said Compton, who got into the field at a sectional qualifier on June 2 in Columbus, Ohio, by surviving a 5-for-3 playoff for the final spots. “I didn’t have my best stuff on the greens. I was watching the leader board, seeing what some of the guys were doing. I knew we were playing for second. I had my opportunities to put a little heat on [Kaymer] and I got it to 4 under, then I made a bogey [at No. 7]. But all in all, finishing second, the up and down I made on 18, just makes the whole week really, really sweet.”
For Fowler, 25, who has made some significant changes to his swing since working with instructor Butch Harmon six months ago, it was a second consecutive top-five finish in a major, after his tie for fifth at the Masters in April. It was also his first final pairing in a major.
“I felt really comfortable, which is a very good thing,” said Fowler, a two-time USA Walker Cup competitor. “The more experience you can get in the final groups, and especially in majors and [being] in contention at majors, it definitely helps out for down the road. With the way I handled myself and kept going through the process on each shot, there was only a handful of shots this week that I wasn’t really prepared to hit and hit them without being ready to hit.”
It’s unknown if Langer, the most decorated golfer in German history, saw Kaymer’s performance. According to NBC, he was on a fishing trip in Alaska this weekend, but he did exchange text messages with Kaymer earlier in the week, wishing him well and encouraging him not to stray from his game plan.
The two now have three of the four major championship covered, with only the British Open missing. Kaymer certainly will be one of the favorites next month at Royal Liverpool.
“We have almost a German gland slam,” said Kaymer. “Winning the PGA [and] winning this one now, I hope it will make Bernhard proud. I’m sure it will make all Germany proud. It’s nice that I could win [The Players Championship] on Mother’s Day. Our Father’s Day was already a couple of weeks ago in Germany, but I didn’t get anything for my father that day, so maybe that works.”
The U.S. Open Trophy makes quite a gift. # # #
David Shefter is a senior staff writer with the USGA. Email him at [email protected] .
For Tournament Information
| Martin Kaymer |
In Egyptian mythology the god Sebek is associated with which creature? | U.S. Open 2014 Golf Leaderboard | Golf Channel
Pinehurst Resort and Country Club | Par: 70 | Yardage: 7562
Purse: $8,000,000 | Defending Champion: Justin Rose
Final day of the 2014 U.S. Open from Pinehurst No. 2! What a tournament it has been, yesterday the hole locations for the third round seem to have held the leader back from carding another 65. Martin Kaymer ended up with a 2-over 72, putting him at 8-under-par and a total of 5 shots ahead of Rickie Fowler and Erik Compton. Dustin Johnson and Henrik Stenson are one shot behind them at 2-under, both have carded 69’s in the first two rounds and 70’s in the third round. Phil Mickelson is out of contention after carding a 2-over 72 on the third round, putting him 5 over for the tournament. Don’t miss the excitement of the final round, would Rickie or Erik be able to catch up to Martin? We shall see, catch it all unfold live on NBC from NOON until 7:30PM ET., or stream it live from any device on NBC Live Extra from NOON to 7PM ET.
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In which musical would you hear the song Bless your beautiful hide? | Howard Keel - Bless Your Beautiful Hide (Seven Brides for Seven Brothers Soundtrack 1) - YouTube
Howard Keel - Bless Your Beautiful Hide (Seven Brides for Seven Brothers Soundtrack 1)
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Published on Sep 7, 2012
Howard Keel singing "Bless Your Beautiful Hide" from the famous musical "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers" 1954 ranked, in 2006, number 21 on the American Film Institute's list of best musicals.
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What name is given to sewing or gluing patches of material onto a garment or piece of material for decoration | Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954) - Bless Yore Beautiful Hide - YouTube
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954) - Bless Yore Beautiful Hide
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Uploaded on Sep 28, 2011
Howard Keel comes to town to find himself a wife, in the 1954 Stanley Donen musical Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. Music by Gene de Paul, lyrics by Johnny Mercer.
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Which Country's Parliament is the Folketing? | Denmark - The National Parliament of Denmark / Folketinget | Agora Portal
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Denmark - The National Parliament of Denmark / Folketinget
Country:
Type of Electoral System
Type of Electoral System:
Direct election: 135 seats are elected by proportional representation in 17 districts, and 40 supplementary seats are allotted to make up for the difference between district and nation-wide vote. The 135 seats are distributed to the parties by the D'Hondt method of the party-list system of proportional representation and the 40 supplementary seats by the Sainte-Laguë method.
List of Standing Committees
| Denmark |
To which order of monks did Tomas De Torquemada belong? | IPU PARLINE database: DENMARK (Folketinget), Full text
10 multi-member constituencies corresponding to counties, subdivided into 92 nomination districts.
Voting system
Proportional: Proportional representation system according to a modified version of the St. Laguë method and Hare quota and using the method of greatest remainders. Each elector can cast either a "personal vote" for one of the candidates or a vote for one of the party lists. They can vote for any of the candidates or parties of their constituency, not being limited to those of their nomination district.
Of the 175 seats reserved for Denmark proper, 135 seats are distributed among the constituencies. In order to distribute these constituency seats among the political groups in contention, the total vote of each party in a constituency is divided by 1, 3, 5 and so on by odd numbers in order to arrive at the quotients on the basis of which seats are allocated). Utilization of this method ensures representation for smaller parties.
The 40 remaining, or compensatory, seats are then distributed among the parties which either have won at least one constituency seat; have obtained, in two electoral regions, at least as many votes as the average number of valid votes cast in the region, per constituency seat; or have obtained at least 2% of all valid votes cast in the country as a whole. Such distribution, based on votes obtained on the national scale, is aimed at redressing the imbalance caused through the distribution of the constituency seats.
When it has been decided which parties are entitled to a share of the compensatory seats, the number of seats which each party is proportionately entitled to of the 175 seats is calculated on the basis of the total number of votes cast for these parties in all parts of the country. From the number of seats thus arrived at for each party, the number of constituency seats already obtained by the party is deducted. The resulting figure is the number of compensatory seats due to the party.
The end result of this system is a distribution of seats in the Folketing that faithfully reflects the share of the popular votes received by the parties.
Candidates who have been nominated but not elected figure on a list of substitute members drawn up by the Ministry of Interior after each general election. These substitute members fill the seats which become vacant between general elections.
Voting is not compulsory.
Dates of election / renewal (from/to)
18 June 2015
Timing and scope of renewal
The Blue bloc, a four-party centre-right alliance, led by former Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen, won 90 of the 175 seats at stake in these earlier-than-scheduled elections. Eighty-five seats were won by the Red bloc, a five-party centre-left alliance (see note 1) led by Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt (see note 2). Although her Social Democratic Party remained the largest party with 47 seats, the Prime Minister conceded defeat and resigned as party leader after ten years in charge. The Danish People's Party led by Kristian Thulesen Dahl, became the second largest party, winning 37 seats compared to 22 in 2011.
On 28 June, Mr. Rasmussen formed a minority government, comprising only the members of his Liberal Party (Venstre). As Venstre won 34 out of 179 seats, it has formed the second smallest administration ever, after the one formed in 1973 by Poul Hartling (Venstre), which had 22 seats.
The elections were called four months early. Ms. Thorning-Schmidt said that the timing for an election was right and pointed to positive growth forecasts for the Danish economy. The major electoral issues included immigration, welfare spending, job creation and economic growth. In the run-up to polling day, the country's cradle-to-grave welfare system took centre-stage, with major parties debating the scope of unemployment benefits.
Note 1:
- The Blue bloc comprised the Liberal Party (Venstre), the Danish People's Party, the Liberal Alliance and the Conservative People's Party.
- The Red bloc comprised the Social Democratic Party, the Social Liberal Party (RV), the Socialist People's Party, the Unity List-Red-Green Alliance and the Alternative (A).
Note 2:
Ms. Thorning-Schmidt's minority government, formed in October 2011, initially comprised her Social Democratic Party, the Social Liberal Party and the Socialist People's Party. The Socialist People's Party left the government in January 2014.
Date of previous elections: 15 September 2011
Date of dissolution of the outgoing legislature: 18 June 2015*
*The outgoing legislature was dissolved at 20:00 on 18 June 2015 in accordance with section 32 (4) of the Constitution which stipulates No seats shall be vacated until a new election has been held.
Timing of election: Early elections
Expected date of next elections: June 2019
Number of seats at stake: 179 (full renewal)
Number of candidates: 799 (549 men, 250 women)
Percentage of women candidates: 31.3%
Number of parties contesting the election: 10
Number of parties winning seats: 9
Alternation of power: Yes
Number of parties in government: 1
Names of parties in government: Liberal Party (Venstre)
Date of the first session of the new parliament: 2 July 2015 *
*In accordance with Section 35 (1) of the Constitution, the newly elected Folketing shall assemble at twelve oclock noon on the twelfth weekday after the day of election, unless the King has previously summoned a meeting of its members.
Name of the new Speaker: Ms. Pia Kjaersgaard (Danish People's Party)
STATISTICS
APPOINTMENT AND TERM OF OFFICE
Title
President of the Danish Parliament
Term
- duration: 1 year at the beginning of every sessional year (October), may be re-elected;
- reasons for interruption of the term: resignation, death
Appointment
- elected by the Members of the Folketing, at the opening of every session and when the Folketing meets for the first time after a general election
- after the approval of the validity of the general election
Eligibility
all Members are eligible, notified by parties
Voting system
- vote may be omitted if there is only one candidate and there are no objections to this candidate
- vote by public ballot, usually (may be secret if the Folketing so decides)
- if one of the Members nominated gets more than half of the votes cast, he/she is elected - if not, another free vote is held - if this does not result in the said majority of votes either, a third vote is held - the third vote is confined to the two candidates who received the largest number of votes during the second vote, and lots will be drawn in the event of a parity of votes.
Procedures / results
- the most senior Member presides over the Assembly during the voting, at the opening of a sessional year
- the tellers count the votes and notify the Speaker of the result
- the most senior Member announces the results without any delay
- 60 Members can request in writing and with at least 3 days' notice a new election for the Speakership
STATUS
Status
- ranks third in the hierarchy of State, after the Head of State and the Leader of the Government
- represents the Assembly with the public authorities
- is ex officio chairman of the Folketing committees
- in the absence of the Speaker, one of the Deputy-Speakers (and in their absence, one of the tellers) can assume his/her role and functions
Board
- the Presidium consists of the Speaker and the 4 Deputy Speakers:
- the Standing Orders Committee (SOC) consists 21 Members who are ex officio Members and whose chairman is the Speaker); the other 16 Members are elected on a pro rata basis, every year at Membersthe opening of the session and after a general election
- meets when necessary when convened by the Speaker
- the Speaker has the final say in most matters - in some matters, the SOC must be consulted
Material facilities
- special allowance equivalent to that for a Minister (DKK 380 703 per annum)
- right to a pension as a former Speaker
- official residence in the parliamentary building
- official car with a driver
- secretariat
- establishes and modifies the agenda
- organizes the debates and sets speaking time
- examines the admissibility of bills and amendments
- refers texts to a committee for study - the Folketing can, if it so desires, refers bills to other committees than those recommended by the Speaker (this very rarely occurs)
Chairing of public sittings
- can open, adjourn and close sittings
- ensures respect for provisions of the Constitution and Standing Orders
- makes announcements concerning the Assembly
- takes disciplinary measures in the event of disturbance, and lifts such measures
- establishes the list of speakers, gives and withdraws permission to speak
- establishes the order in which amendments are taken up
- calls for a vote, decides how it is to be carried out, verifies the voting procedure and cancels a vote in the event of irregularities
- checks the quorum after the vote
- authenticates the adopted texts and the records of debates
- interprets the rules or other regulations governing the life of the Assembly, according to precedents
Special powers
- the Presidium discusses proposals for the Folketing's budget and submits a recommendation to the SOC
- employs and dismisses civil servants and other employees in the administration
- employs and dismisses senior civil servants (including the Clerk) after discussion with the 4 Deputy Speakers and following approval by the SOC
- manages the organization of the internal affairs in consultation with the 4 Deputy Speakers
- is responsible for relations with foreign Parliaments
- is responsible for safety, and in this capacity, can call the police in the event of disturbance in the Chamber
Speaking and voting rights, other functions
- can take the floor in legislative debates
- can cut off a debate which goes too far in relation to the bill which is being debated
- takes part in voting
- normally does not propose bills or amendments except in special cases such as bills which concerns parliamentary conditions
- intervenes in the parliamentary oversight procedure
- signs the laws together with one of the tellers and transmits them to the appropriate Ministry
· Free representation (S. 56 of the Constitution Act of 05.06.1953)
Start of the mandate
· On the election day, when the election has ended. Certain rights only accrue to MPs when their election has been approved and they have made the declaration of adherence to the Constitution Act (S. 32 (7) of the Constitution Act, SO 1 (8) and (9) of the Standing Orders of the Folketing)
· Procedure
Validation of mandates
· Validation by the Folketing on recommendation of a committee (S. 33 of the Constitution Act, SO 1 (2) to (7), and 7 (1) (2.) of the Standing Orders of the Folketing, S. 86 and 87 of the Parliamentary Election Act)
· Procedure
End of the mandate
· On the day of new elections (S. 32 (4) of the Constitution Act; the same applies in case of early dissolution, see S. 32 (2) and (3) of the Constitution Act)
Can MPs resign?
Yes
· Yes, of their own free will
· Procedure (SO 40 of the Standing Orders of the Folketing, S. 92 of the Parliamentary Election Act)
Can MPs lose their mandate ?
Yes
Definitive exclusion from Parliament by the latter:
- Loss of mandate for loss of eligibility (S. 29, 30, 32 (6), and 33 of the Constitution Act, and SO 7 (1) (2.) of the Standing Orders of the Folketing)
- Invalidation of election after approval by the Folketing (S. 33 of the Constitution Act, SO 1 (5) to (7), and SO 7 (1) (2.) of the Standing Orders of the Folketing)
STATUS OF MEMBERS
Indemnities, facilities and services
· Official passport. Certain MPs may apply for diplomatic passports.
· Basic salary (see also S. 58 of the Constitution Act): DKK 586,525 per year (as of 1 Oct. 2009)
+ Cost allowance: in accordance with residence
· Exemption from tax for the cost allowance. The basic salary is not exempted from tax.
· Pension scheme (Law on Election to the Danish Parliament, Lb. no. 271 of 13.05.1987, as amended by the laws no. 744 of 07.12.1988 and no. 245 of 19.04.1989)
· Other facilities:
(c) Free housing for the 5 Members of the Presidium in Christiansborg
(d) Postal and telephone services
(e) Travel and transport
Obligation to declare personal assets
No
Parliamentary immunity - parliamentary non-accountability
· The concept does exist (S. 57 of the Constitution Act).
· Parliamentary non-accountability applies to words spoken and written by MPs both within and outside Parliament, provided that they are pronounced in the exercise of the mandate.
· Derogations: consent of the Folketing; improper statements or offence (SO 29 (2) to (4) of the Standing Orders of the Folketing; see Discipline)
· Non-accountability takes effect on the day when the mandate begins and offers, after the expiry of the mandate, protection against prosecution for opinions expressed during the exercise of the mandate.
Parliamentary immunity - parliamentary inviolability
· The concept does exist (S. 57 of the Constitution Act).
· It applies to criminal and civil proceedings, covers all offences with the exception of minor offences (i.e. ticket fines), and protects MPs from arrest, from being held in preventive custody, and from the opening of judicial proceedings against them. It does not protect them from their homes being searched.
· Derogations: in the case of flagrante delicto, the consent of the Folketing is not necessary.
· Parliamentary inviolability does not prevent MPs from being called as witnesses before a judge or tribunal.
· Protection is provided from the start to the end of the mandate and also covers judicial proceedings instituted against MPs before their election.
· Parliamentary immunity (inviolability) can be lifted (S. 57 of the Constitution Act):
- Competent authority: the Folketing
In this case, MPs need not be heard. They do not have means of appeal.
· Parliament cannot subject the prosecution and/or detention to certain conditions.
· Parliament cannot suspend the prosecution and/or detention of one of its members.
· In the event of preventive custody or imprisonment, the MPs concerned cannot be authorised to attend sittings of Parliament.
EXERCISE OF THE MANDATE
Training
· There is a training/initiation process on parliamentary practices and procedures for MPs. It consists of introduction lectures and courses.
· It is provided by officials of Parliament.
· Handbooks of parliamentary procedure:
- The Standing Orders of the Folketing
- Guide for Members of Parliament
Participation in the work of the Parliament
· It is not compulsory for MPs to be present at plenary sittings, committee meetings, or other meetings (for leave of absence, see S. 41 of the Constitution Act).
· There are no penalties foreseen.
Discipline
· The rules governing discipline within Parliament are contained in SO 29 to 31 of the Standing Orders of the Folketing.
· Disciplinary measures foreseen :
- Order to sit down (SO 29 (1) of the Standing Orders of the Folketing)
- Call to order (SO 29 (2) and (3) of the Standing Orders of the Folketing)
- Order to discontinue the speech (SO 29 (2) and (3) of the Standing Orders of the Folketing)
- Declining to call upon the Member to speak again (SO 29 (2) and (3) of the Standing Orders of the Folketing)
- Suspension from Parliament (SO 29 (2) and (3) of the Standing Orders of the Folketing)
- Adjournment or close of the sitting (SO 29 (4), and 30 of the Standing Orders of the Folketing)
- Closure of the debate (SO 31 of the Standing Orders of the Folketing)
· Specific cases:
- Improper statements or offence (SO 29 (2) to (4) of the Standing Orders of the Folketing)
· Competent body to judge such cases/to apply penalties:
- Order to sit down, call to order, order to discontinue the speech, declining to call upon the Member to speak again, adjournment or close of the sitting, improper statements or offence: the President
- Suspension from Parliament: the Standing Orders Committee
- Closure of the debate: the Folketing
· Procedure:
- Order to sit down (SO 29 (1) of the Standing Orders of the Folketing)
- Call to order, order to discontinue the speech, declining to call upon the Member to speak again, suspension from Parliament (SO 29 (2) and (3) of the Standing Orders of the Folketing)
- Adjournment or close of the sitting (SO 29 (4), and 30 of the Standing Orders of the Folketing)
- Closure of the debate (SO 31 of the Standing Orders of the Folketing)
- Improper statements or offence (SO 29 (2) to (4) of the Standing Orders of the Folketing)
Code (rules) of conduct
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In which US state are the cities of Nogales, Surprise and Yuma? | Population of Arizona (State) - Statistical Atlas
Statistical Atlas
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Population by Place in Arizona
There are 451 places in Arizona. This section compares the 50 most populous of those to each other. The least populous of the compared places has a population of 14,556.
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Population by County in Arizona
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Population by County Subdivision in Arizona
There are 80 county subdivisions in Arizona. This section compares the 50 most populous of those to each other. The least populous of the compared county subdivisions has a population of 8,130.
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Population by State in the United States
There are 50 states in the United States. This section compares Arizona to all of the states in the United States.
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Population by State in the West
There are 13 states in the West. This section compares Arizona to all of the states in the West.
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Definitions
This page reports on the population distribution in Arizona, both in terms of raw head counts, and in terms of population density per square mile.
Population: count of all residents of the given entity at the time of the survey, excluding visitors
Population Density: population divided by the total land area of the entity (i.e., excluding water areas contained in the entity)
For additional information about the data presented on this site, including our sources, please see the About Page .
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What does the word mendacious mean? | Mendacious | Define Mendacious at Dictionary.com
mendacious
telling lies, especially habitually; dishonest; lying; untruthful:
a mendacious person.
1610-20; < Latin mendāci- (see mendacity ) + -ous
Related forms
Examples from the Web for mendacious
Expand
A Democrat's Guide to Bush's Book Bryan Curtis November 9, 2010
Historical Examples
As long as we have that state of things, we shall have wars and secret and mendacious diplomacy.
The President Alfred Henry Lewis
Bein' a woman, you're too feeble-witted for reason, too mendacious for trooth.'
Word Origin and History for mendacious
Expand
adj.
1610s, from Middle French mendacieux, from Latin mendacium "a lie, untruth, falsehood, fiction," from mendax (genitive mendacis) "lying, deceitful," from menda "fault, defect, carelessness in writing," from PIE root *mend- "physical defect, fault" (see amend (v.)). The sense evolution of Latin mendax was influenced by mentiri "to speak falsely, lie, deceive." Related: Mendaciously; mendaciousness.
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper
| lying deceitful |
What makes a Welsh Rarebit a Buck Rarebit? | Mendacious | Define Mendacious at Dictionary.com
mendacious
telling lies, especially habitually; dishonest; lying; untruthful:
a mendacious person.
1610-20; < Latin mendāci- (see mendacity ) + -ous
Related forms
Examples from the Web for mendacious
Expand
A Democrat's Guide to Bush's Book Bryan Curtis November 9, 2010
Historical Examples
As long as we have that state of things, we shall have wars and secret and mendacious diplomacy.
The President Alfred Henry Lewis
Bein' a woman, you're too feeble-witted for reason, too mendacious for trooth.'
Word Origin and History for mendacious
Expand
adj.
1610s, from Middle French mendacieux, from Latin mendacium "a lie, untruth, falsehood, fiction," from mendax (genitive mendacis) "lying, deceitful," from menda "fault, defect, carelessness in writing," from PIE root *mend- "physical defect, fault" (see amend (v.)). The sense evolution of Latin mendax was influenced by mentiri "to speak falsely, lie, deceive." Related: Mendaciously; mendaciousness.
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper
| i don't know |
Who is the current Master of the Queen's Music? | Judith Weir prepares to be a radical master of the Queen's music | Music | The Guardian
Classical music
Judith Weir prepares to be a radical master of the Queen's music
For Weir, the first woman in the position, it means supporting composers and exploring the state of music education
Judith Weir: 'They said it's absolutely up to the person who does it to make it their own.' Photograph: Linda Nylind for the Guardian
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Judith Weir must be the most modest master of the Queen's music in the job's 388-year history. "The palace asked a lot of people who it should be, and I said Jonathan Dove would be the best person," she said, after her appointment was confirmed on Monday. "But they took no notice of me and a few weeks ago they told me they had had the most suggestions that it ought to be me – so well done."
But it's a mistake to read 60-year-old Weir's self-deprecation as a sign that she is not up for the public profile of the role. I first met her more than a decade ago, but have never known her to be more relaxed, forthcoming or fired-up. Weir, who is the first woman to hold the job, is clearly going to be in her element as she tackles this position.
"They had a great sentence in the appointment letter," she says, "something like: 'The Queen would like the position of the master of the Queen's music to be for the enjoyment and openness of music in the nation.' So it's a very wide description, and they said it's absolutely up to the person who does it to make it their own."
For Weir, that doesn't mean writing pieces for royal occasions. Just the opposite: it means supporting and speaking up for her composer colleagues, challenging the function that contemporary music fulfils in society, and embarking on a nationwide exploration of the state of music education in order to create pieces that will be useful for schoolchildren and amateur musicians.
But before she tells me about her softly spoken but radical plans for the decade-long, £15,000-a-year appointment, I ask if she felt any twinges of conscience in taking up the job.
The last incumbent, Peter Maxwell Davies, who was appointed 2004, was a model of how the master's public voice could still be a dissenting one – about the war in Iraq, the state of education, the traducing of the values of classical music in culture – even while he spoke from the centre of the establishment.
What is Weir's relationship with the monarchy and the 'establishment'? "Britain isn't in any state at the moment to become a republic," she says. "We're not there as a country. And for me, the Queen is a fantastic 88-year-old woman of incredible energy. I just have great admiration for her and it is an honour to do something in her name. And as for 'the establishment' – well, who is the establishment now? Sir Mick Jagger?"
Weir says there is still a sneaking suspicion that the world of classical music is carved up by a few big institutions and a handful of powerful cultural leaders. That really is an establishment; but Weir does not need the role of the master for access to classical music's top table. The opportunity of the role, she says, "is to avoid all that – and go and meet the other people".
By "other people", Weir is talking about the musicians and composers who are working in schools and communities, often unsung and underpaid, the grassroots of our musical culture. "I have an interest in teaching at all levels, but taking up this job has reminded me how sketchy my knowledge really is of what's going on in schools. The yearly stipend will help me to travel around the UK – without doing that, it's very difficult to know what's really happening – and possibly to have the time to do a piece every year for those communities. The question of music education over the last few years has been full of rhetorical behaviour. It's been a Punch and Judy show on both sides. And the media love it as well."
As Nicky Morgan takes over as education secretary , there is a looming sense of disaster about the way music is funded in schools in England and Wales. Weir is more pragmatic. "I feel it's rather a fortuitous new start: we have had an education secretary leave and something new will now happen. Each school is different and what's happening in some of them can be remarkably good."
Weir wants to challenge her composer colleagues to write "in a simpler mode, without changing their style" to create music that is accessible for the widest range of people to play and enjoy.
Weir will not be the kind of person to pontificate from the sidelines, but she will lead by the example of her music. Her work is a kind of transcendence of the ordinary, in which often simple ideas, harmonies, and stories become newly rich and magical. She makes us see and feel a sense of wonder, without preaching, without idealism, but with her feet and her ears to the ground.
There will be challenges in her tenure, most obviously the decision her fellow Scots will make in the independence referendum on 18 September (she admits she is delighted that, whatever happens, the Queen's sovereignty looks likely to remain intact over the whole of Great Britain), as well as whatever the next government decides to do to music in schools. And there is also her blog, which launches on Tuesday and which proves that Weir is as fastidious and poetic a writer as she is a composer.
But at least there was one test that Weir did not have to face: what she was going to be called. The palace never even suggested "mistress" of the Queen's music and neither did she. But a friend of hers did come up with "mastress", she tells me with a twinkle in her eye.
The 60-year-old composer is the first female master of the Queen's music, a position that has existed since 1625
Published: 3 Jul 2014
Scottish-born composer will succeed Peter Maxwell-Davies in role described as musical equivalent of poet laureate
Published: 29 Jun 2014
| Judith Weir |
What name is given to the scientific study of the size and shape of the earth? | Judith Weir prepares to be a radical master of the Queen's music | Music | The Guardian
Classical music
Judith Weir prepares to be a radical master of the Queen's music
For Weir, the first woman in the position, it means supporting composers and exploring the state of music education
Judith Weir: 'They said it's absolutely up to the person who does it to make it their own.' Photograph: Linda Nylind for the Guardian
Share on Messenger
Close
Judith Weir must be the most modest master of the Queen's music in the job's 388-year history. "The palace asked a lot of people who it should be, and I said Jonathan Dove would be the best person," she said, after her appointment was confirmed on Monday. "But they took no notice of me and a few weeks ago they told me they had had the most suggestions that it ought to be me – so well done."
But it's a mistake to read 60-year-old Weir's self-deprecation as a sign that she is not up for the public profile of the role. I first met her more than a decade ago, but have never known her to be more relaxed, forthcoming or fired-up. Weir, who is the first woman to hold the job, is clearly going to be in her element as she tackles this position.
"They had a great sentence in the appointment letter," she says, "something like: 'The Queen would like the position of the master of the Queen's music to be for the enjoyment and openness of music in the nation.' So it's a very wide description, and they said it's absolutely up to the person who does it to make it their own."
For Weir, that doesn't mean writing pieces for royal occasions. Just the opposite: it means supporting and speaking up for her composer colleagues, challenging the function that contemporary music fulfils in society, and embarking on a nationwide exploration of the state of music education in order to create pieces that will be useful for schoolchildren and amateur musicians.
But before she tells me about her softly spoken but radical plans for the decade-long, £15,000-a-year appointment, I ask if she felt any twinges of conscience in taking up the job.
The last incumbent, Peter Maxwell Davies, who was appointed 2004, was a model of how the master's public voice could still be a dissenting one – about the war in Iraq, the state of education, the traducing of the values of classical music in culture – even while he spoke from the centre of the establishment.
What is Weir's relationship with the monarchy and the 'establishment'? "Britain isn't in any state at the moment to become a republic," she says. "We're not there as a country. And for me, the Queen is a fantastic 88-year-old woman of incredible energy. I just have great admiration for her and it is an honour to do something in her name. And as for 'the establishment' – well, who is the establishment now? Sir Mick Jagger?"
Weir says there is still a sneaking suspicion that the world of classical music is carved up by a few big institutions and a handful of powerful cultural leaders. That really is an establishment; but Weir does not need the role of the master for access to classical music's top table. The opportunity of the role, she says, "is to avoid all that – and go and meet the other people".
By "other people", Weir is talking about the musicians and composers who are working in schools and communities, often unsung and underpaid, the grassroots of our musical culture. "I have an interest in teaching at all levels, but taking up this job has reminded me how sketchy my knowledge really is of what's going on in schools. The yearly stipend will help me to travel around the UK – without doing that, it's very difficult to know what's really happening – and possibly to have the time to do a piece every year for those communities. The question of music education over the last few years has been full of rhetorical behaviour. It's been a Punch and Judy show on both sides. And the media love it as well."
As Nicky Morgan takes over as education secretary , there is a looming sense of disaster about the way music is funded in schools in England and Wales. Weir is more pragmatic. "I feel it's rather a fortuitous new start: we have had an education secretary leave and something new will now happen. Each school is different and what's happening in some of them can be remarkably good."
Weir wants to challenge her composer colleagues to write "in a simpler mode, without changing their style" to create music that is accessible for the widest range of people to play and enjoy.
Weir will not be the kind of person to pontificate from the sidelines, but she will lead by the example of her music. Her work is a kind of transcendence of the ordinary, in which often simple ideas, harmonies, and stories become newly rich and magical. She makes us see and feel a sense of wonder, without preaching, without idealism, but with her feet and her ears to the ground.
There will be challenges in her tenure, most obviously the decision her fellow Scots will make in the independence referendum on 18 September (she admits she is delighted that, whatever happens, the Queen's sovereignty looks likely to remain intact over the whole of Great Britain), as well as whatever the next government decides to do to music in schools. And there is also her blog, which launches on Tuesday and which proves that Weir is as fastidious and poetic a writer as she is a composer.
But at least there was one test that Weir did not have to face: what she was going to be called. The palace never even suggested "mistress" of the Queen's music and neither did she. But a friend of hers did come up with "mastress", she tells me with a twinkle in her eye.
The 60-year-old composer is the first female master of the Queen's music, a position that has existed since 1625
Published: 3 Jul 2014
Scottish-born composer will succeed Peter Maxwell-Davies in role described as musical equivalent of poet laureate
Published: 29 Jun 2014
| i don't know |
Who became UKIP's first MP when he won the Clacton by-election in October 2014? | Clacton by-election: Douglas Carswell becomes Ukip's first ever elected MP after a sensational victory | The Independent
UK Politics
Clacton by-election: Douglas Carswell becomes Ukip's first ever elected MP after a sensational victory
Mr Carswell switched parties and resigned his seat to give voters in his constituency the chance to back him or sack him - they chose to do the former
Friday 10 October 2014 01:45 BST
Click to follow
Indy Politics
Douglas Carswell (left) and Ukip leader Nigel Farage celebrate their win in Clacton AFP/Getty Images
The UK Independence Party scored a sensational victory early this morning when Douglas Carswell became the first MP ever elected under the party’s colours.
He romped home in a by-election in Clacton, in Essex, with 21,113 votes, trouncing his Tory opponent, Giles Watling, who scored 8,709. Labour came third with 3,959, while the Liberal Democrats trailed with a humiliating 483.
In his acceptance speech, Mr Carswell said that if Ukip remained true to its principles, “there is nothing that we cannot achieve, in Essex, East Anglia, in England, and in the whole country beyond – and, yes, next in Rochester.”
Nigel Farage hailed the vote "the best night in UKIP's history" as he warned the Tories and Labour: "We're after you - you have underestimated us", Sky News reported.
The Ukip leader added: "What it shows is that UKIP is now a truly national party. We will now take the people's army of UKIP to the Rochester and Strood, and we will give that absolutely everything we have got."
In Rochester, the Tories face another potentially disastrous by-election after its MP Mark Reckless became the second Tory to defect to Ukip.
The Clacton result was a personal triumph for the former Tory MP who put his future on the line in August when he announced that he was switching parties and resigned his seat to give voters in his Clacton constituency the chance to back him or sack him.
In pictures: The rise of Ukip
In pictures: The rise of Ukip
1/8 1993: Alan Sked forms Ukip
History professor Alan Sked had been active in anti-EU politics for a while beore he founded Ukip in 1993. He resigned from the party after the 1997 election, concerned that it was attracting far-right members, and has been critical of Ukip since. Picture: Reuters
Reuters
2/8 2005: Kilroy defects
Former TV presenter Robert Kilroy-Silk founded Veritas in 2005, after a failed bid to become leader, and took many of Ukip's elected members with him. But the party slowly lost its popularity and didn't put forward any candidates in the last election. Picture: REUTERS/Kieran Doherty REUTERS KD/RUS
3/8 2010: Farage becomes leader, again
Farage had led Ukip from 2006 until 2009, when he stood down to fight against the Speaker, John Bercow, for his Buckingham seat. He failed to win the election and returned to lead the party in November 2010. Picture: REUTERS/Kieran Doherty
REUTERS/Kieran Doherty
4/8 2010: Ukip fights for election
Nigel Farage was injured in a plane crash on polling day in the 2010 general election, but his party increased its success in the votes. It fielded 572 candidates and took 3.1% of the vote, though failed to win any seats. REUTERS/Darren Staples
REUTERS/Darren Staples
5/8 2013: Eastleigh gains
Ukip's candidate Diane James got the highest ever number of votes for any candidate from the party, but was beaten by the Liberal Democrats. The surge in support gave Ukip confidence ahead of local and European elections later in the year. Picture: Reuters
6/8 2013: Bloom kicked out
Godfrey Bloom, who served as an Ukip MEP from 2004 to 2014, had the whip withdrawn in 2013 after sexist comments and an attack on a journalist. He sat as an independent MEP until 2014, when he ended his term in office. Picture: REUTERS/Luke MacGregor
7/8 2014: European election success
Ukip got a higher proportion of the vote than any other party in 2014's European elections, adding 11 new MEPs and taking its total to 24. REUTERS/Luke MacGregor
8/8 2014: Carswell defects
Douglas Carswell defected from Ukip at the end of August, and was followed by Mark Reckless at the end of September, who resigned from the Tories amid rumours of many more defections to come. Picture: REUTERS/Toby Melville
Turn-out was 51.2 per cent - unusually high for a parliamentary by-election – a tribute partly to the huge effort that volunteers put into plastering Clacton and its surrounding villages with purple coloured Ukip posters.
Read more
PROFILE: A PROLIFIC BLOGGER WHO MAKES HIS OWN JAM
Nigel Farage was also cheered by an extraordinary near miss in the previously safe Labour seat of Heywood and Middleton , where Labour’s candidate, Liz McGinnis, hung on by just 617 votes, after a recount. She received 11,633 votes, 40.9 per cent of the total, to Ukip’s 11,016, or 38.7 per cent. For Labour that result was far too close to comfort, in a seat they held with a majority of 5,971 in 2010. The result, on a low turn out of just 38 per cent, amounted to an 18 per cent swing from Labour to Ukip, who were a poor fourth in 2010. The by election was caused by the death of the Labour MP Jim Dobbie.
Labour’s Michael Dugher was quick to point out that Labour had increased its share of the vote, and the narrowness of the result came from the collapse in Conservative and Lib Dem support – but the increase was less than one per cent and cold comfort on a night when Labour was vividly reminded that Ukip is now corroding the vote in its northern strongholds. Nigel Farage took to twitter to publicise his new slogan aimed at winning over those who normally vote Tory in the north – “vote Tory, get Labour.”
By taking 38.7 per cent of the vote in Heywood and Middleton, Ukip achieved what was up to that moment their best result ever in a parliamentary by-election - though that record lasted for just an hour while the Clacton count was completed.
Losing Clacton is a blow for the Conservatives, who saw their share of the vote fall to around a fifth of the total, down from 53 per cent of votes cast when Carswell was their candidate in 2010. The early indication was that the Liberal Democrats had lost their deposit.
During the day, the Conservatives tried to gain political advantage from the fact that Mr Carswell was unable to vote, despite posing for photographers outside a polling booth, because he lives outside the constituency boundary. The Tory candidate, Giles Watling is a local councillor.
The Tories will put up a desperate fight to hold onto Rochester and Strood, against Mark Reckless. Privately, Conservative party managers had accepted that Clacton was lost, but are hoping they can halt Ukip’s relentless rise by holding on to Rochester. Two Ukip by-elections victories in quick succession would seriously interfere with the message the Tory want to send their natural supporters at next year’s general election – that supporting Ukip is a wasted vote because their candidates have no hope of being elected and defecting to them only helps Labour.
In Clacton, Ukip benefited from a general disillusionment with the main political parties, made worse by high unemployment. A report last year by the Centre for Social Justice said that 54 per cent of 16- to 64-year-olds in one of Clacton’s electoral wards were without jobs and reliant on benefits.
| Douglas Carswell |
In geological ages, which period was the first of the Mesozoic Era? | Ukip may prop up minority Tory government in exchange for EU referendum - ITV News
12 October 2014 at 4:02pm
Ukip may prop up minority Tory government in exchange for EU referendum
Ukip leader Nigel Farage has said his party would prop up a minority Conservative government if it agreed to a "full, free and fair referendum" on Britain's EU membership.
It follows a Survation poll for the Mail on Sunday which found that one in four Britons back Ukip.
The eurosceptic party won a by-election in Clacton with a giant 12,404-vote lead.
Nigel Farage has said his party would prop up a minority Conservative government if it agreed to a "full, free and fair referendum" on Britain's EU membership.
The Ukip leader told BBC1's Sunday Politics:
The price would be a full, free and fair referendum on our continued membership of the European Union, the opportunity to get our country back, and for that to happen quickly.
– nigel farage, ukip leader
It means the eurosceptic party would agree to a confidence and supply arrangement, where it backs or abstains on budget and legislative programme votes.
Labour's Chuka Umunna has called on Ukip to address "racists" in its ranks after allegedly receiving abusive tweets from supporters of the party.
Chuka Umunna allegedly received racist texts from supporters of Ukip.
Credit: Sky News/Murnaghan
Asked about the messages on Sky News, the shadow business secretary said: "Of course there are racists in Ukip - that is unfortunate and that is something they need to address.
"They say terrible things about women, they say terrible things about different parts of our society."
Umunna said the party understood that immigration was a "concern" for many Brits - and a key campaign issue for Ukip - but insisted he would not say "I agree with Nigel" [Farage] on leaving the European Union and thus preventing freedom of movement into Britain.
"Europe is our biggest trading partner. Europe provides jobs. Our links with Europe provide jobs in this country and [Ukip] want to walk off with their bat and do nothing," he said.
Boris Johnson has made an appeal to "kippers" thinking of voting for Ukip - saying "it doesn't seem to me there's a lot between us".
Boris Johnson made an appeal to "kippers" on BBC's Andrew Marr Show.
Credit: Andrew Marr Show/BBC
The Mayor of London said Douglas Carswell, a Conservative defector who became Ukip's first MP appeared to be a "doppelganger" with whom he agreed on most subjects.
He told BBC One's Andrew Marr Show: "What do you want? You want a low-tax economy - what Douglas stands for - you want global free trade, you want a libertarian approach on the economy [...] socially progressive? Go for the Conservatives."
"We're the only party, by the way, that will deliver what the Ukip people want: a referendum on Europe."
He said the Conservatives should campaign to leave Europe should reforms of Britain's relationship with the EU not take place as hoped by the party, and called for a "points-based" system of immigration.
The UK Independence Party's first elected MP has compared the Conservative party to HMV music stores, describing it as "defunct".
Douglas Carswell speaking to Andrew Marr.
Credit: BBC/The Andrew Marr Show
"It's a little bit like HMV music. Once ubiquitous when it came to buying music. The way the Tory party is retailing politics is like the way HMV retailed music - it is a defunct retail model," Douglas Carswell told the BBC's Andrew Marr show.
Carswell, who won the Clacton by-election with a huge majority last week, said he argued that "we needed to Spotify" the Tory Party, but found too much opposition to change.
He also played own suggestions Ukip could gain 25 MPs at the next election, saying: "Let's keep a sense of perspective....I don't like bravado talk and Ia'm not going to use it."
Carswell he was hopeful fellow Tory defector Mark Reckless would win the upcoming by-election in Rochester, saying a win would show that British politics is becoming "fundamentally different".
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In which English town or city would you find Meadowhall Shopping Centre? | Meadowhall Station | Trains to Meadowhall – Trainline
Trains to Meadowhall
Share this route
Meadowhall Interchange in Sheffield opened in 1990 at the same time as the Meadowhall Shopping Centre, linked to the station via a footbridge over the River Don. When it opened, Meadowhall was the second largest shopping centre in the country, and, today, it remains in the top ten. Thanks to Meadowhall Interchange, it is one of the few out-of-town shopping centres in the country fully integrated into the public transport network via the buses, trains and trams that all call at the station. Alongside over 280 stores, Meadowhall also boasts the huge Oasis Dining Quarter with its numerous restaurants and other food outlets, and an eleven-screen multiplex cinema. Meadowhall Interchange is north of Sheffield city centre alongside the M1 motorway. The Supertram route from the city centre to Meadowhall passes the Motorpoint Arena, Ice Sheffield, Don Valley Stadium and the English Institute of Sport on its 15-minute journey.
Station details & facilities
Meadowhall Interchange railway station is connected to the bus station and the shopping centre via a ramp and a walkway. At this entrance, you will also find the ticket office, a waiting room with toilets, and platforms for the Supertram. The four train platforms are linked by a bridge with steps and a ramp down to each. A further waiting room with toilets is on platform 2. The station has a free car park with 307 spaces.
Ticket Office
Lost Property phone number : 0333 222 0125
Facilities
Telephones type : Coins and cards
Customer help points : False
Carpark name : Station Car Park
Carpark operator : South Yorkshire Passenger Transport Executive
Car parking spaces : 307
Accessibility
Step-free access : Whole station
Step-free access notes : Step-free access to all platforms via fairly steep ramps (up to 50m long).
Ramps for train access :
Accessible Booking Office counter : False
Trains to Meadowhall
Railway booking office, Meadowhall Road, Sheffield, South Yorkshire, S9 1JQ
Ticket Office Hours
| Sheffield |
“In The Mood” was which bandleader's signature tune? | GeoBytesGCSE: Out Of Town Shopping Centres
Out Of Town Shopping Centres
Since the 1980s, much of the retail development in the UK has been in the form of out-of-town developments as lower land-values, the availability of land for expansion, a nearby labour force and good access routes on the rural-urban fringe of settlements has encouraged out-of-town centres to develop. These out-of-town centres, contain large, well-known stores and often have attractions for all the family, including leisure facilities, catering outlets etc. The growth of these development has however led to a number of common problems which include:
- traffic congestion in the vicinity of the new developments
- larger stores are often attracted away from nearby town and city centres to these new centres
- more empty shops in town and city centres (often attract vandalism)
- fewer people visiting the city centres - resulting in the creation of a 'dead heart', particularly in smaller market towns and economic decline
City centres have been fighting back against out-of-town developments through 'shop local' campaigns and in 1998, there were calls by the government to stop out-of-town developments, however there have more recently been proposals for relaxing the resulting planning laws which would make it easier for superstores to build out-of-town developments . Other attempts to reduce town centre decline include calls to abolish free car-parking in out-of-town developments to encourage shoppers back to the town centre.
EXAMPLE 1 - MEADOWHALL - Sheffield
Meadowhall shopping centre is a large out-of-town shopping centre that has been developed on the outskirts of Sheffield. It was built in the late 1980s as a response to the lack of shopping provision in the area. It was constructed on a brownfield site (56 hectare site of a former steelworks). Access to the shopping centre is excellent and it is close to several large urban areas with 9 million people living within an hours drive of the centre (see map opposite).
Why this location?
plenty of space for expansion and for providing large free car parks
rates and rents are lower than in the city centre (shops can be bigger) - i.e. cheaper land on edge of Sheffield
near to suburban housing (provides a labour force)
near a number of motorway intersections (nearbly M1/A roads) - great accessibility and access to large sphere of influence
old brownfield site (was a steelworks) with plenty of room for expansion if required
The main characteristics of the shopping centre:
bright and modern with many different faciliites, including a leisure centre, cinema, creche and other attractions for children;
a large variety of shops;
large, free car parts (12,000 spaces!)
provides under-cover shopping (not restricted by weather and shoppers, shop in the comfort of an air-conditioned complex)
supertram link with the city centre;
two new railways stations built
(photo (c) Ian Britton - FreeFoto.com)
The Impact of Meadowhall on Sheffield?
The building of Meadowhall has had an impact on Sheffield City Centre, as many shops have moved out and takings have been down for some shops by as much as 25%. This good article on Geography Pages summarises the issues for the centre.
EXAMPLE 2: BLUEWATER - nr Dartford (Kent)
Bluewater, known as Europe's largest retail and leisure complex, opened in 1999, it was built on a brownfield site, in a disussed chalk quarry and has excellent access, being just outside the M25 in the area of Dartford. The following powerpoint gives more detail about the location and features of the out-of-town shopping centre as well as giving some consideration to the criticisms the centre has come under
Other examples of out-of-town shopping centres include:
Lakeside - East of London
| i don't know |
Who was the Roman god of the sun? | List of Sun Gods From Ancient Religions
By N.S. Gill
Updated August 03, 2015.
In ancient cultures, where you find gods with specialized functions, you'll probably find a sun god or goddess. Many are humanoid and ride or drive a vessel of sort across the sky. It may be a boat, a chariot, or a cup. The sun god of the Greeks and Romans rode in a 4-horse (Pyrios, Aeos, Aethon, and Phlegon) chariot.
There may be more than one god of the sun. The Egyptians differentiated among the aspects of the sun, and had several gods associated with it: Khepri for the rising sun, Atum, the setting, and Ra, at noon, who rode across the sky in a solar bark. The Greeks and Romans also had more than one sun god.
You may notice that most sun deities are male and act as counterparts to female moon deities, but don't take this as a given. There are goddesses of the sun just as there are male deities of the moon.
| Sol |
Which comedy duo had a Number one hit with The Stonk in 1991? | Sol | Roman god | Britannica.com
Roman god
Odin
Sol, in Roman religion , name of two distinct sun gods at Rome. The original Sol, or Sol Indiges, had a shrine on the Quirinal, an annual sacrifice on August 9, and another shrine, together with Luna, the moon goddess, in the Circus Maximus . Although the cult appears to have been native, the Roman poets equated him with the Greek sun god Helios .
The worship of Sol assumed an entirely different character with the later importation of various sun cults from Syria. The Roman emperor Elagabalus (reigned ad 218–222) built a temple to him as Sol Invictus on the Palatine and attempted to make his worship the principal religion at Rome. The emperor Aurelian (reigned 270–275) later reestablished the worship and erected a magnificent temple to Sol in the Campus Agrippae. The worship of Sol as special protector of the emperors and of the empire remained the chief imperial cult until it was replaced by Christianity.
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Date Published: July 20, 1998
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Which Australian animal gets its name from a native word meaning “No drink”? | Meanings and origins of Australian words and idioms - Australian National Dictionary Centre - ANU
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Home » Australian words » Meanings and origins of Australian words and idioms
Meanings and origins of Australian words and idioms
This section contains a selection of Australian words, their meanings, and their etymologies.
All A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
acca
Michael Davie in 'Going from A to Z forever' (an article on the 2nd edition of the Oxford English Dictionary), Age, Saturday Extra, 1 April 1989, writes of his visit to the dictionary section of Oxford University Press:
Before I left, Weiner [one of the two editors of the OED] said he remembered how baffled he had been the first time he heard an Australian talk about the 'arvo'. Australians used the -o suffix a lot, he reflected. Arvo, smoko, garbo, journo. But not all -o words were Australian, said Simpson [the other of the two editors]: eg 'aggro' and 'cheapo'. I asked if they were familiar with the Oz usage 'acco', meaning 'academic'. They liked that. I hoped, after I left, they would enter it on one of their little slips and add it to their gigantic compost heap - a candidate for admission to the next edition.
We trust that Edmund Weiner and John Simpson did not take a citation, since the Australian abbreviation of academic is not acco but acca (sometimes spelt acker).
The abbreviation first appears in Meanjin (Melbourne, 1977), where Canberra historian Ken Inglis has an article titled 'Accas and Ockers: Australia's New Dictionaries'. The editor of Meanjin, Jim Davidson, adds a footnote: 'acca (slightly derogatory) 1, noun An academic rather than an intellectual, particularly adept at manipulating trendiologies, usually with full scholarly apparatus. Hence 2, noun A particularly sterile piece of academic writing.' The evidence has become less frequent in recent years.
1993 Age (Melbourne) 24 December: The way such festivals bring together writers, publishers and accas, making them all accountable to the reader - the audience - gives them real value.
acid: to put the acid on
To exert a pressure that is difficult to resist; to exert such pressure on (a person, etc.), to pressure (someone) for a favour etc.; to be successful in the exertion of such pressure. This idiom is derived from acid test which is a test for gold or other precious metal, usually using nitric acid. Acid test is also used figuratively to refer to a severe or conclusive test. The Australian idiom emerged in the early 20th century and is still heard today.
1903 Sydney Stock and Station Journal 9 October: In the class for ponies under 13 hands there was a condition that the riders should be under ten years of age. When the stewards 'put the acid on' the riders it was found that only one exhibit in a very big field carried a boy who was not over ten years old.
2015 Australian (Sydney) 6 February: One option would be to skip the spill motion and go directly to a call for candidates for the leadership. It would put the acid on putative challengers and catch them out if they are not ready.
Aerial ping-pong
A jocular (and frequently derisive) name for Australian Rules Football (or Aussie Rules as it is popularly called). The term derives from the fact that the play in this game is characterised by frequent exchanges of long and high kicks.
The term is used largely by people from States in which Rugby League and not Aussie Rules is the major football code. This interstate and code rivalry is often found in evidence for the term, including the early evidence from the 1940s.
1947 West Australian (Perth) 22 April: In 1941 he enlisted in the A.I.F. and joined a unit which fostered rugby football. Renfrey did not join in the &oq;mud bath&cq; and did not play 'aerial ping-pong', as the rugby exponents in the army termed the Australian game, until 1946.
1973 J. Dunn, How to Play Football: Sydneysiders like to call Australian Rules 'aerial ping-pong'.
A team from Sydney was admitted to the national competition in 1982, and one from Brisbane was admitted in 1987. These teams are based in traditional Rugby League areas, yet have drawn very large crowds, and have been very successful. While the term is perhaps not as common as it once was there is still evidence from more recent years.
2010 Newcastle Herald 23 September: Without a shadow of a doubt the aerial ping pong boys have league beaten when it comes to WAGs. At the Brownlow Medal night the likes of Chris Judd's fiancee Rebecca Twigley and Gary Ablett's girlfriend Lauren Phillips certainly scrub up well.
akubra
A shallow-crowned wide-brimmed hat, especially one made from felted rabbit fur. It is a significant feature of rural Australia, of politicians (especially urban-based politicians) travelling in the outback, and of expatriates who wish to emphasis their Australianness. Now a proprietary name, our earliest evidence comes from an advertisement.
1920 Northern Star (Lismore) 4 November: Made in Australia! Yes, the smartest hat that's made in our own country may be seen in our hat department ... The makes include 'Sovereign', 'Vebistra', 'Akubra', 'Peerless', 'Beaucaire'.
ambit
The definition of the limits of an industrial dispute. In later use chiefly as ambit claim. In Australian English an ambit claim is one typically made by employees which sets the boundaries of an industrial dispute. The term is a specific use of ambit meaning 'extent, compass'. First recorded in the 1920s.
1923 Mercury (Hobart) 21 March: In the Commonwealth Arbitration Court .. Mr Justice Powers to-day delivered judgment on the point. He said that the ambit of the dispute before the Court was confined to constructional work, but that the Court could and would deal with claims for maintenance work.
2006 Bulletin (Sydney) 16 May: Telstra's ambit claim was for exclusive access on the ground that it was taking all the commercial risk involving the not-inconsiderable expenditure of $3.5bn.
ambo
An ambulance officer. This is an abbreviation that follows a very common Australian pattern of word formation, with –o added to the abbreviated form. Other examples include: arvo (afternoon), Salvo (Salvation army officer), dermo (dermatologist), and gyno (gynaecologist). The -o form is often found at the ending of Australian nicknames, as in Johno, Jacko, and Robbo. Ambo was first recorded in the 1980s.
1986 Sydney Morning Herald 1 February: Even though I was a nurse before I became an ambo, at first I thought, can I handle this?
ant's pants
Something extremely impressive; the best of its kind. Ant's pants is an Australian variant of the originally US forms bee's knees and cat's whiskers with the same meaning. The term is first recorded in the 1930s.
1933 Brisbane Courier 12 May: These Men's Pull-overs of ours. They're the Ant's Pants for Value.
2015 T. Parsons Return to Moondilla: 'Liz is busting to see you', Pat said. 'She thinks you're the ant's pants.'
Anzac
An Australian soldier. Anzac denotes the virtues of courage and determination displayed by the First World War Australian soldiers at Gallipoli in 1915. Anzac was formed from the initial letters of Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. Australian soldiers are also called 'diggers' because so much of the original Anzacs’ time was spent digging trenches. First recorded 1915.
1915 Camperdown Chronicle 2 December: Lord Kitchener told the 'Anzacs' at the Dardanelles how much the King appreciated their splendid services, and added that they had done even better than the King expected.
Anzac biscuit
A sweet biscuit typically containing rolled oats and golden syrup. While variations on this classic recipe exist, its simplicity is its hallmark. The association with the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps goes back to 1917 when the recipe was first recorded. The biscuits are also known simply as Anzacs. The following quotations show the evolution of the recipe:
1917 War Chest Cookery Book (Australian Comforts Fund): Anzac Biscuits. 4oz. sugar, 4ozs. butter, 2 eggs, ½ teaspoon cinnamon, 1 cup flour, 1 cup rice flour, 1 teaspoon baking powder, 1 teaspoon mixed spice. Beat butter and sugar to cream, add eggs well beaten, lastly flour, rice flour baking powder, cinnamon and spice. Mix to stiff paste, roll and cut into biscuits. Bake a nice light brown in moderate oven. When cold jam together and ice.
1926 Argus (Melbourne) 16 June: 'Often Helped' .. asks for a recipe for Anzac biscuits ... Two breakfast-cupfuls of John Bull oats, half a cupful sugar, one scant cupful plain flour, half a cupful melted butter. Mix one table-spoonful golden syrup, two table-spoonfuls boiling water, and one teaspoon-ful bicarbonate of soda, until they froth, then add the melted butter. Mix in dry ingredients and drop in spoonfuls on greased tray. Bake in a slow oven.
apples: she’s apples
Everything is fine, all is well. Australian English often uses the feminine pronoun she where standard English would use it. For example, instead of 'it’ll be right' Australians say ‘she’ll be right’. She's apples was originally rhyming slang - apple and spice or apple and rice for 'nice'. The phrase has now lost all connection with its rhyming slang origin. First recorded in the 1920s the term can still be heard today.
1929 H. MacQuarrie We and Baby: 'She'll be apples!' (Dick's jargon for 'all right'.)
2008 West Australian (Perth) 26 April: After a successful tour and a newly released DVD, she's apples with the ubiquitous Paul Kelly.
arvo
Afternoon, as in see you Saturday arvo. It is often used in the phrase this arvo, which is sometimes shortened to sarvo: meet you after the game, sarvo. Arvo is an example of a special feature of Australian English, the habit of adding -o to an abbreviated word. Other such words are bizzo ‘business’ and journo ‘journalist’. First recorded in the 1920s and still going strong today.
2008 Australian (Sydney) 10 July: Former Baywatch beach decoration and Playboy bunny Pamela Anderson plans to visit a Gold Coast KFC outlet this arvo to protest against the company's treatment of chooks.
Arthur: not know whether you are Arthur or Martha
To be in a state of confusion, as in this comment in an Australian state parliament—‘The Leader of the Opposition does not know whether he is Arthur or Martha, Hekyll or Jekyll, coming or going’. The phrase was first recorded in the 1940s. In recent years it has also been used with reference to questions of gender identity, and in this sense it has been exported to other countries.
1948 Truth (Sydney) 14 March: Players were all over the place like Brown's cows, and most didn't know whether they were Arthur or Martha.
2010 West Australian (Perth) 3 November: Years ago, I teamed my work outfits (Kookai tube skirts, fang-collared blouses) with my dad's ties, only to be informed by my manager I looked as though I wasn't sure if I was Arthur or Martha.
Aussie
Australia; Australian. The abbreviation Aussie is a typical example of the way Australians abbreviate words and then add the -ie (or -y) suffix. Other common examples includes budgie (a budgerigar), rellie (a relative), and tradie (a tradesperson). The word is used as a noun to refer to the country and to a person born or residing in the country, and as an adjective denoting something relating to Australia. Aussie is also used as an abbreviation for 'Australian English' and the 'Australian dollar'. The earliest evidence for Aussie occurs in the context of the First World War.
1915 G.F. Moberly Experiences 'Dinki Di' R.R.C. Nurse (1933): A farewell dance for the boys going home to 'Aussie' tomorrow.
1916 G.F. Moberly Experiences 'Dinki Di' R.R.C. Nurse (1933): One of our Aussie officers.
1917 Forbes Advocate 25 September: 'Hold on Eliza, where did you get that favor?' 'From an Aussie!'
Australia
Why is Australia called Australia? From the early sixteenth century, European philosophers and mapmakers assumed a great southern continent existed south of Asia. They called this hypothetical place Terra Australis, Latin for 'southern land'.
The first European contact with Australia was in the early seventeenth century, when Dutch explorers touched on parts of the Australian continent. As a result of their explorations, that part of the mainland lying west of the meridian which passes through Torres Strait was named Nova Hollandia (Latin for 'New Holland').
In April 1770 Captain James Cook and the crew of the Endeavour reached the southern land. Cook entered the word Astralia (misspelt thus) in his journal the following August. However he did so only in reference to an earlier seeker of the southern land, the Portuguese-born navigator Pedro Fernandez de Quiros, who in 1606 had named the New Hebrides Austrialis de Spiritu Santo. Cook says: The Islands discover'd by Quiros call'd by him Astralia del Espiritu Santo lays in this parallel but how far to the East is hard to say.
Cook himself called the new continent New Holland, a name that acknowledges the early Dutch exploration; the eastern coast he claimed for Britain and called New South Wales. The first written record of Australia (an anglicised form of Terra Australis) as a name for the known continent did not occur until 1794. George Shaw in his Zoology of New Holland refers to:
the vast Island or rather Continent of Australia, Australasia, or New Holland, which has so lately attracted... particular attention.
It was Matthew Flinders, English navigator (and the first person to circumnavigate and map Australia's coastline), who first expressed a strong preference for the name Australia. He gave his reasons in 1805:
It is necessary, however, to geographical propriety, that the whole body of land should be designated under one general name; on this account, and under the circumstances of the discovery of the different parts, it seems best to refer back to the original Terra Australis, or Australia; which being descriptive of its situation, having antiquity to recommend it, and no reference to either of the two claiming nations, is perhaps the least objectionable that could have been chosen; for it is little to apprehended, that any considerable body of land, in a more southern situation, will be hereafter discovered.
To these geographical, historical and political reasons for preferring the name, he adds in his 1814 account of his voyages that Australia is 'agreeable to the ear, and an assimilation to the names of the other great portions of the earth'.
Australia was championed too by Lachlan Macquarie, Governor of New South Wales from 1810, who was aware of Flinders' preference and popularised the name by using it in official dispatches to London. He writes in 1817 of:
the Continent of Australia, which I hope will be the Name given to this country in future, instead of the very erroneous and misapplied name, hitherto given it, of 'New Holland', which properly speaking only applies to a part of this immense Continent.
With Macquarie's kickstart Australia eventually proved to be the popular choice. Although the name New Holland continued alongside it for some time, by 1861 William Westgarth noted that 'the old term New Holland may now be regarded as supplanted by that happier and fitter one of Australia'.
banana bender
A Queenslander. The term derives from the joking notion (as perceived from the southern states of Australia) that Queenslanders spend their time putting bends into bananas. An article from 15 July 1937 in the Queenslander provides a forerunner to the term when a man is asked by the Queen what his occupation is:
"I'm a banana-bender". Further to enlighten her Majesty he explained that bananas grew straight on the trees, and so just before they ripened, his was the job to mount the ladder, and with a specialised twist of the wrist, put into the fruit the Grecian bend that was half its charm.
The association of bananas with Queensland ('banana land') is based on the extensive banana-growing industry in tropical Queensland. The Queensland border has been called the Banana curtain and Brisbane has been called Banana city. Banana bender, in reference to a Queenslander, is first recorded in 1940 and is till commonly heard.
1964 D. Lockwood Up the Track: We are so close to Queensland that I think we should hop over the border. What do you say to a quick look at the banana-benders?
2011 Northern Star (Lismore) 11 July: Should the Matilda's [sic] have won last night or the Netball Diamonds see off New Zealand, Anna Bligh will doubtless claim it was due to the preponderance of banana benders in the squads or at the very least the result of a Gold Coast holiday during their formative years.
bandicoot
Soon after white settlement in 1788 the word bandicoot (the name for the Indian mammal Bandicota indica) was applied to several Australian mammals having long pointed heads and bearing some resemblance to their Indian namesake. In 1799 David Collins writes of the 'bones of small animals, such as opossums ... and bandicoots'.
From 1830s the word bandicoot has been used in various distinctively Australian phrases as an emblem of deprivation or desolation. In 1837 H. Watson in Lecture on South Australia writes: 'The land here is generally good; there is a small proportion that is actually good for nothing; to use a colonial phrase, "a bandicoot (an animal between a rat and a rabbit) would starve upon it".' Typical examples include:
as miserable as a bandicoot
as poor as a bandicoot
as bald as a bandicoot
as blind as a bandicoot
as hungry as a bandicoot
Probably from the perception of the bandicoot's burrowing habits, a new Australian verb to bandicoot arose towards the end of the nineteenth century. It means 'to remove potatoes from the ground, leaving the tops undisturbed'. Usually this activity is surreptitious.
1896 Bulletin 12 December: I must 'bandicoot' spuds from the cockies - Or go on the track!
1899 Bulletin 2 December: 'Bandicooting'.. is a well-known term all over Western Vic. potato-land. The bandicooter goes at night to a field of ripe potatoes and carefully extracts the tubers from the roots without disturbing the tops.
bandicoot: miserable as a bandicoot
Extremely unhappy. Bandicoots are small marsupials with long faces, and have been given a role in Australian English in similes that suggest unhappiness or some kind of deprivation (see above). The expression miserable as a bandicoot was first recorded in the 1820s.
1828 Sydney Gazette 11 January: On her arrival here she found him living with another woman by whom he had several children, and from whom he was necessarily obliged to part, not, however, without very candidly forewarning his wife, the present complainant, that he would make her as miserable as a bandicoot.
2005 R. Siemon The Eccentric Mr Wienholt: I am as miserable as a bandicoot having to sneak home like this.
banksia man
The large woody cone of several Banksia species, originally as a character in children's stories. Banksia is the name of an Australian genus of shrubs and trees with about 60 species. It was named after the botanist Sir Joseph Banks, who was on the Endeavour with James Cook on his voyage of discovery in 1770. After flowering, many banksias form thick woody cones, often in strange shapes. It was on such grotesque shapes that May Gibbs modelled her banksia men in Snugglepot and Cuddlepie of 1918: 'She could see the glistening, wicked eyes of Mrs. Snake and the bushy heads of the bad Banksia men'.
1927 K.S. Prichard Bid me to Love: Louise: .. See what I've got in my pocket for you ... Bill: (diving into a pocket of her coat and pulling out a banksia cone) A banksia man. Oh Mum!
1979 E. Smith Saddle in the Kitchen: Hell was under the well near the cow paddock, deep and murky and peopled by gnarled and knobby banksia men who lurked there waiting for the unguarded to fall in.
barbecue stopper
A topic of great public interest, especially a political one. The term derives from the notion that a topic is so interesting that it could halt proceedings at a barbecue - and anything that could interrupt an Aussie barbecue would have to be very significant indeed! The term was coined by Australian prime minister John Howard in 2001 in the context of balancing work pressures with family responsibilities. Barbecue stopper is now used in a wide range of contexts. For an earlier discussion of the term see our Word of the Month article from August 2007.
2007 Sun-Herald (Sydney) 11 March: Controlled crying is a guaranteed barbecue stopper among Australian parents, more divisive than the old breast-versus-bottle feeding debate.
2015 Australian Financial Review (Sydney) 1 April: Planning and zoning looms as a barbecue stopper in leafy suburbs, where many residents and traders will defend to the last breath their quiet enjoyment and captive markets.
Barcoo
The name of the Barcoo River in western Queensland has been used since the 1870s as a shorthand reference for the hardships, privations, and living conditions of the outback. Poor diets were common in remote areas, with little access to fresh vegetables or fruit, and as a result diseases caused by dietary deficiencies, such Barcoo rot—a form of scurvy characterised by chronic sores—were common. Katharine Susannah Prichard writes in 1946: ‘They were nothing to the torture he endured when barcoo rot attacked him. The great sores festered on his back, hands and legs: his lips split and were raw and bleeding’. Rachel Henning, in a letter to her sister in 1864, makes fun of her Irish servants’ fear of scurvy, for which they eat pigweed, ‘rather a nasty wild plant, but supposed to be exceedingly wholesome, either chopped up with vinegar or boiled’. Another illness probably caused by poor diet was Barcoo sickness (also called Barcoo vomit, Barcoo spew, or just Barcoo), a condition characterised by vomiting. ‘Barcoo was rife among the kiddies and station-hands; vomiting attacks lasting for days laid each low in turn’.
Happily, Barcoo can also denote more positive aspects of outback life: a makeshift resourcefulness - a Barcoo dog is a rattle for herding sheep, which can be as simple as a tin can and a stick – or rough and ready behaviour: ‘The parrot’s language would have shamed a Barcoo bullocky’. Barcoo can also typify the laconic bush wit. Patsy Adam Smith relates the following story: ‘I see you’ve learnt the Barcoo Salute’, said a Buln Buln Shire Councillor to the Duke of Edinburgh. ‘What’s that?’ said His Royal Highness, waving his hand again to brush the flies off his face. ‘That’s it’, said the man from the bush.
barrack for
To give support or encouragement to (a person, team, etc.), usually by shouting names, slogans or exhortations. Some claim barrack comes from Australian pidgin to poke borak at 'to deride', but its origin is probably from Northern Irish barrack 'to brag; to be boastful'. By itself barrack meant 'to jeer' (and still does in British English), but the form barrack for transformed the jeering into cheering in Australian English. First recorded in the 1880s.
1889 Maitland Mercury 24 August: Old dad was in his glory there - it gave the old man joy To fight a passage thro' the crowd and barrack for his boy.
1971 D. Williamson Don's Party: I take it you'll be barracking for Labor tonight?
2011 Gympie Times 28 January: He thought it was about time to take the pledge and officially become Australian as he had barracked for our cricket team since 1955.
barrier rise
The opening of the starting gates to begin a horserace. In horseracing the barrier is a starting gate at the racecourse. The word barrier is found in a number of horseracing terms in Australian English including barrier blanket (a heavy blanket placed over the flanks of a racehorse to calm it when entering a barrier stall at the start of a race), barrier trial (a practice race for young, inexperienced, or resuming racehorses), and barrier rogue (a racehorse that regularly misbehaves when being placed into a starting gate). Barrier rise is first recorded in the 1890s. For a more detailed discussion of this term see our Word of the Month article from October 2010.
1895 Argus (Melbourne) 11 March: Mr W. R. Wilson's colt Merman, who, like Hova, was comparatively friendless at barrier rise.
2011 Shepparton News 27 June: The talented Norman-trained trotter Tsonga, also driven by Jack, speared across the face of the field at barrier rise from outside the front row in the mobile - and from then was never headed.
battler
The word battler has been in the English language for a long time. The word is a borrowing from French in the Middle English period, and meant, literally, 'a person who battles or fights', and figuratively 'a person who fights against the odds or does not give up easily'. The corresponding English word was feohtan which gives us modern English 'to fight'. English also borrowed the word war from the French in the twelfth century; it's the same word as modern French guerre.
But the word battler, at the end of the nineteenth century, starts to acquire some distinctively Australian connotations. For this reason, it gets a guernsey in the Australian National Dictionary.
1. It describes the person with few natural advantages, who works doggedly and with little reward, who struggles for a livelihood (and who displays courage in so doing).
Our first citation for this, not surprisingly, comes from Henry Lawson in While the Billy Boils (1896): 'I sat on him pretty hard for his pretensions, and paid him out for all the patronage he'd worked off on me .. and told him never to pretend to me again he was a battler'.
In 1941 Kylie Tennant writes: 'She was a battler, Snow admitted; impudent, hardy, cool, and she could take a "knock-back" as though it didn't matter, and come up to meet the next blow'.
In this tradition, K. Smith writes in 1965: 'Everybody in Australia has his position. Roughly speaking, there are three kinds of people in this country: the rich, the middle class and the battlers'.
In the 21st century the term has been used in various political contests as this quotation in the Australian from 1 July 2006 demonstrates: 'The Prime Minister, who has built his success on an appeal to Australia's battlers, is about to meet thousands more of them in his northern Sydney seat of Bennelong'.
2. It has also been used of an unemployed or irregularly employed person.
a: (in the country): a swagman or itinerant worker.
This sense is first recorded in the Bulletin in 1898: 'I found patch after patch destroyed. Almost everyone I met blamed the unfortunate "battler", and I put it down to some of the Sydney "talent" until ... I caught two Chows vigorously destroying melon-vines'.
Again in the Bulletin in 1906 we find: 'They were old, white-bearded, travel-stained battlers of the track'.
The word is not much used in this sense now, but in 1982 Page & Ingpen in Aussie Battlers write: 'The average Australian's image of a battler does seem to be that of a Henry Lawson character: a bushie of the colonial era, complete with quart pot and swag, down on his luck but still resourceful and cheerful'.
b: (in an urban context): an unemployed person who lives by opportunism.
Frank Hardy in Tales of Billy Yorker (1965) writes: 'Any Footscray battler could get a few quid off Murphy, just for the asking'.
S. Weller, Bastards I have met (1976) writes: `He was a battler, into all the lurks about the place and just one jump ahead of the coppers all the time'.
3. A person who frequents racecourses in search of a living, esp. from punting. The word is used in Australia with this sense from the end of the nineteenth century.
Cornelius Crowe in his Australian Slang Dictionary (1895) gives: ' Battlers broken-down backers of horses still sticking to the game'.
In 1925 A. Wright in The Boy from Bullarah notes: 'He betook himself with his few remaining shillings to the home of the battler - Randwick [a racecourse in Sydney]'.
4. A prostitute.
In 1898 we find in the Bulletin: 'A bludger is about the lowest grade of human thing, and is a brothel bully ... A battler is the feminine'.
C.W. Chandler in Darkest Adelaide (c. 1907) writes: 'Prostitution though most terrible and degrading in any shape or form reaches its most forbidding form when married women are found out battling for cash'. And further: `I told him I would not mind taking on a tart myself - an extra good battler preferred'.
Meanings 2. 3. and 4 have now disappeared from Australian English, and it is meaning 1 which has become enshrined in the language, especially in the phrase little Aussie battler. This is still the person of the Henry Lawson tradition, who, 'with few natural advantages, works doggedly and with little reward, struggles for a livelihood (and displays courage in so doing)'. But perhaps the battler of contemporary Australia is more likely to be paying down a large mortgage rather than working hard to put food on the table!
berley
Berley is ground-bait scattered by an angler in the water to attract fish to a line or lure. Anglers use a variety of baits for berley, such as bread, or fish heads and guts. Poultry mash and tinned cat food make more unusual berleying material, although this pales beside a Bulletin article in 1936 suggesting 'a kerosene-tinful of rabbit carcasses boiled to a pulp' as the best berley for Murray cod. Berley first appears in 1852 as a verb - to berley is to scatter ground-bait. The writer observes that the locals are baiting a fishing spot (‘burley-ing’) with burnt fish. The first evidence for the noun occurs in the 1860s. The origin of the word is unknown.
big note
To display or boast of one's wealth; to exaggerate one's own importance, achievements, etc. The term is first recorded in the 1920s. In the 1950s a big note man (later called a big noter) was a person who handled or bet large sums of money - big notes. In pre-decimal currency days the larger the denomination, the bigger the banknote. Big-noting arose from the connection between flashing large sums of money about and showing off.
1941 Courier-Mail (Brisbane) 18 February: There was no suggestion that Coates had the revolver for any sinister purpose. He had admitted producing it to 'big note' himself in the eyes of the young woman and her parents.
2012 D. Foster Man of Letters: He's never been one to big-note himself.
bikie
A member of a gang of motorcyclists. Bikie follows a very common pattern in Australian English by incorporating the -ie (or -y) suffix. This suffix works as an informal marker in the language. In early use bikie often referred to any member of a motorcycle (motorbike) gang or club - often associated with youth culture. In more recent times the term is often associated with gangs of motorcylists operating on the fringes of legality. Bikie is first recorded in the 1960s. For a more detailied discussion of the term see our Word of the Month article from March 2014.
1967 Kings Cross Whisper (Sydney) xxxii: Bikie, a member of a gang or a club of people interested in motor bikes.
2015 Northern Territory News (Darwin) 28 May: We need to stop romanticising the notion that bikies are basically good blokes in leather vests. Some bikies procure, distribute and sell drugs through their 'associates', who in turn sell them to kids.
bilby
The bilby is either of two Australian bandicoots, especially the rabbit-eared bandicoot Macrotis lagotis, a burrowing marsupial of woodlands and plains of drier parts of mainland Australia. The word is a borrowing from Yuwaalaraay (an Aboriginal language of northern New South Wales) and neighbouring languages. The bilby is also known as dalgyte in Western Australia and pinky in South Australia. Since the early 1990s there have been attempts to replace the Easter bunny with the Easter bilby. At Easter it is now possible to buy chocolate bilbies. Bilby is first recorded in the 1870s.
1877 Riverine Grazier (Hay) 6 June: There is also all over this part of the country a small animal which burrows in the ground like a rabbit: it is called a bilby, and is found everywhere, almost, up here, in great numbers.
2015 Centralian Advocate (Alice Springs) 10 April: Mining activity can also cause direct and indirect disturbance to sites inhabited by bilbies.
billabong
An arm of a river, made by water flowing from the main stream (usually only in time of flood) to form a backwater, blind creek, anabranch, or, when the water level falls, a pool or lagoon (often of considerable extent); the dry bed of such a formation. Billabongs are often formed when floodwaters recede. The word comes from the south-western New South Wales Aboriginal language Wiradjuri: bila ‘river’ + bang (a suffix probably indicating a continuation in time or space, or functioning as an intensifier), the combination signifying a watercourse that runs only after rain. First recorded in the 1830s.
1861 Burke & Wills Exploring Expedition: At the end of a very long waterhole, it breaks into billibongs, which continue splitting into sandy channels until they are all lost in the earthy soil.
2015 Northern Territory News (Darwin) 13 May: It will soon offer more activities including fishing at a nearby billabong once the area is declared croc-free.
billy
A vessel for the boiling of water, making of tea, etc., over an open fire; a cylindrical container, usually of tin, enamel ware, or aluminium, fitted with a lid and a wire handle. It comes from the Scottish dialect word billy-pot meaning ‘cooking utensil’. Possibly reinforced by bouilli tin (recorded 1858 in Australia and 1852 in New Zealand, with variant bully tin recorded in New Zealand in 1849 but not until 1920 in Australia), an empty tin that had contained preserved boeuf bouilli 'bully beef', used as a container for cooking. It is not, as popularly thought, related to the Aboriginal word billabong. Billy is first recorded in the 1840s.
1859 W. Burrows Adventures of a Mounted Trooper in the Australain Constabulary: A 'billy' is a tin vessel, something between a saucepan and a kettle, always black outside from being constantly on the fire, and looking brown inside from the quantity of tea that is generally to be seen in it.
2005 Australian (Sydney) 12 November: The green ants, we learn later, are a form of bush medicine that others choose to consume by boiling the nest in a billy and drinking the strained and distilled contents.
billycart
A child’s four-wheeled go-cart. Billycart is a shortened form of the Australian term billy-goat cart which dates back to the 1860s. In earlier times the term applied to a small cart, often two-wheeled, that was pulled by a goat. These billycarts were used for such purposes as home deliveries, and they were also used in races. The term was then applied to any homemade go-cart. Billycart is recorded in the first decade of the 20th century.
1952 J.R. Tyrrell Old Books: As boys, Fred and I delivered books round Sydney in a billycart.
1991 T. Winton Cloudstreet: Bits of busted billycarts and boxes litter the place beneath the sagging clothesline.
bindi-eye
Any of several plants bearing barbed fruits, especially herbs of the widespread genus Calotis; the fruit of these plants. Bindi-eye is oftened shortened to bindi, and can be spelt in several ways including bindy-eye and bindii. The word is from the Gamilaraay and Yuwaalaraay Aboriginal languages of northern New South Wales. Bindi-eye is usually considered a weed when found in one's lawn. Many a child's play has been painfully interrupted by the sharp barbs of the plant which have a habit of sticking into the sole of one's foot. Bindy-eye is first recorded in the 1890s.
1894 Queenslander (Brisbane) 11 August: Fancy him after working a mob of sheep through a patch of Bathurst Burr, or doing a day's work in a paddock where the grass seed was bad and bindy-eyes thick.
2015 Australian (Sydney) 3 January: You know it's summer when the frangipani flower in their happy colours, when the eucalypt blossom provides a feast for the rosellas - and when the bindi-eyes in your lawn punish you for going barefoot.
bingle
A fight or skirmish; a collision. Bingle is perhaps from Cornish dialect bing 'a thump or blow'. Most other words derived from Cornish dialect in Australian English were originally related to mining, including fossick. The word is frequently used to refer to a car collision. Bingle is first recorded in the 1940s.
1966 R. Carr Surfie: There was this clang of metal on metal and both cars lurched over to the shoulder and we nearly went for a bingle.
2015 Daily Telegraph (Sydney) 12 April: In fact some of Hughesy and Kate's listeners are laughing so hard they have to pull over in their cars or risk having a bingle on the way back from work.
bitser
A mongrel. A dog (or other animal) which is made up of a bit of this and a bit of that. This meaning is common today, but when bitser first appeared in the 1920s it referred to any contraption or vehicle that was made of spare parts, or had odd bits and pieces added. Bitser is an abbreviation of ‘bits and pieces’, and in the mongrel sense is first recorded in the early 1930s.
1934 Advertiser (Adelaide) 14 May: 'Well, what kind of dog is it?' he asked. The small girl pondered. 'I think he must be a bit of everything. My friends call him a "bitzer"', she replied.
2005 Herald Sun (Melbourne) 27 November: We had lots of cats and dogs. My favourite was a bitser named Sheila.
black stump
The black stump of Australian legend first appears in the late 19th century, and is an imaginary marker at the limits of settlement. Anywhere beyond the black stump is beyond civilisation, deep in the outback, whereas something this side of the black stump belongs to the known world. Although the towns of Blackall, Coolah and Merriwagga each claim to possess the original black stump, a single stump is unlikely to be the origin of this term. It is more probable that the burnt and blackened tree stumps, ubiquitous in the outback, and used as markers when giving directions to travellers is the origin - this sense of black stump is recorded from 1831.
1898 Launceston Examiner 5 November: The mistake in the past has been the piecemeal and patchwork nature of our public works policy. Tracks have been made, commencing nowhere and ending the same, roads have been constructed haphazard, bridges have been built that had no roads leading either to or from them, railways have terminated at the proverbial black stump.
1967 J. Wynnum I'm Jack, all Right: It's way back o' Bourke. Beyond the Black Stump. Not shown on the petrol station maps, even.
2003 Sydney Morning Herald 29 July: Our own wine writer, Huon Hooke, doesn't know the wine but suspects it comes from a region between Bandywallop and the Black Stump.
Blind Freddy
A very unperceptive person; such a person as a type. This term often appears in the phrase even blind Freddy could see that. Although the term may not derive from an actual person, early commentators associate it with a blind Sydney character or characters. Australian lexicographer Sidney Baker wrote in 1966 that 'Legend has it that there was a blind hawker in Sydney in the 1920s, named Freddy, whose blindness did not prevent his moving freely about the central city area'. Other commentators suggest a character who frequented various Sydney sporting venues in the first decades of the 20th century could be the original Freddy. The term itself is first recorded in 1911.
1911 Sydney Sportsman 19 July: Billy Farnsworth and [Chris] McKivatt seem to suit one another down to the ground as a pair of halves, but then Blind Freddie couldn't help taking Chris's passes.
2013 S. Scourfield As the River Runs: Blind Freddie could see Emerald Gorge is a natural dam site.
blood: your blood’s worth bottling
You’re a really valuable person! You’re a loyal friend! This is one of the many Australianisms, along with terms such as ‘digger’, ‘Anzac’ and ‘Aussie’, that arose during or immediately proceeding the First World War. It applied to a person of great heart, who displayed courage, loyalty, and mateship. It is now used in many contexts - ‘Those firefighters—their blood’s worth bottling!’
blouse
To defeat (a competitor) by a very small margin; to win narrowly. This verb derives from the noun blouse meaning 'the silk jacket worn by a jockey'. As the origin of this word would indicate, much of the evidence is from the sport of horseracing. First recorded in the 1980s. For a detailed discussion of blouse see our Word of the Month article from November 2009.
2001 Herald Sun (Melbourne) 22 June: Four years ago at this ground - Mark Taylor's last one-day appearance for Australia - England smashed 4-253 to blouse Australia on a typically good batting strip.
2015 Kalgoorlie Miner 2 March: The Meryl Hayley-trained speedster, chasing four wins in a line, was bloused in a thrilling finish by Cut Snake with a further head to third placegetter, Danreign.
bludger
This word is a survival of British slang bludger, meaning 'a prostitute's pimp'. The word is ultimately a shortening of bludgeoner. A bludgeoner (not surprisingly) was a person who carried a bludgeon 'a short stout stick or club'. It appears in a mid-nineteenth century English slang dictionary as a term for 'a low thief, who does not hesitate to use violence'.
By the 1880s the 'prostitute's pimp' sense of bludger is found in Australian sources. In the Sydney Slang Dictionary of 1882 bludgers are defined as 'plunderers in company with prostitutes'. Cornelius Crowe, in his Australian Slang Dictionary (1895), defines a bludger as 'a thief who will use his bludgeon and lives on the gains of immoral women'.
Thus bludger came to mean 'one who lives on the earnings of a prostitute'. It retained this meaning until the mid-20th century. Thus Dorothy Hewett in her play Bobbin Up (1959) writes: 'But what about libel?' 'There's a name for a man who lives off women!' 'Can't you get pinched for calling a man a bludger?' But this meaning is now obsolete.
From the early twentieth century it moved out to be a more general term of abuse, especially as applied to a person who appears to live off the efforts of others (as a pimp lives on the earnings of a prostitute). It was then used to refer to a person engaged in non-manual labour - a white-collar worker. This sense appears as early as 1910, but its typical use is represented by this passage from D. Whitington's Treasure Upon Earth (1957): '"Bludgers" he dubbed them early, because in his language anyone who did not work with his hands at a laboring job was a bludger'.
And so it came to mean 'an idler, one who makes little effort'. In the war newspaper Ack Ack News in 1942 we find: 'Who said our sappers are bludgers?' By 1950, it could be used of animals which didn't perform up to standard. J. Cleary in Just let me be writes: 'Everything I backed ran like a no-hoper. Four certs I had, and the bludgers were so far back the ambulance nearly had to bring 'em home'.
And thence to 'a person who does not make a fair contribution to a cost, enterprise etc.; a cadger'. D. Niland writes in The Shiralee (1955): 'Put the nips into me for tea and sugar and tobacco in his usual style. The biggest bludger in the country'. In 1971 J. O'Grady writes: 'When it comes to your turn, return the "shout". Otherwise the word will spread that you are a "bludger", and there is no worse thing to be'.
The term dole bludger (i.e. 'one who exploits the system of unemployment benefits by avoiding gainful employment') made its first appearance in 1970s. An early example from the Bulletin encapsulates the derogatory tone: 'A genuine dole bludger, a particularly literate young man ... explained that he wasn't bothering to look for work any more because he was sick and tired of being treated like a chattel' (1976). From the following year we have a citation indicating a reaction to the use of the term: Cattleman (Rockhampton) 'Young people are being forced from their country homes because of a lack of work opportunities and the only response from these so-called political protectors is to label them as dole bludgers'.
Throughout the history of the word, most bludgers appear to have been male. The term bludgeress made a brief appearance in the first decade of this century - 'Latterly, bludgers, so the police say, are marrying bludgeresses' (1908 Truth 27 September) - but it was shortlived.
bluey
The word bluey in Australian English has a variety of meanings. The most common is the swag (i.e. the collection of possessions and daily necessaries carried by a person travelling, usually on foot, in the bush) so called because the outer covering of the swag was traditionally a blue blanket (which is also called a bluey). The earliest evidence for bluey as a swag is from 1878 where the bluey is humped as it was by the itinerant bush worker tramping the wallaby track in the works of writers such as Henry Lawson and Banjo Paterson.
This image (an Australian stereotype) is epitomised in the following 1899 quotation for bluey:
There's the everlasting swaggie with his bluey on his back who is striking out for sunset on the Never-never track. W.T. Goodge, Hits! Skits! and Jingles
The association of the swaggie and his bluey continues in more recent evidence for the term:
A swaggie suddenly appeared out of the bush, unshaven, with wild, haunted eyes, his bluey and billycan on his back. G. Cross, George and Widda-Woman (1981)
That bluey is later transferred to luggage in general, is perhaps not surprising in an urban society which romanticises its 'bush' tradition:
Where's yer bluey? No luggage? J. Duffy, Outside Pub (1963)
In Tasmania, a bluey or Tasmanian bluey is:
a rough overcoat of blue-grey woollen, to be worn by those doing outdoor work during inclement weather. Canberra Times (19 Nov. 1982).
The word has been used to denote another item of clothing - denim working trousers or overalls - but the citation evidence indicates (the last citation being 1950) that this usage is no longer current.
More familiar is the use of bluey to describe a summons, especially for a traffic offence (originally printed on blue paper):
Imagine my shock upon returning to a bluey at the end of the day. Choice (2 April 1986)
Perhaps the most Australian use of bluey is the curious use of it to describe a red-headed person (first recorded in 1906):
1936 A.B. Paterson, Shearer's Colt: 'Bluey', as the crowd called him, had found another winner. (All red-haired men are called 'Bluey' in Australia for some reason or other.)
1978 R.H. Conquest, Dusty Distances: I found out later that he was a native of New South Wales, called ' Bluey because of his red hair - typical Australian logic.
A more literal use of bluey in Australian English is its application to fauna whose names begin with blue and which is predominantly blue in colour:
1961 Bulletin 31 May: We call them blue martins...Ornithologists refer to them as some species of wood swallow... They're all 'blueys' to us.
bodgie
There are two senses of the word bodgie in Australian English, both probably deriving from an earlier (now obsolete) word bodger.
The obsolete bodger probably derives from British dialect bodge 'to work clumsily'. In Australian English in the 1940s and 1950s bodger meant: 'Something (or occasionally someone) which is fake, false, or worthless'. The noun was also used adjectivally. Typical uses:
1950 F. Hardy, Power without Glory: This entailed the addition of as many more 'bodger' votes as possible.
1954 Coast to Coast 1953-54: Well, we stuck together all through the war - we was in under bodger names.
1966 S. Baker, The Australian Language: An earlier underworld and Army use of bodger for something faked, worthless or shoddy. For example, a faked receipt or false name.. is a bodger; so is a shoddy piece of material sold by a door-to-door hawker.
The word bodger was altered to bodgie, and this is now the standard form:
1975 Latch & Hitchings, Mr X: To avoid any suspicions in case they were picked up by the Transport Regulation Board, it was decided.. to take a 'bodgy' receipt for the tyres with them.
1978 O. White, Silent Reach: This heap is hot - else why did they give it a one-coat spray job over the original white duco and fix it with bodgie number plates?
1984 Canberra Times 27 August: Allegations .. of branch-stacking and the use of hundreds of 'bodgie' members in the electorate.
In the 1950s another sense of bodgie arose. The word was used to describe a male youth, distinguished by his conformity to certain fashions of dress and larrikin behaviour; analogous to the British 'teddy boy':
1950 Sunday Telegraph (Sydney) 7 May: The bizarre uniform of the 'bodgey' - belted velvet cord jacket, bright blue sports coat without a tie, brown trousers narrowed at the ankle, shaggy Cornel Wilde haircut.
1951 Sydney Morning Herald 1 February: What with 'bodgies' growing their hair long and getting around in satin shirts, and 'weegies' [see widgie] cutting their hair short and wearing jeans, confusion seems to be be arising about the sex of some Australian adolescents.
This sense of bodgie seems to be an abbreviation of the word bodger with the addition of the -ie (-y) suffix. One explanation for the development of the teenage larrikin sense was offered in the Age (Melbourne) in 1983:
Mr Hewett says his research indicates that the term 'bodgie' arose around the Darlinghurst area in Sydney. It was just after the end of World War II and rationing had caused a flourishing black market in American-made cloth. 'People used to try and pass off inferior cloth as American-made when in fact it was not: so it was called "bodgie",' he says. 'When some of the young guys started talking with American accents to big-note themselves they were called "bodgies".'
This sense of bodgie belongs primarily to the 1950s, but bodgie in the sense 'fake, false, inferior, worthless' is alive and flourishing in Australian English.
bogan
An uncultured and unsophisticated person; a boorish and uncouth person. The early evidence is largely confined to teenage slang.
Some lexicographers have suspected that the term may derive from the Bogan River and district in western New South Wales, but this is far from certain, and it seems more likely to be an unrelated coinage.
The term became widespread after it was used in the late 1980s by the fictitious schoolgirl 'Kylie Mole' in the television series The Comedy Company. In the Daily Telegraph (29 November 1988), in an article headed 'Same name a real bogan', a genuine schoolgirl named Kylie Mole 'reckons it really sux' " [i.e., finds it horrible] to have the same name as the television character.
In Dolly Magazine, October 1988, 'The Dictionary According To Kylie [Mole]' has the following Kyliesque definition: bogan 'a person that you just don't bother with. Someone who wears their socks the wrong way or has the same number of holes in both legs of their stockings. A complete loser'.
The earliest evidence we have been able to find for the term is in the surfing magazine Tracks September 1985: 'So what if I have a mohawk and wear Dr Martens (boots for all you uninformed bogans)?'
In more recent years the term bogan has become more widely used and is often found in contexts that are neither derogatory or negative. The term has also generated a number of other terms including bogan chick, boganhood, and cashed-up bogan (CUB).
2002 Age (Melbourne) 16 July: Campbell, 25, did not grow up as a bogan chick. She had a quiet, middle-class upbringing in Box Hill, attending a private girls' school.
2006 Canberra Times 9 August: We enjoy drinking, pig-shooting, wear check flannelette shirts and have no common sense or good taste ... Our geographic reach is flexible; residents of Taree and like communities, for example, may readily qualify for Boganhood, usually with little or no burdensome paperwork.
2013 Sydney Morning Herald 7 December: Douglas' volley sparked a semantic debate about the use of 'bogan', with Palmer and others claiming the once-pejorative term had become more jocular. Inclusive. Affectionate, even ... 'We're all bogans. I'm a bogan because I'm overweight.' His titular party head seconded that, claiming quickly to have 'spent most of [his] life as a bogan'. 'All I can say is I like chips', Mr Palmer demurred. 'I wear Ugg boots and I go four-wheel-driving.'
2015 Sunday Times (Perth) 25 January: WA's mining boom has given rise to a new kind of bogan - the CUB, or cashed-up bogan.
For further discussions of bogan see our Word of the Month article from Novemeber 2008, and a 2015 article 'Bogan: from Obscurity to Australia's most productive Word' in our newsletter Ozwords.
bogey
To swim or bathe. Bogey is a borrowing from the Aboriginal Sydney Language. The earliest records show the term being used in the pidgin English of Aborigines:
1788 Historical Records of New South Wales II: I have bathed, or have been bathing... Bogie d'oway. These were Colby's words on coming out of the water.
1830 R. Dawson, Present State of Australia: 'Top bit, massa, bogy,' (bathe) and he threw himself into the water.
By the 1840s it was naturalised in Australian English:
1841 Historical Records of Australia: I suppose you want your Boat, Sir; Yes, said Mr Dixon; well, said Crabb I suppose we must bogey for it. Yes, said Mr Dixon, any two of ye that can swim.
In Australian English a noun meaning 'a swim or bathe; a bath' was formed from the verb:
1847 A. Harris, Settlers and Convicts: In the cool of the evening had a 'bogie' (bathe) in the river.
1869 W.M. Howell, Diggings and Bush: Florence was much amused the other evening by her enquiring if she (Flory) was going down to the water to have a 'bogey'. Flory was much puzzled till she found out that a 'bogey', in colonial phraseology, meant a bath.
1924 Bulletin: A boar was discovered by two of us having a bogey in a 16,000-yard tank about five miles from the river.
1981 G. Mackenzie, Aurukun Diary: A bogey is the Queensland outback word for a bath or bathe.
A bogey hole is a 'swimming or bathing hole'. The verb is rare now in Australian English. For an earlier discussion of bogey see our Word of the Month article from February 2010.
bombora
A wave that forms over a submerged offshore reef or rock, sometimes (in very calm weather or at high tide) merely swelling but in other conditions breaking heavily and producing a dangerous stretch of broken water. The word is now commonly used for the reef or rock itself.
1994 P. Horrobin Guide to Favourite Australian Fish (ed. 7): Like most inshore saltwater predators, Salmon hunt around rocky headlands, offshore islands and bomboras [etc.].
Bombora probably derives from the Aboriginal Sydney Language where it may have referred specifically to the current off Dobroyd Head, Port Jackson. The term is mostly used in New South Wales, where there are numerous bomboras along the coast, often close to cliffs. The term was first recorded in 1871 and is now used frequently in surfing and fishing contexts with its abbreviation bommie and bommy being common: 'After a day of oily, overhead bommie waves, we decided to head to the pub’ (2001 Tracks August).
Bondi tram: shoot through like a Bondi tram
Used allusively to refer to a hasty departure or speedy action. Bondi is the Sydney suburb renowned worldwide for its surf beach. The phrase (first recorded in 1943) probably derives from the fact that two trams typically left the city for Bondi together, the first an express tram which would ‘shoot through’ from Darlinghurst to Bondi Junction. Trams last ran on the line in 1960, but the phrase has remained a part of Australian English.
2014 Wimmera Mail Times (Horsham) 14 April: The book is aimed at young adults and the young at heart ... 'It took off like a Bondi tram', she said.
bonzer
Bonzer is an adjective meaning 'surpassingly good, splendid, great'. The word is also used as a noun meaning ‘something (or someone) that excites admiration by being surpassingly good of its kind’, and as an adverb meaning 'beautifully, splendidly'. Bonzer is possibly an alteration of the now obsolete Australian word bonster (with the same meaning) which perhaps ultimately derives from British dialect bouncer 'anything very large of its kind'. Bonzer may also be influenced by French bon ‘good’ and US bonanza. In the early records the spelling bonzer alternates with bonser, bonza, and bonzor. The adjective, noun, and adverb are all recorded from the early years of the 20th century:
(noun) 1903 Morning Post (Cairns) 5 June: The little pony outlaw is wonderfully fast at disposing of his mounts. Yuong Jack Hansen undertook to sit him but failed at every attempt. Jack states he got a 'bonza on the napper', at one time when thrown.
(adjective) 1904 Argus (Melbourne) 23 July: The python is shedding his skin ... 'I say, Bill, ain't his noo skin bonza?'
(adverb) 1914 B. Cable By Blow and Kiss: Came back grinning widely, with the assurance that it [sc. the rain] was coming down 'Bonzer'.
boofhead
A fool or simpleton; a stupid person; an uncouth person. Boofhead derives from buffle-headed 'having a head like a buffalo' (OED) and bufflehead 'a fool, blockhead, stupid fellow' (OED). Bufflehead has disappeared from standard English, but survives in its Australian form boofhead. It was popularised by the use of boofhead as the name of a dimwitted comic strip character invented by R.B. Clark and introduced in the Sydney Daily Mail in May 1941. For an earlier discussion of the word see our Word of the Month article from December 2009.
1943 Australian Women's Weekly (Sydney) 16 January: Many a time when his round head nodded wisely in accord with the sergeant's explanations, the sergeant was tempted to think: 'I don't believe the boof-head knows what I'm talking about.'
2015 Daily Telegraph (Sydney) 23 April: For those who think we should follow the Kiwis in taxation, feel free to move there. We get their boofheads so they can have ours.
boomerang
Boomerang is an Australian word which has moved into International English. The word was borrowed from an Aboriginal language in the early years of European settlement, but the exact language is still uncertain. Early evidence suggests it was borrowed from a language in, or just south of, the Sydney region.
While the spelling boomerang is now standard, in the early period the word was given a variety of spellings: bomerang, bommerang, bomring, boomereng, boomering, bumerang [etc].
The Australian Aboriginal boomerang is a crescent-shaped wooden implement used as a missile or club, in hunting or warfare, and for recreational purposes. The best-known type of boomerang, used primarily for recreation, can be made to circle in flight and return to the thrower. Although boomerang-like objects were known in other parts of the world, the earliest examples and the greatest diversity of design is found in Australia. A specimen of a preserved boomerang has been found at Wyrie Swamp in South Australia and is dated at 10,000 years old. Boomerangs were not known throughout the entirety of Australia, being absent from the west of South Australia, the north Kimberley region of Western Australia, north-east Arnhem Land, and Tasmania. In some regions boomerangs are decorated with designs that are either painted or cut into the wood.
Very early in Australian English the term boomerang was used in transferred and figurative senses, especially with reference to something which returns to or recoils upon its author. These senses are now part of International English, but it is interesting to look at the earliest Australian evidence for the process of transfer and figurative use:
1846 Boston Daily Advertiser 5 May: Like the strange missile which the Australian throws, Your verbal boomerang slaps you on the nose.
1894 Bulletin (Sydney) 7 July: The argument that there should be profitable industrial prison-labour is a boomerang with a wicked recoil.
1911 Pastoralists' Review 15 March: Labour-Socialist legislation is boomerang legislation, and it generally comes back and hits those it was not intended for.
By the 1850s boomerang had also developed as a verb in Australian English, meaning 'to hit (someone or something) with a boomerang; to throw (something) in the manner of a boomerang'. By the 1890s the verbal sense developed another meaning: 'to return in the manner of a boomerang; to recoil (upon the author); to ricochet'. The earliest evidence for this sense occurs in the Brisbane Worker newspaper from 16 May 1891:
Australia's a big country
And Freedom's on the wallaby
Oh don't you hear her Cooee,
She's just begun to boomerang
She'll knock the tyrants silly.
On 13 November 1979 the Canberra Times reported that 'Greg Chappell's decision to send England in appeared to have boomeranged'.
These verbal senses of boomerang have also moved into International English. For a further discussion of boomerang see the article 'Boomerang, Boomerang, Thou Spirit of Australia!' in our Ozwords newsletter.
bottle: the full bottle
Knowledgeable, an expert—‘Does Robbo know anything about paving? Yeah mate, he’s the full bottle.’ The probable source of the phrase is the 19th century British term no bottle ‘no good’ (which in turn is probably an abbreviation of rhyming slang no bottle and glass ‘no class’). In Australia the full bottle came to mean ‘very good’, and then ‘very good at, knowledgeable about (something)’. It is often used in the negative - not the full bottle means ‘not good (at something)’ or ‘not fully informed’. The phrase is first recorded in the 1940s.
1946 West Australian (Perth) 12 January: The B.M. went to ensure that the provost on duty was a full bottle on the art of saluting full generals.
2005 Daily Telegraph (Sydney) 8 December: Given that her cousins are real-life princesses, Makim should be the full bottle on the art of pouring and drinking tea like a lady.
bottom of the harbour
A tax avoidance scheme. In the late 1970s a large number of bottom of the harbour schemes were operating in corporate Australia. The schemes involved buying a company with a large tax liability, converting the assets to cash, and then ‘hiding’ the company by, for example, selling it to a fictitious buyer. Thus the company (and often its records) vanished completely - figuratively sent to the ‘bottom of the harbour’ (originally Sydney Harbour) - with an unpaid tax bill. The term is usually used attributively.
1983 Sydney Morning Herald 13 August: The Federal Government's introduction of the Taxation (Unpaid Company Tax) Act last year is expected to recoup about $250 million in unpaid tax from the bottom-of-the-harbour participants.
2006 A. Hyland Diamond Dove: The feller in the dock was some fabulous creature - part lawyer, part farmer - who'd been caught in a bottom-of-the-harbour tax avoidance scheme.
boundary rider
An employee responsible for maintaining the (outer) fences on a station, or a publicly owned vermin-proof fence. This sense of boundary rider is recorded from the 1860s but in more recent years, as a result of changes in technology and modes of transport, this occupation has become relatively rare. Since the 1980s the term has been used of a boundary umpire in Australian Rules Football, a cricketer in a fielding position near the boundary, and a roving reporter at a sporting game. For a more detailed discussion of the original sense of boundary rider and the later sporting senses see our Word of the Month article from December 2010.
1885 Illustrated Australian News (Melbourne) 30 September: The duties of a boundary rider for the most part consist in riding round the fences every day, seeing that they are all in good order, blocking up any panels that may be broken, putting out strangers (that is stock that have strayed on to the run), and, in fact, doing all that may pertain to keeping his master's stock on his own land, and everybody's else out of it.
2012 K. McGinnis Tracking North: Mechanisation had finally reached the open-range country. There were no more pumpers or boundary riders.
Bradbury: do a Bradbury
Be the unlikely winner of an event; to win an event coming from well behind. The phrase comes from the name of Steven Bradbury, who won a gold medal in speed skating at the 2002 Winter Olympics after his opponents fell. For a detailed discussion of this phrase see our blog 'Doing a Bradbury: an Aussie term born in the Winter Olympics' (which includes a video of Bradbury's famous win), and our Word of the Month article from August 2008.
2002 Sydney Morning Herald 19 February: Maybe Doing a Bradbury will become a common saying in Australian sport[:] To succeed only because everyone else fell over. The Socceroos need some of that luck.
2014 Herald Sun (Melbourne) 10 July: Someone would one day do a 'Bradbury' and finish third or fourth in the Brownlow Medal yet be crowned the winner.
branch stacking
The practice of improperly increasing the membership of a local branch of a political party in order to ensure the preselection of a particular candidate. The term is a specific use of branch meaning 'a local division of a political party'. While the practice described by branch stacking has been around for a very long time, the word itself is first recorded in the 1960s.
1968 Sydney Morning Herald 6 November: Banks and Blaxland electorates adjoin each other and what the people lodging the appeals are saying is that extensive branch 'stacking' has been going on.
2002 Illawarra Mercury (Wollongong) 7 October: Labor will fight branch stacking by forcing all members to be on the electoral roll before taking part in a preselection vote.
bride’s nightie: off like a bride’s nightie
Leaving immediately; making a hasty departure; at full speed. It is likely that this expression was first used in horseracing to refer to a horse that moved very quickly out of the starting gates. The phrase plays on two different meanings of the verb be off: ‘be removed’ and ‘move quickly'. First recorded in the 1960s.
1969 C. Bray Blossom: 'Come on youse blokes!' he shouted. 'We're off like a bride's nightie!'
2005 Canberra Times 18 March: The irony is of course that their CEO is the least loyal person in the company. First sign of a better offer and they are off like a bride's nightie.
bring a plate
An invitation to bring a plate of food to share at a social gathering or fundraiser. There are many stories of new arrivals in Australia being bamboozled by the instruction to bring a plate. As the locals know, a plate alone will not do. In earlier days the request was often ladies a plate, sometimes followed by gentlemen a donation. First recorded in the 1920s.
1951 Sunshine Advocate 22 March: Mrs Gum has kindly offered her home on Saturday, 14th of April for a social evening. Ladies bring a plate.
2013 Northern Star (Lismore) 16 July: A visit in from our Tasmanian friends. 1 pm start of play. Please bring a plate. All welcome.
brumby
A wild horse. The story of wild horses in the Australian landscape was vividly brought to life in Banjo Paterson's 1890 poem 'The Man from Snowy River': 'There was movement at the station, for the word had passed around/ That the colt from old Regret had got away,/ And had joined the wild bush horses.' These 'wild bush horses' have been known as brumbies in Australia since the early 1870s.
The origin for this term is still disputed. E.M. Curr in Australian Race (1887) gives booramby meaning 'wild' in the language of the Pitjara (or Pidjara or Bidjara) people of the region at the headwaters of the Warrego and Nogoa Rivers in south-western Queensland. This is in the general location of the earliest evidence, but the language evidence has not been subsequently confirmed. This origin was popularised by Paterson in an introduction to his poem 'Brumby's run' printed in 1894. A common suggestion is that brumby derives from the proper name Brumby . This theory was also noted by E.E. Morris in Austral English in 1898: 'A different origin was, however, given by an old resident of New South Wales, to a lady of the name Brumby, viz. "that in the early days of that colony, a Lieutenant Brumby, who was on the staff of one of the Governors, imported some very good horses, and that some of their descendants being allowed to run wild became the ancestors of the wild horses of New South Wales and Queensland". Over the years, various Messrs Brumby have been postulated as the origin. More recently, Dymphna Lonergan suggested that the word comes from Irish word bromaigh, the plural form of the word for a young horse, or colt. For a more detailed discussion concerning the origin of the term brumby see the article 'Wild Horses Running Wild' in our Ozwords newsletter.
1871 Maitland Mercury 10 October: A fine grazing block, lightly timbered, and for which the lessee would expect to draw a thousand pounds for his goodwill, without a hoof upon it, by a singular species of transition is suddenly metamorphosed into a mass of scrub, only fit for a mob of 'Brumbies'.
2010 K. McGinnis Wildhorse Creek: The country's rotten with brumbies.
Buckley’s chance
A forlorn hope; no prospect whatever. Often abbreviated to Buckley’s. One explanation for the origin of the term is that it comes from the name of the convict William Buckley, who escaped from Port Phillip in 1803 and lived for 32 years with Aboriginal people in southern Victoria. A second explanation links the phrase to the Melbourne firm of Buckley and Nunn (established in 1851), suggesting that a pun developed on the 'Nunn' part of the firm's name (with 'none') and that this gave rise to the formulation 'there are just two chances, Buckley's and none'. This second explanation appears to have arisen after the original phrase was established. For an earlier discussion about the origin of the term buckley's chance see the article 'Buckley's' in our Ozwords newsletter.
1887 Melbourne Punch 22 September: In our sporting columns, in the Fitzroy team appears the name of Bracken. It should have been Buckley. Olympus explains that he altered it because he didn't want the Fitzroy men to have 'Buckley's chance'.
2015 Australian Financial Review (Sydney) 7 March: If I lose this job I've got Buckley's chance of getting another one.
budgie smugglers
A pair of close-fitting male swimming briefs made of stretch fabric. The Australian term is probably a variation of the international English grape smugglers for such a garment. Budgie smugglers is one of the numerous Australian words for this particular garment (others include bathers, cossies, speedos, swimmers, and togs). Budgie is a shortening of budgerigar - from Kamilaroi (an Aboriginal language of northern New South Wales and southern Queensland), and designates a small green and yellow parrot which has become a popular caged bird. The term is a jocular allusion to the appearance of the garment. Budgie smugglers is first recorded in the late 1990s. For a more detailed discussion of the word see our Word of the Month article from December 2013 .
2002 Herald Sun (Melbourne) 23 November: Nothing stands between you and a continent made entirely of icebergs except the Southern Ocean. That, and a thin pair of Speedos so figure-hugging you can see every goosebump - flimsy togs that are known not-all-that-affectionately by us Brown boys as budgie smugglers!
2015 Sydney Morning Herald 30 March: Property types joined with investment bankers on Sunday when they swapped suits for budgie smugglers to raise more than $600,000 and awareness for cerebral palsy.
bulldust
A kind of fine powdery dirt or dust, often found in inland Australia. Roads or tracks covered with bulldust may be a hazard for livestock and vehicles, which can become bogged in it. It is probably called bulldust because it resembles the soil trampled by cattle in stockyards. The word can also be used as a polite way of saying bullshit. Both senses of the word are first recorded in the 1920s.
1929 Register News-Pictorial (Adelaide) 7 December: Motoring across Lake Eyre ... This 'bull' dust might be about two feet deep, and cakes on the surface, so that it is hard to penetrate.
1954 J. Cleary Climate of Courage: 'I'm seventy-five per cent Irish', said Mick. 'You're seventy-five per cent bulldust, too', said Joe.
2011 M Groves Outback Life: When a stretch of loose bulldust appeared too daunting, Joe would gun the engine down and go at a speed that didn't give us time to bog down.
bull’s roar: not within a bull’s roar
Nowhere near - 'The club’s not within a bull’s roar of winning the premiership this season.' A roaring bull can be heard over a great distance, so that to be not within a bull’s roar is to be a considerable distance away. The phrase is sometimes used without the negative - to be within a bull’s roar means that you are not too far away. A much finer unit of measurement is expressed by the similar Australian phrase within a bee’s dick. The phrase is first recorded in the 1930s.
1936 Chronicle (Adelaide) 3 September: He knew that the horse, trainer and rider were O.K., and felt that the danger lay in interference. I told him that nothing would get within a 'bull's roar' of Agricolo to interfere with him, and such was the case.
2005 West Australian (Perth) 18 April: Again, through no fault of the sometimes-too-helpful McGuire, no recent contestant has come within a bull's roar of winning a serious amount of cash.
bung
Incapacitated, exhausted, broken (as in 'the telly’s bung'). It comes from bang meaning ‘dead’ in the Yagara Aboriginal language of the Brisbane region. It found its way into 19th-century Australian pidgin, where the phrase to go bung meant ‘to die’. The term is often found in this phrasal form where it now has several meanings: 'to be financially bankrupt, to come to nought; to fail, to collapse, to break down'. These figurative senses of bung emerged in the late 19th century.
1885 Australasian Printers' Keepsake: He was importuned to desist, as his musical talent had 'gone bung' probably from over-indulgence in confectionery.
2006 Australian (Sydney) 27 April: Sydney boy Scott Reed was the name on every recruiter's list, but he has been taken to hospital with a bung ankle.
bunyip
An amphibious monster supposed to inhabit inland waterways. Descriptions of it vary greatly. Some give it a frightful human head and an animal body. Many descriptions emphasise its threat to humans and its loud booming at night. It inhabits inland rivers, swamps, and billabongs. The word comes from the Aboriginal Wathaurong language of Victoria. Bunyip is first recorded in the 1840s. For a more detailed discussion of this word see the article 'There's a Bunyip Close behind us and he's Treading on my Tail' in our Ozwords newsletter.
1845 Sydney Morning Herald 12 July: On the bone being shown to an intelligent black, he at once recognised it as belonging to the 'Bunyip', which he declared he had seen.
2015 Southern Highland News (Bowral): Everyone knows bunyips live in the Wingecarribee Swamp, problem is, there are quite a few different theories about this elusive animal and it all seems to turn on how much grog visitors to the swamp have had before they hear the distinctive roar.
burl: give it a burl
Venture an attempt; give something a try. This is an Australian alteration of the standard English phrase give it a whirl. Burl is from the English dialect (especially Scottish and northern English) verb birl ‘spin’ or ‘whirl’ and the corresponding noun 'a rapid twist or turn'. Give it a burl is first recorded in the early years of the 20th century.
1978 Mullally & Sexton Libra and Capricorn: Should be some fish out there I say. We'll give it a burl, eh?
2006 Mercury (Hobart) 13 January: I've never been on a boat cruise. We wanted to give it a burl and see how it went. We'd do it again.
bush week: what do you think this is, bush week?
Do you think I’m stupid? An indignant response to someone who is taking you for a fool - 'You’re going to charge me how much? What do you think this is, bush week?' Bush week is a time when people from the country come to a city, originally when bush produce etc. was displayed; and it is also a celebration in a town or city of bush produce, activities, etc. These senses of bush week go back to the early 20th century. The phrase originally implied the notion that people from the country are easily fooled by the more sophisticated city slickers. The speaker resents being mistaken for a country bumpkin. The phrase is first recorded in the 1940s.
1949 L. Glassop Lucky Palmer: I get smart alecks like you trying to put one over on me every minute of the day. What do you think this is? Bush Week?
2012 J. Murray Goodbye Lullaby: They had already been warned about the breastfeeding business ... 'Whaddya think this is?' said the proprietor as she glared at them all. 'Bloody Bush Week or something? Beat it, you two!'.
Canberra bashing
The act or process of criticising the Australian Government and its bureaucracy. Canberra, the capital of Australia, has been used allusively to refer to the Australian Government and its bureaucracy since the 1920s. The term Canberra bashing emerged in the 1970s, and is also applied in criticisms of the city itself. For a more detailed discussion of the term see our Word of the Month article from February 2013.
1976 Sun-Herald (Sydney) 19 February: Even Federal Liberal MPs from Tasmania feel that their electoral standing is increased by regular outbursts of 'Canberra bashing'.
2014 Canberra Times 28 November: While Canberra bashing has always been a national sport, it is fair to say it has rarely, if ever, been played so artfully and with such dedication as in the past two to three years. Politicians on both sides have shown a willingness to put the boot into a national capital.
captain's pick
(In a political context) a decision made by a party leader etc. without consultation with colleagues. This term also takes the form captain's call. Captain's pick is derived from sporting contexts in which a team captain has the discretion to choose members of the team. The political sense emerged in Australian English in 2013. For a more detailed discussion of this term see our Word of the Month article from January 2014.
2013 Daily Telegraph (Sydney): Ms Peris, who as of yesterday was yet to join the Labor party, is set to become the first indigenous ALP representative in federal parliament with an assured top place on the NT Senate ticket in what Ms Gillard described as a 'captain's pick'.
2015 Australian (Sydney) 5 August: What Abbott's stubbornness missed, however, was that it was the public and his own MPs more than the media or Labor who were disgusted by his intransigence in refusing to remove his captain's pick Speaker.
cark
To die; to break down; to fail. Also spelt kark, and often taking the form cark it. The word is probably a figurative use of an earlier Australian sense of cark meaning 'the caw of a crow', which is imitative. First recorded in the 1970s.
1977 R. Beilby Gunner: 'That wog ya roughed up - well, he karked.' Sa'ad dead!
1996 H.G. Nelson Petrol, Bait, Ammo and Ice: The offside rule has carked it, and good on the refs.
2001 Manly Daily 19 January: The resulting play is five stories from the morgue, monologues by people who have recently carked it and have 'woken up' in the morgue.
chardonnay socialist
A derogatory term for a person who espouses left-wing views but enjoys an affluent lifestyle. It is modelled on the originally British term, champagne socialist, which has a similar meaning. The term chardonnay socialist appeared in the 1980s, not long after the grape variety Chardonnay became very popular with Australian wine drinkers.
1987 D. Williamson Emerald City: I'm going to keep charting their perturbations .. those Chardonnay socialists of Melbourne aren't going to stop me.
2014 Herald Sun (Melbourne) 14 May: Maybe if these rorts are dispensed with, instead of getting failed businessmen, unionists who couldn't get work elsewhere and lawyers who are nothing more than chardonnay socialists and see life as an MP a cosy way to feather their nests, we'll see people in Parliament who have a genuine wish to do something for this country.
checkout chick
A checkout operator at a supermarket. This term usually refers to female checkout operators (hence chick, an informal word for a young woman), but with changes in the gender makeup of the supermarket workforce the term is occasionlly applied to males. Checkout chick is first recorded in the 1970s. For a more detailed discussion of the term see our Word of the Month article from May 2014.
1976 Canberra Times 16 June: The checkout chick is too busy taking money to tell you how to operate your cut-price, multi-purpose, plastic encased kitchen magician.
2014 Geelong Advertiser 19 July: This gormless dude started arguing with the checkout chick and held up a line of about 30 people.
chook
A domestic fowl; a chicken. Chook comes from British dialect chuck(y) 'a chicken; a fowl' which is a variant of chick. Chook is the common term for the live bird, although chook raffles, held in Australian clubs and pubs, have ready-to-cook chooks as prizes. The term has also been transferred to refer to other birds, and often in the form old chook it can refer to a woman. See our Word of the Month articles 'chook run' and 'chook lit' for further uses of chook. First recorded as chuckey in 1855.
1880 Bulletin (Sydney) 17 July: A man was found in the cow-shed of Government House ... Was he looking after the housemaid or the 100 little chookies?
2014 Sydney Morning Herald 25 November: We have chooks at our farm in Bena, an hour and a half out of town.
chook: may your chooks turn into emus and kick your dunny down
A jocular curse. This expression recalls an earlier time when many Australians kept chooks (domestic chickens) in the backyard and the dunny was a separate outhouse. A similar comic exaggeration is seen in the phrase he couldn’t train a choko vine over a country dunny - a comment on a person’s incompetence. First recorded in the 1970s.
1993 Advertiser (Adelaide) 9 June: Maybe when Mr Keating has finished educating the judiciary, he might have a go at the politicians and bureaucrats, starting with arithmetic. Although I must say this is a very cunning, contrived piece of legislation, if that is what they set out to do. May their chooks turn into emus and kick their dunnies down.
chunder
To vomit. Also used as noun ‘vomit’. Chunder possibly comes from a once-popular cartoon character, 'Chunder Loo of Akim Foo', drawn by Norman Lindsay for a series of boot polish advertisements in the early 1900s. It is possible that 'Chunder Loo' became rhyming slang for spew. Chunder, however, is the only form to be recorded. The earliest evidence is associated with Australian troops in action to the north of Australia during the Second World War.
1950 N. Shute A Town like Alice: The way these bloody Nips go on. Makes you chunda.
2003 Daily Telegraph (Sydney) 9 April: Back at least 20 years - to a land where women glow and men chunder.
Clayton's
Something that is largely illusory or exists in name only; a poor substitute or imitation. This word derives from the proprietary name of a soft drink, sold in a bottle that looked like a whisky bottle, and marketed from 1980 as 'the drink you have when you're not having a drink'. For a more detailed discussion of the word see our blog 'The evolution of a word - the case of Clayton's'.
1982 Sunday Telegraph (Sydney) 28 March: So who's the press secretary working out of the NSW Parliament whose press-gallery nickname is Clayton .. because he's the press secretary you're having, when you're not having a press secretary?
2008 A. Pung Growing up Asian in Australia: My bikini top is crammed so full of rubbery 'chicken fillets' I'd probably bounce if you threw me. These Clayton's breasts jiggle realistically when I jump up and down on the spot.
cleanskin
An unbranded animal. In the pastoral industry an animal that has not been branded with a mark identifying the owner can easily be stolen or lost. The word is first recorded in the 1860s. There are several transferred and figurative senses of cleanskin that evolved from the orgininal sense. In the first decade of the 20th century cleanskin began to be used to describe 'an Aboriginal person who has not passed through an initiation rite'. Also from this period on cleanskin was used figuratively of 'a person who has no criminal record; a person new to (a situation or activity) and lacking experience'. From the 1980s cleanskin was also used of 'a bottle of wine without a label that identifies the maker, sold at a price cheaper than comparable labelled bottles; the wine in such a bottle'.
1868 Sydney Morning Herald 11 November: These are branded by the owners of such herds, who know all the while that they do not belong to them, on the assumption that they have the best right to these 'clean skins', and that, after all, they are more likely to be their property than that of anyone else.
1998 M. Keenan The Horses too are Gone: In the rangelands an unbranded calf becomes a cleanskin and cleanskins belong to the first person capable of planting a brand on the rump.
cobber
A friend, a companion. Also used as a form of address (g’day cobber!). The word probably derives from the Yiddish word chaber 'comrade'. A Yiddish source may seem unlikely, but there are several terms in Australian English that are likely to be derived from Yiddish, including doover (‘thingummyjig’), shicer (‘unproductive or worthless mining claim or mine’), and shickered ('drunk’). It is likely that these terms, as well as cobber, found their way into London slang (especially from the Jewish population living in the East End), and from there, via British migrants, into Australian English.
It is sometimes suggested that cobber derives from British dialect. The English Dialect Dictionary lists the word cob 'to take a liking to any one; to "cotton" to', but the evidence is from only one Suffolk source, and the dictionary adds: 'Not known to our other correspondents'. This Suffolk word is sometimes proposed as the origin of cobber, but its dialect evidence is very limited. Cobber, now somewhat dated, is rarely used by young Australians. First recorded in the 1890s.
1929 Bulletin (Sydney) 26 June: 'He was my cobber' - an expressive blend Of 'mate' and 'pal', more definite than 'brother' And somewhat less perfunctory than 'friend'.
2014 Advocate (Burnie) 12 August: Our service was restored at about 11.15pm during July 31, so good onya cobbers for a job well done.
cocky
A small-scale farmer; (in later use often applied to) a substantial landowner or to the rural interest generally. In Australia there are a number of cockies including cow cockies, cane cockies and wheat cockies. Cocky arose in the 1870s and is an abbreviation of cockatoo farmer. This was then a disparaging term for small-scale farmers, probably because of their habit of using a small area of land for a short time and then moving on, in the perceived manner of cockatoos feeding.
1899 Australian Magazine (Sydney) March: 'Cockie' was a contemptuous title by which the big farmers distinguished themselves from the little.
2006 Stock and Land (Melbourne) 4 May: Removing the stereotypical image of farmers being whinging cockies is also important.
convict
A person sentenced in the British Isles to a term of penal servitude in an Australian Colony. The foundations of European settlement in Australia are based on the transportation of tens of thousands of prisoners from the British Isles. The word is a specific use of convict 'a condemned criminal serving a sentence of penal servitude' (OED). While in America convict is still used to refer to a prisoner, in Australia it is now largely historical. For a further discussion of this word see our blog 'A long lost convict: Australia's "C-word"?' And for a discussion of words associated with Australia's convicts see the article 'Botany Bay Argot' in our Ozwords newsletter.
1788 Historic Records of Australia (1914): The convicts on both sides are distributed in huts.
1849 G.F. Angas Description of the Barossa Range: No convicts are transported to this place, for South Australia is not a penal colony.
cooee
Originally a call used by an Aboriginal person to communicate (with someone) at a distance; later adopted by settlers and now widely used as a signal, especially in the bush; a name given to the call. The iconic call of the Australian bush comes from the Aboriginal Sydney language word gawi or guwi meaning 'come here'. Cooee is recorded from the early years of European settlement in Sydney. It is often found in the phrase within cooee meaning 'within earshot; within reach, near'.
1827 P. Cunningham Two Years in New South Wales: In calling to each other at a distance, the natives make use of the word Coo-ee, as we do the word Hollo, prolonging the sound of the coo, and closing that of the ee with a shrill jerk.
1956 E. Lambert Watermen: If I ever see you within coo-ee of my boat again, I'll drown you.
2006 Herald Sun (Melbourne) 15 March: These Games are no longer some village competition with a hometown audience that you can please with a cooee and a wobbleboard.
coolibah
The term coolibah is best known from the opening lines of Banjo Paterson's 1895 lyrics for the song Waltzing Matilda:
Once a jolly swagman camped by a billabong Under the shade of a coolibah tree...
The word is a borrowing from Yuwaaliyaay (and neighbouring languages), an Aboriginal language of northern New South Wales. In the earlier period it was was spelt in various ways, including coolabah, coolobar, and coolybah.
It is term for any of several eucalypts, especially the blue-leaved Eucalyptus microtheca found across central and northern Australia, a fibrous-barked tree yielding a durable timber and occurring in seasonally flooded areas. Coolibah is first recorded in the 1870s.
1876 Sydney Morning Herald 9 August: The country consists of open plains, with myall and coolabah.
1995 Australian (Sydney) 16 September: With its dead coolibah trees, sun-bleached cattle bones and screeching galahs, Howard Blackburn's back paddock could be anywhere in Australia's drought-ravaged grazing lands.
crook
Bad, unpleasant or unsatisfactory: Things were crook on the land in the seventies. Crook means bad in a general sense, and also in more specific senses too: unwell or injured (a crook knee), and dishonest or illegal (he was accused of crook dealings). It is an abbreviation of crooked ‘dishonestly come by; made, obtained, or sold in a way that is not straightforward’. All senses are recorded from the 1890s.
1913 A. Pratt Wolaroi's Cup: Most stables .. are crook some of the time, but none are crook all of the time.
1936 F. Clune Roaming Round the Darling: My cobber, here, used to sing in opera. He's a pretty crook singer, but he'll sing for you.
2014 Advertiser (Adelaide) 31 May: I was feeling crook at the Ipswich races and over the weekend. I went to the GP on Monday and before I knew it I was in emergency and then off to Brisbane.
cup of tea, a Bex, and a good lie down
Used to indicate the need for a rest in order to settle down, solve a problem, etc.; a panacea. The phrase (now often with some variations) was originally the title of a a revue at the Phillip Street Theatre in Sydney 1965. The cuppa, the Bex (an analgesic in powder form) and the lie down were supposed to be the suburban housewife’s solution to problems such as depression, anxiety, isolation and boredom.
1971 Sydney Morning Herald 13 May: 'A Cup of Tea, a Bex and a nice lie down' used to be regarded as a bit of a joke. Not anymore. Drug hungry women gulp their share of $200 million headache powders, tranquillisers and sleeping pills every year - to solve every problem from what they'll cook for dinner to that vague headache.
2014 Courier-Mail (Brisbane) 23 January: Catholic Church officials once thought child-sex abuse victims just needed a 'cup of tea, a Bex and a good lie down' to get over crimes committed against them by paedophile clergy.
currency lad or lass
A native-born Australian. These terms are now obsolete. In the early days of the Australian colony English gold pieces were called sterling, but there were also ‘inferior’ coins from many countries. These were called currency. The ‘sterling’ British-born immigrants used the word currency to belittle the native-born Australians, but the Australians soon used it of themselves with pride. First recorded in the 1820s.
1824 Australian (Sydney) 18 November: Let the currency lads and lasses turn Arcadian shepherds and shepherdesses if they choose.
1840 Port Phillip Gazette: The answer of the simple Currency Lass will suit our purpose, who, when asked if she would like to visit England, said, no! there are so many thieves there!!
dag
An unfashionable person; a person lacking style or character; a socially awkward adolescent, a 'nerd'. These senses of dag derive from an earlier Australian sense of dag meaning 'a "character", someone eccentric but entertainingly so'. Ultimately all these senses of dag are probably derived from the British dialect (especially in children's speech) sense of dag meaning a 'feat of skill', 'a daring feat among boys', and the phrase to have a dag at meaning 'to have a shot at'. The Australian senses of dag may have also been influenecd by the word wag (a habitual joker), and other Australian senses of dag referring to sheep (see rattle your dags below). Dag referring to an unfashionable person etc. is recorded from the 1960s.
1983 Sydney Morning Herald 24 September: Has it helped them feel more relaxed with the boys in their PD group. 'Well, most of them are dags', Julie laughs, 'but at least they're easier to talk to'.
2011 Australian Financial Review (Sydney) 11 July: Christian, while your budget may appear to be reasonable .. your dress sense is nothing less than appalling. Never ever wear a striped suit, a striped shirt and a striped tie together - just dreadful ... You look like a real dag.
dag: rattle your dags
Hurry up, get a move on. Dags are clumps of matted wool and dung which hang around a sheep’s rear end. When a daggy sheep runs, the dried dags knock together to make a rattling sound. The word dag (originally daglock) was a British dialect word that was borrowed into mainstream Australian English in the 1870s. The phrase is first recorded in the 1980s.
1984 S. Thorne Battler: C'mon Mum, rattle yer dags - the old girls are hungry!
2010 Countryman (Perth) 11 February: Rattle yer dags, woolclassers, time's running out to re-register yourselves with the Australian Wool Exchange.
dak
To pull down or remove the trousers from (a person) as a joke or punishment. Dak derives from another Australian term daks meaning 'a pair of trousers'. The term is first recorded from the early 1990s but is probably much older than that. For a more detailed discussion of dak see our Word of the Month article from July 2009.
1994 Age (Melbourne) 24 July: We played footy together, but his recognition was going on to play for Footscray; I was the little fella so mine was getting dakked every pie night.
2007 Herald Sun (Melbourne) 4 October: The former Fitzroy and Brisbane footballer has 'Fitzroy RIP 1996' tattooed on his right buttock. His family didn't know about it until he was dacked during a game this year.
damper
A simple kind of bread, traditionally unleavened and baked in the ashes of an outdoor fire. This word is specific use of British damper meaning ‘something that takes the edge off the appetite’, and probably with some influence from damp down '(of a fire or furnace) to cover or fill it with small coal, ashes, or coke, so as to check combustion and prevent its going out, when not required for some time'. Because it was the most common form of bread for bush workers in the nineteenth century, to earn your damper means to be worth your pay. First recorded in the 1820s.
1825 Howe's Weekly Commercial Express (Sydney) 23 May: There is at this moment many a poor settler up the country, buried in the bush .. eating salt pork and dampers with an occasional feast of kangaroo.
2013 S. Bisley Stillways: We made damper out of flour and water, squeezed it around green sticks to cook over the coals.
dawn service
A commemorative ceremony held at dawn on Anzac Day. Anzac Day, April 25, is a national public holiday in Australia commemorating all those who have served and died in war. It is the anniversary of the landing at Gallipoli of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) troops in 1915. While commemorative services have been held on April 25 since 1916, the term dawn service is not recorded until the 1920s.
1971 Bulletin (Sydney) 8 May: Ahead of us, already drunk in preparation for an Anzac Sunday, three old mates, Les, Norm and Billy, a rolled flag between them, zigzag toward the Dawn Service.
2015 Sun-Herald (Sydney) 11 January: Cruise Express's Legends of the Mediterranean package will cruise the waters off the Turkish coast at dawn on April 25 and the official dawn service ashore will be broadcast on the ship.
didgeridoo
The didgeridoo is a wind instrument that was originally found only in Arnhem Land in northern Australia. It is a long, wooden, tubular instrument that produces a low-pitched, resonant sound with complex, rhythmic patterns but little tonal variation. In popular understanding many Australians probably believe that this is an Aboriginal word. Indeed, the 1988 edition of the Australian National Dictionary attributed it to the Yolngu language of northern Queensland. Subsequent research has cast doubt on this etymology, and in 1990 the following statement was made in Australian Aboriginal Words in English: 'Although it has been suggested that this must be a borrowing from an Australian language it is not one. The name probably evolved from white people's ad hoc imitation of the sound of the instrument'. This argument is supported by two of the earliest pieces of evidence for the term:
1918 Richmond Guardian (Melbourne): 'At Darwin the nigger crew is making merry with the Diridgery doo and the eternal ya-ya-ya ye-ye-ye cry'.
1919 Smith's Weekly (Sydney): 'The Northern Territory aborigines have an infernal - allegedly musical - instrument composed of two feet of hollow bamboo. It produces but one sound - 'didjerry, didjerry, didjerry -' and so on ad infinitum.
digger
An Australian soldier. The term was applied during the First World War to Australian and New Zealand soldiers because so much of their time was spent digging trenches. An earlier Australian sense of digger was ‘a miner digging for gold ’. Billy Hughes, prime minister during the First World War, was known as the Little Digger. First recorded in this sense 1916.
1918 Aussie: Australian Soldiers' Magazine February: About the origin of this word 'Digger' ... It came to France when the sandgropers gave up digging on the goldfields of W.A. and carried on with it on the battlefields.
2015 Daily Telegraph (Sydney) 26 January: Australia's special-forces troops .. dominate the military division of the 2015 Australia Day Honours. They include a major who planned an 'unprecedented operation' to capture a rogue Afghan sergeant who murdered three Australian diggers.
dinkum
Reliable; genuine; honest; true. This word is a shortening of fair dinkum which comes from British dialect. The compound fair dinkum 'fair dealing which is just and equitable' is recorded from Lincolnshire in 1881, and is the equivalent of West Yorkshire fair doos fair dealing. The adjective is first recorded in Australia from the 1890s. For a more detailed discussion of dinkum see the article 'The Story of Dinkum' on our blog.
1910 Sunday Times (Perth) 6 March: I'll tell you, sir, what happened, and I tell the dinkum truth.
2014 Sydney Morning Herald 29 July: The electorate is better educated than ever before, people are more financially successful and they see through the paradox that governments promise more and more but can achieve less. The starting point is to make the debate more dinkum.
dinner: done like a dinner
Comprehensively outwitted or defeated - ‘Collingwood was done like a dinner in the grand final’. The phrase was first recorded in 1847. The origin is uncertain, but a common variation is ‘done like a dog’s dinner’, which implies a meal devoured with enthusiasm, and the bowl licked clean. This may give a clue to the source of the phrase. If you are done like a dinner, you are completely and efficiently demolished.
1853 T.F. Bride Letters from Victorian Pioneers: The horse swam for a quarter of a mile down the river with the cart after him .. the driver, who remained till then on his seat on the hurdle up to his neck in water, calling out to me 'he was done like a dinner'.
2013 Courier-Mail (Brisbane) 14 November: Keep going the way they are and they will be done like a dinner for many elections to come.
dob
To inform upon (someone); to incriminate (someone). The ethic of standing by one’s mates means that many Australians take a dim view of dobbing. The word is probably related to British dialect dob meaning 'to put down an article heavily or clumsily; to throw down', and 'to throw stones etc. at a mark' (often used to describe throwing and hitting in games of marbles). Dob is first recorded in the 1950s. For a more detailed discussion of this term see the article 'The Story of Dob' on our blog.
1955 Overland v.: He came to me and dobbed in one of the carpenters for talking.
2013 S. Bisley Stillways: He used to sell single cigarettes to kids, and although it was common knowledge, he had never been busted and no one ever dobbed on him.
dolly’s wax: full up to dolly’s wax
‘Would you like more dessert?’ ‘No, I’m full up to dolly’s wax.’ This rather old-fashioned phrase means that you have eaten enough. It refers to the time before plastics were widely used, when children’s dolls had wax heads attached to cloth bodies. This example illustrates the way the origins of words and phrases can be lost with changes in technology. The expression has several variants including fed up to dolly's wax, and its meaning does not always denote being 'full' with food. First recorded in the early 20th century.
1943 Australasian (Melbourne) 10 July: There are books on this and books on that about past, present, and future international relations all deadly dull ... And I am fed up to dolly's wax with them.
2012 C. Tiffany Mateship with Birds: Every night after tea ⅆ Edna asked Harry if he'd had enough to eat. 'I'm full up to Dolly's wax', Harry would say, patting his neck.
donkey vote
(In a preferential system of voting) a vote recorded by allocating preferences according to the order in which candidates' names appear on the ballot paper; such votes viewed collectively. Voters who merely number the candidates in the order they are listed on the ballot paper (without regard for the merits of the candidates) are casting a donkey vote - that is, a stupid vote. First recorded in the early mid-20th century.
1955 Sydney Morning Herald 9 December: In previous Senate elections about 2 per cent. of voters have voted straight across the ballot paper without knowing which parties they were voting for. In South Australia this vote - the 'donkey vote' - will go to the Anti-Communists.
2001 Manly Daily 20 October: Although happy to top the ballot in Warringah, Greens candidate Keelah Lam said the only donkey votes in Warringah would come from people with no interest in politics.
Dorothy Dixer (Dorothy Dix)
A parliamentary question asked of a Minister by a member of the party in government to give the Minister the opportunity to deliver a prepared reply. It comes from Dorothy Dix, the pen-name of Elizabeth Gilmer (1870-1951), an American journalist who wrote a famous personal advice column which was syndicated in Australia. Her column came to seem a little too contrived, as if she was writing the questions as well as the answers. First recorded in the 1930s. For a discussion about the use of Dorothy Dixer in rhyming slang see the article 'Dorothies and Michelles' in our Ozwords newsletter.
1934 Canberra Times 27 July: There were many questions on trade and finance matters. One of those came from Mr Hutchin, and there were cries of 'Dorothy Dix' when he asked it ... When a Minister is anxious to make some information available, or to answer some outside criticism, he will often get a private member to ask a question on the subject.
2003 Australian (Sydney) 28 May: Like everyone else, Kevin Rudd was spellbound when diminutive Liberal MP Sophie Panopolous rose to ask a dorothy dixer. And it was not her husky voice or hair or makeup that stopped traffic, but the rows and rows of pearls .. dangling beneath her neck. 'Condolence motion to the oysters', barked Rudd.
dreamtime
(In traditional Aboriginal belief) a collection of events beyond living memory that shaped the physical, spiritual, and moral world; the era in which these occurred; an Aboriginal person's consciousness of the enduring nature of the era. The term also takes the form dreaming. Dreamtime is a translation of alcheringa - a word from the Arrernte Aboriginal language of the Alice Springs region in central Australia. The term is first recorded in the 1890s.
1963 D. Attenborough Quest Under Capricorn: Although the Dreamtime was in the past, it is also co-existent with the present, and a man, by performing the rituals, can become one with his 'dreaming' and experience eternity. It is to seek this mystical union that the men enact the ceremonies.
2015 Advertiser (Adelaide) 26 January: Australia, old as the dreamtime, From your sun-warmed dust I grew, The molecules that make me, All have been part of you.
drongo
A fool, a simpleton, an idiot. There is also a bird called a drongo. The spangled drongo is found in northern and eastern Australia, as well as in the islands to the north of Australia, and further north to India and China. It is called a drongo because that is the name of a bird from the same family in northern Madagascar. The spangled drongo is not a stupid bird. It is not a galah. One book describes it thus: 'The spangled drongo catches insects in the air, chasing them in aerobatic flight'. There is one odd story about the drongo, however: unlike most migratory birds, it appears to migrate to colder regions in winter. Some have suggested that this is the origin of the association of 'stupidity' with the term drongo. But this seems most unlikely.
So what is the true story? There was an Australian racehorse called Drongo during the early 1920s. It seems likely that he was named after the bird called the 'drongo'. He wasn't a an absolute no-hoper of a racehorse: he ran second in a VRC Derby and St Leger, third in the AJC St Leger, and fifth in the 1924 Sydney Cup. He often came very close to winning major races, but in 37 starts he never won a race. In 1924 a writer in the Melbourne Argus comments: 'Drongo is sure to be a very hard horse to beat. He is improving with every run'. But he never did win.
Soon after the horse's retirement it seems that racegoers started to apply the term to horses that were having similarly unlucky careers. Soon after the term became more negative, and was applied also to people who were not so much 'unlucky' as 'hopeless cases', 'no-hopers', and thereafter 'fools'. In the 1940s it was applied to recruits in the Royal Australian Air Force. It has become part of general Australian slang.
Buzz Kennedy, writing in The Australian newspaper in 1977, defines a drongo thus:
A drongo is a simpleton but a complicated one: he is a simpleton [of the] sort who not only falls over his feet but does so at Government House; who asks his future mother-in-law to pass-the-magic-word salt the first time the girl asks him home.... In an emergency he runs heroically in the wrong direction. If he were Superman he would get locked in the telephone box. He never wins. So he is a drongo.
The origin of the term was revived at Flemington in 1977 when a Drongo Handicap was held. Only apprentice jockeys were allowed to ride. The horses entered were not allowed to have won a race in the previous twelve months.
1941 Somers Sun 2 July: When you are called Drongo, ignore it.
2013 A. Goode Through the Farm Gate: I can't believe my drongo of a father is asking such ridiculous questions.
drop bear
A jocular name for an imaginary animal similar in appearance to a koala, with very sharp jaws and teeth, that is said to devour tourists etc. after dropping down on them from trees. The term is often associated with the fooling of gullible international tourists, and has accordingly been used this way in television advertisements. There are suggestions that the term drop bear emerged in the Second World War period (see 1982 quotation below) but the first record is from the 1980s.
1982 N. Keesing Lily on a Dustbin: The 'drop bears' are creatures of a tall story - they were invented during World War II for the benefit of gullible American servicemen. It is alleged that 'drop bears' are a dangerous kind of koala and that they drop out of trees on the heads and shoulders of bush walkers and hug them to death.
2014 Townsville Bulletin 7 November: Participants are advised to choose their start time carefully to ensure they are finished before it gets dark and the drop bears come out at 6.30pm.
drover’s dog: like a drover’s dog
Drover’s dog has been used since the 1850s in various similes, usually uncomplimentary - a head like a drover’s dog (big and ugly), all prick and ribs like a drover’s dog (lean and hungry), and leaking like a drover’s dog (as in ‘the NSW Cabinet is leaking like a drover’s dog!’). It can also mean a nonentity, as when a politician commented in 1983 that ‘a drover’s dog could lead the Labor Party to victory’.
1978 J. Colbert The Ranch: The other Harry has got a head like a drover's dog and always wears a hat.
2001 B. Courtenay: We'd heard Nancy say he'd come back like a drover's dog all prick and ribs.
ducks on the pond
Look out - female approaching! A warning cry from a male as a signal to other men that a woman is approaching a traditionally all-male environment. It is a reminder that the men should modify their language and behaviour to avoid giving offence. It was first used in shearing sheds, but is now heard in other places, especially in a pub. While the first written evidence comes from the early 1980s the phrase probably goes back several decades earlier.
1982 P. Adam-Smith When We Rode the Rails: I remember well enough years ago hearing them yell 'Ducks on the Pond!' when a sheila hove in sight but that was more to warn a man to watch his tongue.
2005 Sun-Herald (Sydney) 22 May: The pathetic and increasingly unwatched Footy Show on Channel Nine whipped up another 'ducks on the pond' furore over the proposal to include the outspoken Rebecca Wilson on their panel. Fatty Vautin and Peter Sterling reportedly held angry meetings with their producer declaring they would not speak to Wilson if she was hired.
dunny
A toilet. The dunny was originally any outside toilet. In cities and towns the pan-type dunny was emptied by the dunny man, who came round regularly with his dunny cart. Dunny can now be used for any toilet. The word comes from British dialect dunnekin meaning an 'earth closet, (outside) privy' from dung + ken 'house'. First recorded in the 1930s but dunnekin is attested in Australian sources from the 1840s.
1957 Overland x: We used ter have a snake in the dunny - lav., sir.
2000 Tracks January: The scourge of the summer festival-goer has to be the crusty dunnies.
earbash
To subject (a person) to a torrent of words; to talk at great length to; to harangue. While not a physical beating of the ears, most people can sympathise with a person who has sustained a long taking to (an ear-bashing) by a boring or obnoxious windbag (an earbasher). The verb is first recorded from the 1940s, and possibly comes from Australian military slang of the Second World War period.
1943 Argus (Melbourne) 27 November: I’ve been 'bashed' as the DI’s (drill instructors) call it, on the parade ground, 'ear bashed' by ADI (aerodrome defence instructors) lectures, and have sweated ... and sometimes trembled ... over the fearsome obstacles on the Bivouac Assault Course.
2013 M. Lucashenko Mullumbimby: This valley’s full of people that want to earbash ya.
economic rationalism
A government’s free-market approach to economic management. This approach is typically reflected in the adoption of privatisation, deregulation, ‘user pays’, and low public spending. Most Australians are surprised to discover that this is an Australian term. The corresponding term in Britain is Thatcherism, and in the United States Reaganomics. First recorded from the 1970s.
1979 Patience & Head From Whitlam to Fraser: The second strand of Labor thinking on agricultural policy can be described as economic rationalism. The ALP contains many influential spokesmen who advocate disengagement of governments from existing agricultural assistance measures .. and the encouragement of a pattern of agricultural production that is more in tune with market opportunities.
2014 Age (Melbourne) 14 November: The ideals of higher education are being compromised by economic rationalism.
emu bob
The act or process of picking up litter; a group of people doing this; the act or process of searching an area of ground for something. This term developed out of an earlier verbal form (recorded in the 1920s), emu-bob, meaning 'to pick up pieces of timber, roots, etc., after clearing or burning'. By the 1940s the verb had developed a more specific sense: 'to pick up litter'. By the 1970s the verbal form had developed into the noun. The term is used with allusion to an emu bending its neck toward the ground in search of food.
1978 Canberra Times 13 October: What a vision splendid is Mr Sim's - a nation-wide 'emu bob' of dole-bludgers, singing no doubt as they retrieve the excreta of civilisation.
2008 Northern Territory News (Darwin) 10 November: Maybe the Government could give the prisoners something useful to do and do emu bobs.
esky
A portable insulated container in which food and drink are kept cool. A common sight at barbecues, beaches, parks, and camping grounds in the summer months. Esky is from a proprietary name of a portable insulated container, earlier an ice chest, and also earlier called Eskimo. First recorded from the 1950s.
1952 Sydney Morning Herald 2 December: Take your 'refrigerator' to the picnic or tour. The Esky Auto Box keeps drinks and food cold and fresh wherever you go. Will fit in the boot of any car.
2001 T. Winton Dirt Music: They have a folding table and esky out here on the sand beside the fire.
factory
A prison for the confinement of female convicts. Also known as a female factory. The first such factory was established in 1804 at Parramatta in New South Wales. It was a place of punishment, a labour and marriage agency for the colony, and a profit-making textiles factory where women made convict clothing and blankets. There were eight other factories in the Australian convict settlements.
1806 Sydney Gazette 13 July: Catharine Eyres .. ordered to the Factory at Parramatta for the term of six months.
1832 Colonial Times (Hobart) 21 August: The lass I adore, the lass for me, Is a lass in the Female Factory.
fair go
A reasonable chance, a fair deal: small business didn’t get a fair go in the last budget. Australia often sees itself as an egalitarian society, the land of the fair go, where all citizens have a right to fair treatment. It is often used as an exclamation: fair go Kev, give the kids a turn! Sometimes it expresses disbelief: fair go—the tooth fairy? For further discussion of this term see the article 'Australia - the land of the fair go' on our blog.
1891 Brisbane Courier 25 March: The reason the shearers disappeared is that a large number of warrants have been issued for their arrest ... Both men turned pale, but struggled, calling out, 'Read the warrants to us first'. Inspector Ahern said, 'You can hear them later', and the police seized the prisoners. Both appealed to Mr. Ranking, crying out, 'Do you call this a fair go, Mr. Ranking?'
2011 Townsville Bulletin 27 August: Voting for same-sex marriage is a vote for equality, and a vote for a fair go for all lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Australians.
fairy bread
Slices of bread cut into triangles, buttered and sprinkled with tiny, coloured sugar balls called ‘hundreds and thousands’. Fairy bread is frequently served at children’s parties in Australia. The name possibly comes from the poem ‘Fairy Bread’ in Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verse, published in 1885. First recorded from the 1920s.
1929 Mercury (Hobart) 25 April: The children will start their party with fairy bread and butter and 100's and 1,000's, and cakes, tarts, and home-made cakes.
2001 U. Dubosarsky Fairy Bread: The morning of the party, Becky and her mother were in the kitchen making fairy bread. Her baby brother sat on the floor eating the bits that fell off the table.
fair suck of the sauce bottle
Steady on, be reasonable. This is one of several variations on the Australian exclamation ‘fair go’. It expresses a keen sense of injustice - 'fair suck of the sauce bottle, mate, I’m only asking for a loan till payday!' The phrase was probably originally used with reference to sauce bottle meaning 'a bottle of alcoholic liquor'. In 2006 Australian opposition leader Kevin Rudd famously used a variant of the phrase: 'fair shake of the sauce bottle'. Sometimes ‘saveloy’ or ‘sav’ is substituted for ‘sauce bottle’. The phrase ‘fair crack of the whip’ has the same meaning. Fair suck of the sauce bottle is first recorded in the 1970s. For a further discussion of the origin of the phrase see the article 'Folk Etymology in Australian English' in our Ozwords newsletter.
1986 Canberra Times 4 July: Come on NRMA, fair suck of the sauce bottle.
2006 Herald Sun (Melbourne) 13 May: In the never-ending search for justice and a fair suck of the sauce bottle, the Payneful Truth asks this week why Peter Costello's Federal Budget again ignored footy fans and let the price of a beer at the MCG stay at a ridiculous $5.20 for 425ml.
feral
As elsewhere, in Australia feral describes a domesticated animal that has gone wild. But in Australia the adjective has another meaning '(especially of a person) wild, uncontrolled; unconventional; outside the conventional bounds of society; dirty, scruffy. Feral is also used as a noun to mean 'a person living outside the conventional bounds of society; a wild or uncontrolled person. The Australian senses of the adjective and noun are first recorded in the 1980s.
(adj.) 1986 Sun (Melbourne) 27 October: The last of the so-called 'feral' women who kept vigil outside Parliament House for two weeks packed up and went home yesterday ... The women clashed with media crews and politicians in a series of well-documented incidents ... They were quite happy with the 'feral' tag. 'I really like it, in fact', one woman said. 'Untamed, not domesticated - that's what it means to us.'
(n.) 1995 Courier-Mail (Brisbane) 7 January: A haven for alternative lifestylers, Sydney yuppies and scruffy 'ferals', Byron Bay's main beach is one of the major reasons people are drawn to this town every summer.
(adj.) 2012 Northern Daily Leader (Tamworth) 4 June: They are feral lowdown scum and should be portrayed as such. They have invaded people's homes and maliciously destroyed victims' property.
firie
A firefighter. Firie follows a common pattern in Australian informal English whereby a word is abbreviated (in this case firefighter or fireman) and the -ie (or -y) suffix is added. Other examples include barbie (a barbecue), Chrissy (Christmas), and rellie (a relative). Firie is recorded from the 1980s.
1998 Manly Daily 16 October: It turned out someone, who also lives around the Warringah Mall area, had called the firies after thinking a shop was alight.
2014 Morning Bulletin (Rockhampton) 5 November: The firies came close to saving the home but it does have some extensive damage.
flash as a rat with a gold tooth
Ostentatious, showy and a bit too flashily dressed. This phrase is usually used of a man, and implies that although he may be well-dressed and well-groomed, there is also something a bit dodgy about him. In spite of a superficial smartness, he is not to be trusted. In spite of the gold tooth, he is still a rat. First recorded in the 1970s.
1978 Sun-Herald (Sydney) 27 August: Eddie is the ultimate lurk-man ... Eddie is as flash as a rat with a gold tooth.
2006 D. McNab Dodger: What brought him unstuck were his brazen schemes and lavish lifestyle. He was as flash as a rat with a gold tooth.
flat out like a lizard drinking
Extremely busy, at top speed. This is word play on two different meanings of the standard English ‘flat out’. The literal sense is to lie fully stretched out (like a lizard), and the figurative sense means as fast as possible. The phrase also alludes to the rapid tongue-movement of a drinking lizard. It is sometimes shortened, as in ‘we’re flat out like a lizard trying to meet the deadline’. First recorded in the 1930s.
1952 Meanjin: I've been flat out like a lizard since eight o'clock this morning.
2006 Townsville Bulletin 3 January: Dr Low was the only orthopaedic surgeon working in Townsville over the break and according to hospital sources was flat out like a lizard drinking.
fossick
To search or rummage for something. In the Cornish dialect, fossick means ‘to obtain by asking, to ferret out’. Cornish miners probably brought the term to Australia in the 1850s and used it to describe their search for gold. Australia inherited a number of mining terms from the Cornish, but they remain very specialised, and fossick is the only one to move out into the wider speech community.
1871 Emigrant's Wife II: I goes over to where he had thrown it, and takes out my knife and stoops down to fossick among it.
2011 L. Heidke Claudia's Big Break: 'Okay, we get the picture', said Sophie as she fossicked around in her enormous bag in search of boarding passes.
Fremantle doctor
A cool sea breeze which brings relief on a hot summer’s day. A wind blowing inland late in the day is a welcome feature of the climate in Western Australia’s south-west. Like Fremantle, many towns have given it a local name. Albany, Geraldton, Esperance, Eucla and Perth all have their doctor. The term derives from the figurative application of doctor in the West Indies to 'a cool sea breeze which usually prevails during part of the day in summer', and in South Africa to 'a strong, blustery south-east wind prevailing at the Cape', from doctor 'any agent that gives or preserves health'. Fremantle doctor is recorded from the 1870s.
1873 Herald (Fremantle) 4 January: Three or four days of a fierce westerly wind, succeeded by a strong, cool sea breeze - known up the country as the Fremantle doctor.
2002 Canberra Times 26 December: The only thing that has really taken me aback .. has been Brett Lee. At Perth, with the Fremantle Doctor up his arse, he was seriously quick.
furphy
A rumour or false report; an absurd story. Furphy comes from the name of a firm, J. Furphy & Sons Pty. Ltd., who operated a foundry at Shepparton, Victoria, and manufactured water carts - the name Furphy appeared on these carts. The term probably originated at the Broadmeadows army camp in Melbourne as a transfer from the name of the carts to the typical gossip of soldiers at sites serviced by these carts during the period of the First World War. Furphy is first recorded in 1915.
1915 J. Treloar Anzac Diary 3 February: Today’s 'furphy', for never a day goes by without at least one being created, was about lights being prohibited in camp on account of the possibility of German airship raid. Some of the troops do not suffer from lack of imagination.
2014 Courier-Mail (Brisbane) 22 September: In the age of instant gratification, rampant consumerism and materialism, men and women are being sold a series of furphies about love.
galah
The word galah comes from Yuwaalaraay and related Aboriginal languages of northern New South Wales. In early records it is variously spelt as galar, gillar, gulah, etc. The word is first recorded in the 1850s. The bird referred to is the grey-backed, pink-breasted cockatoo Eolophus roseicapillus, occurring in all parts of Australia except the extreme north-east and south-west. It is also known as the red-breasted cockatoo and rose-breasted cockatoo.
Some early settlers used the galah as food. In 1902 the Truth newspaper reports: 'The sunburnt residents of at that God-forsaken outpost of civilisation were subsisting on stewed galah and curried crow'. Some writers report that galah pie was a popular outback dish.
The galah, which usually appears in a large flock, has a raucous call, and it was perhaps this trait which produced the term galah session for a period allocated for private conversation, especially between women on isolated stations, over an outback radio network. F. Flynn in Northern Gateway (1963) writes: 'The women's radio hour, held regularly night and morning and referred to everywhere as the 'Galah Session'. It is a special time set aside for lonely station women to chat on whatever subject they like'. More generally, a galah session is 'a long chat' - A. Garve, Boomerang (1969): 'For hours the three men chatted... It was Dawes who said at last, "I reckon this galah session's gone on long enough".'
Very commonly in Australian English galah is used to refer to a fool or idiot. This figurative sense is recorded from the 1930s, and derives from the perceived stupidity of the bird. The following quotations give an indication of how the term is used:
1951 E. Lambert Twenty Thousand Thieves: 'Yair, and I got better ideas than some of the galahs that give us our orders'.
1960 R.S. Porteous Cattleman: 'The bloke on the other end of the line is only some useless galah tryin' to sell a new brand of dip'.
1971 J. O'Grady Aussie Etiket: 'You would be the greatest bloody galah this side of the rabbit-proof fence'.
From this sense arise a number of colloquial idioms. To be mad as a gumtree full of galahs is to be completely crazy. To make a proper galah of oneself is to make a complete fool of oneself. A pack of galahs is a group of contemptibly idiotic people.
g'day
An abberviation of good day, a familiar greeting, used frequently and at any hour. While the word is recorded from the 1880s, it came to international prominence in the 1980s through a series of tourism advertisements where Australian actor and comedian Paul Hogan invited people from around the world to visit Australia and say g'day.
1889 C. Praed Romance of the Station: He pulled up, nodding to Alec’s 'Good-day, Tillidge', and replying in a short, morose manner, running his words one into the other, as a bushman does, 'G’d-day, sir'.
2000 J. Harms Memoirs of a Mug Punter: I made it to the table where the prime minister was wielding his pen. He looked up. 'G'day', he said. He didn't recognise me.
geek
In International English geek means 'a person who is socially inept or boringly conventional or studious'. The sense comes from the United States, where it originally referred to an assistant at a sideshow whose purpose was to appear an object of disgust or derision. The American word appears to be a variant of geck, a Scottish word (from Dutch) meaning 'a gesture of derision; an expression of scorn or contempt'. In more recent times the word has been increasingly applied to a person who is obsessed with computers and computer technology.
In Australia, however, there is another meaning of the word geek. It means 'a look', and usually appears in the phrase to have (or take) a geek at. It is also used as a verb. This Australian sense derives from British dialect (Scottish and Northern England) keek meaning 'to look, to peep'. The Australian form geek appears as a verb in Cornish meaning 'to peep, peer, spy', and this is likely to be the same word as the northern keek. The lateness of the word in Australian English, however, suggests a borrowing from the northern dialects rather than from Cornish. Both Australian senses of the noun and verb are recorded from the early 20th century.
1954 T.A.G. Hungerford Sowers of Wind: There's a circus down by the dance-hall, a Jap show ... What about having a geek at that?
2012 Newcastle Herald 16 January: There’s vintage bikes ... The cafe has gained a steady stream of regulars for coffee, breakfast, lunch or a geek at the bikes.
gilgai
Gilgai is a word which describes a terrain of low relief on a plain of heavy clay soil, characterised by the presence of hollows, rims, and mounds, as formed by alternating periods of expansion during wet weather and contraction (with deep cracking) during hot, dry weather.
This type of terrain is described as gilgaed. A single hole is known as a gilgai, or gilgai hole. Such holes are also known as crabholes, dead-men's graves, or melon holes.
The word comes from Wiradjuri (an Aboriginal language once spoken over a vast area from southern New South Wales to northern Victoria) and Gamilaraay (an Aboriginal language spoken over a vast area of east-central New South Wales and extending into southern Queensland) gilgaay 'waterhole'. Gilgai if recorded from the 1860s.
1881 W.E. Abbott Notes of a Journey on the Darling: At the blackfellows' tanks the clay excavated is still seen beside the waterholes, while in the gilgies there is no appearance of any embankment, the ground all round being perfectly level.
2005 H.S. Kent What do you do with them on Sundays?: With all the rain that had been about, most of the gilgais would be full, which meant that we’d be drinking fresh water.
glory box
A box in which a woman accumulates items in preparation for marriage; the collection itself. In other countries it is called a hope chest or bottom drawer. Glory box is probably related to British dialect glory hole 'a place for storing odds and ends’. The term is first recorded in 1900.
1905 Brisbane Courier 10 October: A grand chance for hotel and boarding-house keepers, private householders, and all young ladies collecting for the glory box.
2000 Canberra Times 24 June: I remember girls I knew growing up in Newcastle who had glory boxes the size of rooms ... They were focused entirely on the fantasy of the day and it almost didn't matter who the groom was.
goog: full as a goog
Extremely drunk; replete with food; extremely full, packed. In Australian English a goog is an egg. It is an abbreviation of the British dialect word goggy 'a child's name for an egg', retained in Scotland as goggie. The phrase is a variation of an earlier British phrase in the same sense: full as a tick, recorded from the late 17th century. Other Australian combinations include full as a boot, full as a Bourke Street tram, and full as a pommy complaint box. Full as a goog is recorded from the 1930s.
1944 Sydney Morning Herald 17 June: The evidence of Detective Lambert, a security officer with Detective Fraser, is that defendant was 'as full as a goog'.
2011 Hawkesbury Gazette (Windsor) 30 March: I was full as a goog after my main and would have exploded if I'd attempted a dessert.
goon
Cask wine. This word is frequently found in the compound goon bag 'a wine cask, specifically the bag containing the wine’. The word is possibly a transferred use of the Australian English word goom ‘methylated spirits as an alcoholic drink’. Goom itself may derive from a south-east Queensland Aboriginal word (from Gabi-gabi, Waga-waga, and Gureng-gureng) meaning ‘water, alcohol’. The form goon may also have been influenced by an altered pronunciation of flagon. Australia There is evidence for this term from the early 1980s. For more about wine terms in Australian English see the article 'Wine in Australian English' on our blog.
1997 J. Birmingham Tasmanian Babes Fiasco: None of the wine he reviewed ever cost more than ten bucks a bottle. (In fact very few even came within cooee of that, mostly tapering off at five or six bucks per four litre 'goon'.)
2001 Sunday Mail (Brisbane) 28 October: Teenagers call it 'goon'. It is cheap and nasty white wine - for $10 you can get four or five litres of the stuff at any pub or bottle shop.
green ban
A prohibition on demolition or construction projects on sites deemed to be of historical, cultural or environmental significance, especially one imposed by a trade union. The term arose by analogy with black ban (a prohibition, especially as imposed by a trade union, that prevents work from proceeding), with the colour green being associated with the environmental lobby. Although green ban is used elsewhere, the term was recorded first in Australia in 1973.
1973 P. Thomas Taming the Concrete Jungle: A unionist coined a happy phrase for such bans to save natural bush and park. 'They're not black bans', he said; 'they're green bans.'
2014 Herald Sun (Melbourne) 13 October: We should be punching alarm buttons and throwing ballast off our sinking ship - dead weights like the debt, as well as our crippling weekend penalty rates, huge government handouts and green bans on everything from new uranium mines to coal-seam gas exploration.
grey nomad
A retired person who travels extensively within Australia, especially by campervan, caravan or motor home. The grey nomad is a product of the baby boomer generation. The term is recorded from the 1990s. For a further discussion of this term see our Word of the Month article from September 2007.
1995 Australian (Sydney) 2 December: Another rapidly growing population is the 'grey nomads' who travel from resort to resort in caravans or recreational vehicles.
2012 S. Williams Welcome to the Outback: Along with hordes of grey nomads, I spend a day checking out the Australian Stockman’s Hall of Fame.
guernsey
Guernsey is the second largest of the Channel Islands. The name is used attributively to designate things found in or associated with Guernsey. Thus the term Guernsey cow for an animal of a breed of usually brown and white dairy cattle that originated in Guernsey.
In the early nineteenth century the term Guernsey shirt arose for 'a close-fitting woollen sweater, especially one worn by sailors'. During the gold rushes in Australia in the mid nineteenth century, in a specialisation of this sense, the term guernsey was used to describe a kind of shirt worn by goldminers:
1852 F. Lancelot Australia as it Is: The usual male attire is a pair of common slop trowsers, a blue guernsey ... a broad-brimmed cabbage-tree hat.
In a further specialisation in Australian English, the term guernsey has been used since the 1860s to refer to a football jumper, especially as worn by a player of Australian Rules football:
1868 Geelong Advertiser 21 September: Ample evidence of a desperate struggle was afforded by the style in which they limped off the ground, some covered with nothing in the shape of a guernsey but rags, and some wanting even these.
From the football meaning there arose in the early 20th century the phrase to get a guernsey or be given a guernsey, meaning to win selection for a sporting team. In a widening of this sense, the phrase came to mean 'to win selection, recognition, approbation', and is commonly used in non-sporting contexts:
1957 D. Whitington Treasure upon Earth: The executive won't give me a guernsey for the Senate.
2014 Border Mail (Albury & Wodonga): The diverse range includes some films that ordinarily would be unlikely to get a guernsey outside our capital cities.
happy as Larry
Extremely happy. The origin of this phrase is unknown, but is perhaps an arbitrary partial rhyming reduplication with 'happy'. The phrase is used elsewhere but recorded earliest in New Zealand and Australia. The earliest non-Australasian evidence is Irish. Irish English has larry 'fool' from Irish learaire 'lounger, loafer', but there is no clear link to the phrase. The Dictionary of New Zealand English suggests a Scottish origin (from the Clydesdale area) larrie meaning 'joking, jesting, gibing'. The phrase is first recorded in Australian evidence from the 1880s.
1896 Alexandra & Yea Standard 10 January: The guests one and all appeared as happy as Larry, and they sang and danced - and danced and sang - with a vim that did our heart good to look upon.
2013 S. Thorne Bonzer: I put my disappointment away in a drawer, and pulling on my happy-as-Larry face, toddled down towards them.
happy little Vegemite
A cheerful person; a satisfied person. The phrase comes from a 1950s advertising jingle for the yeast-based spread Vegemite. The jingle began: ‘We're happy little vegemites, as bright as bright can be we, We all enjoy our vegemite for breakfast, lunch, and tea'. For a further discussion of Vegemite and to view the advertisement see the article 'A History of Vegemite' on our blog.
1981 Bulletin (Sydney) 14 April: Expatriate Australians living in Italy have to pay dearly to be 'happy little Vegemites'.
2012 D. Fordham Dream Keeper: We have to remember what Mummy told us, happy thoughts make for happy little Vegemites.
hard word
An importunate request (especially of a monetary or sexual nature). This term is often found in the phrase to put the hard word on: to make demands (especially monetary or sexual) on (someone). The term is from British dialect where it had various meanings including 'abuse, scandal, marriage proposal, refusal'. The Australian usage is recorded from the early 20th century.
1915 Cairns Post 29 July: Constable Geary appears to be a fine big affable member of the force, and as next Saturday is pay day, it is to be hoped he will not put the 'hard word' on too many of us.
2014 Australian Financial Review (Sydney) 1 March: It was at the Australian Open tennis in January when I first put the hard word on Seven Network commercial director Bruce McWilliam to have lunch with me on the record.
Harold Holt: to do a Harold Holt
To escape; to make a rapid departure. To do a Harold Holt is rhyming slang for bolt. The phrase is from the name of former Australian prime minister Harold Holt who disappeared, presumed drowned, while swiming at Portsea, Victoria, in 1967. As with other rhyming slang terms the rhyming element is often omitted, hence we sometimes see the forms to do a Harold and to do a Harry. The phrase is recorded from the 1980s. For a further discussion of this term see the article 'Harold Holt does a Harry' on our blog.
1990 Sun-Herald (Sydney) 25 February: Instead she does a Harold Holt early next morning, booking herself on a flight to Paris with Ivan's American Express card.
2013 Canberra Times 7 February: When I was younger and single I would never partake in goodbyes, I would always do a Harold Holt in the middle of night and by-pass the whole awkwardness in the morning.
hills hoist
The hills hoist is a rotary clothes line fitted with a hoist that is operated by a crown and pinion winding mechanism. In Australia Lance Hill is commonly thought to have invented the rotary clothes hoist, but he adapted the existing design in 1946 by including his own winding mechanism. The name hills hoist is used generically in Australia for any rotary clothes line.
As a symbol, the hills hoist has both positive and negative connotations in Australian culture. As a positive symbol it featured in the opening ceremony of the 2000 Sydney Olympics: ‘The cultural symbols of our backyard suburbia—the Hills Hoist and the lawn mower—are so respectably well entrenched that they featured at the Olympics.’ (Australian 7 October 2000). As a negative symbol it stands for the dreary sameness and ordinariness of Australian suburbia. In an interview in the Sun-Herald in 2007 Barry Humphries as Dame Edna Everage explains what would have been the Dame’s fate if she had not met Barry: ‘I would still be in a suburban house, I might even be dead ... I would have been up to my wrists in grey water with peas and mutton fat floating in it. I would have been staring through chipped venetian blinds at rusted Hills hoists and broken plastic toys. I would be locked into the rather sad Valium-infested life of so many women’.
hip-pocket nerve
An imaginary nerve that reacts whenever demands are made on one's money (especially in contexts such as government proposals to increase taxes). The term is from hip-pocket 'a trouser pocket that traditionally contains a wallet'. Hip-pocket nerve is recorded from the 1940s.
1959 Sun-Herald (Sydney) 5 July: The hip-pocket nerve is the most sensitive nerve in the body; and, maybe, when industry feels financial loss over an ailment, there'll be some high-powered research into its causation.
2014 Australian Financial Review (Sydney) 8 September: Australia's modern prosperity is now being hit by a national income squeeze as our terms of trade slide from their highest level for more than a century. This is showing up, for example, in falling real wages that inevitably will grate the hip-pocket nerve of voters.
hoon
A lout or an exhibitionist, especially a young male who drives dangerously or at reckless speed. The origin of the word is unknown. Suggestions for its origin include: an alteration of Australian English hooer 'a prostitute, a general term of abuse'; an alteration of Australian English poon 'a simpleton or fool'; a contraction of hooligan; and the Scottish word hune 'a loiterer, a drone, a lazy, silly person'.
From the 1930s hoon referred to a lout or exhibitionist, and from the 1950s it also referred to a pimp. The current sense referring to a reckless driver only emerged in the 1980s. For further discussion of this term see the article 'A Hoon by any other Name' in our Ozwords newsletter, and for a discussion of the term hoon operation see our Word of the Month article from July 2015.
1988 Age (Melbourne) 14 March: You get all sorts of abuse on late-night studies around in the inner suburbs ... Particularly when you're standing out on the road, hoons drive past with bare bums hanging out of the window fairly frequently.
2005 S. Dooley Big Twitch: It was into this habitat, at about 11.30pm, that I drove, having passed more than forty kilometres of .. hoons in souped-up cars cruising the highway in packs.
Hughie
Hughie is the rain god, and the appeal send it down Hughie is a request for a heavy fall of rain - the phrase is first recorded in 1912. Since the 1950s surfers have also implored the god's name in a request for good waves. Theories about the origin of the word Hughie range from alterations of the names Jupiter, Zeus, or Yahweh, to the classical Greek huei ‘it is raining’. For a further discussion about this term and its possible origins see the article 'Send Her Down Who-ie?' in our Ozwords newsletter.
1922 Bulletin (Sydney) 6 April: At the end of the dry, when the first few showers fall, 'Send it down, Hughie!' is the heartfelt exclamation of every eager bush-watcher.
1979 Tracks November: I’m just writing to have a bitch to Huey about one of the worst winter flat spells in memory since I’ve been surfing.
2014 Outback June: And so, on behalf of south-west Queensland, Hughie, please send her down.
ice block
A confection of flavoured and frozen water. Almost a necessity on hot summer days in Australia. The ice block is sometimes called an icy pole in Australian English - a popular brand of this confection. The term is recorded from the 1930s.
1933 Morning Bulletin (Rockhampton) 11 December: While walking across a street a boy had an ice block struck from his hand by a flash of lightning.
2014 Courier-Mail (Brisbane) 11 January: 'Not Icy Pole. An iceblock. You call them iceblocks', I reply. 'You call them iceblocks because they are iceblocks.'
illywhacker
A small-time confidence trickster. The word is probably formed from illy (with the same meaning) which is likely an alteration of the Australian word spieler meaning 'a person who engages in sharp practice; a swindler, originally a card sharper'. To whack the illy (to act as a confidence trickster) and illywhacker are first recorded in Kylie Tennant's The Battlers (1941):
An illy-wacker is someone who is putting a confidence trick over, selling imitation diamond pins, new-style patent razors or infallible 'tonics'... 'living on the cockies' by such devices, and following the shows because money always flows freest at show time. A man who 'wacks the illy' can be almost anything, but two of these particular illy-wackers were equipped with a dart game.
Illywhacker was becoming obsolescent in Australian English, but it was given new life when Peter Carey used it as the title of his 1985 novel. In that novel, we find the following passage:
What's an illywhacker?'... 'A spieler.. a trickster. A quandong. A ripperty man. A con-man.
For further discussion of this term see our Word of the Month article from June 2008.
iron lung: wouldn’t work in an iron lung
Extremely lazy. The phrase derives from the artificial respirator that kept polio patients alive by ‘breathing’ for them in the days when up to ten thousand people annually were affected by poliomyelitis ('infantile paralysis’) in Australia. When vaccinations became routine in the mid-1950s, the fear of polio diminished. The phrase is recorded from the 1970s.
1971 F. Hardy Outcasts of Foolgarah: Even the most primitive societies protect, succor and shelter the aged, but not so the affluent society with the principle of he that cannot work neither shall he eat (except Silver Tails who wouldn't work in an iron lung).
2013 Herald Sun (Melbourne) 16 June: Once upon a time, about 50 years ago, we in Australia were literate, well-mannered, well-dressed, hard-working and fairly happy. Now, we are illiterate, ill-mannered, wouldn't work in an iron lung, among the worst-dressed in the world, and overall, not very happy people. What happened, I wonder?
jackeroo
The word jackeroo was originally a Queensland term (recorded from 1840) referring to a white man who lived beyond the bounds of close settlement. Later, a jackeroo was 'a young man (frequently English and of independent means) seeking to gain experience by working in a supernumerary capacity on a sheep or cattle station'. A jackeroo is now 'a person working on such a station with a view to acquiring the practical experience and management skills desirable in a station owner or manager'. The word can also be used as a verb, meaning 'to work as a jackeroo'. The term jilleroo is sometimes used for a female jackeroo.
In 1895 A. Meston in Geographic History of Queensland proposed an Aboriginal origin for the term:
Another word used throughout Australia is jackeroo, the term for a 'newchum', or recent arrival, who is acquiring his first colonial experience on a sheep or cattle station. It gas a good-natured, somewhat sarcastic meaning, free from all offensive significance. It is generally used for young fellows during their first year or two of station life. The origin of the word is now given for the first time. It dates back to 1838, the year the German missionaries arrived on the Brisbane River, and was the name bestowed upon them by the aboriginals. The Brisbane blacks spoke a dialect called 'Churrabool', in which the word 'jackeroo' or 'tchaceroo' was the name of the pied crow shrike, Stripera graculina, one of the noisiest and most garrulous birds in Australia. The blacks said the white men (the missionaries) were always talking, a gabbling race, and so they called them 'jackeroo', equivalent to our word 'gabblers'.
The etymology proposed by Meston appears to be without foundation. There is no confirmatory evidence of a bird name tchaceroo in the Brisbane language, or of anything like this being applied to missionaries.
Is it possible that the term has an English origin? The personal name Jack is often used in contexts of manual work (e.g. a device for lifting heavy objects) and appears in such idioms as a jack of all trades.
This perhaps fits the later meanings of jackeroo, but unfortunately it does not explain the original Queensland meaning. In 1875 Campbell & Wilks in The Early Settlement of Queensland write:
A black fellow.. warned me.. that their intention was first to spear all the commandants, then to fence up the roads and stop the drays from travelling, and to starve the 'jackeroos' (strangers).
The jury is still out on this term. Is it possible that it is a Queensland Aboriginal term not for 'crow shrike' but for 'stranger'?
1869 Queenslander (Brisbane) 1 May: He seemed to think that a cove who comes into the bush as a jackeroo has nothing else to do but sit down and order the men about; but when the overseer was about he was quite another fellow and he was as quiet as a mouse.
2012 M. Hercock Desert Droving: A word of recall here about jackeroos. They were the privileged class of learner, who ate at the homestead with the manager, not with us ringers.
Jacky Howe
A (navy or black) sleeveless singlet cut nearly to the waist under the arms to give freedom of movement. The Jacky Howe is worn especially by shearers and other rural workers. It was named after the style of singlet worn by shearer John Robert (‘Jacky’) Howe who established a world shearing record by hand-shearing 321 sheep in 7 hours and 40 minutes at Alice Downs, Queensland, in the 1890s. His world record stood until 1950 when it was broken by a shearer using a machine. Jacky Howe is first recorded in 1900.
1925 Cairns Post 24 March: You know, Mr Editor, those Jacky Howes are cool and comfortable, are they not?
2011 M. Thornton Jackaroo: In his Jackie Howe, his biceps bulge, the size of footballs.
jumbuck
Jumbuck is an Australian word for a 'sheep'. It is best known from Banjo Paterson's use of it in Waltzing Matilda.
Two of the earliest appearances of the term show Aborigines using it in pidgin English:
1824 Methodist Missionary Society Records: To two Brothers of mine, these monsters exposed several pieces of human flesh, exclaiming as they smacked their lips and stroked their breasts, 'boodjerry patta! murry boodjerry - fat as jimbuck!!' i.e. good food, very good, fat as mutton.
1842 Port Phillip Patriot 19 July: The villains laughed at and mocked us, roaring out 'plenty sheepy', 'plenty jumbuck', (another name of theirs for sheep).
The origin of the word is not known. It may possibly be from an Aboriginal language, or it may be an Aboriginal alteration of an English phrase such as jump up. Some suggested etymologies are very fanciful indeed. In 1896 a writer in the Bulletin suggested:
The word 'jumbuck' for sheep appears originally as jimba, jombock, dambock, and dumbog. In each case it meant the white mist preceding a shower, to which a flock of sheep bore a strong resemblance. It seemed the only thing the aboriginal imagination could compare it to.
Whatever the case, jumbuck was a prominent word in the pidgin used by early settlers and Aborigines to communicate with one another, and was thence borrowed into many Australian Aboriginal languages as the name for the introduced animal, the sheep. For a further discussion of jumbuck, including its possible origin in Malay, see a previous 'Mailbag' article in our newsletter Ozwords.
1847 Argus (Melbourne) 22 October: Shearing is the great card of the season, and no settler being the owner of jumbucks can give a straight answer upon any other, than this all absorbing topic.
1981 P. Barton Bastards I have Known: My favourite was a little grey mare that ... knew more about handling sheep than most sheep dogs. She sensed the first day I was on her that I was a novice with the jumbucks.
kangaroo
Any of the larger marsupials of the chiefly Australian family Macropodidae, with short forelimbs, a tail developed for support and balance, long feet and powerful hind limbs, enabling a swift, bounding motion. Perhaps the most well-known Australian English word, kangaroo comes from the Guugu Yimithirr Aboriginal language of far north Queensland. For a more detailed discussion of kangaroo, and the many words deriving from it, see our article 'Kangaroo: the international and regional word' on the Oxford Dictionaries blog, and the article 'Kangaroo: A First Australian' in our newsletter Ozwords.
king-hit
A sudden, damaging blow; a knock-out punch; an unfair punch. This term is recorded from the late 19th century. In more recent years the term has been mentioned in relation to 'one-punch' assaults in Australian cities. These assaults are usually carried out by intoxicated young men in the vicinity of nightclub and hotel venues. This type of assault often takes the form of a single unprovoked and unexpected hit to the victim's head, sometimes resulting in serious head injuries or death. In this context there have been calls to replace the term king-hit with 'coward punch'. King-hit is also used as a verb.
1898 Evening News (Sydney) 2 September: He would not hit a man on the cheek. He would give him the 'King hit' - on the point - which would knock him out.
2014 Courier-Mail (Brisbane) 26 January: There is no trace of a fair go in a king hit or coward punch, as it should be known.
koori
The word koori is now well established in Australian English, but it continues to cause confusion and misunderstanding.
Many Aborigines dislike the terms 'Aborigine' and 'Aboriginal' since these terms have been foisted on them, and they carry a lot of negative cultural baggage. Not surprisingly, they have looked for alternative words, and instead of 'Aborigine' many prefer to use the word for a 'person' from a local language.
In order to understand the history of the word koori we need to bear in mind the fact that when the Europeans arrived here there were about 250 languages spoken in Australia. Way back in the past, they were no doubt related, but most of them were as different from one another as English is different from Italian or Hindi.
Some languages of south-east Australia (parts of New South Wales and Victoria) had a word - coorie, kory, kuri, kooli, koole - which meant 'person' or 'people'. In the 1960s, in the form koori, it came to be used by Aborigines of these areas to mean 'Aboriginal people' or 'Aboriginal person'. It was a means of identification. But because of the wide variety of Aboriginal languages and cultures, koori has not gained Australia-wide acceptance, being confined to most of New South Wales and to Victoria.
Other terms are preferred in other regions: Murri over most of south and central Queensland, Bama in north Queensland, Nunga in southern South Australia, Nyoongah around Perth, Mulba in the Pilbara region, Wongi in the Kalgoorlie region, Yamitji in the Murchison River region, Yolngu in Arnhem Land, Anangu in central Australia, and Yuin on the south coast of New South Wales. For a while Tasmanian Aborigines called themselves koories, and then Tasmanian koories to distinguish themselves from the mainland koories. Recently, we have gathered evidence for the term muttonbird koories, a reference to the importance of muttonbirding to their traditional way of life, especially on the islands off the Tasmanian coast. More recently, the tribal or language term Palawa is increasingly being used.
kylie
Most people associate the term kylie with the female personal name (as in Kylie Minogue). In Western Australia, however, it is a term for what is known elsewhere as a 'boomerang'. The word came into Australian English from Noongar, an Aboriginal language spoken over a large extent of south-western Western Australia, including present-day Perth, Albany, and Esperance. The word also occurs in other western and central Australian languages.
The word first appears in English in G.F. Moore's Diary of Ten Years Eventful Life of an Early Settler in Western Australia (published in 1884, but referring to an 1835 diary entry):
I am sorry that nasty word 'boomerang' has been suffered to supercede the proper name. Boomerang is a corruption used at Sydney by the white people, but not the native word, which is tur-ra-ma; but 'kiley' is the name here.
While early writers use various spellings (as with Moore's kiley), in the twentieth century the spelling kylie is standard. The female personal name Kylie may be based on this word.
lairy
Flashily dressed; showy; socially unacceptable. The term is a transferred use of British slang lairy (or leery) meaning 'knowing, conceited'. Our first evidence for the term comes from September 1898 when the Melbourne journal, Tocsin, described someone thus: Height, about 5' 6 1/2in.; style 'lairy'. Shop made suit, tight fit and cheap. Flower in slouched hat, well over eyes. 'Silk' rag around neck.
The precise spelling of lairy was not immediately apparent, and for many years the variants leary and leery were common. These appear now to have faded away. Despite the uncertainty of its spelling, lairy nonetheless quickly became a standard term in Australian English, and, from the early twentieth century, writers felt able to use it without the need for quotation marks. In 1907 for example C.W. Chandler wrote in Darkest Adelaide: Sitting on the seat with him was a nice specimen of the Australian larrikin. Not so leery, perhaps, as his prototypes of Melbourne and Sydney, but a choice specimen of his class nevertheless.
The popularity of the adjective lairy quickly spawned a noun and a verb to match. The noun lair, meaning 'one who displays vulgarity, esp. in dress or behaviour; a show-off; a larrikin' was in use by the 1920s as in C.E. Sayers, Jumping Double: A hit behind the ear from one of those back street lairs. And it remains in use today, often in the collocation mug lair, applied to someone supposed to be both stupid and vulgar, as in the description published in the Australian in August 1982 of a particular Carlton half-forward flanker as 'a mug lair and a show pony'.
The verb lair is most frequently used as a verb phrase in combination with up to mean 'behave in the manner of a lair', and has produced another adjectival use as in G. Savage, The House Tibet (1989): At Legal Aid I got landed with this callous bitch all laired up with these big shoulder pads and earrings like baby crocodiles.
By the 1950s the verb had produced a new extended form, lairise, with an identical meaning. In 1960 for example the Northern Territory News commented: All they seem to think of these days is lairizing around in ten-gallon hats, flash, colored shirts, gabardine riding breeches and polished riding boots chasing a bit of fluff. And in 1987 the Australian, in its description of a football match, said: Certain players ... instead of doing the percentage things ... turned it into a bit of show-off time and started lairising.
lamington
A square of sponge cake coated in chocolate icing and desiccated coconut. The origin of this term has been hotly debated. The cake is popularly associated with the name of Charles Wallace Baillie, Baron Lamington (1860-1940), Governor of Queensland (1895-1901), and although the dates of the earliest recipes line up with the governership, the attribution does not appear until the 1970s. The early New Zealand evidence has a variety of spellings including leamington and lemmington, which may point to a different origin. For a further discussion about the possible origins of this term see the article 'Lords and Lamingtons' on our blog.
1924 Argus (Melbourne) 3 September: The icing may be poured over the lamingtons, but it is simpler to dip the cake into the icing.
2006 West Australian (Perth) 24 May: They jostle for space with tarts and pies and panini and sour-dough rolls and giant cupcakes and biodynamic everything ... And you look at it and say to yourself, 'God, I could murder a lamington'.
larrikin
A person who acts with apparently careless disregard for social or political conventions; a person who is unsophisticated but likeable and good-hearted, 'a rough diamond'; a joker. This well-known Australian term is recorded from the 1890s, but originally the term was quite pejorative. From the 1860s into the early 20th century a larrikin was 'a young urban rough, especially a member of a street gang; a hooligan'. The term comes from British dialect larrikin 'a mischievous or frolicsome youth', ultimately a form of larking (about) 'indulging in mischievous fun', also attested in British dialect as larack about. For a more detailed discussion about larrikins in Australian history see the article 'The Leary Larrikin' in our newsletter Ozwords.
1891 Truth (Sydney) 15 March: Jackeroos .. are such fun, and vary, from the sensible one, in a fair way for promotion, to the larrikin, who will either sling station life or hump the swag.
1997 T. Ferguson Left, Right and Centre: They appealed to the irreverence of the Australian spirit, the larrikin in us all.
lay-by
A system of payment whereby a purchaser puts a deposit on an article which is then reserved by the retailer until the full price is paid. The retailer lays the article by until payment is complete. The lay-by system first appeared in the early 20th century. By the mid-20th century, shops extolled customers to ‘Lay-by now!’ but the introduction of credit cards in the 1970s has slowly changed buying patterns. Lay-by is also used as a verb.
1918 Barrier Miner (Broken Hill) 20 April: In the leading business establishments of Sydney a system of purchase, called the 'lay by' has been introduced ... It is said that the storerooms of most of the drapery establishments in Sydney are filled to their utmost capacity with things being bought on the 'lay by' system.
2013 Australian (Sydney) 1 October: He was hopeful of a rebound in spending on toys in the lead-up to Christmas, after a poor mid-year sales period when parents traditionally begin buying toys on lay-by ahead of the festive season.
life wasn’t meant to be easy
A catchphrase popularised by Malcolm Fraser (Prime Minister 1975–83) and later attributed by him to the British playwright George Bernard Shaw. Fraser first used the phrase in his 1971 Alfred Deakin Lecture. The phrase is now used as a stock response to complaints or whinges of any kind - 'I have to take the kids to soccer training every night this week'. 'Well, life wasn’t meant to be easy!' Shaw’s full quotation (from his 1921 work Back to Methuselah) is 'life is not meant to be easy, my child; but take courage: it can be delightful’.
1985 Courier-Mail (Brisbane) 4 June: Life wasn’t meant to be easy for Labor Governments.
2013 Age (Melbourne) 19 January: Follow your instincts and impulses. Forget that masochistic 'no pain, no gain; life wasn't meant to be easy' rot.
light on the hill
The phrase is used allusively to refer to the ideals of the Australian Labor Party. In 1949 Prime Minister Ben Chifley spoke of the Labor goal of social justice as 'the light on the hill, which we aim to reach by working for the betterment of mankind'. Since then the light on the hill has become a catchphrase in Australian politics, used to evoke traditional Labor values.
1967 R.G. Menzies Afternoon Light: The Socialist objective, his 'light on the hill', must not be blotted out or obscured in this way.
2013 Australian (Sydney) 18 November: Labor remains .. the party of labour. Trapped in its myths, it invests itself with a historic mission of leading 'working people' to the 'light on the hill': a light whose glare now serves mainly to hide corrupt deals and tarnished ideals.
little Aussie battler
In Australia a battler is a person who struggles for a livelihood, and who displays great determination in so doing. This sense is first recorded in 1896 in a Henry Lawson story. Such a person is now often described as a little Aussie battler, a phrase first recorded in the 1970s.
1974 Australian Women's Weekly (Sydney) 19 June: Known far and wide as 'the little Aussie battler', Ernie Sigley battles on regardless with his undoubted talent and the team of regulars on his entertaining show.
2003 Illawarra Mercury (Wollongong) 19 February: He was the little Aussie battler who pushed his mower from suburb to suburb when his van was repossessed because he had too many freeloaders on the books.
mad as a cut snake
Very angry; crazy; eccentric. The phrase also takes the form mad as a snake. The different senses of the phrase derive from the fact that ‘mad’ has two main senses - ‘crazy’ and ‘angry’. The ‘crazy’ sense is illustrated by ‘that bloke wearing a teapot on his head is as mad as a cut snake’, and the angry sense is illustrated by ‘be careful of the boss this afternoon, he’s as mad as a cut snake’. There are similar phrases in Australian English including mad as a meat axe and mad as a gumtree full of galahs. Mad as a (cut) snake is first recorded in 1900.
1900 Queensland Times (Ipswich) 12 June: A man named John Molloy was brought up at the Police Court ⅆ on suspicion of being of unsound mind ... Molloy was taken to Ipswich, examined (I am informed) by a medical man, and discharged. Some surprise has been expressed at this course, for, according to all accounts, the man was, to use a colloquial expression, 'as mad as a snake'.
2013 Sunday Telegraph (Sydney) 10 March: At the time his colleagues accused him of being as mad as a cut snake.
magic pudding
An endlessly renewable resource. The term comes from a famous Australian children's book, Norman Lindsay's The Magic Pudding (1918), in which the pudding renews itself as soon as slices are cut out of it. Magic pudding is often found in political contexts, the first recording of it is when it was used by the then Australian treasurer Paul Keating (see quotation below).
1985 Courier-Mail (Brisbane) 5 July: Mr Keating had warned throughout the tax debate that there was no 'magic pudding' to provide tax cuts for all.
2013 Herald Sun (Melbourne) 8 March: The key here is what the money is spent on, with infrastructure projects holding out the prospect of being a magic pudding that can create jobs, increase productivity and improve state government revenue.
mallee bull: fit as a mallee bull
Very strong and healthy. A mallee bull is one that lives in mallee country - poor, dry country where small scrubby eucalypt trees called mallee grow. Any creature that survives in such difficult conditions would have to be tough and fit. The word mallee come from the Victorian Aboriginal language Woiwurrung, but is also found in other indigenous languages of Victoria, South Australia, and southern New South Wales. The first evidence for the phrase is from 1879 where it appears in the form strong as a mallee bull.
1966 R.A.N. News (Sydney) 27 May: The patient is now fit as a malee bull.
2011 M. Groves Outback Life: He was as fit as a Mallee bull and drop-dead gorgeous!
manchester
Household linen, and the department of a shop where such goods are sold. The term is an elliptical and transferred use of Manchester wares or Manchester goods 'cotton goods of the kind manufactured in Manchester' in Lancashire in England. The city of Manchester in northern England was the centre of the English cotton industry in the 1700s and 1800s. London sales assistants are reputed to be quite baffled by Australian customers enquiring where in the store to find manchester. The word is recorded from the 1840s.
1935 Australian Woman's Mirror (Sydney) 2 July: Thrifty Housewives should not delay to choose from these Manchester Values.
2005 Age (Melbourne) 19 February: My partner and I can't agree on the bath mat ... Please help, as I don't want bathroom manchester to tear us apart.
mate
This word is used in various ways in Australian English as it is in other Englishes. It can refer to a close friend or acquaintance, but can also be used ironically. It is most most frequently used as a mode of address implying equality and goodwill. For a very detailed discussion about the word mate in Australian English see 'The Story of Mate' on our blog.
matilda
The collection of possessions and daily necessaries carried by a person travelling, usually on foot, in the bush; especially the blanket-wrapped roll carried, usually on the back or across the shoulders, by an itinerant worker; a swag. This iconic name for a swag is best know from the title of the song 'Waltzing Matilda'. The term is a transferred but unexplained use of the female name. Matilda is recorded from the 1880s. For a further discussion of the term and its possible German origins see the article 'Chasing our Unofficial National Anthem: Who Was Matilda? Why did she Waltz?' in our newsletter Ozwords.
1905 Sydney Morning Herald 27 May: Many a swagman adds a dog to his outfit, and the animal ranks much higher in his affections than 'Matilda', which, it might be explained, is swagmanese for swag.
1996 W. Anderson Warrigal's Way: Lugging my matilda, I walked down Normanby Road towards the Port, Port Melbourne.
Melba: do a Melba
Used allusively of a person who retires but returns to their profession, especially one who makes repeated 'farewell' performances or comebacks. The phrase refers to Australian operatic soprano Dame Nellie Melba (Helen Porter Mitchell) 1861–1931, whose stage name derived from her birthplace, Melbourne. She announced her retirement in 1924, but gave ‘farewell’ performances at Covent Garden in 1926, in Sydney, Melbourne, and Geelong in 1928, and then sang in England over the next two years. The phrase is recorded from the 1940s.
1959 Sun-Herald (Sydney) 11 January: Gladys Moncrieff .. has no intention of doing a Melba on us.
2012 Australian (Sydney) 17 November: Unless he does a Melba, this means the 2010 novel Nemesis will stand as his 31st and last work of fiction.
motza
A large sum of money, especially as won in gambling; a fortune; a great amount. There is also a transferred sense meaning 'a certainty'. Motza can be spelt in various forms including motsa, motser, and motzer. The word is probably derived from the Yiddish word matse meaning '(unleavened) bread'. Motza is recorded from the early 20th century.
1911 Sunday Times (Perth) 1 January: He just managed to squeeze home on the post, much to the delight of the bookmakers, who were 'up against' Darjeeling for what the sporting fraternity would term a 'motzer'.
2012 Australian (Sydney) 17 November: Unless he does a Melba, this means the 2010 novel Nemesis will stand as his 31st and last work of fiction.
moz: put the moz on
To exert a malign influence upon (a person), to jinx. Moz is an abbreviated form of mozzle, which is derived from the Hebrew word mazzal meaning 'luck'. It probably came into Australian English via German Yiddish speakers. Put the moz on is recorded from the 1920s.
1963 H. Porter The Watcher on a Cast-Iron Balcony: Mother is wishing Miss Brewer some female ill, is putting the mozz on her.
2001 H. Menzies Ducks Crossing: As the tide goes up and down the oysters grow and three years later Bob's your uncle, you've got yourself a motza selling to the fish market in Sydney.
mozzie
A mosquito. Mozzie (also spelt mossie) follows a very common pattern in Australian English whereby a word is abbreviated and the -ie (or -y) suffix is added. This suffix works as an informal marker in the language. Mozzie is now used elsewhere but is originally and chiefly Australian. The word is recorded from the early 20th century.
1916 Punch (Melbourne) 6 April: Here in Victoria we go right along, cursing, the 'mossies', fighting them every night, losing good sleep through them, and yet never attempting to use the nets.
2006 A. Hyland Diamond Dove: Jack reckoned Bickie could smell water the way a mozzie can smell blood.
mullet: like a stunned mullet
Dazed, stupefied; uncomprehending; unconscious. The phrase alludes to the goggle-eyed stare (and sometimes gaping mouth) of a fish that has been recently caught and made unconscious. A person typically looks like a stunned mullet as the result of a sudden shock or surprise. The phrase is recorded from 1918.
1918 Examiner (Launceston) 11 January: We finally dug into shell holes in the dark opposite the Boche trenches, and waited there like 'stunned mullets' for three hours with the Huns shelling us.
2001 W. Dodson The Sharp End: I eventually managed to get him handcuffed and searched while my team-mates sat on their haunches and watched like a pair of stunned mullets.
muster
The gathering together of (frequently widely dispersed) livestock in one place for the purpose of branding, counting, etc.; a round-up of stock. This sense of muster is transferred from a chiefly miliatry use of the word where it meant 'an act of calling together soldiers, sailors, prisoners, etc.; an assembling of people for inspection, exercises, etc. ... a roll-call'. In Australia this military sense was applied specifically to a routine assembly of convicts in order to ascertain that they were all present. Also in the colonial period muster referred to a census of the whole population (of the colony, of a district, etc.). The transferred sense to lifestock is recorded from the 1830s.
1852 G.C. Mundy Our Antipodes: The riding after cattle in the bush, for the purpose of driving them in or collecting them for muster, is very hard and sometimes dangerous work.
2013 Gympie Times 16 March: This week he took Craig Warhurst on a muster to show how much help a good dog can be to a property owner.
nasho
Compulsory military training, as introduced under the National Service Act of 1951. It is also a name for a person who underwent National Service under the Act. The word nasho is an abbreviation of national with an added -o, a common feature of Australian word formation—compare garbo (‘garbage collector’), journo (‘journalist’), and milko (‘milk man’). In the past nasho was seen as a derogatory term within the permanent military force. The term was first recorded in 1953, but it is especially associated with those national servicemen who fought in Vietnam.
1973 Bulletin (Sydney) 27 January: Some 'nashos' have shown outstanding zeal by signing on with the Regular Army.
1980 C. James, Unreliable Memoirs: National Service was designed to turn boys into men and make the Yellow Peril think twice about moving south. It was universally known as Nasho.
Ned Kelly: as game as Ned Kelly
Fearless in the face of odds; foolhardy. The phrase derives from the name of Australia's most famous bushranger, who was hanged for his crimes in 1880. Opinion on Kelly has remained divided, his critics seeing him as the worst type of colonial thug, while others have represented him as a champion of the underdog, a brave opponent of heartless authority, and a staunch Australian nationalist. A number of terms and phrases derived from the name Ned Kelly are found in Australian English and are discussed in a 2009 article 'Who's Robbing this Coach? Ned Kelly and Australian English' in our newsletter Ozwords. For a discussion of the term Ned Kelly beard see our Word of the Month article from March 2015. And for a further discussion of as game as Ned Kelly see our blog . The phrase is first recorded in the 1920s.
1936 Sydney Morning Herald 8 January: When the police asked what had been done with the man's money, Sloane said, 'You had better find out. You can take me and put me in for two years if you like. I'm no squib; I'm as "game" as "Ned" Kelly. I went to the war when I was 15'.
1997 D. Ireland, The Chosen: The other kids loved him, he was never vicious or cowardly and so brave that he was game as Ned Kelly and had a heart like Phar Lap's.
2012 Australian Financial Review (Sydney) 1 August: How bonza is Leisel Jones to be fifth fastest 100m breaststroker in the world, proving the critics wrong. She's as game as Ned Kelly, that girl.
neenish tart
A small sweet pastry case filled with mock cream, and sometimes including jam, topped with brown and white or pink and white icing. While the origin for this term is unknown the spelling variants neinich, nenische, and nenish suggest that it may derive from a Germanic language. The earliest evidence takes the form neenish cake and dates to 1895. The early evidence also reveals that there have been various recipes for this tart over the years.
1902 Sydney Mail 10 December: Neenish Tarts ... On the top of the whole spread the thinnest layer possible of icing made with the white of an egg and icing sugar sufficient to form a thick paste. With coffee, colour one half a pale yellow, and the other half a deep brown. Ice the tarts carefully, having the top of each half dark, and the other half light, the division being exactly in the centre. Care must be taken that the two colours do not run into each other.
2011 S. McCullough, The Meaning of Existence: By the time the gig rolled around, about half my face had peeled. I looked like a living, breathing Neenish Tart.
Noah
A shark. The word is derived from rhyming slang Noah's ark, but as is common with many rhyming slang terms the rhyming final element is often omitted. Other examples of rhyming slang in Australian English include: Al Capone 'phone', Barry Crocker 'a shocker', billy lid 'kid', meat pie 'a try (in rugby)', and mystery bag 'snag (a sausage)'. For a more detailed discussion of rhyming slang in Australian English see the article 'Does Australian Slang still Rhyme?' in our newsletter Ozwords. Noah's ark can be found from the late 19th century in Australian English as a rhyming slang term for 'nark', meaning an informer. The shark sense is first recorded from the 1930s.
1936 Western Argus (Kalgoorlie) 12 May: They were about 70 yards from the shore and noticed a 12 ft. shark swimming about. As the 'Noah's Ark' seemed to avoid bait thrown on a line, they decided to experiment with fracteur.
1979 B. Humphries, Bazza Comes Into his Own: A lotta them beaches in Oz are full of Noahs.
1995 T. McGowan, Crew: 'Noahs love surf carnivals', Jason said.
no worries
No bother, no trouble; an assurance that all is fine. This colloquial version of the phrase ‘not to worry’ is very common in Australia, and also occurs in other forms such as ‘no worries, mate’, ‘no wuckers’, and ‘nurries’. It implies that everything will come right, or be taken care of, and that we should all be relaxed —‘Will you help me do my homework, Dad? It’s due tomorrow!’ ‘No worries, son’. First recorded in the 1960s.
1978 Westerly i: Thanks very much. No worries, she said, making space for my gear on the back seat.
2000 R. Smith, Cold Beer and Crocodiles: I thanked him for the tip. 'No worries.'
ocker
An uncouth, uncultivated, or aggressively boorish Australian male, stereotypically Australian in speech and manner; a typical or average Australian male. Ocker is also used as an adjective meaning characteristically Australian; uncouth, uncultured, or aggressively boorish in a stereotypically Australian manner.
In Australia ocker has been used as a nickname and familiar form of address for a man since the early 20th century. Originally the nickname was applied to a person named Oscar, but its application widened through the 20th century as this quotation demonstrates:
Traveller, arriving late at the airport to find the flight fully booked, was told by the cheerful airline worker: 'Sorry, ocker, the Fokker's chocker'. (Northern Territory News, 25 August 1982)
But we need to turn the 1960s for the more derogatory use of ocker. And we need to turn to the world of Australian television. In the Mavis Bramston Show (1963-68) Ron Frazer (1924-83) played the character Ocker. Gerry Wilkes in Exploring Australian English, writes:
The talented comedian Ron Frazer appeared in a series of TV sketches from which I retain a mental picture of him leaning on a bar, speaking with a broad Australian accent, probably wearing shorts and thongs, and periodically sinking a glass of beer. As that character was called 'Ocker', ocker became the name of the type.
Soon after this, the word was used as a derisive nickname for a person who exploits an exaggerated Australian nationalism. Thus in King's Cross Whisper, 1969, we find:
Sir Ocker Fairfax, leader of the famous Foot and Mouth Jumping Brigade, received his gong for devising Operation Skippy.
Ocker is usually applied to men but there is evidence for the feminine forms ockerette and ockerina from the 1970s. Ocker is still commonly heard in Australian English although the word bogan is now more common in some contexts.
oil
Information or news. This is a figurative use of oil as the substance essential to the running of a machine, and it was first recorded during the First World War.
1916 Anzac Records Gazette (Alexandria, Egypt), 4 March: An acquaintance greets you with ... ‘What’s the oil’.
1941 K.S. Prichard Moon of Desire: Like to come down to the saddling paddock… If there’s any oil about for the next race, we may as well have it.
2000 S. Maloney Big Ask: He put his plate down, as if the subject had ruined his appetite, parked his elbows on the table and gave me the oil.
Oil is often found in the terms dinkum oil and good oil, both also occurring in the context of the First World War. In wartime the camps and trenches were rife with rumour, and the soldiers’ thirst for accurate information is reflected in these terms. Dinkum is an Australianism meaning ‘reliable’ or ‘genuine', and dinkum oil means ‘reliable information’ or ‘an accurate report’. For more information about dinkum oil and other words from the Gallipoli campaign, see our blog Anzac: Words from Gallipoli .
1915 Argus (Melbourne) 9 June: Gallipoli… Our lads commenced to pinch themselves to make sure they were really under fire. They had been disappointed so often that now they could hardly believe they had the real thing. I heard one man say, ‘Saida the dinkum oil at last; no more furpheys;’ and that was the feeling all round.
2014 Sydney Morning Herald 14 July: What you write about your life in your autobiography is a little like what you say when under oath. When you call that autobiography This is My Life it is a further affirmation that what I am telling you is the dinkum oil.
The good oil means ‘reliable, and therefore welcome, information’.
1918 Gippsland Times (Sale) 20 May: I have never left my unit since I joined, only a ten days' Blighty leave. Next leave will consist of 14 days. It will soon be four years for me, and I can give you the good oil—Australia will do me!
2010 J. Elias Sin Bin: It wouldn't have been too hard to get the good oil from his New South Wales colleagues. Bennett, however, didn't say a word to me about anything aside from football.
on the sheep’s back
A phrase used to allude to wool as the source of Australia’s national prosperity. The notion is often expressed as riding on the sheep’s back, and sometimes as living off the sheep’s back. For much of Australia’s recent history wool has been the basis of the national economy and the country’s major export. The first wool exports from Australia to Britain began in the 1820s, and the industry boomed throughout the 19th century and beyond. Despite setbacks such as drought, world war, and depression, wool continued its traditional dominance until the mid-20th century.
1924 Sydney Morning Herald 30 July: Australia, said Mr Dunbabin, might be on the sheep's back to-day, but in its infancy it was for some time on the whale's back. It was whale oil, whale bone, sealskins, and seal oil that provided the first important export staples of Australia.
1965 G. McInnes Road to Gundagai: We were reminded by politicians and editors, and of course at school, ad nauseum, that Australia ‘lives off the sheep’s back’.
2014 Weekly Times (Melbourne) 16 July 84/1 So Australia may still be riding on the sheep's back, but clearly it's what's under the fleece that is gaining more and more attention.
on the wallaby
The word wallaby (used to describe many smaller marsupials of the family Macropididae) is a borrowing into English from the Sydney Aboriginal language. It first appears in written form in 1793.
The term wallaby track is first used to describe the path worn by a wallaby:
1846 J.L. Stokes Discoveries in Australia: In some parts of the tall scrub were wallaby tracks.
By the late 1840s the term had been transferred to the route followed by a person who journeys through the country, especially in search of seasonal work. It often occurs in the phrase on the wallaby track and in in the abbreviated form on the wallaby:
1849 Stephen's Adelaide Miscellany: The police themselves are usually well-treated in the bush.. they make a 'round' through the district, and get a meal at every hut, and one man from every said hut (besides those mobs on the 'wallaby track') stops for a night at the police-station in return.
1893 J.A. Barry Steve Brown's Bunyip: I'm on the wallaby, looking for shearing, and, worse luck, haven't got no gold.
1932 J. Truran Green Mallee: South Australia was still a long way off; too far for sore feet that were not used to the wallaby-track.
2000 C. Walker Buried Country: Harry, Wilga says 'was more or less a drifter'. He left Sydney, went on the wallaby again.
The phrase on the wallaby is also commonly found in a transferred and figurative sense meaning 'on the move' or 'on the road':
1918 7th Field Artillery Brigade Yandoo: Next morning, the Brigade was on the 'wallaby'.
2005 Cairns Post 18 August: As a local in my 60s, managing on a pension, last year I set off on my life's dream of going 'on the wallaby' around Australia.
Oz
Australia. The word Oz reproduces in writing the pronunciation of an abbreviation of Aussie, Australia, or Australian. The first evidence appears as Oss in 1908, and this form is likely to rhyme with boss. Overwhelmingly the later evidence is for the Oz spelling, with the final sound pronounced as ‘z’. (Occasionally the word is written as Aus, but pronounced the same way as Oz.) It is possible that the form Oz was influenced by The Wizard of Oz, a film that gained worldwide popularity following its release in 1939. The first record of Oz meaning ‘Australia’ appears not long after this in 1944, in the context of a wartime troop newsletter:
1944 Barging About: Organ of the 43rd Australian Landing Craft Co. 1 September: All the tribes of Oz did gather together.
1971 B. Humphries Bazza Pulls It Off: If they guess I’m from Oz the shit will really hit the fan!
2001 Outback August: We both hope to return to Oz shortly.
Oz is also used as an adjective, meaning ‘Australian’, and this is recorded from the early 1970s.
1972 Bulletin (Sydney) 10 June: The Oz habit of shaking hands while looking away at an angle of ninety degrees.
2005 Sydney Morning Herald 22 July (Metro Supplement): The vocals veer from fast-paced raps to more introspective spoken word, the Oz accent adding a distinct flavour.
pavlova
A meringue dessert with a soft centre, topped with whipped cream and fresh fruit. It was named after the Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova, who toured Australia and New Zealand in 1926 to great acclaim. The pavlova (also formerly called pavlova cake) is claimed as a national dessert by both countries, and there has been much discussion about where it was invented. It is clear that the term pavlova is first recorded in New Zealand in 1927, but in this instance it refers to a moulded, multi-layered jelly dessert. The first New Zealand reference to the more familiar meringue dessert occurs in a 1933 cookery book. The first Australian reference to the classic dish occurs two years later. The shape and appearance of the pavlova may originally have been intended to suggest a ballerina’s tutu.
1935 Advocate (Burnie) 14 September: There are several different varieties of Pavlova cake. The most elaborate consists of alternate layers of meringue, marshmallow, whipped cream and fruit filling, piled high to make the most luxurious party dish.
2004 Northern Territory News (Darwin) 11 November: His signature dish is an emu egg pavlova.
If the Kiwis can claim the first evidence for pavlova, Australia can claim the first evidence of the common abbreviation pav, first recorded in 1966.
2013 Sydney Morning Herald 21 December: Swap the Christmas pud for a great big festive trifle stuffed with fresh fruit and jelly or a pav oozing with cream and raspberries.
pineapple: to get the rough end of the pineapple
To get a raw deal, or to receive unfair or inequitable treatment. The force of the phrase derives partly from the fact that either end of a pineapple is ‘rough’, although the end with the prickly leaves is very rough indeed. This expression is recorded first in 1959, and the early evidence is for the form to get the wrong end of the pineapple. From the 1970s onwards the ‘rough end’ takes over from the ‘wrong end’ as the more common form of the expression. The equivalent American saying is ‘to get the fuzzy end of the lollypop’.
1961 R. Lawler Piccadilly Bushman: He’ll know what I mean when I talk of getting the wrong end of the pineapple.
2013 Sydney Morning Herald 23 October: We welcomed the byelection so we could send you the message: we don't support a government that is giving us the rough end of the pineapple.
plonk
Wine, or fortified wine, of poor quality; more generally, wine or alcohol of any kind. It is possible that this word has its origin with Australian soldiers serving in France in the First World War. Plonk is likely to be an altered form of the French word ‘blanc’ in vin blanc, ‘white wine’. Soldiers may have pronounced this as van blonk, further transforming it into plonk. Evidence of the period records other similar names used by soldiers for wine based on the French vin blanc: point blank, von blink, plink, plink-plonk, and plinkety-plonk. The Australian word plonk has now spread to other Englishes. It is first recorded in 1919, and is now often used of cheap or poor quality wine.
1927 News (Adelaide) 8 December: ‘Give us a definition of “plonk”?’ asked Mr McMillan. ‘Yes, I can do that’, replied the obliging Mr Collins. ‘It is a cheap wine produced in Mr Crosby's district.’
1992 Sun-Herald (Sydney) 5 July 30/1 My local plonk shop where I am caught browsing through the Australian white wine section by one of the counter-jumpers.
2007 A. Agar Queensland Ringer: It is not plonk. It is good red South Australian wine.
For more on words related to wine drinking, see our blog ‘ Wine in Australian English ’.
pokies
Poker machines. Pokies are coin or card-operated. The punter presses a button or pulls a lever to spin the wheel, and the machine pays out, if you’re lucky, according to the combination of symbols that appear on the wheel. Known elsewhere as slot machines, fruit machines, or one-armed bandits, pokies are commonplace in Australian pubs and clubs, and a substantial revenue raiser. The first State in Australia to legalise this form of gambling was New South Wales in 1956. The term pokies is first recorded in 1964.
1965 I. Hamilton Persecutor: I always know how much I lose on the pokies.
2007 Herald Sun (Melbourne) 27 March: The Prince Alfred Hotel in Church St, Richmond, is on the market, and some fear it may be turned into a pokies venue. But if the new owners try to get pokies in they will have a huge fight on their hands.
pom
A British person, especially one from England. (Originally applied to an immigrant from the British Isles.) The word pom has its origin in wordplay. An early, derisory term for an immigrant in Australia was the rhyming slang jimmygrant (sometimes written as Jimmy Grant), recorded in 1844. Jimmygrant was further abbreviated in the 1870s to jimmy:
1878 Australian Town & Country Journal (Sydney) 6 July: The country was worth living in, not like it is now, overstocked with ‘jimmies’—a lot of useless trash.
By 1912 another rhyming slang term for ‘immigrant’ had appeared: pomegranate (also written as pommygranate and Pommy Grant). In the same year the first evidence for two abbreviations of pomegranate—pom and pommy—can also be found. Pomegranate (along with its variants) and jimmygrant coexisted for some time:
1912 Truth (Sydney) 22 December: Now they call ’em ‘Pomegranates’ and the Jimmygrants don’t like it.
1916 W.C. Watson The Memoirs of a Ship’s Fireman: As I hailed from the Old Dart, I of course, in their estimation, was an immigrant, hence the curl up of the lip. But ‘pommygrant’ or ‘jimmygrant’, they always had a helping hand for me.
Eventually the term pomegranate replaced jimmygrant, and later was itself replaced by the abbreviations pom and pommy:
1920 H.J. Rumsey Pommies (Introduction): The title that I have selected for the book: ‘The Pommies’ is now a common name for recent arrivals from Britain. During the last few weeks, I have scores of times heard the Prince of Wales affectionately described as a ‘dear little pommy’.
1923 Bulletin (Sydney) 12 July: It was a Pommy bloke wot put me wise. I was in Snotty Padger’s bar one day ’Avin’ a quiet couple wiv the flies When Pom. lobs in.
1984 B. Dixon Searching for Aboriginal Languages: The weatherbeaten, red faces of the cattlemen sitting on stools around the bar all slowly swivelled and surveyed me. ‘Pommy!’ ejaculated one of them. I was made to feel that no one had ever asked for a gin and tonic in that pub before.
2013 Courier-Mail (Brisbane) 29 July: The birth of a future King of England is nice for the Poms and Anglophiles but it has no relevance on who will be a future president of the republic of Australia.
There are a number of incorrect theories about the origin of pom. The most common suggests it is an acronym for Prisoner of Mother England, variously described as being stamped on convict clothing or scratched on the walls of prison cells by convicts. There is no evidence whatever to support this notion.
Today the use of pom and pommy to refer to an English person is common and widespread. These words can be used with good humour or in a derogatory way, but at the core they still imply a degree of ‘us and them’ mentality. The term whingeing pom, first recorded in 1962, embodies this. It refers to an English person, especially a migrant, who is regarded as a habitual complainer.
1967 Canberra Times 31 March: Many English people are castigated as ‘whinging Poms’, and it behoves Mr Crawford to pack his bags and go if life in Australia is so distasteful.
2014 Daily Telegraph (Sydney) 20 September (Home Supplement): He became an Australian citizen in his second year. ‘I decided early on I would never be a whingeing Pom and we were convinced that living here was brilliant’, he says.
pork chop: to carry on like a pork chop
To behave foolishly, to make a fuss, to complain, or to rant. This expression is often thought to allude to the spluttering noise of a pork chop that is being fried. However it is probably a variant of the older expression like a pork chop in a synagogue, meaning something that is unpopular, unlikely, or rare (with reference to the Jewish prohibition of the eating of pork). To carry on like a pork chop is first recorded in 1975.
2002 Sunday Telegraph (Sydney) 10 November: The Australian sports public are a forgiving lot. Ask Lleyton Hewitt. Or Shane Warne. Here are a couple of champions who, on several occasions, have carried on like pork chops.
2003 E. Vercoe Keep Your Hair On: She's a beautiful woman, your mother, but by God can she carry on like a pork chop about nothing.
possum: stir the possum
To excite interest or controversy; to liven things up. This phrase is first recorded in 1888, and probably developed as the obverse of the phrase to play possum meaning ‘to pretend to be asleep or unconscious when threatened’ (in imitation of an opossum’s supposed behaviour).
1949 R. Park Poor Man’s Orange: A mission was like a tonic. It stirred the ’possum in the people, and for months afterwards they could still feel the enthusiasm.
2006 Advertiser (Adelaide) 11 November: Professor Seddon said his talk was deliberately designed to ‘stir the possum’ and generate discussion.
prawn
A fool; also used as a general term of abuse. It is a figurative use of the word prawn, an edible crustacean (high on Australia’s list of favourite foods). The Australian sense of ‘fool’ is first recorded in 1893.
1944 L. Glassop We were the Rats: What an odious prawn this Anderson is, I thought.
2013 S. Thorne Bonzer: I would have loved her to put in a day now and then at the new tuckshop… But she wouldn't, because she thought the woman who ran it was a ‘prawn’.
The term raw prawn, recorded from 1940, is based on this. It means 'an act of deception; a "swiftie"; an unfair action or circumstance, a rough deal’. It derives from the notion of something that is difficult to swallow.
1954 Queensland Guardian (Brisbane) 20 January: Snow says he thinks that this is the raw prawn. We do all the work, the mob behind Menzies gets all the dough.
2012 Sydney Morning Herald 10 March (News Review Section): I can't find one person who expects to get a parental leave scheme that provides full pay. If there's something we hate more than blatant, vote-grabbing profligacy, it's when someone tries to sell us a raw prawn.
Today raw prawn is most often heard in the idiom to come the raw prawn, meaning 'to attempt to deceive, or treat like a fool; to misrepresent a situation’. It is typically used in negative constructions, especially as don't come the raw prawn with me (‘don’t try to treat me like a fool’). It is first recorded in 1942.
1973 Woman's Day (Sydney) 26 March: `Don't come the raw prawn with me, mate,' he said. `I can get it back home at Woollies for that price.'
2000 B. Lunney Gone Bush: ‘Don't come the raw prawn with me. Look at those mudflats out there’, I said to him. I was only fourteen years old at the time and remembered thinking, he's having a go at me and must think I'm a dope.
public servant
A person employed by a government authority; a member of a State or Territory public service, or the Australian Public Service. It is the Australian term for the standard English civil servant. Public servant has its origin in Australia’s history as a penal colony. Unease about the word convict led to the creation of euphemistic terms, including government man and public servant (both recorded from 1797). The convict public servant was assigned to public labour.
1799 D. Collins An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales (1802) vol. II: Such of the .. public servants as might have taken to concealments on shore for the purpose of avoiding their work, or making their escape from the colony.
By 1812 public servant was used to refer to any government worker, whether free or convict, and two centuries later it is still the standard Australian term for a public service employee.
1832 Colonial Times (Hobart) 25 April: Mr Henry Melville certainly cannot boast of being in receipt of a handsome salary, as a public servant.
2013 Courier-Mail (Brisbane) 28 October: Cairns could become the Canberra of the north under a plan to force public servants to move from the national capital to the tropics.
See our blog ‘The convict origins of “public servant”’ for a discussion of the term.
Queenslander
A resident of Queensland; a person born in Queensland. Queensland was constituted as a separate colony in 1859, having previously formed part of New South Wales. The first evidence of Queenslander to describe a resident of the new colony occurs later that year.
1878 J.H. Nicholson Opal Fever: No violence! Let us remember we are gentlemen and Queenslanders.
2013 Courier-Mail (Brisbane) 18 December: Just as well we Queenslanders are a non-parochial lot, always considerate of the feelings of southerners.
A transferred sense of Queenslander appeared in the 1980s. It refers to a house of a style built in Queensland from the 1870s onwards, timber-built and typically set high on stumps, with exterior weatherboards and corrugated iron roof, a wraparound verandah, and good ventilation. The design maximises air movement in humid conditions.
1990 R. Fitzgerald Busy in the Fog: Isn't our house grand? It's an old Queenslander.
2013 S. Thorne Bonzer: A typical weatherboard ‘Queenslander’, it was built for the climate—up on stumps for the air to circulate underneath, with verandahs and lots of louvres.
quokka
A small, short-tailed wallaby, Setonix brachyurus, of south-western Western Australia, including Rottnest and Bald Islands. (These islands are free of quokka predators such as foxes and cats.) Quokka was first recorded in 1855, and comes from Noongar, an Aboriginal language of this area. Quokkas are the size of a cat, and have long greyish-brown fur and rounded ears.
1968 V. Serventy Southern Walkabout: It is the famous quokka, one of the pademelon wallabies, which creates most interest. It was this wallaby, mistaken by Dutch visitor Vlaming for a large rodent, which led to the island’s name, Rottnest or ‘Rat’s Nest’.
2004 Australian Geographic July: Beneath the trees live various marsupials, including WA's largest mainland population of quokka and the honey possum or noolbenger.
quoll
Any of several marsupials of the genus Dasyuris of Australia and New Guinea. Quolls are cat-sized marsupials with long tails, pointed snouts, brown fur, and distinctive white spots. They are nocturnal and hunt insects, birds and small mammals. The word quoll derives from Guugu Yimithirr, an Aboriginal language of north-eastern Queensland. Joseph Banks, botanist with James Cook’s voyage of discovery in 1768-71, recorded it in his Endeavour journal in 1770, when the Endeavour was beached for repairs on the site of present-day Cooktown. However quoll was not the name that European settlers used; native cat was the common term for this animal until the mid 19th century. From the 1960s the word quoll began to replace native cat, and today quoll is the dominant term.
1770 J. Banks Endeavour Journal: Another [quadruped] was calld by the natives Je-Quoll.
1987 Wildlife Australia (Autumn issue): It is only in recent years that distinctive native names have been proposed to replace the ‘tainted’ European ones. Quoll for native cat, for example.
2013 Herald Sun (Melbourne) 13 May: Ms Leonard has hand-reared three kangaroos, a wombat and two quolls.
razoo
A non-existent coin of trivial value. Razoo, first recorded in 1919, is used in negative contexts only, especially as to not have a razoo, and to not have a brass razoo 'to have nothing; to be penniless'. The origin of the word is unknown, although it is perhaps a corruption of the French coin called a sou. The form brass razoo appears later in 1927. The brass of brass razoo is likely influenced by the standard English brass farthing, which is also used in negative contexts with a similar meaning (‘she hasn’t got a brass farthing’). For an earlier discussion of the possibility that the form brass razoo is a euphemism for arse razoo (from arse raspberry ‘a fart’) see the article ‘Brass Razoo: is it but a breath of wind?’ on page 6 of our Ozwords newsletter.
1965 R.H. Conquest Horses in Kitchen: My main worry was that when I did leave hospital… I wouldn’t have a razoo to my name.
2015 Daily Telegraph (Sydney) 14 April: I am trapped in limbo and have not earned a brass razoo in six months.
razor gang
A parliamentary committee established to examine ways of reducing public expenditure. The term razor gang derives from the name of a violent street gang in Sydney in 1927 who were armed with razors. The parliamentary sense may be a transfer from the 1960s British Railway slang (an extended use of the literal razor gang) ‘a team of investigators seeking ways of improving economy and productivity’. In Australia in 1981 razor gang became the popular term to refer to the Committee for Review of Commonwealth Functions, chaired by Treasurer Phillip Lynch, which was charged with cutting government spending. Today razor gang is used of any similar committee or organisation that seeks to drastically cut expenditure.
1981 Bulletin (Sydney) 5 May: Canberra reports said that Sir Phillip Lynch’s ‘Razor Gang’ had recommended an overall staff cut in the Federal public service of 2 percent.
2012 Gold Coast Bulletin 15 June: The Newman Government's razor gang has seized the $1.3 million that was allocated by the previous Labor government for the Burleigh police beat to plump up its Budget bottom line.
right: you right?
Often heard as a question from a salesperson to a customer, this is the Australian equivalent of the standard query are you being served? It may sound offhand to non-Australian ears, but although informal, it is not a sign of disrespect. It is a shortened form of are you all right? First recorded in 1974.
1985 Bulletin (Sydney) 16 July: Cedric Felspar .. was lost in thought in .. David Jones .. when a salesgirl crept upon him from behind and whined: ‘You right?’
2013 Age (Melbourne) 13 January: When sales assistants ask ‘Are you right?’, I have answered: ‘No, I'm left of centre.’ What's wrong with ‘May I help you’?
rogaining
A sporting event similar to orienteering, in which teams compete over a course that requires at least twelve hours to complete. The word rogaine probably derives from the first names of the founders of the sport: Ro(d), Gai(l), and Ne(il) Phillips. The earliest evidence of rogaining is found in 1979.
1982 N. & R. Phillips Rogaining: Rogaining is the sport of long distance cross-country navigation in which teams of two to five members visit as many checkpoints as possible in an allocated period. Teams travel entirely on foot, navigating by map and compass in terrain that varies from open farmland to thick, hilly forest. A central base camp provides hot meals throughout the event and teams may return there at any time to eat, rest or sleep.
2013 Milton-Ulladulla Times 25 June: Elleisha has also .. survived overnight bush rogaines, running through the bush at Kangaroo Valley as first aid officer for her team on a 24-hour trek.
rooned: we'll all be rooned
We will all be ruined. An expression of pessimism. Rooned is an Irish pronunciation of ‘ruined’, used in the refrain of the poem ‘Said Hanrahan’, published in 1921 by John O’Brien, the pen name of P.J. Hartigan. Hanrahan, a farmer, is a lugubrious and pessimistic doomsayer. Whatever the weather, he predicts disaster: ‘We’ll all be rooned,’ said Hanrahan, ‘before the year is out’. The expression is now used to mock pessimists, and is first recorded in the same year the poem was published.
1927 Gundagai Independent 1 August: There are plenty of Hanrahans about—‘We'll all be rooned’, they croon, ‘if rain don't come this month’.
2008 Canberra Times 26 January (Opinion Supplement): We may have become a nation in 1901 but in 107 years since we have gradually severed constitutional, legal and procedural links to the English crown and government apparatus. Each has been accompanied by cries of ‘We'll all be rooned!’
rort
To scam, misuse, or to treat fraudulently. This significant Australian word derives from wrought, an archaic past participle of the verb to work. Wrought means ‘worked into shape or condition’ and we see it today in the term wrought iron. Indeed the Australian rort is sometimes spelled wrought in early evidence (see the 1938 example below). The verb rort first appears in 1919.
1938 Argus (Melbourne) 26 March (Supplement): ‘Now me’, he went on, ‘I was edjicated in Woolloomooloo, in Sydney. That's were I learnt wroughting’. ‘But what is this wroughting?’ I asked. He wrinkled his forehead thoughtfully. ‘It's a bit ’ard to explain it’, he said. ‘What it really comes to is that you sells something that isn't no use, to people what doesn't want it, for good, ’ard cash.’
2006 Daily Telegraph (Sydney) 28 September: Carlton were found to have rorted the salary cap.
Rort is also used as a noun, meaning ‘a trick, a fraud, a dishonest practice’, and is first recorded in 1926. For a further discussion of the origin of rort, see our Word of the Month article .
1936 J. Devanny Sugar Heaven: The cockies are supposed to pay this retention money into the bank and we are supposed to draw interest on it but normally they don’t pay it in. They keep the use of it through the season and we draw the bare amount at the end of the cut. It’s the greatest rort ever.
2000 R. Hoser Taxi: Canberra, the public service capital of Australia, is without doubt the rort capital as well.
sanger
A sandwich. Sanger is an alteration of the word sandwich. Sango appeared as a term for sandwich in the 1940s, but by the 1960s, sanger took over to describe this staple of Australian cuisine. Sangers come in all shapes and sizes for all occasions—there are gourmet sangers, steak sangers, veggie sangers, cucumber sangers, and even double banger sangers.
1968 D. O’Grady A Bottle of Sandwiches: Meals consisted of piles of sangers, made by the pub cook, and brought out at odd intervals.
2003 J. Birmingham Dopeland: The club sanger is the only reason I stay here.
schmick
Smart, stylish; excellent. Schmick (sometimes shmick) is a relatively recent addition to Australian English. The form smick is found once in the written record in the 1970s, and may be a blend of the words smart and slick. From the late 1990s onwards smick is modified to schmick on the model of various Yiddish words borrowed into English. Schmick is now often heard in Australian English. For a discussion of the origin of schmick, and the term schmick-up that has developed from it, see our Word of the Month article.
1999 Courier-Mail (Brisbane) 28 July: The view over the river and Story Bridge will be pretty schmick.
2009 J. Welch Choir Man: I .. was decked out in a lovely new navy-blue suit… When I walked out onstage feeling rather schmick, I got a nod of acknowledgement from the very handsome artistic director, Richard Bonynge.
School of the Air
A government-funded educational program that uses a two-way radio communication system (and, more recently, internet technology) to enable children in remote areas to participate in ‘classroom’ activities for part of each day. Developed to supplement correspondence education, the School of the Air was pioneered in Australia in 1951. It remains the most important means of education for children who have no access to school.
1960 Bulletin (Sydney) 17 February: Queensland’s first School of the Air, operating one hour daily from the Cloncurry flying-doctor base, got away to a bad start.
2009 E. McHugh Birdsville: I'm happy about School of the Air being over… Now they're off to school and in a classroom again they can come home to me and I'm just Mum instead of being their cranky teacher.
screamer
(In Australian Rules football) a spectacular overhead mark. Australian Rules is a team game in which the ball is moved by running, kicking, and handballing. A mark is the act of cleanly catching a ball that has been kicked a distance of more than 15 metres, and the mark allows the catcher to take an unimpeded kick of the ball. A screamer is a mark that results from an especially high and spectacular leap for the ball. It is a specific use of the standard English screamer meaning ‘an outstanding specimen’. The Australian Rules screamer is first recorded in 1953.
1989 Age (Melbourne) 24 July: 'Leaping Al' Lynch played an inspired game... kicking six goals and .. sitting on a pack of four players .. to pull down a screamer.
2014 Herald Sun (Melbourne) 30 March: Six minutes in he threw himself onto a pack in the goalsquare and took a screamer.
A second sense of screamer is recorded in Australian English from 1959. It functions in various compound terms with words for measures of alcoholic drink, indicating a person who has a low tolerance of alcohol, or who becomes drunk easily or quickly. Two-pot screamer is the most common of these, but you can also find two-pint, two-middy, and two-schooner screamers.
1972 Bulletin (Sydney) 3 June: Sefton said she’d become a two middy screamer. He said when she had a few drinks she began to shout and tried to dominate the conversation.
2004 Canberra Times 12 December (Magazine Section): In the days when I was a two-pot screamer (as opposed to now when I'm a two-pot sleeper), I could be guaranteed to reveal bits of me which oughtn't to be revealed to anyone.
seachange
A significant change of lifestyle, especially one achieved by moving from the city to a seaside town. It derives from SeaChange (1998–2000), the name of a popular Australian television series in which the principal character moves from the city to a small coastal town. The name of the series itself alludes to the standard English meaning of sea-change ‘a profound or notable transformation’, which has its origin in Shakespeare’s play The Tempest: ‘Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea-change, Into something rich and strange.’ The Australian meaning is first recorded in 1998, and has generated the verb to seachange, and the name seachanger to describe people who choose a seachange. A later term modelled on seachange is tree change, referring to a significant change in lifestyle with a move from the city to a rural district.
2003 Daily Telegraph (Sydney) 1 December: Sea change investors cause prices to triple. People fleeing Sydney to NSW coastal areas for a ‘sea change’ have forced land prices up by as much as three times in three years.
2006 Australian Gourmet Traveller April: One of Melbourne's best pub restaurants .. has appointed a ‘certified Francophile’ to replace Tim Saffery, who is sea-changing to the New South Wales south coast.
secret business
In traditional Aboriginal culture, ceremony and ritual that is open only to a particular group. The word business in this term is from Aboriginal English, and means ‘traditional Aboriginal lore and ritual’, and is recorded from 1907. Secret business is first recorded much later in 1986, and from it have developed terms with a more specific reference: secret men’s business, for ceremony and ritual that is open only to men, and secret women’s business, for ceremony and ritual that is open only to women.
1997 West Australian (Perth) 9 July: People might refuse to give evidence if it meant revealing secret business.
2001 A. McMillan An Intruder's Guide to East Arnhem Land: In the morning the men went off to a nearby ceremonial site for Ngarra bunggul or, if you like, secret men's business.
2014 Cairns Post 24 February: It's really hard with my daughters, a lot of it is secret women's business. The women had more sacred areas than men and it's up to my partner, my sisters and my mum to teach them.
From the late 1990s the terms are transferred into standard Australian English where they are used, often jokingly, in non-Aboriginal contexts.
1997 New Idea (Melbourne) 29 November: Kingswood driving is secret men's business—just like pushing a shopping trolley straight is secret womens' business.
shag: like a shag on a rock
An emblem of isolation, deprivation, and exposure. It is first recorded in 1845. A shag is a name for any of several species of Australian cormorant, commonly found in coastal and inland waters, where they are often seen perched alone on a rock—the behaviour that gave rise to the expression. In Australian English any isolated person can be described as being like a shag on a rock—for example, a political leader with few supporters, or a person without friends at a party. Sometimes found in the formulation as lonely (or miserable) as a shag on a rock.
1864 Sydney Morning Herald 8 July: He heard Lant say he would be revenged on Mr Orr; he would scab his sheep, and leave him as miserable as a shag on a rock.
2001 B. Courtenay Four Fires 501 Tommy doesn't want the poor bloke to be standing there like a shag on a rock.
sheila
A girl or woman. This word first appeared in Australian English in 1832 with the spelling shelah. It was initially used in Australia to refer to a woman of Irish origin, but from the late 19th century onwards it became a general term for a woman or girl. It probably derives from the generic use of the (originally Irish) proper name Sheila. For a full discussion of its likely origin in the old celebration Shelah’s Day, celebrated the day after St Patrick’s Day, see our blog ‘Shelah’s Day and the origin of sheila’ from March 2016. For a different, but nevertheless Irish, view of the origin of the term, see an earlier discussion in our Ozwords article ‘Who is Sheila?’ from December 2001.
1930 L.W. Lower Here’s Luck: ‘Sheilas!’ gasped Woggo as the girls clambered out of the car.
1992 J. Davis In our Town: That's my sister. What a sheila. Every bloke in Northam wants to date her.
shower: I didn’t come down in the last shower
I’m not stupid, don’t try and put one over me! This is a response to someone who is taking you for a fool, and indicates that you have more experience or shrewdness than you have been given credit for. It is now used elsewhere, but it is recorded earliest in Australia, and its use is chiefly Australian. First evidence is from 1883.
1904 Northern Miner (Charters Towers) 22 September: At least I thought it would be accepted that I didn't come down in the last shower.
2015 Star Observer (Sydney) September: I didn’t verbalise it with my mother until she was dying… So I told her, just before she died, and she looked at me and said, ‘Michael, I didn’t come down in the last shower. You’ve been bringing Johan to Sunday dinner for the last 30 years, do you think I was blind?'
sickie
A day's sick leave, especially as taken without sufficient medical reason. Sickie is an abbreviation of the term sick leave, and illustrates a distinctive feature of Australian English — the addition of -ie or -y to abbreviated words or phrases. Other examples include: firie ‘firefighter’, surfie ‘surfer’, and Tassie ‘Tasmania’. Sickie is first recorded in 1953, and is often found in the phrase to chuck a sickie, meaning ‘to take a day’s sick leave from work’ (often with the implication that the person is not really ill).
1962 Bulletin (Sydney) 3 March: I don’t feel a bit like work today… I think I’ll take a sickie.
2003 Canberra Times 21 June: The age old practice of ‘chucking a sickie’ in the Australian Public Service is costing the taxpayer at least $295 million a year.
skip
An Australian, especially one of British descent. Also as skippy. The term is the creation of non-British Australian migrants, especially children, who needed a term to counter the insulting terms directed at them by Australians of British descent. First recorded in 1982, it derives from the children’s television series Skippy, the Bush Kangaroo (1966-68).
1988 K. Lette Girls' Night Out: The Skips at school had teased her about being Greek.
2000 Geelong Advertiser 3 December: You listening to me ya skippy dickhead?
Skippy has a later meaning, ‘kangaroo meat’, first recorded in the early 1990s and derived from the same source. For a discussion of this sense see our Word of the Month article from October 2013.
sledge
Of a fielder in a game of cricket, to attempt to break the concentration of a person batting by abuse or needling. Sledge is first recorded in the mid-1970s in a cricketing context. It derives from the word sledgehammer, used figuratively to designate an unsubtle form of verbal abuse. Later it became used more widely in a variety of contexts, sporting and otherwise, in the sense ‘to criticise, ridicule, attack’. For a discussion of the theory that it derives from the name of the singer Percy Sledge, see our blog ‘Percy Sledge and cricket’ from April 2015.
1980 Sydney Morning Herald 16 October: Crude language is forbidden. This edict should put an end to the disgraceful practice of ‘sledging’ opponents, an abomination that has become rampant in the game over the last few years.
2014 Sydney Morning Herald 7 June: And The Australian is certainly selective about which women it worries about: it was hardly outraged over the sustained sledging of Julia Gillard.
sleepout
A verandah, porch, or outbuilding that is used for sleeping accommodation. The word first appears in 1915. Sleepouts are often used when hot weather encouraged people to sleep in a sheltered area that might receive cooling night breezes. Sometimes a sleepout may be a porch or verandah that is enclosed with windows or walls, eventually becoming a permanent extra bedroom.
1959 L. Rose Country of the Dead: He looked up through the gauze wire serving as the outer wall of the sleep-out, across the dry river flat.
2006 Courier-Mail (Brisbane) 28 October (Etc Section): It still has an authentic country feel with wide shady verandas, a wood-burning fireplace for frosty nights, two double bedrooms with high wrought-iron beds and, much to the children's delight, a sleepout they were all to share on our visit.
snag
A sausage. Also snagger. In Australia and elsewhere snag has a number of meanings, including ‘a submerged tree stump’, ‘an unexpected drawback’, and more recently as an acronym for sensitive new age guy’. But in Australia a snag is also one of several words for ‘sausage’ (others include snarler and snork). It is first recorded in 1937, and probably comes from British (mainly Scots) dialect snag meaning ‘a morsel, a light meal’. Snag has generated another, rhyming slang, term for the humble sausage: the aptly named mystery bag.
1943 Bulletin (Sydney) 15 December: Waiting only to bolt a couple of cold ‘snags’ Ted got out his bike.
1991 Age (Melbourne) 24 December (Supplement): Bangers, snags, call them what you will, the once-humble sausage has moved up into the gourmet class.
sorry
In traditional Aboriginal culture, of or relating to death and mourning. In Aboriginal English the adjective sorry is recorded in this sense from the 1940s. Later compounds based on sorry include sorry business, ritual and ceremony associated with death, and sorry camp, a mourning camp.
1997 S. Dingo Dingo: the Story of Our Mob: When Polly passed away, none of the children had been permitted to go to the sorry ceremony, the funeral, no children at all.
1999 Canberra Times 11 December (Panorama): An Aboriginal boy tells us about going with his family by car to Yarrie for sorry business.
In the wider Australian community sorry is found in the annual Sorry Day, first held on 26 May 1998, a public expression of regret for the treatment of the stolen generations, those Aboriginal children who were forcibly removed from their parents by white authorities. It is also, for the Indigenous community, a day of mourning.
2001 Adelaidean June: For the fourth year in a row, Sorry Day has been marked at Adelaide University with a formal ceremony.
spit the dummy
This has two meanings in Australian English: to give up (contesting or participating), and to lose one’s temper or composure. The phrase is recorded first in the1980s. It is usually used of an adult with the implication is that the behaviour described is childish, like a baby spitting out its dummy in a tantrum and refusing to be pacified.
1992 Sydney Morning Herald 2 November: With most games, of course, I'd simply spit the dummy, hit the switch and give up.
2005 Age (Melbourne) 27 November: There was a lingering doubt: would host Russell Crowe spit the dummy and biff someone with a trophy?
spunk
A sexually attractive person. Australians also use the meanings for this term that exist in standard English: 1 courage and determination. 2 semen. But in Australia spunk is most commonly used to refer to a person of either sex who is regarded as sexually attractive. It is first recorded in the 1970s and is derived from spunky ‘full of spirit; brave, plucky’, although it may be influenced by spunk ‘semen’. A term based on the Australian spunk is spunk rat, which means the same thing, but can also mean ‘a sexually promiscuous person’.
1979 Carey & Lette Puberty Blues: It was Darren Peters—the top surfing spunk of sixth form.
2004 Australian (Sydney) 12 June (Magazine): Physical attractiveness is multi-dimensional: after all, one person's spunkrat is another person's .. er, rat.
squatter
A squatter is a person who unlawfully occupies an uninhabited building. But in early nineteenth-century Australia a squatter (first recorded 1825) was also a person who occupied Crown land without legal title. From the 1840s it began to refer to any person who grazed livestock on a large scale, without reference to the title by which the land was held; and the term squatter also referred to such a person as being of an elevated socio-economic status. Squatters became wealthy and powerful, and the term squattocracy (recorded in 1841) alludes to their aristocratic pretensions.
1867 ‘A Colonist’ Life’s Work As It Is: No men have made wealth faster in this colony than ‘squatters’; that is, in plain English, sheep and cattle owners.
1984 W.W. Ammon et al. Working Lives: He had class that manager, squattocracy class, and only others of squatter ilk were encouraged to fraternise with him.
stolen generation
The Aboriginal people who were removed from their families as children (especially between the 1900s and the 1960s) and placed in institutions or fostered by white families. Also stolen generations. The term was first recorded in 1982.
2002 Koori Mail 20 February: I hope this film will be a turning point in Australians’ awareness of the complex and painful issues surrounding the Stolen generations.
2006 Mercury (Hobart) 22 November: Pioneering laws to offer compensation to Tasmanian Aborigines forcibly removed from their families as part of the Stolen Generation were passed yesterday by the Tasmanian House of Assembly.
stoush
Fighting; violence; a brawl or fight. Probably from British dialect (Scots) stashie, stushie (and variants) ‘an uproar; a commotion, disturbance, quarrel’. Stoush is used as a noun and a verb (‘to strike or thrash; to fight or struggle’) from the late 19th century.
1935 J.P. McKinney Crucible: ‘The jacks were tailing me up.’ ‘What was the matter’, John asked. ‘Just a bit of stoush’, said Roberts. ‘Two of them bailed me up for my pass. I dropped them and beat it for the bush.’
1994 Courier-Mail (Brisbane) 19 July: Australia's leading fund managers are lining up for a stoush with one of the industry's leading researchers over its proposal to develop a rating system.
Stoush was also used to refer to military engagement during the First World War, and later the phrase the big stoush was used of the war itself.
1932 Western Mail (Perth) 25 August: I was on board the troopship Nestor when that steamer went over to the big stoush in 1915.
For a discussion of the phrase the big stoush, see our Word of the Month for April 2015.
straight to the poolroom
A catchphrase used to express the great value of a gift, prize, object, etc. The idiom comes from the 1997 film The Castle in which the main character, Darryl Kerrigan (played by Michael Caton), says of gifts such as ‘a samurai-sword letter opener’ that ‘this is going straight to the poolroom’, suggesting it is so wonderful that it should be preserved as a trophy. First recorded in 1998.
2000 Sunday Mail (Adelaide) 21 May: Bravo! The great man signed a football for me and when I get home it's going straight to the pool room.
stubby
A short, squat beer bottle, especially one with a capacity of 375 ml. The bottle is stubby (short and thick) in comparison with the tall and slender 750 ml beer bottle. First recorded in 1965. The term stubby holder appears a few years later, to describe a casing made of an insulating material, in which a stubby is held (and kept cold) while the contents are being drunk. The expression a stubby short of a sixpack, recorded from the late 1990s, means ‘very stupid; insane’. It is an Australian variation of a common international idiom, typically represented by a sandwich short of a picnic. It combines the Australian stubby with the borrowed American sixpack (a pack of six cans of beer), demonstrating how readily Australian English naturalises Americanisms.
1966 J. Iggulden Summer’s Tales: Drinking beer from small, cold stubbies.
2005 Townsville Bulletin 12 November: The fact the affable brindle bitzer is a stubbie short of six pack might explain why one day he took on a stingray. No dog in his right mind would tackle a stingray, especially one at home in its own watery environment.
such is life
An expression of resignation; a philosophical acceptance of the bad things that happen in life. First recorded in 1896. This is a commonplace, but given significance in Australia because these words are popularly understood to be the last uttered by the bushranger Ned Kelly on the gallows in 1880. The expression was further popularised by its use as the title for Joseph Furphy’s famous novel about rural Australia (1903). Some claim that Kelly’s last words were in fact ‘Ah well, I suppose it has come to this’— not quite as memorable. For a discussion of such is life and other terms associated with Ned Kelly, see the article ‘Who’s Robbing this Coach? Ned Kelly and Australian English’ in our Ozwords newsletter from April 2009.
1918 W. Hay The Escape of the Notorious Sir William Heans: The tragic distresses of portions of our lives ... make at worst a pleasant interest for the young of future ages. Such is life!
2006 Sydney Morning Herald 1 July: It's the first time in my life that I've been sacked but such is life. My pride has been a bit dented.
swag
In early use, the collection of possessions and daily necessaries carried by a person travelling, usually on foot, in the bush; especially the blanket-wrapped roll carried on the back or across the shoulders by an itinerant worker. In later use, such a collection of possessions carried by a worker on a rural station, a camper, or a traveller to the city from a country area; a bed-roll. First recorded in 1836. The Australian sense of swag is a transferred use of swag from British thieves’ slang ‘a thief's plunder or booty’. The transfer of meaning (from the booty itself to the the booty and its container) is recorded by convict James Hardy Vaux in 1812 and published in his Memoirs in 1819. For more on this see the article ‘James Hardy Vaux: Pioneer Australian Lexicographer’ (page 6) in our Ozwords newsletter from April 2008.
1890 Bulletin (Sydney) 30 August: Did you ever take 'the wallaby' along some dreary track
With that hideous malformation, called a swag, upon your back.
2006 R. Ellis Boats in the Desert: He slid out of it like a banana losing its peel. He began rummaging among his swag looking for something, and as he did so, I saw a brown snake slithering away from Jim's swag as fast as it could go.
The verb to swag meaning 'to carry one's swag' appears in the 1850s, and the compound swagman (a person who carries a swag; an itinerant worker, especially one in search of employment, who carries a swag; a vagrant) appears in the 1860s.
1996 B. Simpson Packhorse Drover: I remember clearly the sad procession of down-at-heel swagmen, many of them returned soldiers, who called at our place in the hope of getting a job or a handout.
For a discussion of other terms associated with swagmen, see the article ‘The Jolly Swagman’ on pages 6-7 of our Ozwords newsletter, October 2007.
tall poppy
A person who is conspicuously successful, especially one who attracts envious notice or hostility. It is often said that Australians have a tendency to cut tall poppies down to size by denigrating them. It may have its origin in an obsolete 17th-century sense of the word poppy, meaning ‘a conspicuous or prominent person or thing, frequently with implication of likely humiliation’. This meaning of poppy is likely to refer to the Roman historian Livy’s account of Tarquinius Superbus, who silently showed how to deal with potential enemies by striking off the heads of the tallest poppies in his garden with a stick.
The Australian tall poppy is first recorded in 1871, and tall poppy syndrome, the practice of denigrating prominent or successful people, is recorded from 1983.
1894 Oakleigh Leader (Melbourne) 29 December: He would avert direct taxation on wealth by retrenching all the low paid civil servants, while carefully protecting the tall poppies who have very little to do.
2005 Sydney Morning Herald 12 March: How do colleagues know when I am having a go at Shane Warne?… They can see my fingers moving on the keyboard. Look, I try not to do it all the time, honest! But sometimes the compulsion just overwhelms me, as a hideous case of Tall Poppy Syndrome grabs me by the throat and, fair dinkum, makes me do it.
tart
A girlfriend or sweetheart; also applied generally to a girl or woman, implying admiration. This Australian sense of tart is recorded from 1892 through to the 1970s, but has now fallen out of use. It is likely to be an abbreviation of jam tart, itself probably rhyming slang for sweetheart.
1937 A.W. Upfield Mr Jelly’s Business: I’m in love with a tart. Her name’s Lucy Jelly. She is the loveliest girl within a thousand miles of Burracoppin.
1972 D. Sheahan Songs From The Canefields: If you fell in love and got on with a tart—’Twas happy she’d be to go out in a cart—And after the wedding she’d chatter for hours Of sight and scenes that she saw at the Towers.
Today a woman is likely to take offence if you call her a tart, since the two current meanings for a female tart are both derogatory: 1. a promiscuous woman or prostitute, and 2. an offensive slang term for a girl or woman. It wasn't always the case. For the best part of the last hundred years, calling a woman a tart in Standard English was not necessarily an insult, and both the positive and negative meanings of tart overlap for much of this time. However the use of tart to mean a girlfriend or sweetheart is unique to Australian English.
things are crook in Tallarook
A rhyming catchphrase used to indicate that things are bad or unpleasant. Its use often prompts a similar response from a listener, such as ‘but things are dead at Birkenhead’.Tallarook is the name of a small town in northern Victoria, and crook is used in the Australian sense ‘bad; inferior; unpleasant; unsatisfactory’. Things are crook in Tallarook is one of several similar phrases based on rhyming reduplication, including ‘there’s no work at Bourke’, ‘got the arse at Bulli Pass’, ‘no lucre at Echuca’, and ‘everything’s wrong at Wollongong’. They are sometimes thought to be associated with the Great Depression of the 1930s, when massive unemployment meant that many people travelled long distances looking for work. However, things are crook in Tallarook is not recorded until the early 1940s.
1988 H. Reade You’ll Die Laughing: How stiff can you get? No tube, no jack, no spare, no car, no bike, no ’phone, no hearse and no bloody undertaker! Things are crook in Tallarook.
2005 Newcastle Herald 26 February (Weekender Section): ‘Things are crook in Tallarook’ was a well-worn exclamation from World War II diggers when they found themselves in a sticky situation.
tickets: to have tickets on yourself
To have an exaggerated sense of one’s own importance or value; to be conceited. The evidence for this phrase dates from 1904. It became popular around the time of the First World War, and increasingly so into the 1920s and 30s. The original meaning of the word ticket is uncertain, but it probably refers to betting tickets (a person is so confident in their ability that they would bet on himself or herself). Other suggestions have included raffle tickets, price tags (especially the kind that used to be displayed on the outfit of mannequins in shop windows), or prize ribbons awarded at agricultural shows.
1945 Townsville Daily Bulletin 28 November: Entered a haughty lady with enough rings on her fingers to open a jeweller's shop. One glance convinced me she had ‘tickets on herself’, and in her own mind believed she was superior to the others in the compartment.
2001 Australian (Sydney) 26 September: Freeman is often portrayed as a shy, humble athlete, but she professed the opposite to be true. ‘I think I have always had the overwhelming audacity to believe I could win. I always had tickets on myself, I just didn't speak about it publicly’, she said.
trackie daks
Tracksuit trousers. Trackie is a colloquial term for tracksuit, chiefly used in Australia and Britain and recorded from the 1980s. The word daks began as a proprietary name (trademarked in the 1930s) for a brand of trousers. In Australia daks became used as a generic term for trousers from the 1960s. The two words appear in the compound trackie daks in 1993 and, whether you love them or deride them as daggy, they are Australia’s favourite leisure wear.
1997 Courier-Mail (Brisbane) 7 August: Scott Blackwell pops on his trackie daks to write a dag's guide to the Ekka.
2001 Australian (Sydney) 12 May: I like to think she eases herself into some comfy old trackie daks.
troppo: go troppo
To become mentally disturbed; to go crazy or wild. Troppo is formed by the abbreviation of tropic and the addition of –o, and it demonstrates a common Australian way of altering words. The phrase to go troppo was first used by Australian troops in the Pacific during the Second World War, and arose from the idea that long exposure to tropical conditions affected your sanity. It is now used in various contexts.
1945 G. Powell Two Steps To Tokyo: I might have wondered at what stage I had reached in the process of going ‘troppo’. It was a common saying with us that a man was beginning to go ‘troppo’ when he started talking to the lizards.
1994 M. Colman In A League Of Their Own: This was in the middle of the Whitlam government's darkest days and the crowd has gone absolutely troppo when Gough's walked out.
true blue
Very genuine, very loyal; expressing Australian values; Australian. This derives from a British English sense of true blue, recorded from the 17th century with the meaning ‘faithful, staunch, unwavering in one's commitments or principles; extremely loyal’. Later it also came to mean ‘staunchly conservative’ in a political sense. In Australia true blue expressed a completely different political ideal; the earliest records of the Australian sense date from the 1890s and mean ‘loyal to workers and union values’.
1897 Worker (Sydney) 18 September: Reports from the sheds are cheering, both reps. and men being of the sort called ‘true blue’.
This sense is overtaken in the last decades of the 20th century by a more general use of true blue to refer to something or someone that expresses Australian values, or is very genuine or loyal.
2006 Townsville Bulletin 6 January: The two married after dating for two years. Both were barely 20, she Canadian, he true blue Aussie.
Although true blue is not exclusively Australian, it is of special interest in Australia, and used here without the connotations of conservatism that are usually present elsewhere. For an earlier, detailed discussion of the history of the term from medieval times, see the article ‘How True Blue is True Blue?’ (page 5) in our Ozwords newsletter from October 1996.
turps: on the turps
Drinking heavily. Turps is an abbreviation of turpentine, and is recorded in Australian English from the 1860s with the meaning ‘alcoholic liquor’. It alludes to the use of spirits such as turps and methylated spirits by down-and-out alcoholics. In the earliest uses of the phrase on the turps the alcohol referred to is a spirit such as gin or rum, but more recently it has referred to any kind of alcoholic drink, especially beer.
1968 D. O’Grady A Bottle of Sandwiches: He’s a bastard when he gets on the turps.
2006 Australian (Sydney) 14 June: Drinking coffee after a night on the turps might do more than help you sober up—it could also slash your risk of developing cirrhosis of the liver.
two-up
A gambling game in which two coins are tossed in the air and bets laid as to whether both will fall heads or tails uppermost. It is first recorded in 1855. The two coins, traditionally pre-decimal currency pennies, are placed tails up on a flat board called the kip. The ring-keeper (the person in charge of the two-up ring) calls come in spinner, and the spinner tosses the coins. Two-up was popular with Australian soldiers during the First World War, and has become associated with the Anzacs. The game is traditionally played on Anzac Day, 25 April, in hotels and RSL clubs. For further discussion of two-up, see the article ‘The Language of Two Up’ in our Ozwords newletter from October 2010.
1893 Western Champion (Barcaldine) 27 June: The men were amusing themselves on the ‘off-day’ by playing cards, &c., one group playing ‘two-up’.
2007 Canberra Times 26 April: Ms Brill joined about 100 people yesterday at the club's outdoor two-up ring to watch punters empty their wallets and pint glasses during the traditional Anzac game.
uey
A U-turn. Uey is formed by abbreviating U-turn and adding –y on the end, a common Australian way of altering words. It is often found in the phrases to chuck a uey or to do a uey, meaning ‘to carry out a U-turn’. The earliest evidence of the term is found in 1973.
1975 Australian Women’s Weekly 2 July: My father remarked nervously that we were going the wrong way. ‘Sir’, replied the driver, ‘I will shortly make a turn. I am not in the habit of chucking a U-ey.’
2006 A. Hyland Diamond Dove 205 He did a casual u-ie in the driveway and headed south.
ugg boot
A flat-soled boot made from sheepskin with the wool on the inside. The term is of unknown origin, but is perhaps originally an alteration of ugly boot. Ugg boots (also spelled ugh boots and ug boots) are Australia’s favourite footwear for comfort or cold weather. The early evidence for the term, from the late 1960s, suggests they first became popular with surfers. The name Ugh-boots was registered as a proprietary name for a type of footwear in 1971 by the Shane Clothing Company, but in 2006 ugg boot (and its variants) was removed from the Australian register of trademarks. It is now a generic term for this type of boot in Australia. For a discussion of this and other footwear terms, see our blog ‘Footwear in Australian English’ from May 2015.
1986 Woman's Day (Sydney) 15 December: You can wash your ug boots in the washing machine with a good wool wash.
2003 Sydney Morning Herald 29 November: Is it just us, or has 2003 been the year of the ocker? Everywhere you look, there are ugh boots, thongs and mullet haircuts.
ute
Abbreviation of utility, a small truck with a two-door cab that looks like a sedan, and a tray (with permanent sides) that is part of the body. The word ute is first recorded in 1943. Utes are used for carrying light loads and are a familiar sight on Australian roads, both rural and urban. Many towns have an annual gathering of utes for competitive display, sometimes called a ute muster, with prizes awarded in categories such as ‘best street ute’ and ‘best feral ute’.
1955 Bulletin (Sydney) 2 February: Charley, caught well out in the blacksoil country in his utility .. glanced over his shoulder—the back of the ute was loaded with hailstones!
1994 Age (Melbourne) 26 June: No country road anywhere on this continent is ever entirely free of hoons in utes travelling faster than they ought to.
verandah over the toy shop
A man's large protruding belly; a ‘beer gut’. This phrase is a jocular allusion to toy shop in the sense ‘sexual wares’ (with reference to the male genitals). In standard English a verandah is ‘a roofed platform along the outside of a house, level with the ground floor’, but in Australia it also refers to the same kind of open-sided roofed structure over a shop or commercial building. The verandah is a significant architectural feature in Australia, and although Australian shops now rarely have such verandahs, the phrase verandah over the toy shop is still current. It is first recorded in 1987. Variants include verandah over the tool shed.
1991 Australian Financial Review (Sydney) 10 September: Santa training courses start in October—so pull out that red suit with the fur trimmings, and get accustomed to sticky fingers and wet patches on your knee. A small veranda over the toy shop probably wouldn't hurt either.
2009 J. Castrission Crossing the Ditch: He was looking slimmer and fitter than ever before. Normally, his cheeks had a decent puff in them and his veranda over the toy shop would have no trouble resting on the table edge.
vegemite: happy little vegemite, Vegemite kid
Vegemite is a concentrated yeast extract used as a spread. It was registered as a trademark in 1923, and became one of Australia’s favourite spreads for toast and sandwiches. The phrase happy little vegemite means ‘a cheerful or satisfied person', and is recorded from 1954. The phrase derives from an advertising campaign in the same year that included the jingle: ‘We're happy little Vegemites As bright as bright can be. We all enjoy our Vegemite For breakfast, lunch, and tea.’ (See the video on our blog ‘A History of Vegemite’ .)
2001 B. Courtenay Four Fires: So the Owens Valley CFA weren't always happy little Vegemites.
The 1980s saw another term adopted into Australian English from a Vegemite advertising campaign. Ads included the line ‘I’ll always be a Vegemite kid’, and Vegemite kid came to mean not only 'a child who eats Vegemite', but 'a typical Australian'.
1996 Sydney Morning Herald 19 June: Jane Campion? She's an Aussie. Neil Finn? A true-blue Vegemite kid. Mel Gibson? He fought at Gallipoli, didn't he?… That was just a movie? Oh, close enough.
waltzing Matilda: to waltz Matilda
To carry a swag; to travel the road. A matilda is a swag, the roll or bundle of possessions carried by an itinerant worker or swagman. The word waltz in to waltz Matilda is a jocular or ironic way to refer to the hard slog of carrying your possessions as you travel on foot, although waltz may possibly influenced by a German colloquial term, auf die Walze gehen, which means ‘to go a-wandering; to go on one's travels’.
The term to waltz Matilda is first recorded in the late 1880s, and is likely to have had a fairly short life, if it hadn’t been for the poet Banjo Patterson. In 1895 he penned the lyrics to the song about a swagman that became Australia’s famous national song, ‘Waltzing Matilda’. The song became strongly associated with national identity, and has cemented the term waltzing Matilda in the Australian imagination – although it is a fair bet that not all of us know exactly what it means!
1908 Cairns Morning Post 8 April: The population still increases, every coach to Quartz Hill bringing a full complement of passengers who ‘waltz matilda’ the 60 odd miles to the new El Dorado.
1945 J. Devanny Bird of Paradise: Nowadays they waltz Matilda on bikes.
For an earlier discussion of to waltz Matilda see the article ‘Chasing Our Unofficial National Anthem: Who Was Matilda? Why Did She Waltz?' (page 2) in the May 1999 issue of our Ozwords newsletter.
wide brown land
Australia. The phrase originates in the poem ‘My Country’ (originally titled ‘Core of My Heart’) by homesick poet Dorothea Mackellar, a young Australian living in England. It was published in the London Spectator in 1908, and then widely in Australian newspapers. The poem contrasted her experience of the green, orderly English countryside with the extremes of Australian geography and climate. Wide brown land is from the much-quoted second stanza:
I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Her beauty and her terror –
The wide brown land for me!
Following the poem’s publication, the phrase wide brown land began to be used from the 1930s to refer to Australia.
1966 J. Smith Ornament of Grace: A nice myth to be dusted off every Anzac Day, about bronzed heroes of the wide brown land.
1999 T. Astley Drylands: Out there all over the wide brown land, was a new generation of kids with telly niblets shoved into their mental gobs from the moment they could sit up in a playpen.
widgie
The female counterpart of a bodgie . Bodgies and widgies had their heyday as a youth subculture in 1950s Australia, and widgies, like bodgies, were readily identified by their style of clothing. In the Sydney Morning Herald, 11 February 1955, there occurs an interesting description of the 1950s widgie:
Constable Waldon said: 'A widgie, as she is known to me, is generally dressed in a very tight blouse, mostly without sleeves, and generally with a deep, plunging front. The blouse closely conforms to the lines of the body. In addition, she usually has a form-fitting skirt, which is very tight, especially around the knees. The skirt flares out a little below the knees and generally has a split either at the side or at the rear to enable her to walk. A widgie wears a short-cropped haircut.' Judge Curlewis said the detective's description of a widgie was the best he had heard in a Court.
Widgie (often spelt weegie in early occurrences) is first recorded in 1950. It is of unknown origin, although suggested origins have included a blend of woman (or women) and bodgie, an allusion to their wedge-shaped hairstyles, or an arbitrary rhyming reduplication on bodgie. The phenomenon of bodgies and widgies peaked in the 1950s. In the 1960s they were replaced by new subcultures such as the sharpies, rockers, mods, and surfies.
1996 Condon & Lawson Smashed: Breezy McCarthy, good-time girl, fast girl, slut, was a sort of widgie, if that word from the fifties still has any meaning.
wigwam: a wigwam for a goose’s bridle
Something absurd or preposterous; used as a snubbing or dismissive reply to an unwanted question. It might be used to answer an inquisitive child who asks ‘What’s in the bag?’ The original English idiom was a whim-wham for a goose’s bridle. Whim-wham meaning 'an ornament' or ‘a trinket’ disappeared from the language in the nineteenth century and survived only in this phrase. In Australia the meaningless whim-wham was altered to the more familiar wigwam (and sometimes to wing-wong). The Australian idiom is first recorded in 1917.
1947 Sydney Morning Herald 12 March: ‘Where you going?’ he called. ‘To get a wigwam for a goose's bridle’, yelled Smiley insolently, recalling one of the sayings of Granny McKinley, the oldest inhabitant.
2004 Mercury (Hobart) 19 June: And when your dad was busy in the shed and you repeatedly asked ‘What's that dad?’ there were all those variants on ‘A wigwam for a goose's bridle’.
wobbly: to chuck a wobbly
To lose one's self-control in a fit of nerves, panic, temper, annoyance, or the like. To chuck a wobbly is a variant of the Standard English idiom to throw a wobbly, where wobbly means ‘a fit of temper or panic’. In Australian English chuck in the sense of ‘throw’ or ‘stage’ is used in other expressions with the same meaning, such as chuck a mental and chuck a mickey. Chuck a wobbly is first recorded in 1986. In 1992 it appears in the record of a parliamentary debate in the Australian Senate, when one senator chastises another: ‘Stop chucking a wobbly, Senator Ray. Behave yourself. You will have a heart attack.’
2006 Courier-Mail (Brisbane) 7 January: If one more cot-case trendy brands us as bogan yobbos, we'll chuck a wobbly.
wog
A microbe or germ, a ‘bug’; an illness such as influenza or gastroenteritis. This wog is not the offensive word used in Australia to mean a migrant from southern Europe, and in Britain to mean a non-white migrant. This Australian wog originally meant ‘an insect or grub’, and referred especially to a predatory or disagreeable one. It then came to mean a germ or illness, and is first recorded in this sense in 1931.
1937 Cairns Post 19 July: This is the season, according to the experience of recent years, for the influenza ‘wog’ to become active, and this year is no exception to the rule.
2006 Newcastle Herald 1 June: I have had this wog for a while, and I was pretty crook when I woke up this morning, so I arranged replacement drivers for my team at Newcastle and then came to the hospital.
Woop Woop
A remote and supposedly backward rural town or district. It is one of several imaginary names Australians use to refer to a typical place in the outback, including Oodnagalahbi, Bullamakanka, and Bandywallop. As with Woop Woop, they allude to remoteness, a lack of sophistication, or both. Woop Woop is a jocular formation that is probably influenced by the use of reduplication in Aboriginal languages to indicate plurality or intensity. A number of real Australian placenames, such as Wagga Wagga, are examples of reduplication. The first evidence for Woop Woop occurs in the 1890s.
1940 Rip (Port Phillip) 29 October: If I go to the dance on Thursday, I’ll have to walk from Woop-Woop.
1993 R. Fitzgerald Eleven Deadly Sins: It is preferable to refer to one's opponent as ‘the honourable member for Woopwoop’ rather than as ‘that idiot scumbag’.
wowser
A person who is publicly censorious of others and the pleasures they seek; a person whose own behaviour is puritanical or prudish; a killjoy. Wowser, still current in Australian usage, is recorded from 1900. Its origin is uncertain. It may be from British dialect wow ‘to howl or bark as a dog; to wail’ and ‘to whine; to grumble, make complaint’, but it is possibly a coinage of John Norton, who was the editor of the Sydney newspaper Truth from 1891–1916. He claimed to have invented it, saying ‘I first gave it public utterance in the [Sydney] City Council, when I applied it to Alderman Waterhouse, whom I referred to as ... the white, woolly, weary, watery, word-wasting wowser from Waverley’. Certainly the earliest evidence for wowser is found in Truth. Wowser is a productive term that has given rise to words such as wowserish, wowserdom, and wowserism – all of which can be found in use today.
1906 Truth (Sydney) 25 March: A wowser cannot walk through the Art Gallery without being shocked by seeing the picture of some well-proportioned goddess.
1989 Sun (Melbourne) 14 March: And there are plenty of wowsers who believe Dr Ruth should be censored and any talk of sex confined strictly to the bedroom.
For an earlier discussion of the history of wowser see the article ‘Wow for Wowser!’ (page 7) in our Ozwords newsletter from May 1997.
X-ray
Used to designate a style of Aboriginal painting that originated in Western Arnhem Land (Northern Territory). The style is characterised by the depiction of internal as well as external organs of the subject, as if the artist is seeing it with X-ray vision. The first evidence of the term is found in the early 1940s.
1978 R. Edwards Aboriginal Art in Australia: The famous X-ray paintings have their home in the west. In them, the artist portrays not only the external features of the animal, human or spirit being he is painting, but also the spinal column, heart, lungs and other internal organs. It is a conventional way of showing that there is more to a living thing than external appearances.
1999 M. Mahood Crocodile Dreaming: Two big sea turtles and a dugong, X-ray style.
yabby
Any of several freshwater crayfish valued as food, especially the common species Cherax destructor that is native to south-eastern Australia. Fishing for yabbies is often a favourite childhood memory for Australians who lived near a dam or creek. A piece of string lowered into the water, with a bit of fresh meat tied to it for the yabby to latch on to, is the traditional fishing method. Yabbies are good to eat (a number of species can now be found on restaurant menus) and are also used as fishing bait. The word yabby is a borrowing from the Wemba Wemba language of Victoria. The earliest evidence of it dates from the 1840s, and it has generated a number of compound terms such as yabby farming, yabby net, and yabby trap.
1889 Bathurst Free Press 14 March: Luscious Murray cod, with succulent ‘yabbies’ and tempting fruit.
1999 Australian Gold, Gem &Treasure Magazine December: About a kilometre from our camp was a dam brimming over with large yabbies so each night Imy would set a couple of yabby nets he happened to have, baited with some Meaty Bites, and the next morning we would feast on toasted yabby sandwiches.
A second sense of yabby occurs chiefly in Queensland, recorded from 1952. It refers to any of several small burrowing shrimp-like marine crustaceans that are commonly used for bait. Anglers often use a mechanical device called a yabby pump to extract these crustaceans from the sand or mud flats.
1994 P. Horrobin Guide to Favourite Australian Fish (ed. 7): Inside temperate estuaries, there are two small shrimps which are first class baits for a variety of fish. These are the ‘yabbies’ or ‘nippers’.
There are many species of freshwater crayfish in Australia and many different names for them, such as lobby, marron, and crawchie. For a discussion of these and other terms for Australian freshwater crayfish, see our blog ‘The problem with yabbies’ from February 2013.
yakka
Work, strenuous labour. The word is used especially in the phrase hard yakka. Yakka first occurs in the 1840s as a verb meaning ‘to work’, and it derives from yaga meaning ‘work’ in the Yagara language of the Brisbane region. Yakka found its way into nineteenth-century Australian pidgin, and then passed into Australian English. Spelling variants such as yakker and yacker are also found.
1892 Bulletin (Sydney) 19 November: The stevedore must yacker for the bit he gets to eat.
2004 Townsville Bulletin 14 July: We marched out through the thigh-deep mud carrying wallaby jacks, jungle matting lent by the army and railway sleepers. It was hard yakka.
yidaki
A didgeridoo. Yidaki is a borrowing from the Yolgnu languages of north-eastern Arnhem Land (Northern Territory). The instrument was originally used only in Arnhem Land, but became commonly known in Australia as the didgeridoo (not an Aboriginal word, but an imitation of the sound by non-Aboriginal people). The Yolgnu word for the instrument has become widely known in recent decades, and was popularised by the music group Yothu Yindi, formed in 1986, whose members were Yolgnu speakers.
1988 Sydney Morning Herald 12 November: The rock and roll starts. It's a thick sound, made more bass-y by the addition of the yidaki but Bakamana Yunupingu has a strong, appealing voice.
2000 Koori Mail (Lismore) 20 September: With the sound of the yidaki (didgeridoo) echoing off nearby high-rise buildings and apartments, a gathering of Sydney's Aboriginal community celebrates the mid-point of the Budyari ‘Proper Way’ Festival.
yowie
An ape-like monster supposed to inhabit parts of eastern Australia. The yowie is Australia’s equivalent of the Himalayan yeti, or the American bigfoot or sasquatch. Yowie may come from the word yuwi ‘dream spirit’ in the Yuwaalaraay language of northern New South Wales. However, another possiblity is that yowie is an alteration of the word yahoo, a name given by Aboriginal people to an evil spirit. Yowie is first recorded in the 1970s.
1980 M. McAdoo If Only I’d Listened: ’E’d be about six foot easy tall, broad, an’ a sort of brownish fur lookin’ stuff all over ’im, an’ standing up like a man… We didn’t know what the name of it was then, but .. a lot of people’ve been seein’ them around the eastern parts, an’ they’re known as the ‘Yowie’.
zac
A sixpence. It is probably derived from the Scottish dialect word saxpence. Zac is first recorded in Australian English in the 1890s. Later it is also used to mean ‘a trifling sum of money’, as in the phrase not worth a zac. Australians no longer use pounds, shillings and pence since decimal currency was introduced in 1966, but we have long memories. Despite the fact that there have not been zacs in our wallets for fifty years, the word zac, and the notion that it is not worth a great deal, can still be found in Australian usage.
1945 Australian Week-End Book: The only one who’d backed it had been his wife who’d had a zac each way.
2006 Age (Melbourne) 29 August: ‘When I started this .. I divested myself of anything I owned’, he said. ‘I'm not worth a zac.’
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What women was Time Magazine man of the year in 1952? | Australian Animals List: Native, Endangered, Introduced, Fauna
Australian Animals List
The red fox was released in Victoria Australia in the 1850s. Today it is found in over 75% of Australia.
Red Fire Ant
This ant arrived in shipping containers from the USA in 2001. Presently it has been contained to areas around the port of Sydney and Brisbane. Millions of dollars are spent each year preventing its spread.
Goat
Goats escaped into the wild and now cause significant damage to the environment by overgrazing and depriving other animals of food.
Brumby
Brumbies are wild horses. They are descendants of animals that escaped from early European settlers.
Cat
Feral cats are ordinary domestic cats that have gone wild and survive by hunting and scavenging. They prey on small native animals and birds.
The Monarch Butterfly arrived in Australia unintentionally brought here by American gold miners.
Pig
Feral Pigs are the descendants of pigs brought to Australia by European settlers. Many were allowed to roam and soon became wild.
Flea
The European and Spanish Rabbit Fleas was specially imported to use as a carrier of the myxomatosis virus used to kill feral wild rabbits.
House Mouse
The common house mouse is one of the few animals that wasn't brought to Australia intentionally. It hitched a free ride on ships.
Native Australian Animals What is a Native Animal?
Ever wondered what animals are really native to Australia ?
Generally speaking, it is any animal that has been in Australia before the arrival of humans . The reason this definition is the best is because animals such as the kangaroo have been in Australia for millions of years and are unquestionably native. The the dingo , on the other hand, which considered native by some, was only brought to Australia by humans about 5000 years ago. Many other animals such as cattle and rabbits were also introduced by European settlers less than 200 years ago. These are definitely not native to Australia.
Australia has some of the most unusual native animals in the world. Over 83% of the mammals, 7% of the birds, 89% of the reptiles and 94% of the frogs are unique to Australia. Overall, about 8% of the world's plants and animals are found only in Australia.
Australia's long isolation from the rest of the world has allowed Australian fauna to evolve separately from those in other parts of the world, but many fill similar niches in the local environment. For example the Echidna is an Australian anteater. The Tasmanian Tiger (now extinct) was a marsupial wolf. The existence of similar animals in different parts of the world is referred to as " Parallel Evolution ".
Australian Mammals
There are three types of mammals in Australia. These are monotremes, marsupials and placentals.
Monotremes first appeared between 145–99 million years ago and are the oldest type of Australian mammals. Two out of the five known species of monotremes in the world live in Australia. The Echidna and Platypus are two such animals found in Australia.
Marsupials appeared about 64-65 million years ago and are the second oldest type of mammal found in Australia. They occupy every niche of the Australian habitat and range from the large Red Kangaroo to marsupials smaller than a mouse.
Placental mammals are relatively recent arrivals to Australia. Bats were the first to arrive getting here about 23 million years ago. Rodents arrived about 5-10 million years ago. These animals reached Australia by flying or hitching a ride on floating debris and crossing the oceans that separated Australian from Asia as Australia as it stated drifting slowly closer to Asia. These placental mammals make up a very small percentage of the total mammalian population. Humans introduced a number of animals. The Dingo was the first of these, coming here about 5,000 years ago.
Australia has many amphibians and reptiles found nowhere else in the world.
Lizards – There are over 700 species unique to Australia alone.
Snakes – Australia has 140 species of land snakes and 32 species of sea snakes. Of these about a 100 are poisonous snakes. The bite from about 12 of these can be fatal to humans. The Red-bellied Black Snake is one such poisonous snake.
Frogs – Four families of native frogs numbering 230 species inhabit the continent. 135 of these are unique to Australia. There is only one introduced frog family. This is the ecologically disastrous Cane Toad .
Crocodiles – Australia has two species of crocodile. The Saltwater Crocodile is the world's largest and can weigh as much as 1,000 kilos and is known to attack humans. Fresh water crocodiles are much smaller and do not attack humans.
Turtles – There are 35 species of freshwater turtles. Six species of sea turtle also visit the coastlines.
Australian Birds
Australia has 800 species of birds, 350 are found only in Australasia.
Ratites such as the Emu and Cassowary , are large flightless birds similar to the ostrich.
Megapods such as the Mallee fowl, trace their ancestry as far back as Gondwanan time. These stocky birds look somewhat like chickens. They have small heads and large feet (that's why the name "megapod" meaning big-feet).
Parrots unique to Australia comprise nearly 20% of the world's know species. These include the cockatoo and the almost extinct night parrot .
Other birds such as Kookaburras are the world's largest kingfishers.
Introduced Animals in Australia Humans deliberately brought Animals to Australia
No Hoofed Animals, Mice Apes & Monkeys in Australia
Until Europeans came in 1788, there were no hoofed animals (like horses, cattle, goats, deer etc.) in Australia. Rats and mice were the only animals that the Europeans didn't bring intentionally. They arrived as stowaways on ships. Australia also did not have any apes or monkeys.
The first animals to be introduced into Australia by humans was the Dingo a wild Australian dog. It was brought here by Asian sea-farers over 5000 years ago. Other introduced animals were brought here for agricultural purposes (cattle and sheep), for transportation (camel and horse), for sport (rabbit and fox), for pleasure (myna bird and house sparrow) and for pest control ( Cane Toad). Some of these creatures have been disastrous to the Australian ecology.
Related Article: Introduced Animals of Australia - Feral, Invasive, Benign & Beneficial
Endangered Australian Animals Many native animals of Australia are close to extinction
According to the Australian Department of the Environment's Endangered Australian Animals List many Australian native animals are endangered and threatened with extinction. For example; even the cuddly Koala is listed as vulnerable, the Cassowary and Night Parrot are listed as endangered and the Gouldin Finch as critical.
Related Article: Endangered Animals of Australia
Extinct Australian Animals Many native animals of Australia became extinct since humans arrived
Since the arrival of European settlers in 1788 Australia has lost numerous native animals and plants. The Tasmanian Tiger is a prominent example of a recently extinct Australian animal. The last died in captivity in 1936.
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Name the soft cloth made from silk that derives its name from the French word for rag. | Silk Chiffon Nude fabric by the yard | NY Fashion Center Fabrics
Imported Fabric
Soft, pebbly texture due to the tight, crepe twist silk yarns
Has a velvety sheen due to the way the silk filaments reflect light, but is not particularly shiny
Silk chiffon does not lend itself to garments that are tailored or require a lot of precise seaming.
If garment requires interfacing, we recommend using silk organza for sew-in interfacing
You can create volume in this very thin fabric by utilizing soft tucks, shirring, or sewing it with multiple layers
Because of its loose structure, fabric tends to move when laid out for cutting. Layer the fabric between two sheets of tissue thin paper before cutting to stabilize. Hold fabric in place using fabric weights or fine, sharp pins (like our extra fine pins). Keep cut fabric pieces pinned to tissue paper until right before you’re ready to sew
Hand-baste pattern pieces before sewing with a sharp, fine needle
Use tissue paper as backing when sewing seams together to help stabilize fabric – tear away once seam is secure
It’s best to only cut one layer at a time to avoid grain distortion.
Use a new, thin needle when sewing this fabric to avoid snags– especially when machine sewing
Use cotton, or cotton-covered polyester thread when sewing
Hold thread ends when beginning to avoid accidental shirring
The best finishes for chiffon are French seams, very narrow hems (1/8”), or purl stitch
Hand washing may cause water spots, check a small piece to check. Dry clean recommended.
Draping Demo
Our in-house fashion stylist tests a variety of looks to showcase how this fabric drapes and gives expert tips on how to best work with it.
| Chiffon |
Who played The Lone Ranger in the 1950's TV series? | Vintage Fashion Guild : Lightest Open Weave Or Sheer Fabrics
Lightest open weave or sheer fabrics
Lightest open weave or sheer fabrics
Search Lightest open weave or sheer fabrics:
Batiste
Jul 8, 2012
| by admin | Fabric Resource | Fabric , Cotton or cotton-like , Top weight , Lightest open weave or sheer fabrics Read More
Named for Jean Baptiste, a French weaver of the 13th century who wove fine linen cloth, batiste is now most commonly made of cotton or a cotton/polyester blend, The fabric is light and sheer, with lengthwise streaks. It is a balanced plain weave. When cotton is used, the soft, limp fabric is often mercerized to bolster its luster and strength. The fabric is often white, pale solids or delicate prints. There are also wool, silk
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Cheesecloth
Jul 8, 2012
| by admin | Fabric Resource | Fabric , Cotton or cotton-like , Top weight , Lightest open weave or sheer fabrics Read More
In the U.S., cheesecloth is the name of sheer, soft, loosely-woven bleached gauze fabric used for non-clothing purposes such as bandaging, dust cloths, and pressing cheese, butter and meat. In the U.K., cheesecloth is a light shirting weight soft cotton which is most often bleached but can be dyed, and is characterized by a crinkled texture. See also: Gauze Muslin Cotton crepe Cotton georgette
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Chiffon
Jul 8, 2012
| by admin | Fabric Resource | Fabric , Silk or silk-like , Top weight , Lightest open weave or sheer fabrics Read More
Chiffon is French for “rag,” but this very sheer fabric is the most elegant of rags! Originally silk, chiffon is also now made of polyester, nylon or rayon as well. It is a loose, balanced plain weave with tightly twisted single yarns in both directions. It has a subtle crepe texture, and is as light and thin as can be. Chiffon is sometimes also used to describe the lightness of a fabric, such as chiffon
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China silk, habutai
Jul 8, 2012
| by admin | Fabric Resource | Fabric , Silk or silk-like , Top weight , Lightest open weave or sheer fabrics Read More
Very similar in their qualities, China silk originates from China, while habutai is Japanese. Habutai means “soft as down” in Japanese. Both are extremely soft, fine, light and lustrous fabrics, usually in a plain weave. China silk can be dyed, while habutai is more often left a natural ecru and can be slightly irregular in its fibers. Uses: Very light blouses, lingerie, linings
Gauze
Jul 8, 2012
| by admin | Fabric Resource | Fabric , Cotton or cotton-like , Top weight , Lightest open weave or sheer fabrics Read More
Soft, limp fabric with a loose, airy weave. Usually cotton, gauze was originally made of silk in the city of Gaza in the Middle East. It can be found in cotton blends, wool, silk, acetate or rayon. Plain or leno weave may be used. If stiffened with sizing, the fabric may be referred to as scrim. Uses: Loose-fitting, unstructured garments, most often blouses and dresses. In the U.K. and Australia, gauze refers to surgical bandaging
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Gazar
Jul 8, 2012
| by admin | Fabric Resource | Fabric , Silk or silk-like , Top weight , Lightest open weave or sheer fabrics Read More
Gazar is alternatively called gaze, the French word for gauze. Gazar is a fine, sheer, crisp silk fabric which may be in a leno weave, but most commonly is in a plain weave. The fabric is more crisp than chiffon and georgette, but less than organza. Uses: Formal wear, bridal, dresses, interfacing or facing for lightweight fabrics See also: Ninon Organza
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Georgette
Jul 8, 2012
| by admin | Fabric Resource | Fabric , Silk or silk-like , Top weight , Lightest open weave or sheer fabrics Read More
A sheer, dull, easily draped fabric originally of silk—now also manufactured fibers and even wool—in a balanced plain weave. The crepe texture is achieved by highest twist yarns in both warp and weft. Every one to two yarns the direction alternates from S-twist to Z-twist. It is much like chiffon, only slightly more crepe-textured and heavier. Georgette is named after a late 19th-century French fashion designer named Madame Georgette de la Plante. Georgette is also
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On which islands would you find Longstone Lighthouse? | Heritage Locations
Visit website
About Longstone Lighthouse
The Farne Islands are a group of fifteen to twenty islands (depending on the state of the tide) lying some 2.5-7.5 km (1 1/2-4 3/4 miles) off the coast of Northumberland. Divided into two groups, the main islands in the Inner Group are Inner Farne, Knoxes Reef and the East and West Wideopens (all joined together on very low tides) and (somewhat separated) the Megstone; the main islands in the Outer Group are Staple Island, the Brownsman, North and South Wamses, Big Harcar and the Longstone. The two groups are separated by Staple Sound.
Longstone Rock lies about 9.7 km (6 miles) from the mainland on the westernmost side of the reef. Vegetation is very scanty being predominantly matgrass. The Lighthouse was built and designed by Joseph Nelson in 1826, and was originally called the Outer Farne lighthouse. The site has a long history showing the need for a light, prior to the construction of the lighthouse. A light was requested for these islands by Sir John Clayton in the late 17th century and by Captain J. Blackett in 1755. Unfortunately both were rejected as the Elder Brethren of Trinity House were unable to obtain the consent of the affected parties to pay a toll for the maintenance of the light.
However, in 1826 it was found essential for the welfare of shipping off the Northumberland coast to construct a lighthouse in the Farne Group on the Longstone Rock. Designed and built by Joseph Nelson, it is a red and white circular tower built of rough stone with iron railings around the lantern gallery. The light originally came from Argand lamps with twelve burners, parabolic reflectors 53 cm (21 in) in diameter and 23 cm (9 in) deep and a catadioptric optical apparatus. The cost of the Lighthouse and the dwellings was approximately £4,771, the lantern alone costing £1,441.
The island was isolated and bleak, with storms frequently so bad that waves covered the living quarters, forcing the family to take refuge in the upper rooms. The lighthouse is most famous for the night in September 1838 when the steamer 'Forfarshire', bound from Hull to Dundee, went aground on Hawkers Rocks, about a mile from the Lighthouse. Forty three people were drowned as the stern portion of the vessel split off and was carried away in the storm. The forepart, to which clung the survivors, remained fast on the rocks. At daybreak William Darling, the keeper, and the fishermen ashore saw the wreck, but the waves were beating against the rocks so much that the fishermen thought it impossible to attempt a rescue and even Darling hesitated. He was finally persuaded to make the attempt by his daughter, with her as the second hand in the small lighthouse boat.
After a terrific struggle, they brought back four men and one woman in their frail open boat and later a further four survivors. All nine had to be accommodated and fed at the lighthouse for two days until the storm abated and they could be taken to the mainland. This gallant action made Grace Darling and her father famous. The Royal Humane Society voted them its gold medal, the Government made them a grant and a public subscription was organised.
Major alterations were made to the Lighthouse in 1952 and the light was converted to electricity. The lighthouse was converted to automatic operation in September 1990 and is now monitored from the Trinity House Operations Control Centre at Harwich.
By road: Off A1, via B1340 to Seahouses.
By boat: Boat trips are available from April to October from Seahouses.
Armstrong, Richard, Grace Darling - Maid and Myth, Dent, ASIN: B0026MH2FQ (1965)
Bowen, J.P., British Lighthouses, British Council, ASIN: B001A8HS24 (1947)
Denton, A. & Leach, Nicholas, Lighthouses of England and Wales: A Complete Guide, Landmark Publishing, ISBN-10: 1843063190 (2007)
Hague, Douglas and Christie, Rosemary, Lighthouses, Their Architecture, History and Archaeology, Gomer Press, ISBN-0850883245(1975)
Naish, John, Seamarks, Their History and Development Adlard Coles Nautical, ISBN-10: 0540073091 (1985)
Nicholson, Christopher, Rock lighthouses of Britain; The end of an era?, Whittles Publishing, ISBN 1870325419. (1995)
Payton, Charles, Lighthouses: Towers of the Sea, National Trust Books, ISBN-10: 1905400128 (2006)
Smedley, Constance, Grace Darling and Her Times, Hurst & Balackett, ASIN: B00120EZ6M (1932)
Watt, Grace, The Farne Islands, Their History and Wildlife, Country Life, ASIN: B0000CI2HV (1951)
Woodman, Richard & Wilson, Jane, The Lighthouses of Trinity House, ISBN 1 904050 00 X (2002)
| Farne Islands |
“Go Set A Watchman” is a long awaited sequel to which novel published in 1960? | Grace Darling Website
Welcome to the Grace Darling website
Grace was born on 24th November 1815 at Bamburgh, Northumberland and spent her youth in two lighthouses (Brownsman and Longstone) where her father, William, was the keeper. In the early hours of the 7th September 1838, Grace, looking out from an upstairs window of the Longstone Lighthouse on the Farne Islands, spotted the wreck and survivors of the Forfarshire on Big Harcar, a low rocky outcrop. The Forfarshire had foundered on the rocks and broken in half; one of the halves had sunk during the night. Amidst tempestuous waves and gale force winds there followed an amazing rescue of the survivors.
www.GraceDarling.co.uk
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Which Crystal Palace manager became the first casualty of this season's Premier League when he got sacked in December 2014? | Steve McClaren on Crystal Palace shortlist to replace sacked Neil Warnock | Daily Mail Online
Steve McClaren on Crystal Palace shortlist to replace sacked Neil Warnock
Neil Warnock was sacked as Crystal Palace manager after four months
Steve McClaren, Victor Pereira and Tony Popovic are on the shortlist
Crystal Palace have won just three games this season
comments
Crystal Palace have a wide-ranging list of possible candidates to replace manager Neil Warnock, who was sacked on Saturday.
The list includes Derby’s Steve McClaren, ex-Porto boss Vitor Pereira and former Palace players Tony Popovic and Gareth Southgate.
However, Tony Pulis, who saved Palace from relegation last season before leaving in acrimonious circumstances on the eve of this campaign, has been effectively ruled out of contention. The Palace board do not envisage being able to work with him and Pulis, himself, says there is ‘no chance’ he will go back.
Derby manager Steve McClaren is one of the names being considered to be the next Palace manager
NEXT MANAGER ODDS
Mike Phelan 20/1
Source: Coral ; odds are subject to change
Warnock, 66, was told that he was being fired yesterday morning, the day after Palace lost 3-1 at home to Southampton and just four months after his second stint as Palace manager began.
He became the first Premier League casualty of the season after Palace co-chairman Steve Parish took what he described as the ‘unfortunate decision’ to fire him.
Palace have won just once in their last 12 Premier League games and have dropped into the relegation zone, albeit within one point of safety and two wins from mid-table.
The fear of Palace falling back into the Championship and off the Premier League gravy train, allied with doubts that Warnock is the right man to spend transfer window funds, underpinned the decision.
Neil Warnock was sacked by Palace after just four months in charge
Former Porto boss Vitor Pereira is on the short-list to replace Warnock at Crystal Palace
Crystal Palace chairman Steve Parish (right) has made the decision to sack Warnock after a poor start
Keith Millen has taken over as caretaker manager for today’s trip to QPR and could remain in charge for the New Year’s Day visit to Aston Villa.
Parish has reportedly already spoken to Pereira, who was considered by Everton as David Moyes’ successor before Roberto Martinez was given the job.
The bookmakers’ early favourite for the job was former Spurs manager Tim Sherwood, although he was considered and did not get the post when Palace were looking to replace Pulis.
| Neil Warnock |
Name the year: SAS stormed the Iranian Embassy in London; Ronald Reagan was elected President and Rhodesia gained independence? | Manchester City explore £200m Lionel Messi options and Roberto Martinez on borrowed time at Goodison Park | Daily Mail Online
Manchester City explore £200m Lionel Messi options and Roberto Martinez on borrowed time at Goodison Park
Manchester City still exploring possibility of signing Lionel Messi
Roberto Martinez under pressure at Everton after poor start to the season
Derby manager Steve McClaren being lined up to replace Martinez
Tony Popovic a leading contender for Crystal Palace manager's job
Marco Reus likely to join Real Madrid from Dortmund in the summer
comments
Manchester City continue to look in to the viability of signing Lionel Messi.
Last week Chelsea boss Jose Mourinho said the Blues could not sign the Argentine because of the Financial Fair Play restraints.
A £200m transfer fee plus a gross package nearing £500,000 a week is obviously a massive obstacle.
But City’s money men are still looking into how a deal could be calibrated, especially in the knowledge that tax implications could yet force Messi to leave Spain.
Manchester City are still interested in a deal to sign four-time Ballon d'Or winner Lionel Messi (second left)
Roberto Martinez is the next Premier League manager who faces the axe.
In a shock development it is understood Martinez is suddenly under immense pressure at Everton in the wake of Neil Warnock’s dismissal at Crystal Palace. The 66-year-old Yorkshireman became the first Premier League managerial casualty of the season on Saturday.
The man who is being lined to replace Martinez as new Goodison Park boss is former England manager Steve McClaren, currently in charge at Derby.
Roberto Martinez is under mounting pressure at Goodison Park after the Boxing Day defeat by Stoke City
Referee Lee Mason books Everton and Scotland forward Steven Naismith during the 1-0 defeat
At the start of the season Martinez seemed fireproof.
Such was the Spaniard’s reputation that he was spoken of as potential successor to Arsene Wenger at Arsenal or even a future England manager.
But Everton have underperformed this season and Grapevine sources tell us that Martinez’s job is now on the line.
Derby manager Steve McClaren (right) could be the man to replace Martinez should he be sacked
Tony Popovic has emerged as a leading candidate to become the new Crystal Palace manager after the dismissal of Neil Warnock.
Popovic is a former Palace player and currently boss of Western Sydney Wanderers in his native Australia.
As soon as Warnock was dismissed the names of Tim Sherwood, Chris Hughton were bandied about.
So to Paul Clement (ex-Chelsea coach now at Real Madrid) and strangely Dutchman Dick Advocaat.
But Popovic could prove to be a shock appointment.
Former Crystal Palace defender and assistant manager Tony Popovic watches his Western Sydney Wanderers side in the FIFA Club World Cup in Morocco last week
Marco Reus to Real Madrid stories are now in over drive.
This column revealed that Borussia Dortmund’s Reus will be Madrid’s 'Galactico' signing next summer a month ago.
But that does not necessarily mean Gareth Bale will leave Madrid for Manchester United at the end of the season because of Reus’s arrival as has been predicted in some quarters.
Yes, United want Bale. They are prepared to pay a £120million transfer fee and give the player at least £350,000 a week wages.
But we are told ideally Bale wants to negotiate a new contract and stay in Spain.
Dortmund and Germany winger Marco Reus celebrates scoring against Bayern Munich back in November
I am hearing: Such is the vanity of top flight footballers that at Chelsea’s Cobham training ground there is now a 'resident' teeth-whitening dentist.
I am also hearing: If West Ham and Sam Allardyce part company at the end of the season then Gus Poyet is a leading candidate to replace him.
I bet: West Ham are 25-1 with Corals to beat Arsenal on Sunday. That’s got to be worth the cost of a skinny latte for the potential return of a bulls eye.
BTW: I’m still baffled why the Premier League felt it appropriate to stage a minute's applause ahead of Boxing Day matches in memory of the so called Truce Match which allegedly happened at the first Christmas of the World War I.
Can anyone actually provide proof such a game occurred?
Actually, I understand it could have been there were several impromptu 'kickabouts' on several fronts from Belgium to Greece.
West Ham players line up for a minute's applause ahead of their Boxing Day defeat at Chelsea
But in essence it’s one of the myths that have run out of control.
Moreover why does the corporate football machine of the Premier League think they can 'own' this story in a manner where it seems they say: 'we unite the world'.
It is estimated around 15million people died as a consequence of the 1914-18 conflict.
I can’t see any reason to clap about that.
Certainly not for reflected glory.
I-Say: It had been the longest time from the start of a Premier League season for a manager to be sacked since 1996, when Roy McFarland was ousted by Bolton.
But on Saturday the seal was finally broken as Neil Warnock was shown the door by Crystal Palace.
Now Warnock is not everyone’s cup of tea.
Indeed I know of some people in the game who would happily punch him on the nose.
Crystal Palace sacked manager Neil Warnock (centre) after the 3-1 Boxing Day defeat by Southampton
But to be axed so soon after being appointed at the start of the season after Tony Pulis parted company with the club having 'fallen out' with supremo Steve Parish before a ball had been kicked?
Seems rash.
Yes, Parish will point to the fact that last season getting rid of Ian Holloway and appointing Pulis in the autumn saved the club’s Premier League bacon.
He might be proved correct again. On the other hand, if the now parted Warnock was such a mistake one has to wonder at the rationale of recruitment at Palace.
Palace co-chairman Steve Parish (right) has seen two managers come and go since August
But of course the trend in the modern game is for boardroom chiefs to sack the manager the moment the natives get restless on the basis of acting before the natives turn on, well, them.
Looking back the often maligned Martin Edwards arguably did the best bit of service for Manchester United from Busby to Best et al when he stood by Alex Ferguson when it seemed after nearly FOUR years - not six months - the wheels appeared to be falling off. And the rest, as they say...
If Warnock is the wrong man now then he was the wrong man in August. Parish has done a good job in helping turn Palace around. But if he is not careful he will put the club back into a tail-spin again.
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What is a more familiar name for Deuterium Oxide? | Deuterium oxide - definition of deuterium oxide by The Free Dictionary
Deuterium oxide - definition of deuterium oxide by The Free Dictionary
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/deuterium+oxide
deuterium oxide
n.
Water in which deuterium replaces hydrogen, D2O, isolated for use as a moderator in certain nuclear reactors.
deuterium oxide
(Elements & Compounds) another name for heavy water
ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:
heavy water
moderator - any substance used to slow down neutrons in nuclear reactors
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References in periodicals archive ?
In the deuterium oxide dose-to-mother technique, the mother consumes an accurately weighed dose of deuterium oxide, which rapidly equilibrates with her body water, including her milk.
'Energy efficient' orangutans need less food fuel than we do
Identification of 3,4-Dihydroxy-2-oxo-butanal (L-threosone) as intermediate compound in oxidative degradation of dehydro-L-ascorbic acid and 2,3-diketo-L-gulonic acid in a deuterium oxide phosphate buffer.
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| Heavy water |
Grand Mal and Petit Mal are two types of which illness | Product Name Deuterium oxide | Sigma-Aldrich
Note: This product can be packaged on demand. For information on pricing, availability and packaging of custom sizes, please contact Stable Isotopes Customer Service .
Sodium acetate + water in deuterium oxide, 99.9 atom % D
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Who was the Greek goddess of agriculture? | DEMETER - Greek Goddess of Grain & Agriculture (Roman Ceres)
Demeter
Persephone and Demeter, Athenian red-figure lekythos C5th B.C., National Archaeological Museum, Athens
DEMETER was the Olympian goddess of agriculture, grain and bread who sustained mankind with the earth's rich bounty. She presided over the foremost of the Mystery Cults which promised its intiates the path to a blessed afterlife in the realm of Elysium. Demeter was depicted as a mature woman, often wearing a crown and bearing sheafs of wheat or a cornucopia (horn of plenty), and a torch.
MYTHS
Some of the more famous myths featuring the goddess include:--
The abduction of her daughter Persephone by Hades, and the great dearth she brought down upon the earth. << More >>
The nursing of Demophoon, the young son of King Keleus (Celeus) of Eleusis. << More >>
The journeys of Triptolemos, a hero sent by the goddess to instruct mankind in agriculture. << More >>
Her assault by Poseidon who forcefully coupled with her in the form of a horse. << More >>
The punishment of Erysikhthon (Erysichthon) who was cursed with an unquenchable hunger by the goddess for cutting down her holy grove. << More >>
Many other myths are detailed over the following pages.
DEMETER PAGES ON THEOI.COM
This site contains a total of 15 pages describing the goddess, including general descriptions, mythology, and cult. The content is outlined in the Index of Demeter Pages (left column or below).
FAMILY OF DEMETER
KRONOS & RHEA (Hesiod Theogony 453, Apollodorus 1.4, Diodorus Siculus 5.68.1, Hyginus Fabulae, et al)
OFFSPRING
ENCYCLOPEDIA
Demeter, Athenian red-figure volute krater C5th B.C., Badisches Landesmuseum
DEMETER, one of the great divinities of the Greeks. Tho name Demeter is supposed by some to be the same as gê mêtêr, that is, mother earth, while others consider Deo, which is synonymous with Demeter, as connected with dais and dainumi, and as derived from the Cretan word dêai, barley, so that Demeter would be the mother or giver of barley or of food generally. (Hom. Il. v. 500.) These two etymologies, however do not suggest any difference in the character of the goddess, but leave it essentially the same.
Demeter was the daughter of Cronus and Rhea, and sister of Hestia, Hera, Aides, Poseidon, and Zeus. Like the other children of Cronus she was devoured by her father, but he gave her forth again after taking the emetic which Metis had given him. (Hesiod. Theog. 452, &c.; Apollod. i. 2. § 1.)
By her brother Zeus, Demeter became the mother of Persephone (Proserpina) and Dionysus (Hesiod. Theoq. 912; Diod. iii. 62), and by Poseidon of Despoena and the horse Arion. (Apollod. iii. 6. § 8; Paus. viii. 37. § 6.) The most prominent part in the mythus of Demeter is the rape of her daughter Persephone by Pluto, and this story not only suggests the main idea embodied in Demeter, but also directs our attention to the principal seats of her worship. Zeus, without the knowledge of Demeter, had promised Persephone to Pluto, and while the unsuspecting maiden was gathering flowers which Zeus had caused to grow in order to tempt her and to favour Pluto's scheme, the earth suddenly opened and she was carried off by Aïdoneus (Pluto). Her cries of anguish were heard only by Hecate and Helios. Her mother, who heard only the echo of her voice, immediately set out in search of her daughter.
The spot where Persephone was believed to have been carried into the lower world is different in the different traditions; the common story places it in Sicily, in the neighbourhood of Enna, on mount Aetna, or between the wells Cyane and Arethusa. (Hygin. Fab. 146, 274; Ov. Met. v. 385, Fast. iv. 422; Diod. v. 3; Cic. in Verr. iv. 48.) This legend, which points to Sicily, though undoubtedly very ancient (Pind. Nem. i. 17), is certainly not the original tradition, since the worship of Demeter was introduced into Sicily by colonists from Megara and Corinth. Other traditions place the rape of Persephone at Erineus on the Cephissus, in the neighbourhood of Eleusis (Orph. Hymn. 17.15), at Colonus in Attica (Schol. ad Soph. Oed. Col. 1590), in an island of the Atlantic near the western coast of Spain (Orph. Argon. 1190), at Hermione in Peloponnesus (Apollod. i. 5. § 1; Strab. viii. p. 373), in Crete (Schol. ad Hesiod. Theog. 914), or in the neighbourhood of Pisa. (Paus. vi. 21. § 1.) Others again place the event at Pheneus in Arcadia (Conon, Narr. 15), or at Cyzicus (Propert. iii. 21. 4), while the Homeric hymn on Demeter places it in the plain of Nysa in Asia. In the Iliad and Odyssey the rape of Persephone is not expressly mentioned.
Demeter wandered about in search of her daughter for nine days, without taking any nectar or ambrosia, and without bathing. On the tenth she met Hecate, who told her that she had heard the cries of Persephone, but did not know who had carried her off. Both then hastened to Helios, who revealed to them thai Pluto had been the ravisher, and with the consent of Zeus. Demeter in her anger at this news avoided Olympus, and dwelt upon earth among men, conferring presents and blessings wherever she was kindly received, and severely punishing those who repulsed her or did not receive her gifts with proper reverence. In this manner she came to Celeus at Eleusis. As the goddess still continued in her anger, and produced famine on the earth by not allowing the fields to produce any fruit, Zeus, anxious that the race of mortals should not become extinct, sent Iris to induce Demeter to return to Olympus. (Comp. Paus. viii. 42. § 2.) But in vain.
At length Zeus sent out all the gods of Olympus to conciliate her by entreaties and presents; but she vowed not to return to Olympus, nor to restore the fertility of the earth, till she had seen her daughter again. Zeus accordingly sent Hermes into Erebus to fetch back Persephone. Aïdoneus consented, indeed, to Persephone returning, but gave her a part of a pomegranate to eat, in order that she might not always remain with Demeter. Hermes then took her in Pluto's chariot to Eleusis to her mother, to whom, after a hearty welcome, she related her fate. At Eleusis both were joined by Hecate, who henceforth remained the attendant and companion of Persephone. Zeus now sent Rhea to persuade Demeter to return to Olympus, and also granted that Persephone should spend only a part of the year (i. e. the winter) in subterraneous darkness, and that during the rest of the year she should remain with her mother. (Comp. Ov. Met. v. 565, Fast. iv. 614; Hygin. Fab. 146.)
Rhea accordingly descended to the Rharian plain near Eleusis, and conciliated Demeter, who now again allowed the fruits of the fields to grow. But before she parted from Eleusis, she instructed Triptolemus, Diocles, Eumolpus, and Celeus in the mode of her worship and in the mysteries. These are the main features of the mythus about Demeter, as it is contained in the Homeric hymn; in later traditions it is variously modified.
Demeter was the goddess of the earth (Eurip. Bacch. 276), and more especially of the earth as producing fruit, and consequently of agriculture, whence human food or bread is called by Homer Il. xiii. 322) the gift of Demeter. The notion of her being the author of the earth's fertility was extended to that of fertility in general, and she accordingly was looked upon also as the goddess of marriage (Serv. ad Aen. iv. 58), and was worshipped especially by women. Her priestess also initiated young married people into the duties of their new situation. (Plut. de Off. conj. 1.) As the goddess of the earth she was like the other theoi chthonioi, a subterraneous divinity, who worked in the regions inaccessible to the rays of Helios. As agriculture is the basis of a well-regulated social condition, Demeter is represented also as the friend of peace and as a law-giving goddess. (thesmophoros, Callim. Hymn. in Cer. 138; Orph. Hymn. 39. 4; Virg. Aen. iv. 58; Hom. Il. v. 500; Ov. Met. v. 341; Paus. viii. 15. § 1.)
The mythus of Demeter and her daughter embodies the idea, that the productive powers of the earth or nature rest or are concealed during the winter season; the goddess (Demeter and Persephone, also called Cora, are here identified) then rules in the depth of the earth mournful, but striving upwards to the all-animating light. Persephone, who has eaten of the pomegranate, is the fructified flower that returns in spring, dwells in the region of light during a portion of the year, and nourishes men and animals with her fruits.
Later philosophical writers, and perhaps the mysteries also, referred the disappearance and return of Persephone to the burial of the body of man and the immortality of his soul.
Demeter was worshipped in Crete, Delos, Argolis, Attica, th western coast of Asia, Sicily and Italy, and her worship consisted in a great measure in orgic mysteries. Among the many festivals celebrated in her honour, the Thesmophoria and Eleusinia were the principal ones. (Dict. of Ant. s. vv. Chloëa, Haloa, Thesmophoria, Eleusinia, Megalartia Chthonia.) The sacrifices offered to her consisted of pigs, the symbol of fertility, bulls, cows, honey-cakes, and fruits. (Macrob. Sat. i. 12, iii. 11; Diod. v. 4; Paus. ii. 35. § 4, viii. 42, in fin.; Ov. Fast. iv. 545.) Her temples were called Megara, and were often built in groves in the neighbourhood of towns. (Paus. i. 39. § 4, 40. § 5, vii. 26. § 4, viii. 54. § 5, ix. 25. § 5; Strab. viii. p. 344, ix. p. 435.) Many of her surnames are descriptive of the character of the goddess.
She was often represented in works of art, though scarcely one entire statue of her is preserved. Her representations appear to have been brought to ideal perfection by Praxiteles. (Paus. i. 2. § 4.) Her image resembled that of Hera, in its maternal character, but had a softer expression, and her eyes were less widely opened. She was represented sometimes in a sitting attitude, sometimes walking, and sometimes riding in a chariot drawn by horses or dragons, but always in full attire. Around her head she wore a garland of corn-ears or a simple ribband, and in her hand she held a sceptre, cornears or a poppy, sometimes also a torch and the mystic basket. (Paus. iii. 19. § 4, viii. 31. § 1, 42. § 4; Plin. H. N. xxxiv. 8. s. 19.) She appears most frequently on gems and vases. The Romans received the worship of Demeter, to whom they applied the name of Ceres, from Sicily. (Val. Max. i. 1. § 1.)
Source: Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology.
CLASSICAL LITERATURE QUOTES
I) THE HOMERIC HYMNS
Homeric Hymn 2 to Demeter 1 ff (trans. Evelyn-White) (Greek epic C7th or 6th B.C.) :
"I begin to sing of rich-haired Demeter reverend goddess (semne thea)--of her and her trim-ankled daughter [Persephone] whom Aidoneus (Haides) rapt away . . . Right blessed is he among men on earth whom they freely love: soon they do send Ploutos (Plutus, Wealth) as guest to his great house, Ploutos (Wealth) who gives wealth to mortal men. And now, queen of the land of sweet Eleusis and sea-girt Paros and rocky Antron, queen (potnia), giver of good gifts (aglaodoros), bringer of seasons (horephoros), lady (anassa) Deo, be gracious, you and your daughter all beauteous Persephone, and for my song grant me heart-cheering substance."
Homeric Hymn 13 to Demeter :
"I begin to sing of rich-haired Demeter, awful goddess, of her and of her daughter lovely Persephone. Hail, goddess! Keep this city safe, and govern my song."
II) THE ORPHIC HYMNS
Orphic Hymn 40 to Demeter (trans. Taylor) (Greek hymns C3rd B.C. to 2nd A.D.) :
"To Demeter Eleusinia. O universal mother, Deo famed, august, the source of wealth, and various named: great nurse, all-bounteous, blessed and divine, who joyest in peace; to nourish corn is thine. Goddess of seed, of fruits abundant, fair, harvest and threshing are thy constant care. Lovely delightful queen, by all desired, who dwellest in Eleusis' holy vales retired. Nurse of all mortals, who benignant mind first ploughing oxen to the yoke confined; and gave to men what nature's wants require, with plenteous means of bliss, which all desire. In verdure flourishing, in glory bright, assessor of great Bromios [Dionysos] bearing light: rejoicing in the reapers' sickles, kind, whose nature lucid, earthly, pure, we find. Prolific, venerable, nurse divine, thy daughter loving, holy Koure [Persephone]. A car with Drakones (Dragon-Serpents) yoked 'tis thine to guide, and, orgies singing, round thy throne to ride. Only-begotten, much-producing queen, all flowers are thine, and fruits of lovely green. Bright Goddess, come, with summer's rich increase swelling and pregnant, leading smiling peace; come with fair concord and imperial health, and join with these a needful store of wealth."
Orphic Hymn 41 to Demeter :
"To Meter Antaia (Cerulean Mother) [Demeter]. Basileia Antaia (Cerulean Queen) [Demeter], of celebrated name, from whom both men and Gods immortal came; who widely wandering once, oppressed with grief, in Eleusis' valleys foundest relief, discovering Persephone thy daughter pure in dread Aides (Hades), dismal and obscure. A sacred youth while through the earth you stray, Dysaulos [Iakkhos (Iacchus)], attending leader of the way; the holy marriage Khthonios Zeus [Haides] relating, while oppressed with grief you rove. Come, much invoked, and to these rites inclined, thy mystic suppliant bless, with favouring mind."
III) OTHER HYMNS
Bacchylides, Fragment 3 (trans. Campbell, Vol. Greek Lyric IV) (C5th B.C.) :
"Of Demeter, ruler of corn-rich Sikelia (Sicily), and of the violet-garlanded Koure (Core) [Persephone] sing."
Greek Lyric V Scolia, Fragment 885 (trans. Campbell) (Greek lyric B.C.) :
"I sing of the mother of Ploutos (Plutus, Wealth), Demeter Olympia, in the garland-wearing season, and of you, Persephone, child of Zeus: greetings, both! Tend the city well."
Callimachus, Hymn 6 to Demeter (trans. Mair) (Greek poet C3rd B.C.) :
"[Ostensibly a hymn for the Thesmophoria festival of Athens:] As the Basket comes, greet it, ye women, saying ‘Demeter, greatly hail! Lady of much bounty, of many measures of corn.’ As the Basket comes, from the ground shall ye behold it, ye uninitiated, and gaze not from the roof or from aloft--child nor wife nor maid hath shed her hair [i.e. the locks were dedicated at puberty]--neither then nor when we spit from parched mouths fasting [i.e. the Nesteia, the second day of the Thesmophoria, a day of fasting]. Hesperos (the Evening Star) from the clouds marks the time of its coming: Hesperos, who alone persuaded Demeter to drink, what time she pursued the unknown tracks of her stolen daughter [Persephone].
Lady, how were thy feet able to carry thee unto the West, unto the Melanoi (Black Men) and where the golden apples are? Thou didst not drink nor dist thou eat during that time nor didst thou wash. Thrice didst thou cross Akheloios with his silver eddies, and as often didst thou pass over each of the ever-flowing rivers, and thrice didst thou seat thee on the ground beside the fountain Kallikhoros (Callichorus) [i.e. the well at Eleusis], parched and without drinking, and didst not eat nor wash.
Nay, nay, let us not speak of that which brought the tear to Deo! Better to tell how she gave cities pleasing ordinances; better to tell how she was the first to cut straw and holy sheaves of corn-ears and put in oxen to tread them, what time Triptolemos was taught the good craft . . .
O Demeter, never may that man be my friend who is hateful to thee, nor ever may he share party-wall with me; ill neighbours I abhor.
Sing, ye maidens, and ye mothers, say with them : ‘Damater, greatly hail! Lady of much bounty, of many measures of corn.’ And as the four white-haired horses convey the Basket, so unto us will the great goddess of wide dominion come brining white spring and white harvest and winter and autumn, and keep us to another year. And as unsandalled and with hair unbound we walk the city, so shall we have foot and head unharmed for ever. And as the van-bearers bear vans [i.e. skull-shaped baskets, sued for offering first-fruits to the gods] full of gold, so may we get gold unstinted. Far as the City Chambers let the uninitiated follow, but the initiated even unto the very shrine of the goddess--as many as are under sixty years. But show that are heavy and she that stretches her hand to Eileithyia [goddess of childbirth] and she that is in pain--sufficient it is that they go so far as their knees are able. And to them Deo shall give all things to overflowing, even as if they came unto her temple.
Hail, goddess, and save this people in harmony and in prosperity, and in the fields bring us all pleasant things! Feed our kine, bring us flocks, bring us the corn-ear, bring us harvest! And nurse peace, that he who sows may also reap. Be gracious, O thrice-prayed for, great Queen of goddesses!"
Ovid, Metamorphoses 5. 341 ff (trans. Melville) (Roman epic C1st B.C. to C1st A.D.) :
"Ceres [Demeter] first turned the earth with the curved plough; she first gave corn and crops to bless the land; she first gave laws; all things are Ceres' gift. Of Ceres I [the Muse Calliope] must sing. Oh that my song may hymn the goddess' praise as she deserves, a goddess who deserved high hymns of praise."
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTIONS OF DEMETER
Demeter and Plutus, Apulian red-figure loutrophoros C4th B.C., The J. Paul Getty Museum
Classical Greek literature offers only a few, brief descriptions of the physical characteristics of the gods.
Homeric Hymn 2 to Demeter 40 ff (trans. Evelyn-White) (Greek epic C7th or 6th B.C.) :
"[Demeter mourning the loss of her daughter Persephone:] She rent the covering upon her divine hair with her dear hands: her dark cloak she cast down from both her shoulders . . . queenly Deo wandered over the earth with flaming torches in her hands."
Homeric Hymn 2 to Demeter 182 ff :
"[Demeter mourning Persephone] walked behind . . . with her head veiled and wearing a dark cloak which waved about the slender feet of the goddess . . . Soon they came to the house of heaven-nurtured Keleos (Celeus) and went through the portico . . . the goddess walked to the threshold: and her head reached the roof and she filled the doorway with a heavenly radiance. Then awe and reverence and pale fear took hold of Metaneira, and she rose up from her couch before Demeter." [N.B. In this passage, Demeter was disguised as a mortal woman. However, the vision of her divinity is still apparent.]
Homeric Hymn 2 to Demeter 275 ff :
"[Demeter reveals her true divinity to Queen Metaneira :] ‘Lo! I am that Demeter who has share of honour and is the greatest help and cause of joy to the undying gods and mortal men . . .’
When she had so said, the goddess changed her stature and her looks, thrusting old age away from her [i.e. her disguise as an old woman] : beauty spread round about her and a lovely fragrance was wafted from her sweet-smelling robes, and from the divine body of the goddess a light shone afar, while golden tresses spread down over her shoulders, so that the strong house was filled with brightness as with lightning. And so she went out from the palace. And straightway Metaneira's knees were loosed and she remained speechless for a long while."
Callimachus, Hymn 6 to Demeter 58 ff (trans. Mair) (Greek poet C3rd B.C.) :
"Demeter was angered beyond telling [by king Erysikhthon (Erysichthon)] and put on her goddess shape [i.e. she shed a mortal disguise]. Her steps touched the earth, but her head reached unto Olympos. And they [the men fellingher sacred grove], half-dead when they beheld the lady goddess, rushed suddenly away, leaving the bronze axes in the trees."
Ovid, Fasti 4. 417 ff (trans.Boyle) (Roman poetry C1st B.C. to C1st A.D.) :
"To a sacred feast; the blonde goddess [Demeter] came."
Ovid, Fasti 4. 575 ff :
"Ceres [Demeter] revived her own look . . . and crowned her hair with chaplets of corn."
Nonnus, Dionysiaca 5. 562 ff (trans. Rouse) (Greek epic C5th A.D.) :
"She [Demeter] untied the fruitful frontlet [i.e. a wreath of corn-ears] from her head, and shook loose the long locks of hair over her neck."
ANCIENT GREEK & ROMAN ART
Statius, Thebaid - Latin Epic C1st A.D.
Apuleius, The Golden Ass - Latin Novel C2nd A.D.
BYZANTINE
Photius, Myriobiblon - Byzantine Greek Scholar C9th A.D.
Suidas, The Suda - Byzantine Greek Lexicon C10th A.D.
OTHER SOURCES
Source status of Demeter pages:-
Fully quoted: Hesiod, Homeric Hymns, Epic Cycle & Homerica, Apollodorus, Pausanias, Strabo, Orphic Hymns, Quintus Smyrnaeus, Callimachus, Aelian, Hyginus (Fabulae & Astronomica), Ovid (Metamorphoses), Apuleius;
Partially or not quoted (Greek): Homer (Iliad & Odyssey), Pindar, Greek Lyric (Fragments), Greek Elegaic (Fragments), Aeschylus, Euripides, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Aesop, Herodotus, Plato, Apollonius Rhodius, Theocritus, Lycophron, Plutarch, Philostratus & Callistratus, Antoninus Liberalis, Diodorus Siculus, Oppian, Colluthus, Nonnus, Oppian, Tryphiodorus, et. al.;
Partially or not quoted (Latin): Ovid (Fasti), Cicero, Statius, Propertius, Valerius Flaccus, et. al.
| Demeter |
What type of creature is an Emmett? | Demeter Greek Goddess Profile
Updated August 08, 2016.
Who Is Demeter?:
Demeter is a goddess of fertility, grain, and agriculture. She is pictured as a mature motherly figure. Although she is the goddess who taught mankind about agriculture, she is also the goddess responsible for creating winter and a mystery religious cult. She is usually accompanied by her daughter Persephone.
Occupation:
Family of Origin:
Demeter was a daughter of the Titans Cronus and Rhea, and so a sister of the goddesses Hestia and Hera, and the gods Poseidon, Hades, and Zeus.
Demeter in Rome:
The Romans referred to Demeter as Ceres. The Roman cult of Ceres was initially served by Greek priestesses , according to Cicero in his Pro Balbo oration. For the passage, see Tura's Ceres . In "Graeco Ritu: A Typically Roman Way of Honoring the Gods" [Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, Vol. 97, Greece in Rome: Influence, Integration, Resistance (1995), pp. 15-31], author John Scheid says the foreign, Greek cult of Ceres was imported to Rome in the middle of the third century B.C.
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Ceres was also referred to as Dea Dia in connection with a three-day May Ambarvalia festival, according to "Tibullus and the Ambarvalia," by C. Bennett Pascal, in The American Journal of Philology, Vol. 109, No. 4 (Winter, 1988), pp. 523-536. Also see Ovid's Amores Book III.X, in an English translation: "No Sex -- It's the Festival Of Ceres" .
Attributes:
The attributes of Demeter are a sheaf of grain, a conical headdress, a scepter, a torch, and a sacrificial bowl.
Persephone and Demeter:
The story of Demeter is usually combined with the story of the abduction of her daughter Persephone . Read this story in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter .
Eleusinian Mystery:
Demeter and her daughter are at the center of the widest spread Greek mystery cult -- the Eleusinian Mysteries -- a mystery religion that was popular in Greece and in the Roman Empire . Named for the location in Eleusis , the mystery cult may have started in the Mycenaean period , according to Helene P. Foley, in The Homeric hymn to Demeter: translation, commentary, and interpretive essays. She says that substantial remains of the cult begin in the 8th century B.C., and that the Goths destroyed the sanctuary a few years before the start of the fifth century A.D. The Homeric Hymn to Demeter is the oldest record of the Eleusinian Mysteries, but it is a mystery and we don't really know what transpired.
Orphic Hymn to Demeter (Ceres):
Above, I provided a link to the so-called Homeric Hymn to Demeter (in public domain English translation). It tells of the abduction of Demeter's daughter Persephone and the trials the mother went through to find her again. The Orphic hymn paints a picture of the nurturing, fertility goddess.
XXXIX.
O Universal mother, Ceres fam'd
August, the source of wealth, and various nam'd: 2
Great nurse, all-bounteous, blessed and divine,
Who joy'st in peace, to nourish corn is thine:
Goddess of seed, of fruits abundant, fair, 5
Harvest and threshing, are thy constant care;
Who dwell'st in Eleusina's seats retir'd,
Lovely, delightful queen, by all desir'd.
Nurse of all mortals, whose benignant mind,
First ploughing oxen to the yoke confin 'd; 10
And gave to men, what nature's wants require,
With plenteous means of bliss which all desire.
In verdure flourishing in honor bright,
Assessor of great Bacchus, bearing light:
Rejoicing in the reapers sickles, kind, 15
Whose nature lucid, earthly, pure, we find.
Prolific, venerable, Nurse divine,
Thy daughter loving, holy Proserpine:
A car with dragons yok'd, 'tis thine to guide, 19
And orgies singing round thy throne to ride: 20
Only-begotten, much-producing queen,
All flowers are thine and fruits of lovely green.
Bright Goddess, come, with Summer's rich increase
Swelling and pregnant, leading smiling Peace;
Come, with fair Concord and imperial Health, 25
And join with these a needful store of wealth.
From: The Hymns of Orpheus
Translated by Thomas Taylor
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Who was the last British winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature? | Nobel Prize for Literature: the good, the bad and the British - Telegraph
Book news
Nobel Prize for Literature: the good, the bad and the British
As this year's recipient is set to be announced, we look back at some of the award's beloved, obscure and homegrown winners.
Ernest Hemingway Photo: GETTY IMAGES
The Italian playwright Dario Fo
By Marie-Claire Chappet
10:55AM BST 09 Oct 2014
The 107th Nobel Prize for literature, the richest literary prize in the world, is awarded today. Over it's history, the prize has been awarded to works in over 25 different languages.There have been 10 British winners (including one British prime minister) four joint wins, 13 female recipients, one Yiddish winner and two writers who have declined the substantial prize.
The award has not been without controversy, with prominent and successful writers often rejected in favour of more obscure choices and selections often tainted by political bias. The Prize has, however, celebrated some of the finest literary output of the last century.
The Popular:
W.B. Yeats (1923): The beloved Irish poet was awarded the prize "for his always inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation". Reflecting this, Yeats claimed that he accepted the award "less as an individual than as a representative of Irish literature."
Ernest Hemingway (1954): One of the most significant writers of the twentieth-century, Hemingway was awarded his Prize in recognition of an individual work. The Old Man and the Sea (1951) was singled out as an example of his "mastery of the art of narrative."
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Novelist Ernest Hemmingway
Jean Paul Sartre (1964): Sartre was the second writer to decline a Nobel Prize, out of a habit of refusing all official honours. The first was Boris Pasternak in 1958 who initially accepted but then was forced to decline, under pressure from his native Soviet Union. Sartre refused as he felt it was wrong for a writer to turn himself into "an institution" yet was selected for having "exerted a far-reaching influence on our age".
Samuel Beckett (1969): The avant-garde playwright and novelist was honoured for his writing, which "in new forms for the novel and drama - in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation".
Playwright Samuel Beckett
Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1982): The magic realist novelist, and auhor of the highly acclaimed One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), was honoured for "his novels and short stories, in which the fantastic and the realistic are combined in a richly composed world of imagination, reflecting a continent's life and conflicts".
Wole Soyinka (1986): was the first African in Africa and in Diaspora to be honoured with a Nobel Prize for literature. The Nigerian writer was chosen for his works which "in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones fashion the drama of existence".
The Obscure:
Elvyind Johnson and Harry Martinson (1974): The choice of the joint prize for these Swedish authors was an unpopular one. The Prize has long been criticised for favouring European authors, particularly authors from Sweden, as the award is granted by The Swedish Academy. The relatively unknown Johnson and Martinson, who were both Nobel Prize judges, controversially beat Graham Greene and Vladimir Nabakov to the award.
Dario Fo (1997): Viewed as one of the least worthy winners, Fo was primarily a performance artist who had been censored by the Roman Catholic Church. What made his selection even more unpopular was that he succeeded over other, more established, writers: Salman Rushdie and Arthur Miller. Rushdie's rejection was widely criticised and two academy members resigned over its refusal to support the writer after a fatwa was issued against him in 1989. The selection of Fo was defended by the academy, however, who awarded the prize on the grounds that Fo: "emulates the jesters of the Middle Ages in scourging authority and upholding the dignity of the downtrodden".
Italian playwright Dario Fo
Elfriede Jelenik (2004): Jelenik herself believed that she should not have received a Nobel Prize. She believed she had only been chosen for "being a woman" and praised her competitors instead. A member of the Swedish Academy, Knut Ahnlud, shared Jelenik's belief and resigned over her selecton, claiming she had "done irreparable damage" to the prize.
Herta Muller (2009): The academy believed that the Romanian-born German novelist was deserving of the award for she "with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed". Others were not as convinced and the selection of Muller was heavily criticised for returning the award to its Eurocentric bias.
The British:
Ruyard Kipling (1907): The first British author to be awarded the prize, Kipling has become something of an institution. The prize was awarded "in consideration of the power of observation, originality of imagination, virility of ideas and remarkable talent for narration". Kipling remains the youngest Nobel Laureate for Literature, receiving his award at 42.
Rudyard Kipling
George Bernard Shaw (1925): The Irish-born writer has often been heralded as the most significant British dramatist since Shakespeare. He was recognised: "for his work which is marked by both idealism and humanity, its stimulating satire often being infused with a singular poetic beauty."
John Galsworthy (1932): The prize is typically awarded in recognition of a writer's life's work. On nine occasions, however, the prize was given to recognise a single piece. Galsworthy's The Forsythe Saga in 1932 was among these.
T.S Eliot (1948): American-born Eliot, acclaimed poet and literary essayist, received the award in recognition of his "outstanding, pioneer contribution to present-day poetry."
Bertrand Russell (1950): The philosopher and social critic was decorated for his humanitarian focus and his championing of "freedom of thought."
Winston Churchill (1953): The only British prime minister to receive a Nobel Prize for Literature, recognised for his historical and biographical description, specifically in his works The Second World War and A History of the English Speaking Peoples.
Winston Churchill
William Golding (1983): received the 1983 prize "for his novels which, with the perspicuity of realistic narrative art and the diversity and universality of myth, illuminate the human condition in the world of today."
V.S Naipaul (2001): the Trinidadian-British writer is best known for his focus upon the legacy and impact of British colonialism. He was recognised in 2001 for "incorruptible scrutiny in works that compel us to see the presence of suppressed histories".
Harold Pinter (2005): The acclaimed and beloved playwright and screenwriter was honoured for his plays which force "entry into oppression's closed rooms".
Doris Lessing (2007): The oldest recipient of the award, at 88, Lessing was named "that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny". She is one of twelve women to win the award, the first was Selma Lagerlof in 1909.
Doris Lessing, the oldest recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature
| doris lessing 2007 |
In which US state would you find the cities of Chesapeake, Roanoke and Fredericksburg? | Nobel Prize for Literature: the good, the bad and the British - Telegraph
Book news
Nobel Prize for Literature: the good, the bad and the British
As this year's recipient is set to be announced, we look back at some of the award's beloved, obscure and homegrown winners.
Ernest Hemingway Photo: GETTY IMAGES
The Italian playwright Dario Fo
By Marie-Claire Chappet
10:55AM BST 09 Oct 2014
The 107th Nobel Prize for literature, the richest literary prize in the world, is awarded today. Over it's history, the prize has been awarded to works in over 25 different languages.There have been 10 British winners (including one British prime minister) four joint wins, 13 female recipients, one Yiddish winner and two writers who have declined the substantial prize.
The award has not been without controversy, with prominent and successful writers often rejected in favour of more obscure choices and selections often tainted by political bias. The Prize has, however, celebrated some of the finest literary output of the last century.
The Popular:
W.B. Yeats (1923): The beloved Irish poet was awarded the prize "for his always inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation". Reflecting this, Yeats claimed that he accepted the award "less as an individual than as a representative of Irish literature."
Ernest Hemingway (1954): One of the most significant writers of the twentieth-century, Hemingway was awarded his Prize in recognition of an individual work. The Old Man and the Sea (1951) was singled out as an example of his "mastery of the art of narrative."
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15 Apr 2015
Novelist Ernest Hemmingway
Jean Paul Sartre (1964): Sartre was the second writer to decline a Nobel Prize, out of a habit of refusing all official honours. The first was Boris Pasternak in 1958 who initially accepted but then was forced to decline, under pressure from his native Soviet Union. Sartre refused as he felt it was wrong for a writer to turn himself into "an institution" yet was selected for having "exerted a far-reaching influence on our age".
Samuel Beckett (1969): The avant-garde playwright and novelist was honoured for his writing, which "in new forms for the novel and drama - in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation".
Playwright Samuel Beckett
Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1982): The magic realist novelist, and auhor of the highly acclaimed One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), was honoured for "his novels and short stories, in which the fantastic and the realistic are combined in a richly composed world of imagination, reflecting a continent's life and conflicts".
Wole Soyinka (1986): was the first African in Africa and in Diaspora to be honoured with a Nobel Prize for literature. The Nigerian writer was chosen for his works which "in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones fashion the drama of existence".
The Obscure:
Elvyind Johnson and Harry Martinson (1974): The choice of the joint prize for these Swedish authors was an unpopular one. The Prize has long been criticised for favouring European authors, particularly authors from Sweden, as the award is granted by The Swedish Academy. The relatively unknown Johnson and Martinson, who were both Nobel Prize judges, controversially beat Graham Greene and Vladimir Nabakov to the award.
Dario Fo (1997): Viewed as one of the least worthy winners, Fo was primarily a performance artist who had been censored by the Roman Catholic Church. What made his selection even more unpopular was that he succeeded over other, more established, writers: Salman Rushdie and Arthur Miller. Rushdie's rejection was widely criticised and two academy members resigned over its refusal to support the writer after a fatwa was issued against him in 1989. The selection of Fo was defended by the academy, however, who awarded the prize on the grounds that Fo: "emulates the jesters of the Middle Ages in scourging authority and upholding the dignity of the downtrodden".
Italian playwright Dario Fo
Elfriede Jelenik (2004): Jelenik herself believed that she should not have received a Nobel Prize. She believed she had only been chosen for "being a woman" and praised her competitors instead. A member of the Swedish Academy, Knut Ahnlud, shared Jelenik's belief and resigned over her selecton, claiming she had "done irreparable damage" to the prize.
Herta Muller (2009): The academy believed that the Romanian-born German novelist was deserving of the award for she "with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed". Others were not as convinced and the selection of Muller was heavily criticised for returning the award to its Eurocentric bias.
The British:
Ruyard Kipling (1907): The first British author to be awarded the prize, Kipling has become something of an institution. The prize was awarded "in consideration of the power of observation, originality of imagination, virility of ideas and remarkable talent for narration". Kipling remains the youngest Nobel Laureate for Literature, receiving his award at 42.
Rudyard Kipling
George Bernard Shaw (1925): The Irish-born writer has often been heralded as the most significant British dramatist since Shakespeare. He was recognised: "for his work which is marked by both idealism and humanity, its stimulating satire often being infused with a singular poetic beauty."
John Galsworthy (1932): The prize is typically awarded in recognition of a writer's life's work. On nine occasions, however, the prize was given to recognise a single piece. Galsworthy's The Forsythe Saga in 1932 was among these.
T.S Eliot (1948): American-born Eliot, acclaimed poet and literary essayist, received the award in recognition of his "outstanding, pioneer contribution to present-day poetry."
Bertrand Russell (1950): The philosopher and social critic was decorated for his humanitarian focus and his championing of "freedom of thought."
Winston Churchill (1953): The only British prime minister to receive a Nobel Prize for Literature, recognised for his historical and biographical description, specifically in his works The Second World War and A History of the English Speaking Peoples.
Winston Churchill
William Golding (1983): received the 1983 prize "for his novels which, with the perspicuity of realistic narrative art and the diversity and universality of myth, illuminate the human condition in the world of today."
V.S Naipaul (2001): the Trinidadian-British writer is best known for his focus upon the legacy and impact of British colonialism. He was recognised in 2001 for "incorruptible scrutiny in works that compel us to see the presence of suppressed histories".
Harold Pinter (2005): The acclaimed and beloved playwright and screenwriter was honoured for his plays which force "entry into oppression's closed rooms".
Doris Lessing (2007): The oldest recipient of the award, at 88, Lessing was named "that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny". She is one of twelve women to win the award, the first was Selma Lagerlof in 1909.
Doris Lessing, the oldest recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature
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What sort of fish makes an Arbroath Smokie? | A Smokie? | Arbroath Smokies
Gordon Ramsay
Chef, restaurateur, author & presenter
It has a rich creaminess and moisture, and fresh like that is undoubtedly the best way to eat Smokies.
Martin Wishart
…eye-opening, a revelation in taste and texture
Nigel Slater
Cook, food writer, author & presenter
That flavour was just so immense… A delight to eat your food… This man is creating a whole new culinary education.
Gary Rhodes
Chef, restaurateur, author & presenter
The moist warm flesh is divine. It is one of the best fish I have ever tasted.
Sue Lawrence
Simply some of the most delicious fish I’ve ever had. Nice one, Iain.
Jamie Oliver
So much you can do with a SmokieRecipes
What Is A ‘Smokie?’
Arbroath Smokies originated in Auchmithie, a small fishing village a few miles north of Arbroath, once populated with fisher folk of Scandinavian origin; ‘Spink’ is a Norse surname. Iain uses the same methods that were used in the late 1800’s, as shown in the Fraser Collection photos .
The fishwives originally smoked the fish in halved barrels with fires underneath, trapping the smoke under layers of hessian sacking. At the start of the 20th century the first Auchmithie fisher-folk began moving to Arbroath , and the process soon became known as the Arbroath Smokie, as we know it today.
Only haddock can be used to produce an authentic ‘Arbroath Smokie.’ The fish are gutted at sea, washed and boxed ready for auction at the fish market. Once back in the fish house, they are headed and cleaned, or ‘sounded.’ They are then dry salted in tubs for a given period. This helps to draw excess moisture from the fish and toughens the skin in preparation for the smoking process. The length of salting time depends on the size of the fish and how fresh they are (amongst other factors). After salting, they are thoroughly washed off, then tied by the tail in ‘pairs’ and hung on sticks.
The smokie pit is then prepared. A hole is dug in the ground, and a half whisky barrel is set into it. The base of the barrel is lined with slates to protect it, and a hardwood fire of beech and oak is lit inside.
The sticks of fish are then placed over the pit and the hessian cover allows the fire to breathe and maintain the required heat. The number of layers and dampening of the ‘cloots’ depends on the weather, and may be adjusted throughout the smoking to prevent the fish either smoking too quickly and burning, or smoking too slowly and drying out. The cooking time is usually a minimum of 30–40 minutes but only an experienced smokie maker knows exactly when they are ready. The resultant golden brown fish, eaten straight from the barrel is a truly mouth-watering experience that has to be tasted to be believed! Some Smokie afficionados have even been moved to write poetry...
A Few Of Our Awards
BBC Radio 4 Food Producer of the Year 2006
Country Living/Sainsbury’s ‘Taste Of Britain’
Gold Award 2007
| Haddock |
What would be measured on a Galvanometer? | How to make Arbroath Smokies - YouTube
How to make Arbroath Smokies
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Uploaded on Apr 10, 2008
Watch the traditional process of smoking fish on the East Coast of Scotland. Cleaned and split haddocks, hung in pairs on sticks, are placed over smouldering hardwood logs in a pit.
This clip is taken from the film SMOKIES, which records the Scottish fishing industry as it was in the late 1950s.
The clip is from The Scottish Screen Archive collection. For more information about this film including details of how to obtain a copy please follow this link http://ssa.nls.uk/film.cfm?fid=1781
The Scottish Screen Archive holds thousands of films and videos from Scotland's 20th-century history. The archive contains everything from home movies and advertisements to educational films and documentaries. There are films detailing technical processes and others showing the imagination and innovation of Scottish film-makers over the years. http://www.nls.uk/ssa/
Category
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In geological ages, which period was the Last of the Palaeozoic era? | The Paleozoic Era
Online exhibits : Geologic time scale
The Paleozoic Era
The Paleozoic is bracketed by two of the most important events in the history of animal life. At its beginning, multicelled animals underwent a dramatic "explosion" in diversity, and almost all living animal phyla appeared within a few millions of years. At the other end of the Paleozoic, the largest mass extinction in history wiped out approximately 90% of all marine animal species. The causes of both these events are still not fully understood and the subject of much research and controversy. Roughly halfway in between, animals, fungi, and plants colonized the land, the insects took to the air, and the limestone shown in the photo at right was deposited near Burlington, Missouri.
The Paleozoic took up over half approximately 300 million years (542 mya to 251 mya)* of the Phanerozoic. During the Paleozoic there were six major continental land masses; each of these consisted of different parts of the modern continents. For instance, at the beginning of the Paleozoic, today's western coast of North America ran east-west along the equator, while Africa was at the South Pole. These Paleozoic continents experienced tremendous mountain building along their margins, and numerous incursions and retreats of shallow seas across their interiors. Large limestone outcrops, like the one pictured here, are evidence of these periodic incursions of continental seas. The Paleozoic Era is bracketed by the times of global super-continents. The era opened with the breakup of the world-continent Pannotia and closed with the formation of Pangea, as the Earth's continents came together once again.
Many Paleozoic rocks are economically important. For example, much of the limestone quarried for building and industrial purposes, as well as the coal deposits of western Europe and the eastern United States, were formed during the Paleozoic.
The Paleozoic is divided into six periods: the Cambrian , Ordovician , Silurian , Devonian , Carboniferous (in the U.S., this is divided into the Mississippian and Pennsylvanian Periods), and Permian . Most of these names derive from locations where rocks of these ages were first studied. Cambria was the Latin name for Wales, and the Ordovices and Silures were two Welsh Celtic tribes. The Devonian is named for Devonshire, England. The Mississippian is named for the upper Mississippi River valley, not the state of Mississippi, which has very few rocks of this age; however, the Pennsylvanian is named for the state of Pennsylvania. The Permian was described from rocks in the region of Perm, a town in the Ural Mountains of Russia. The exception to this naming convention is the Carboniferous; its name means "coal-bearing," and this is a time when extensive coal beds were formed around the world.
Life
Two great animal faunas dominated the seas during the Paleozoic. The "Cambrian fauna" typified the Cambrian oceans; although members of most phyla were present during the Cambrian, the seas were dominated by trilobites, inarticulate brachiopods, monoplacophoran molluscs, hyolithids, "small shelly fossils" of uncertain systematic position, and archaeocyathids. Although all of these except the archaeocyathids survived past the Cambrian, their diversity declined after the Ordovician. Later Paleozoic seas were dominated by crinoid and blastoid echinoderms, articulate brachiopods, graptolites, and tabulate and rugose corals.
By the end of the Ordovician , life was no longer confined to the seas. Plants had begun to colonize the land, closely followed in the Silurian by invertebrates, and in the Upper Devonian by vertebrates. The early tetrapods of this time were amphibian-like animals that eventually gave rise to the reptiles and synapsids by the end of the Paleozoic. One of the earliest terrestrial tetrapod faunas known in the world is from Joggins , Nova Scotia.
Land plants evolved rapidly into the vacant niches afforded them on land. By the end of the Devonian, forests of progymnosperms, such as Archaeopteris dominated the landscape. By the end of the Paleozoic, cycads, glossopterids, primitive conifers, and ferns were spreading across the landscape.
The Permian extinction, 251.4 million years ago, devastated the marine biota: tabulate and rugose corals, blastoid echinoderms, graptolites, the trilobites, and most crinoids died out. One lineage of crinoids survived, but never again would they dominate the marine environment.
Paleozoic fossil localities
Aldan River, Siberia : Lower Cambrian fauna from this site in Yakutia, Siberia, trace the early evolution of animals with skeletons.
Burgess Shale : One of the greatest fossil finds ever made is the Burgess fauna of British Columbia. Thousands of soft-bodied animal fossils paint us a picture of Cambrian marine life.
Canning Basin, Australia : A great diversity of fossil gastropods has been uncovered in the Canning Basin.
Glass Mountains, Texas : Permian fossils from the Glass Mountains are of shallow, warm-water marine life.
House Range, Utah : A varied array of Cambrian critters has been found in the Wheeler Shale and the Marjum Formation, both of which are exposed in the House Range.
Joggins, Nova Scotia : Carboniferous coal swamps were home to early tetrapods such as Dendrerpeton.
Lake Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada : The limestones of this region have preserved many spectactular fossils of Ordovician macroalgae.
Marble Mountains, California : Olenellid trilobites are plentiful in the Latham Shale, here in the Mojave Desert.
Mazon Creek, Illinois : This site has become famous for its iron concretions preserving both plants and marine invertebrates.
Rhynie Chert, Scotland : This has been one of the most important sources of fossils of early land plants and terrestrial arthropods. The anatomy of specimens is preserved in three-dimensional detail.
White-Inyo Mountains, California : You can visit Cambrian reefs in the mountains of eastern California.
Resources
Find out more about the Mesozoic paleontology and geology of North America at the Paleontology Portal's pages on the Cambrian , Ordovician , Silurian , Devonian , Carboniferous , and Permian Periods.
See the Wikipedia page on the Paleozoic.
Read more about the Permian-Triassic extinction on Wikipedia.
Find out more about the complex history of the formation and break-up of Pangea on Wikipedia.
* Dates from the International Commission on Stratigraphy's International Stratigraphic Chart, 2008.
Tony R. Fiorillo created the original page, 5/24/1994; Allen G. Collins made modifications, 11/11/1994, and broke the original page into multiple pages 11/28/1994; Ben M. Waggoner added new text, 11/11/1994 and 11/28/1994; Brian R. Speer updated the content, 5/20/1998; Sarah Rieboldt updated the pages to reflect the Geological Society of America (GSA) 1999 Geologic Timescale, 11/2002; Dave Smith recombined the content into a single page and adapted it to the new site format, 6/29/2011; photographer of Burlington limestone unknown
| Permian |
Cosette, Marius and Fantine are characters in which book and film? | Permian - definition of Permian by The Free Dictionary
Permian - definition of Permian by The Free Dictionary
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Permian
(pûr′mē-ən, pĕr′-)
adj.
Of, relating to, or being the period of geologic time from about 299 to 251 million years ago, the seventh and last period of the Paleozoic Era. The Permian Period is characterized by the formation of the supercontinent Pangaea, the first modern conifers, and the diversification of reptiles. It ended with the largest known mass extinction in the history of life. See Table at geologic time .
n.
[After Perm Oblast, a region of west-central Russia.]
Permian
(ˈpɜːmɪən)
adj
(Geological Science) of, denoting, or formed in the last period of the Palaeozoic era, between the Carboniferous and Triassic periods, which lasted for 60 000 000 years
n
(Geological Science) the Permian the Permian period or rock system
[C19: after Perm, Russia]
(ˈpɜr mi ən)
adj.
1. noting or pertaining to a period of the Paleozoic Era occurring from about 280 million to 230 million years ago, a time of mass extinctions and a profusion of amphibian species.
n.
2. the Permian Period or System.
[1841; after the province of Perm in E Russia (see Perm ), where strata from this period were identified; see -ian ]
Per·mi·an
(pûr′mē-ən)
The seventh and last period of the Paleozoic Era, from about 286 to 245 million years ago. The Permian Period was characterized by the formation of the supercontinent Pangaea, the rise of modern conifers, and the diversification of reptiles. It ended with the largest known mass extinction in the history of life. See Chart at geologic time .
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'Cap de Formentor' is the northernmost point of which popular holiday island? | CAP DE FORMENTOR - MALLORCA´S NORTHERNMOST VIEWING POINT | New Home Mallorca
CAP DE FORMENTOR
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CAP DE FORMENTOR – MALLORCA´S NORTHERNMOST VIEWING POINT
Cap de Formentor forms the eastern end of Majorca´s Formentor peninsula. The Majorcans also call the cape the meeting point of the winds.
Cap de Formentor is a spectacular bluff, located on the northernmost point of the Balearic Island Majorca. Its highest point, Fumart, is 384m above sea level. It has many associated bays, including Cala Figuera, Cala Murta and Cala Pi de la Posada.
The 13.5 km street which runs from Port de Pollença to Cap de Formentor was built by the Italian engineer Antonio Paretti. His masterpiece on Majorca, however, was the snake to Sa Calobra. Instead of being overwhelmed by what stood in his way on the cliffs, Parretti observed the Tramuntana winds and understood: where the slope was too steep, he made a curve. When he had to remove part of the cliffs, he placed the waste in other places where it was needed. The result was the two streets, which are nestled together in the mountains like abandoned silk ribbons.
The northernmost end of the Majorcan world was formed quite bizarrely by the wind and water. The steps, walls, paths and the lighthouse on Cap de Formentor were built from the cliffs in 1892. When the poet Miquel i Llobera, who owned the Cap de Formentor peninsula, died, it was divided into lots and sold. In 1928 Adan Diehl, a native Argentinian and art lover, decided to build the Hotel Formentor and to endow the purchase of art. Since then this hotel on the Platja de Formentor has been the meeting place for personalities from all over the world. It is located somewhat apart from the main street; by following the street further, one can reach the lighthouse, which is surrounded by protected rare plants.
The headland has quite a few lookout points with spectacular views. The most well-known is Mirador del Mal Pas, also named Mirador d’es Colomer after the small island Colomer, the view from which can be seen in the picture above. The panorama from Majorca’s Finisterre illuminates Menorca in the east, Cala Fiquera in the west, and Alcudia with its sandy beach in the south. But the view of the cliffs below causes even the most fearless to feel weak in the knees. The sea roars 300m below and if that isn’t enough, the winds found at the headland are vicious.
In this place a German radio operator and pilot built a private weather station in 1996, which transmitted encoded radio transmissions to the base station 56 km away (a beam radio). This and other data was then sent all over the world wirelessly. The analyses were used by hotels, organizers, sailing clubs, flying clubs, and others. They are freely available to anyone who has the necessary receiving equipment. The official weather department is located in Porto Pi, on the Palma de Mallorca harbor. It is responsible for international ships, air travel and other sites.
In the southeastern part by Racó de Xot there is a cave with an opening into the sea. It has two entrances located about 8m over the surface of the water. The cave has a length of 90m and a height of 8m and is a part of the most important sources of information from the prehistoric period of talaiot culture.
NEW HOME MALLORCA offers a wide range of the following property types:
Apartment & Penthouse Building Plot & Project Commerce & Investment Finca & Country House Newly built apartments Newly built houses Popular residences Villa & House
NEW HOM MALLORCA offers properties for sale in Mallorca in the following areas:
| Majorca |
"Which composer's dying words were supposedly, ""I shall hear in heaven""?" | FORMENTOR SALES
FORMENTOR
The Formentor peninsula is part of the Northern tip of Mallorca and it is the stunning beach, Cala Formentor, which draws visitors from all of Mallorca. It is one of the most visited beaches on the island, with its fine white sand, crystal clear waters the most beautiful shades of turquoise blue.
You can browse our selection of holiday accommodation below via your specific requirements. You can also email us with your requirements and we can recommend the best options for you based on what you want. All of our staff have visited Mallorca so feel free to speak to us if you need help deciding.
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"""I am not in the least afraid to die"" are the last words attributed to which famous naturalist?" | Last Words by Charles Darwin - Famous Last Words
FAMOUS LAST WORDS
Last Words by Charles Darwin
"I am not the least afraid to die."
~ Darwin, Charles (1809-1882)
Charles Robert Darwin, FRS was an English naturalist and geologist, best known for his contributions to evolutionary theory.
Related reading
Washington, George (1732-1799)
Learn to write and deliver a heartfelt eulogy using these unique funeral speech samples and eulogy examples, funeral readings, funeral thank you notes, best poems for funerals, funeral etiquette, funeral obituaries, funeral notices, memorials and tributes... We also included numerous samples of famous eulogies and famous last words collections... Browse bereavement and grief readings on Eulogy Speech.... Want to find out how to write a eulogy? Use our free sample eulogies and written examples of a eulogy for mother, eulogy for father, eulogy for brother, eulogy for grandmother, eulogy for a friend... All that and much more advice that can help you with your memorable eulogy.
| Charles Darwin |
In the original television run of 'Crossroads', which character was played by Roger Tonge? | The Manliest Last Words in the Face of Death - Mandatory
mandatory
The 12 Manliest Last Words From Men As They Faced Death
Get it all out before it's too late.
by Noah Henry
Apr 9th, 2015
Your final words are your last legacy upon mankind. Have you thought about what you’re going to say? These men did, and the effects were profound. Lend your eyes and ears and take a cue from these badass last utterances.
Context: The social reformer and clergyman who championed women’s suffrage, abolition, and temperance died of a stroke on March 6, 1887. The night before drifting off into oblivion, he uttered these final words.
Context: On April 18, 1882, Charles Darwin had a severe heart attack in the middle of the night. He was recently diagnosed with coronary thrombosis and knew it was coming to an end. Recognizing his imminent death, he awoke and stated to his son, “I am not the least afraid to die.” The great naturalist died in England, and the ballsiness of such a final statement is something we can all aspire to.
Context: On April 15, 1912, bandleader Wallace Hartley and a few musicians attempted to quell Titanic passengers’ horror. Until the very last moments of the ship sinking, the band kept playing. As the waves crashed on his bandmates and death swiftly came, he called out to his friends, “Gentlemen, I bid you farewell.” He was found two weeks later floating in the icy Atlantic fully dressed with his violin case strapped to his body. A newspaper reported that Hartley’s act “will rank among the noblest in the annals of heroism at sea.”
Context: During the Salem Witch Trials, courts would impose awful torture techniques to get those accused to plea. One witch by the name of Giles Corey refused. He died of pressing, an old colonial trick to get people to talk, which involved placing large rocks and boulders on top of a board that lay on top of the body, systemically crushing people to death.
Knowing he wouldn’t be offered a fair trial, Corey simply requested more weight. As his eyes bulged and his tongue protruded from his face, he continued screaming, “More weight,” right up until his last breath. He was 71.
Context: Nostradamus suffered pangs of gout that made much of his final years unbearable. The famous French seer spent his life predicting future occurrences, and his last one rang unequivocally true. On July 1 1566, he told his secretary that he wouldn’t be alive the next day. An alternative quote is, “You will not find me alive at sunrise.” The next morning she found him dead on the floor next to his bed.
Context: A theoretical physicist whose life is glittered with scientific accomplishments had surgery on two rare forms of cancer. It didn’t save him. Moments before death, he acknowledged the mundane nature of death. He was 69.
Context: He was a convicted murderer facing execution in 1995 for the killing of two women. While not exactly manly, one could agree his last words expressed zero fear of death.
Context: “No more games. No more bombs. No more walking. No more swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always bitch. No fun – for anybody. 67. You’re getting greedy. Act your old age. Relax – this won’t hurt.” Thompson always knew he’d stare death in the eyes and take his own life. He told his friend 25 years previously that “he would feel real trapped if he didn’t know that he could commit suicide at any moment.”
Context: Joe Hill was an Swedish labor activist who played a substantial role in the Industrial Workers of the World labor union in the early 20th century. A thorn the side of the establishment, he was accused of murder (based on dubious evidence) and sentenced to death by firing squad. When the deputy shouted, “Ready … Aim …” Hill interjected, “Fire!” He died on November 19, 1915 at 36.
Context: “And don’t make a mess of it,” Morant yelled in the face of a firing squad, exemplifying true badassery in its purest form. He was a military commander during the Second Boer War in Africa, and he was accused of war crimes under still-disputed circumstances. After his death in 1902, Morant remains an Australian folk legend for his wartime heroics.
Context: So punny it’s not even funny. American criminal James French was supposed to live out a life sentence after murdering a man who picked him up hitchhiking. He didn’t want to commit suicide, so he killed his cellmate in order to be executed. As he sat on the electric chair, he offered a bit of advice to the press.
Context: Quattrocchi was an Italian security officer who was taken hostage by Islamic militants in 2004. They filmed him and told him to dig his own grave and kneel beside it. But Quattrocchi remained defiant till the bitter end. He pulled off his hood and shouted, “I’ll show you how an Italian dies!” They shot him in the back of the neck, and the video was never released because it was too gruesome.
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Which 'Coronation Street' character was played for may years by Jean Alexander? | Coronation Street legend Jean Alexander recovers from stroke and says 'there's life in the old dog yet' - Mirror Online
TV
Coronation Street legend Jean Alexander recovers from stroke and says 'there's life in the old dog yet'
The 87-year-old, who played Coronation Street cleaner Hilda Ogden for 23 years, was hospitalised in June but says she is now 'happy, fit and well'
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Atta curl: Corrie star Jean’s back enjoying life (Photo: ITV)
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Coronation Street legend Jean Alexander is back home after making an amazing recovery from a stroke.
The 87-year-old, who played Cobbles cleaner Hilda Ogden for 23 years, said yesterday: “Thank you to everyone for all the goodwill messages, I was very touched but there is life in the old dog yet.”
In June, Jean was rushed from her Merseyside home by ambulance to a Southport hospital after a 999 call.
She was then moved to a specialist care home where it was feared she would end up staying for some time.
But she said: “I am back home where I am happy, fit and well after that little hiccup. I am getting on with life as normal.”
She said staff at Southport and Formby hospital had been “magnificent” and added: “I am enjoying life with family and friends. In fact I’m just going out to do the weekly shop at the supermarket.”
Jean left Corrie in 1987 and and has not acted since her role as Last of the Summer Wine’s Aunty Wainwright in 2010.
She also revealed she has osteoporiosis, which had made her shrink.
“I have lost four inches in height. I used to be 5ft 4in, now I’m just 5ft. But this is what happens.”
Emergency: How the Mirror revealed Jean's plight in June
She added: “I can get down on my knees when I’m in the garden – but I can’t get up again.”
Liverpool-born Jean never married but won Corrie viewers’ hearts with her partnership with Bernard Youens playing her layabout husband Stan. He died in 1984.
“I loved playing Hilda. I never envisaged how iconic she would become, but to be able to make her someone so many people recognised was an honour,” Jean said.
“Hilda was fun, especially with the scrapes Stan got in. I understood her because I knew a lot like her when I was young.
“Hilda was a hard worker and kept Stan in order. They’d bicker, but let anyone say anything about the other and they were up in arms,” she added.
“I’m flattered the character was so successful. I appreciate that people enjoyed what I did. It makes me feel very grateful for my existence.”
| Hilda Ogden |
Which popular holiday island has 'Punta de la Rasca' as its southernmost tip? | Coronation Street's Jean Alexander is 'not in danger' after hospital scare | Daily Mail Online
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Much-loved former Coronation Street actress Jean Alexander is recovering after she was rushed to hospital after a 999 call.
The legendary star, whose role as Hilda Ogden in Coronation Street made her a household name, was admitted to hospital last week after suffering numerous health concerns in recent years.
The Mirror reports that the 88-year-old, who starred in the soap from 1967 - 1987, is recovering in a rehabilitation unit.
In recovery: Jean Alexander, who played Hilda Ogden in Coronation Street, is reportedly getting better after a recent health scare
Her brother Kenneth Hodgkinson, 90, told the paper: 'She seems reasonably chirpy and not in danger. From what I hear she is pottering about and so on. It seems to have passed over.'
He said the star has thanked her fans for their support, saying: 'She is very grateful for all the interest shown by the public in her. It is very kind of people to still be interested in her.'
He said that Jean was taken into hospital after feeling ill last week and is doing well, but has difficulty walking.
Health scare: Jean Alexander, pictured left as Hilda Ogden in Coronation Street, was rushed to hospital last week. She was last seen on TV in Last Of The Summer Wine (right)
He said: 'She did not feel too well in the morning. She was a little bit shaky so she was taken in and they tried to assess her to see what was the matter. We don’t think it is serious, she is getting on very well.'
He added that he does not yet have a medical diagnosis of what happened to the star.
Ms Alexander, who lives in Southport, prompted concern after she was seen being taken away in an ambulance by a concerned neighbour.
Legendary: Jean Alexander with her on-screen husband, Stan, played by Bernard Youens
HOW HILDA OGDEN BECAME ONE OF CORRIE’S MOST-LOVED CHARACTERS
Jean Alexander played Rover’s Return cleaner Hilda Ogden from 1964 to 1987, during which time she became one of the most-loved characters the soap has ever had.
She was voted the greatest TV character of all time in a Radio Times poll and her trademark headscarf and curlers made her one of the most recognisable, too.
While Hilda was often used to bring light relief to the soap, the moment she cried over the sight of her dead husband’s glasses is thought by some to be one of the most powerful moments in soap history.
Hilda had an on-screen husband called Stan, played by Bernard Youens, and the pair were known for their bickering.
But underneath the surface tension was a rock-solid marriage that never wavered.
A survey by NTL: Home granted them the accolade of Britain's top romantic TV couple in 2002.
She told the Daily Mirror : 'The ambulance crew came to her home. I hope she's okay.'
The actress was under observation for a number of days, but has since been released, according to the Liverpool Echo .
The Mirror had earlier claimed that the actress had died, but has since retracted the story.
Ms Alexander starred on Coronation Street for 23 years, eventually leaving the show in 1987.
She admitted that while she understood that the show had to move on, she longed for the days when the street was gentle, funny and human.
The retired actress felt the humour has all but gone out of the soap.
Ms Alexander also said that she would not return to Coronation Street after bowing out following the death of her on-screen husband Stan.
She told the Daily Express: 'It is more than 25 years since she [Hilda] left the Street and I have been asked a number of times to do an episode but she wouldn't be the "old scrubber" she was, now.
'Hilda had a bit of sense in her head; she would have adapted, smartened herself up and learned to speak better.
She added: 'People would want her to be the old Hilda. I couldn't do that.'
The veteran star was last seen on screen in Last Of The Summer Wine, which ended in 2010.
Veteran actress: Jean Alexander starred in Coronation Street for 23 years, becoming a household name
Bygone era: Ms Alexander said that she would not return to Coronation Street after bowing out following the death of her on-screen husband Stan. She's pictured here with Dr Lowther, played by David Scase
Fond memories: Ms Alexander, seen here on Coronation Street with Sally Whittaker as Sally Webster, said she preferred the soap when it was gentle, funny and human
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Which Canadian Province has Victoria as its capital, and is crossed by the River Fraser? | British Columbia - The Canadian Encyclopedia
MLA 7th Edition
Robinson, J. Lewis. "British Columbia". The Canadian Encyclopedia. Toronto: Historica Canada, 2010. Web. 19 Nov 2010.
Robinson, J. Lewis. "British Columbia". The Canadian Encyclopedia. Toronto: Historica Canada, 2010. Web. 19 Nov 2010.
APA 6th Edition
Robinson, J.L.. R. The Canadian Encyclopedia. (2010). British columbia. Retrieved January 16, 2017 From http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/british-columbia/.
Robinson, J.L.. R. The Canadian Encyclopedia. (2010). British columbia. Retrieved January 16, 2017 From http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/british-columbia/.
Chicago 16th Edition
Robinson, J. Lewis. "British Columbia." In The Canadian Encyclopedia. Historica Canada, 1985—. Article published November 19, 2010
Robinson, J. Lewis. "British Columbia." In The Canadian Encyclopedia. Historica Canada, 1985—. Article published November 19, 2010
Turabian
Robinson, J. Lewis. 2010. British Columbia. The Canadian Encyclopedia http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/british-columbia/ (accessed January 16, 2017).
Robinson, J. Lewis. 2010. British Columbia. The Canadian Encyclopedia http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/british-columbia/ (accessed January 16, 2017).
While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions.
Cities & Populated Places
British Columbia
British Columbia is Canada's most westerly province — a mountainous area whose population is mainly clustered in its southwestern corner.
British Columbia is Canada's most westerly province, and is a mountainous area whose population is mainly clustered in its southwestern corner. BC is Canada’s third-largest province after Québec and Ontario , making up 10 per cent of Canada’s land surface. British Columbia is a land of diversity and contrast within small areas. Coastal landscapes, characterized by high, snow-covered mountains rising above narrow fjords and inlets, contrast with the broad forested upland of the central interior and the plains of the northeast. The intense "Britishness" of earlier times is referred to in the province's name, which originated with Queen Victoria and was officially proclaimed in 1858.
Land and Resources
Regions
British Columbia has two main regions, often called "the Coast" and "the Interior." These two regions both have numerous contrasts and variations within them. The so-called "Lower Mainland," dominated by metropolitan Vancouver , contains over 60 per cent of the province's population and is its commercial, cultural and industrial centre. A slightly broader region, sometimes called the “ Georgia Strait ” region, includes Victoria and the southeast coast of Vancouver Island ; this area holds approximately 20 per cent of the population.
The vast interior is dominated by parallel mountain ranges and its population spreads north–south along valleys, notably the Okanagan and the Kootenay. Population centres are dispersed, as at Kamloops and Prince George in the interior, Prince Rupert and Kitimat on the northern coast, and Dawson Creek and Fort St. John in the Peace River Lowland . Each of these towns are centres of separate sub-regions and depend more on world markets than local markets.
Much of the development of resource-based economic activity in the province has been concerned with linking these separate regions together into a broader provincial economy. The northern half of the province is virtually uninhabited north of Prince Rupert and is cut off from the Pacific Ocean by the Alaska Panhandle. The Peace River Lowland of the northeast is actually an extension of the Interior Plains and more closely resembles neighbouring Alberta than the rest of the province.
Landforms, Geology and Drainage
The Cordilleran mountain system of western North America covers most of British Columbia, except for the Peace River area in the northeast. The Rocky Mountains rise abruptly about 1,000–1,500 m above the foothills of Alberta, and some of their snow- and ice-covered peaks tower more than 3,000 m above sea level; the highest peak in the Canadian Rockies, Mount Robson , west of Jasper, AB, is 3,954 m.
In the southern Rockies the sharp, jagged sedimentary rock peaks from the Palaeozoic era (542 to 251 million years ago) differ from the older more rounded, lower peaks of Proterozoic era (2.5 billion to 542 million years ago) to the north. The Rocky Mountains terminate south of the Liard River in northeastern BC.
The western boundary of the Rocky Mountains is the narrow Rocky Mountain Trench — the longest valley in North America, extending for 1,400 km from Montana to the Yukon and along the length of BC. Out of the trench flow the headwaters of the Kootenay , Columbia , Fraser , Parsnip, Finlay, Kechika and Liard rivers, each separated from the others by low drainage divides.
Two other mountain systems lie west of the Rocky Mountain Trench: the Columbia Mountains to the south; and the Cassiar-Omineca Mountains to the north. The Columbia Mountains consist of three parallel north–south ranges (Purcell, Selkirk and Monashee ) with sharp peaks of 2,000–3,000 m separated by long, narrow valleys occupied by Kootenay Lake and the Columbia River . These mountains consist mainly of sedimentary and intrusive rocks of Cretaceous (146 to 65.5 million years ago), Triassic (248 to 206 million years ago) and Jurassic (199.6 to 145.5 million years ago) ages, and contain many mineral deposits. The fourth range of the group, the Cariboo Mountains northwest of the Thompson River , is composed of sedimentary rocks of Proterozoic age which appear to have fewer mineral deposits.
The Interior Plateau, made up of broad and gently rolling uplands, covers central British Columbia. The region is a basin or watershed, because it is surrounded by higher mountains. Many of the rocks are lavas of Cretaceous and Tertiary (65.5 million to 2.6 million years ago) geological ages with apparently little mineralization except around the plateau edges. The Fraser River has cut deeply into the bedrock in the southern part of the plateau to form the spectacular Fraser River Canyon . The Stikine Plateau is to the north. Another upland area of mainly Jurassic lava rocks with some recent volcanoes, the plateau contains the headwaters of the Stikine River. Both the Interior and Stikine plateaus are about 1,000 m above sea level.
The western section of the province’s mountain ranges consists of the Coast Mountains along the coast and the offshore Insular Mountains. The northern end of the Cascade Mountains of Washington State terminates at the Fraser River, and then the high, snow and ice-covered peaks of the Coast Mountains extend northward along the Alaskan Panhandle into the Yukon. These scenic mountains have peaks up to 3,000 m in the southern part, with Mount Waddington, the highest peak entirely in BC, rising to 4,016 m.
Numerous long, twisting, deep fjords penetrate into the coast’s mountain mass. The rocks are mostly granitic intrusions of Cretaceous and Tertiary ages and there are some recent volcanoes . The lower Coast Mountains (1,500–2,000 m) near the Skeena River increase in altitude to the north.
The highest peak in BC, Fairweather Mountain (4,663 m), straddles the Alaska border in the St Elias Mountains just northwest of the Coast Mountains. Only three major rivers have cut through the barrier of the Coast Mountains: the Fraser, Skeena and Stikine . The Fraser and Skeena river valleys have become the sites of the only land-transportation routes reaching the coast from the interior.
The offshore Insular Mountains are the partially submerged northern continuation of the Olympic Mountains and Coast Ranges of Washington state. They provide the land mass for both Vancouver Island and Haida Gwaii . The highest peak on Vancouver Island is the Golden Hinde , at 2,200 m.
All of British Columbia was under a thick sheet of ice during the ice age . Some coastal areas and interior valleys became ice-free about 12,000–15,000 years ago, and since then the coastal lowlands have been rising relative to sea level. The remainder of the province became ice free 7,000–13,000 years ago. The results of continental and alpine glaciation can be seen everywhere in the province in fjords and cirques (i.e., amphitheatre-shaped basins) in the mountains, ground moraines across the Interior Plateau, and terraces (i.e., flat areas above a river) and benches (i.e., flat, narrow platforms) along interior rivers.
Soils and Vegetation
Approximately three per cent of British Columbia has soils suitable for agricultural production. As in most mountainous areas only the narrow floodplains, terraces and deltas of the river valleys have alluvial soils where crops can grow. Glacial deposition on the middle slopes of the mountains provides enough soil to support tree growth.
The coniferous trees of coastal British Columbia are the tallest and broadest trees in Canada. Douglas fir , western cedar , balsam fir , hemlock and Sitka spruce grow very well in the mild, wet climate and are the basis for the province's most valuable primary industry, forestry . Similar trees, plus lodgepole pine , ponderosa pine and aspen occupy the middle slopes of the interior mountains and plateaus. Depending on local conditions, such as slope and exposure, the upper treeline in southern BC is about 2,000 m and declines to about 1,000 m in the north. In contrast, the Coast Mountains and the lower valleys of the rivers across the southern third of the province have a drier climate, indicated by these regions’ grassland cover.
Climate
There are wide variations in climate within small areas of British Columbia. The major climate contrast is between the coast and the interior, but there are also significant variations between valleys and uplands, and between the northern and southern parts of the province. Relatively warm air masses from the Pacific Ocean bring mild temperatures to the coast during the winters, while cold water keeps coastal temperatures cool in the summer. The barrier of the Coast Mountains keeps these moderating conditions from moving inland. Average January mean temperatures are above 0°C at most coastal stations — the mildest in Canada — and July averages are about 15°C in the north and 18°C in the sheltered Georgia Strait region.
In contrast, in winter the interior may be covered by cold air masses pushing south from the Yukon or Alaska, particularly in the northern part of the province. Average daily mean January temperatures are -10°C to -15°C across the central interior and are a cold -20°C or more on the northeastern plains. The southern interior valleys may heat up during the summer, recording July average monthly temperatures of more than 20°C, but farther north, at higher altitudes on the central Interior Plateau, temperatures average about 15°C in midsummer.
The air masses from the Pacific bring ample rainfall to the coast, particularly in the autumn and winter. The interior valleys on the eastern side of the mountains receive much less precipitation. The west-facing mountains of Vancouver Island receive more than 2,500 mm of annual precipitation, whereas the east-coast lowland records only about 700 to 1,000 mm. The western slopes of the Coast Mountains accumulate 1,000 to 3,000 mm annually, of which a high percentage is snowfall. However, the Okanagan Valley receives a mere 250 mm of annual precipitation.
The coast’s frost-free season is the longest in Canada, averaging more than 200 days; in contrast, the central Interior Plateau is handicapped by a short, frost-free season of only 75 to 100 days. The well-publicized mild, wet winters and cool, dry summers associated with British Columbia are characteristic only of the southwest; the rest of the province experiences temperature conditions similar to those on the plains of Alberta and Saskatchewan .
Natural Resources
About 60 per cent of British Columbia is forested, accounting for approximately 19.5 per cent of the forested land in Canada.
The geology of most mountainous areas is favourable to mineralization, and BC is no exception. A wide range of metals has been discovered throughout the mountainous part of the province, including lead , zinc , gold , silver , molybdenum , copper and iron . The Peace River Lowland , northeast of the Rocky Mountains, has a different geological base consisting of younger, sedimentary rocks which have been the sources of petroleum , natural gas and coal .
BC has the largest provincial potential for electric power generation, as the heavy precipitation, steep mountain slopes and large, interior drainage basins are ideal physical conditions for the production of hydroelectric power . However, some of the large interior rivers have not been harnessed because it would damage the habitat of the Pacific salmon which spawn in the headwaters of coastal and interior rivers flowing into the Pacific Ocean.
Conservation
The balance between economic development and environmental protection is particularly troublesome in British Columbia, which relies heavily on renewable resources. Early on many of the province’s resources seemed inexhaustible, but by the 1930s the coast forest was being rapidly depleted. The salmon fishery has been threatened by overfishing and the destruction of marine and river habitats in some places, and some of British Columbia's scarce agricultural land has been lost to roads, housing and industry. Early provincial governments were primarily concerned with rapid development to promote local employment. However, especially since the Second World War , much legislation has been enacted to preserve the environment and natural resources. The success of reforestation programs has been questioned, but forestry is being managed by the principle of "sustained yield."
Fishing is confined to certain places and times, and a freeze was placed on changing the use of agricultural land in 1973. The British Columbia Ecological Reserves Act (1971) set aside numerous reserves of representative ecosystems. Prior to this, some of the country’s earliest National Parks were established in British Columbia, beginning with Glacier and Yoho in 1886, Mount Revelstoke in 1914 and Kootenay in 1920. (See also National Parks of Canada ; Environmental and Conservation Movements .)
People
Urban Centres
The province’s population has always lived primarily in cities, and in 2011, 86 per cent of the population was classified as urban, most in the southwest region.
Metropolitan Vancouver is the largest city in the province. There are three additional metropolitan areas: Abbotsford-Mission , Kelowna and Victoria , the capital. Mid-sized cities include Prince George, Kamloops, Chilliwack and Nanaimo , while smaller communities include Cranbrook , Penticton , Vernon , Dawson Creek , Prince Rupert , Courtenay , Port Alberni , Fort St. John , Terrace and Williams Lake .
Labour Force
Of those participating in the workforce, 80 per cent worked in the service sector in 2015. Within this sector the three largest employers were the trades, health care and social assistance, and professional services (e.g., legal services, engineering, communications, etc.). Within the goods-producing sector (which employs the remaining 20 per cent), the biggest employers were construction and manufacturing. In 2015, unemployment was 6.2 per cent, making it one of the lowest rates in the country.
Language and Ethnicity
British Columbia is one of the most ethnically diverse provinces in the country. Similar to other provinces, the top ethnic origins reported in the 2011 National Household Survey reflected European roots (the top three were English, Scottish and Canadian). Where BC’s ethnic make-up differs, however, is in the large proportion of visible minorities — just over 27 per cent in 2011, or the highest percentage in the country. For comparison, in the same year about 26 per cent of Ontario’s overall population was a visible minority, followed by Alberta at just over 18 per cent.
Of the visible minority population in BC, the largest communities were Chinese and South Asian . Japanese people represent about 1 per cent of the population, which is significant compared to other parts of Canada (for example, less than 1 per cent of Ontario’s population is Japanese). There is also a relatively significant Aboriginal population (just over 5 per cent in 2011).
The province’s present-day ethnic make-up is a reflection of its history. In the early part of the 20th century more than 75 per cent of the province’s residents were of British origin and most of the population spoke English as their first language. In the mid-19th century Chinese people began working in the mines of the Cariboo, and in the early 1880s many more Chinese were brought to BC as labourers for the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR). Afterwards many of them settled in Vancouver, and a smaller "Chinatown" also arose in Victoria. Japanese Canadians also settled in southwestern BC between 1900 and 1940.
As in other parts of Canada, the percentage of people of British origin has declined rapidly since 1950. Large numbers of East, Southeast and South Asians began immigrating to BC in the 1970s.
The earlier part of the province's history was marred by racism , particularly the anti-Asiatic riots of 1907 and the Komagata Maru incident of 1914. Stirred up by politicians of all parties, fears were rampant that British Columbia's future as a "white province" was threatened. The population of Japanese and Chinese was less than 40,000 in 1921, but their concentration in the Lower Mainland and southern Vancouver Island, combined with the restricted forms of employment available to them, made them conspicuous.
Because they were hard-working and forced to take lower wages the Japanese and Chinese population was considered unfair competition by the unions and the agricultural community. The campaign of the Asiatic Exclusion League (established 1921) and others resulted in the Chinese Immigration Act of 1923, which effectively ended Chinese immigration.
Many Japanese were evicted from their coastal fishing villages during the Second World War and placed in internment camps. Political discrimination against non-whites in BC finally ended after the Second World War when the Chinese and Hindu populations were enfranchised in 1947, and the Japanese in 1949.
Religion
Since the near majority of people in BC have some British background and are English-speaking, as in other parts of Canada, they are predominantly Christian (about 45 per cent according to the 2011 National Household Survey). Those claiming no religious affiliation numbered just over 44 per cent.
History
Aboriginal Peoples
The coasts and interior valleys of British Columbia were first occupied sometime after the last Ice Age. Occupation of some sites in BC has been confirmed by carbon dating at about 6,000–8,000 years ago. The people of the Northwest Coast lived in autonomous villages of 200 to 1,000 people and had access to a particularly bountiful environment that provided abundant shellfish, salmon and even whales. Groups living along the coast used a variety of fishing tools and techniques, and used forest resources to build large and sophisticated plank houses. The coastal people concentrated along the lower reaches of the major salmon rivers. These groups developed an elaborate culture typified by totem poles and the potlatch (see Tagish ; Tsimshian ; Haida ; Tlingit ; Kwakiutl ; Nootka ; and Native People: Northwest Coast ). The interior inhabitants, such as the Carrier , Interior Salish and Kootenay were generally nomadic and depended on hunting. Those groups living in the Subarctic region of the interior generally fished and hunted moose and caribou, while those living in the southern interior had a milder climate. The availability of salmon made it possible for the groups living in the southern interior to winter in small villages.
European Settlement
Due to its distance from the eastern coast of Canada and the barrier to east-west movement created by the mountains, the Pacific Northwest was very difficult for early Europeans to reach and was the last part of North America they explored. The first permanent European settlement came with the development of the fur trade in the early 19th century. A flurry of activity followed the discovery of gold on the lower and middle Fraser River (see Fraser River Gold Rush ), resulting in an inland system of supply and transportation along the Fraser River to the Cariboo Mountains. By the 1880s more permanent mining towns began to dot the valleys of the southeast – each supported by local forestry, small farms and complex rail, road and water transport. In contrast, on the southwest coast settlement was more urban and commercial.
From 1860 to 1890 Victoria, the capital, was the main administrative and commercial settlement, and the supply centre for interior and coastal resource development. Vancouver, on Burrard Inlet north of the mouth of the Fraser River, was selected as the site for the western terminal of the CPR in 1886. Vancouver soon replaced Victoria as the commercial centre and became the main port for both coastal and interior products to move to world markets.
Overall, British Columbia developed contrasting coastal and interior settlement patterns which remained the same throughout the 20th century, although densities increased. The population has always been primarily urban, living in the southwest region. The remaining population is dispersed across the southern half of the province, mainly occupying the north-south valleys or resource-based settlements along the main transportation lines. The only major farming populations live in the Okanagan Valley and dispersed along the highway between Kamloops and Prince George. These linear population clusters are separated from each other by unoccupied mountain ranges. With the exception of an urban and agricultural cluster in the Peace River area of the northeast, few people live north of Prince George and Prince Rupert.
Europeans arrived at the northwest coast much later than they did other areas of the continent. Spaniards under Juan Pérez Hernández were probably the first Europeans to see the coast of BC in 1774. They did not land, but Pérez claimed the region for Spain. Four years later James Cook took his two British ships into Nootka Sound on the west coast of Vancouver Island. Within a few years British traders came by sea and developed a flourishing fur trade with coastal Aboriginal peoples.
The Spanish had established a trading post at Nootka Sound and seized British ships there, and in 1789 Spain and Britain had a dispute over the ownership of West Coast North America. This Nootka Sound Controversy was settled by the Nootka Conventions of 1790–94, which did not determine ownership, but gave equal trading rights to both countries.
British claims were strengthened after 1792 when ships under George Vancouver carried out a careful three-year mapping of the coast from Oregon to Alaska. Vancouver named many of the bays, inlets and coastal landform features. In this period of worldwide European colonialism, there was no concern among European governments and businessmen that this area was already occupied by Aboriginal peoples.
In 1793 the first European report about the interior of BC was made by the North West Company fur trader Alexander Mackenzie . He entered the region from the east via the Peace and Upper Fraser rivers, and explored westward across the Chilcotin Plateau and through the Coast Mountains to the long inlet at Bella Coola .
Two other members of the North West Company, Simon Fraser and David Thompson , explored other parts of the interior early in the 19th century. They established the first permanent European settlements in the province, which were fur trade posts supplied from Montréal. In 1808 Fraser reached the mouth of the river which now bears his name, and in 1811Thompson found the mouth of the Columbia River after exploring the river routes of southeastern BC.
For about 50 years, while eastern North America was being occupied and settled by European agricultural people and dotted with commercial cities, the mountainous western part of the continent remained little-known territory on the fringes of fur-trade empires controlled from eastern cities.
During the first half of the 19th century the British-owned Hudson’s Bay Company controlled the western fur trade, including the area of present-day Washington and Oregon. In the 1830s American settlers began to move into the southern part of this region, and refused to recognize the authority of the British company.
Conflicting territorial claims were settled in the 1846 Oregon Treaty , which established the southern boundary of BC along the 49th parallel, with the exception of Vancouver Island. In anticipation of this result the HBC had moved its headquarters to newly-established Fort Victoria in 1843.
In 1849 the British government granted Vancouver Island to the HBC for colonization, and in 1851 James Douglas , an official of the company, became governor of the new colony. In 1856 Douglas established a legislative assembly for Vancouver Island. At mid-century the only non-Aboriginal settlements within the boundaries of present-day British Columbia were fur trade posts on the coast, such as Victoria, Nanaimo and Fort Langley , and in the interior, such as Kamloops, Fort (later Prince) George and Fort St. James .
Development
This relatively quiet period of history ended in 1858 when gold was discovered in the sand bars along the Lower Fraser River. The ensuing gold rushes brought thousands of fortune hunters from many parts of the world, but mainly from the California goldfields. Many fortune hunters came by boat from San Francisco, crowding into inadequate facilities in Victoria to buy supplies and receive permits.
Prospecting took place upstream along the banks and bars of the Fraser River during 1858. The town of Yale was established as a trans-shipping centre at the south end of Fraser Canyon, and as the eastern end of water transport from the Fraser River mouth. Gold seekers walked the tributaries of the Fraser River and major gold finds were made east of Quesnel .
The boomtown of Barkerville arose at the western edge of the Cariboo Mountains as the chief service town for the Cariboo goldfields. At its peak in the early 1860s Barkerville likely held a fluctuating population of about 10,000, making it the largest settlement in western Canada at that time.
In order to establish government and maintain law and order around the goldfields, the British established a separate mainland colony of British Columbia in 1858 under the authority of James Douglas, who also remained the governor of Vancouver Island. The new settlement of New Westminster , located slightly inland on the north bank of the Fraser River delta, was proclaimed capital of the new colony in 1859 and controlled river traffic entering the Fraser River en route to the interior. In the early 1860s the amazing feat of building the Cariboo Road along the walls of the Fraser Canyon was accomplished in order to move supplies to interior settlements.
In 1866, with gold production declining and people leaving, the British government united the two colonies to reduce administrative costs. New Westminster was the capital of the combined colony for two years before protests from the older capital, Victoria, resulted in the seat of government being moved there in 1868. The resulting physical separation of the capital from the majority of the people and economic activity on the mainland later led to communication problems for the region, and many government services and offices had to be duplicated on the mainland.
After 1867 the British colony on the West Coast debated whether it should join the new Confederation of eastern provinces known as Canada. In 1871 the 12,000 non-Aboriginal residents of BC agreed to enter the Dominion of Canada on the condition that the federal government build a transcontinental railway to link it with the eastern provinces. The federal government agreed, but the new province waited, rather impatiently at times, for 15 years before the Canadian Pacific Railway reached the southwest coast. (See also British Columbia and Confederation .)
The union with Canada was an unhappy one at first. The new province ran heavily into debt; the cost of governing a large mountainous area with few people was very high, and revenues from resource users were low. More than one-third of the province's white residents lived in or near Victoria. Even by 1881 the white population of 24,000 was less than the estimated 25,000 Aboriginal peoples.
The hoped-for expansion of trade with East Asia did not develop immediately with the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1885. However, the railway did bring people to the port of Vancouver and by 1901 that city had surpassed Victoria in population. Vancouver's population of almost 27,010 in 1901 had been reached within 15 years, whereas after 58 years of occupation Victoria had only 23,688 people.
Around the turn of the 20th century entrepreneurs came to British Columbia to exploit the province's vast resources. A salmon-cannery industry was established along the coast. There were sawmills all around the shores of Georgia Strait and particularly along eastern Vancouver Island, and the first pulp and paper mill was completed at Powell River in 1912.
The major expansion of the forest industry came, however, after the First World War when the Panama Canal opened and gave access to markets around the north Atlantic region. Since access to capital and natural resources for export was more important than ownership of farmland, BC attracted a different type of settler from those who settled on the land on the Prairies and across eastern Canada.
In interior BC in the 1890s the major resource development and settlement centred on the mining activity in the Kootenay region of the southeast. Prospectors, mainly from mining camps in western Montana and Idaho, moved northward along the valleys and discovered gold and base metals in the area west of Kootenay Lake . Mining camps sprung up in the Slocan Valley, at Rossland , near Grand Forks and elsewhere. Nelson became the main service, supply and administrative centre, with a population of about 4,500 in 1911.
Railways extended northward into the interior from the US, and the CPR built a line westward through the Crowsnest Pass in 1899 to bring coal from Fernie to smelters in the mining centres. By about 1914, however, many of the mines had closed and some towns were abandoned, although other mines opened in later years. The extension of the Kettle Valley branch of the CPR to the coast during the First World War came after the peak of mining activity in the Kootenay region.
Agriculture brought settlers to the south-central interior. At the time of the early 1860s Cariboo Gold Rush ranching was established in the grassland valleys and rolling basins across the southern interior plateau. Irrigation was developed west of Kamloops and in the northern Okanagan Valley early in the 20th century. Irrigation for orchards that spread south from Vernon aided settlement projects for returning soldiers after the First World War (see Veterans’ Land Act ).
The Grand Trunk Pacific Railway west from Edmonton through the Upper Fraser, Bulkley and Skeena valleys was built in 1907–14 and was intended to give Canada a second gateway through the mountains to the Pacific coast. After the railway was built Prince George became a minor sawmill centre, with rail access eastward to the growing housing market in the Prairie provinces. However, the port and rail terminal at Prince Rupert never developed the anticipated volume of traffic, partly because there was little need for incoming freight. Despite its hopes, the small town remained mainly a fisheries centre.
International political upheaval during 1930–45 and the resulting loss of world markets led to a serious economic decline in BC’s resource-based activities. After about 1950, however, the improved transportation system did much to integrate the interior resource economies and settlements with coastal collection, processing and management centres.
Appropriately, the theme of Expo 86 , held in Vancouver, was transportation and communications. Thousands of Canadians migrated to BC, attracted by the mild climate and perceived economic opportunities, joining thousands of other immigrants from Asia. These people not only provided labour and management for the growing commercial and service occupations, they were also consumers of goods, services and entertainment. In the 21st century, BC is one of Canada's most prosperous and fastest-growing provinces.
Economy
Resource-based activities have been the basis of BC's economy throughout its modern history. Aboriginal people depended on the resources of land and sea for their food, clothing and exchange. The first items of trade desired by Europeans were sea otter pelts from the coast and animal furs from the interior.
Europeans were primarily attracted by mineral resources, notably gold in the central interior and southeast, and also by coal on Vancouver Island, near Nanaimo and Cumberland . By the 1880s the tall, straight coniferous trees of the coast forest were being cut for lumber to supply other Pacific Rim settlements, and salmon were being canned at numerous river-mouth canneries to be shipped throughout the world.
In the 19th century BC’s natural resources supplied markets elsewhere in Anglo-America or in East Asia, or Europe. Local manufacturing consisted primarily of some first-stage processing of these resources.
As population increased in the 20th century and concentrated in or near the ports of the southwest, consumer-goods manufacturing began in the southwestern cities. This was aided by the high cost of transporting manufactured goods from eastern Canada and the US, and by an ample supply of hydroelectric power. Agricultural settlement expanded across the lowland and delta of the Lower Fraser River. The management and financial activities related to resource development remained in the coastal cities, mainly Vancouver.
Agriculture
While only 3 per cent of BC’s land area is used for agriculture, the province is well-known for its fruit crop, leading the country in the production of berries , wine-grapes, fruits and nuts. Farm cash receipts totalled $2.9 billion in 2014 (farm cash receipts are Statistics Canada’s way of measuring the agriculture sector’s contribution to the country’s gross domestic product , on a province-by-province basis). Important crops include grapes, blueberries, cherries, raspberries, pears and apricots. Farming in BC had its origins in supplying the mid-19th century trading posts. The growing cities of Vancouver and Victoria stimulated agricultural expansion in the Fraser Valley and on Vancouver Island. In the 1890s fruit and vegetable growing were established in the Okanagan and beef ranching in the Cariboo region.
The largest area of cultivated land in BC is in the Peace River area, which accounts for about 90 per cent of the province’s grain harvest. The small farms of the Lower Fraser River have the longest frost-free season in Canada and produce dairy and livestock products, vegetables, small fruits, and specialty crops such as blueberries, cranberries and flower bulbs. In the dry southern interior, agriculture flourishes only where irrigation systems have been established.
The narrow benches and terraces above Lake Okanagan are one of Canada's three main fruit-growing regions and an important grape-growing area. The small, intensive farms produce apples, pears, peaches, cherries, plums, grapes and apricots. There are cattle ranches across small areas of grassland on the southern Interior Plateau, but not enough meat is produced to supply even the Vancouver market.
Despite the scarcity of high-quality agricultural land in BC, in the period from 1966–71 urban sprawl was consuming over 6,000 hectare of prime agricultural land per year. About 20 per cent of the prime agricultural land of the Lower Fraser and 30 per cent of the Okanagan had already been converted when in 1973 the Land Commission Act froze the disposition of agricultural land for non-agricultural use, despite the great demand of it for housing, industry, hobby farms and country estates.
Forestry
Forestry was the main component of BC's economy throughout the 20th century and continues to play an important role in the 21st century. Employment in this sector has declined over the past several years due to a variety factors, including the collapse of the US housing market after the 2008 financial crisis and the negative impact of the mountain pine beetle on interior forests. Exports of newsprint have been particularly affected by the growing popularity of online news sources and have declined by 80 per cent in the last two decades. However, forest products are still the province’s largest export commodity.
Commercial logging began in the 1840s on Vancouver Island and spread with the Fraser River Gold Rush of 1858. After the middle of the 19th century lumber mills were established in the southwest to supply the building needs of growing settlements and to export to nearby Pacific settlements. Temporary sawmills also operated near all of the scattered mining communities in the interior; some of these mills, located on the two main railway lines, were able to export lumber eastward to the growing Prairie towns in the early 20th century.
Lumber production expanded rapidly along the coast after the First World War, as the newly opened Panama Canal made eastern US and European markets more accessible to West Coast mills. Most lumber companies extended their logging camps northward along the coast and transported the logs by water to large sawmills around the Georgia Strait region. With minor exceptions, such as near Prince Rupert, this pattern of north coast primary cutting and south coast processing and export has been maintained.
Pulp and paper mills were established at a few places around the Strait of Georgia early in the 20th century, but these mills did not have large markets for newsprint and paper similar to the markets in the eastern US available to eastern Canadian mills. Unlike eastern mills, the pulp and paper mills of BC became integrated into existing sawmill operations and received much of their wood fibre raw material from product residue, such as sawdust and chips from adjoining lumber mills.
The pulp and paper industry remained coastal until the mid-1960s, when mills were opened in several places across the interior. This interior expansion was part of the general spread of the forest industry into the interior of the province stimulated by increased foreign markets, improved interior road and rail transport, new government concessions and cutting rights to forested areas, and a concern for possible depletion of the coast’s forest reserves.
Throughout the 1970s the interior produced about half of the value of provincial forest products. Early in the 20th century small sawmills disappeared along the coast, and after 1950 interior small sawmills also disappeared. These were replaced by large centrally located sawmills, sometimes with adjoining pulp and paper or paper mills.
Although water transport, often in self-dumping log barges, is still the chief means of transporting logs to the mills along the coast, water transport is rarely used in the interior — unlike the river-based log transport system which evolved in eastern Canada. Interior logs and finished forest products are all moved by road or rail and therefore all forestry-based settlements are located on the main railways or highways.
In 1986–87 the BC legislature passed three new acts dealing with the responsibilities of the Ministry of Forests in managing, protecting and conserving forest resources. Pressures on the industry increase as demands grow for preservation of the forests for recreation, wildlife, aesthetics, and as a resource for future generations. In the mid-1980s the industry, after dramatically increasing its penetration of the US market, was under pressure from US producers for alleged unfair competition (see Softwood Lumber Dispute ). This dispute led to years of bitter negotiations and significant reductions in lumber exports to the US (see also Forest and; Forest Economics ).
In the late 1980s the forestry sector came under increasing criticism for its forestry practices and the harvesting of old growth forests. Preservationists won some victories (Carmanah Valley and Clayoquot Sound) after initiating national and international campaigns. Through the Forest Reserve Act (1994) the provincial government is trying to prevent similar future confrontations by securing a commercial forest land base. In 2007 the government announced the Coastal Forest Action Plan, aimed at improving the sector’s competitiveness and encouraging a shift to harvesting second-growth trees.
Mining
Mining has a long history in British Columbia, and remains an integral piece of the province’s economy. Coal, copper and molybdenum make up the bulk of the materials mined. Gold, silver, lead and zinc are also of significance.
Mining became important in BC in 1858 with the Fraser Gold Rush and later discoveries in the Cariboo region. Between 1890 and 1910 the Kootenay region of southeastern BC became one of the most important mining areas of Canada. The huge smelter-refinery at Trail receives ore from BC, the Yukon and the Northwest Territories .
Coal was first mined near Port McNeill and soon after at Nanaimo on Vancouver Island in the mid-19th century. Immense coal deposits in the Fernie-Crowsnest Pass area were used by the Trail smelter and by the railways until both converted to diesel fuel. Both metallurgical and thermal coal is exported from southeastern BC to Japan and elsewhere. The younger sedimentary rocks of northeastern BC, like those of the interior plains of Alberta, are sources of coal, petroleum and natural gas. The latter two products are transported by pipelines to urban markets in southwestern BC and the adjoining northwestern states of the US.
Throughout the 20th century metal mines have opened and closed across the southern interior from Grand Forks to Princeton. In the early 1980s mining in the area was highlighted by large, open-pit copper mines southwest of Kamloops. Other metal mines across the Interior Plateau from near Williams Lake to Babine Lake in the northwest have produced intermittently.
Mines have also operated intermittently along the coast of BC for more than a century. Base-metal mines opened and closed near Stewart , northeast of Prince Rupert, and at several places on Vancouver Island. Iron ore and copper, to name just two examples, have been exported to Japan from coastal mines. Because nearly all of BC’s mineral production is consumed outside of the province, the fortunes of the mining industry are largely determined outside of the province’s boundaries.
Energy
British Columbia produces a surplus of energy in the form of electrical power, coal, petroleum and natural gas. Of these, two are of particular importance: BC is one of the largest natural gas producers in the country; and hydroelectricity is the province’s largest source of electrical power generation. BC Hydro , a Crown corporation , is one of largest electric utilities in Canada. The British Columbia Transmission Corporation is also a Crown corporation, with the mandate to plan, build and operate BC Hydro’s electrical transmission system. In addition to these Crown corporations the province also has several private utilities companies, such as FortisBC, which owns transmission and distribution lines that connect with BC Hydro. There are also a small number of independent power producers that are connected to the electricity grid.
British Columbia’s reliance on hydroelectricity stems from its steep and rugged landforms and ample precipitation, which together produce enormous seasonal runoffs in numerous rivers and vast amounts of potential hydroelectric power. Hydroelectric power was first produced at the close of the 19th century from small rivers in the southwest for urban consumers in Victoria and Vancouver. The largest single power site in the southwest of the province prior to 1940 was developed on Bridge River, just east of the Coast Mountains. The southwestern power sources were sufficient for industrial and residential markets in the Georgia Strait region until the 1960s.
Around the turn of the century the Kootenay and other rivers in the southeast were dammed to produce electric power for the many local mines and towns. This power was ample until the 1960s. Following an international agreement, the Columbia River was dammed at Mica Creek in the "Big Bend" north of Revelstoke to help even out the flow of the river and make American downstream power plants more efficient (see Columbia River Treaty ). In the 1970s, turbines were installed in the dam to produce electric power for metropolitan Vancouver.
The northeastern section of the province was the last developed for hydropower. As a result of technological improvements in long-distance transmission facilities it became possible to dam the Peace River where it spilled out of the Rocky Mountains and to send the power about 1,000 km south to the growing markets in metropolitan Vancouver. The Fraser River, occupying the central part of the province, is the greatest potential source of hydroelectric power, but technology has not yet solved the problem of using the river for both fish and power.
Fisheries
The most valuable fishery in British Columbia is Pacific salmon, which have two- to five-year cycles of river spawning, sea migration and return to the same spawning rivers. As the returning fish approach and concentrate off river mouths they are caught by large fishing vessels. Although most coastal rivers produce some salmon, the largest catches are obtained off the mouths of the Fraser and Skeena rivers. This method of harvest has resulted in seriously depleted fish stocks and a threat to the fishery as a whole.
Other fish caught along the coast and offshore include herring , halibut and other groundfish such as cod and sole, as well as a large variety of shellfish, particularly oysters which are farmed at various locations along the coast.
Early in the 20th century salmon canneries were dispersed all along the BC coast close to the catching areas. However, the gradual introduction of improved boats, with longer ranges and refrigeration, resulted in the closing of most canneries on the central coast. Despite this, fish processing remains an important part of BC’s economy. Today, many of the plants are concentrated in the southwest.
Transportation
Land transportation has been funnelled into the narrow river valleys across the southern half of the province. The two transcontinental railways use the Fraser and Skeena valleys to cross through the western mountain barrier to reach the coast. Four passes through the Rocky Mountains have been used by the railways and, later, roads to enter BC from the east. From south to north these strategic passes are Crowsnest, Kicking Horse , Yellowhead and Pine .
The only south-north railway, BC Rail (originally called the Pacific Great Eastern), was owned by the provincial government before becoming privatized in 2004. In the 1950s it was extended from Vancouver through Prince George to the Peace River area in the northeast; another extension of the railway into the unoccupied area northwest of Prince George was halted in the 1970s. The Southern Railway of British Columbia is older than BC Rail, and the latter was a part of BC Hydro until 1988. It provides a freight service between Chilliwack and New Westminster, and onto Annacis Island on the Fraser River.
British Columbia lacked an interconnected highway system in the interior until the 1950s. The first paved road entirely across the width of the province, the Trans-Canada Highway , was not completed until 1962. Completed in 1990, the Coquihalla Highway was built to lighten traffic on trucking routes and to enhance regional tourism. Most roads still follow the valley floors — where people and settlements are — and therefore have a general south-north pattern, with fewer east-west links.
The provincial government is responsible for the construction and maintenance of all public roads in unorganized territory and for classified arterial highways through incorporated areas. Several parts of BC have little or no land transportation lines.
There are no roads along the long section of mainland coast between Powell River and Prince Rupert because of extremely high construction costs around the innumerable fjords, plus the lack of permanent settlements. Only one road crosses northwestern BC from Prince Rupert (and Stewart) to Cassiar and the Alaska Highway ; the latter is the only road across northeastern BC. As part of its bid for the 2010 Winter Olympics major improvements to a section of Highway 99 known as the Sea-to-Sky Highway linking West Vancouver to Whistler were completed in 2009.
Coastal British Columbia is served by an extensive ferry service which moves freight, cars and passengers across the Strait of Georgia. BC ferries service almost 50 ports of call along the coast, and small regional operators provide service to remote local communities. Small coastal boats, tugs and barges move natural resources, supplies and people along the sheltered "Inside Passage" between Vancouver Island and the mainland and northward to Prince Rupert, Haida Gwaii and the Alaska Panhandle. Early in the 20th century shallow-draft lake vessels operated during summer on the long, narrow lakes of the central and southeast interior, but they gradually disappeared after all-season highways were built.
All major cities in British Columbia are served by airlines, which, like rail, road and water transportation, further reinforce the dominance of metropolitan Vancouver and the densely occupied southwestern corner of the province.
Tourism and Recreation
British Columbia is known internationally for its outdoor recreation, particularly sportfishing , camping, hiking , boat cruising, driving for pleasure, skiing and hunting . The many provincial and federal parks showcase spectacular mountain scenery and varied local physical environments. The national parks are mainly in the mountains of eastern BC and include Yoho , Kootenay , Glacier and Mount Revelstoke . Pacific Rim National Park on western Vancouver Island has the longest continuous stretch of sand beach in the province.
In 1987 an agreement was reached to establish Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve in the Queen Charlotte Islands (Haida Gwaii). This unique rain forest is one of North America's most diverse plant and animal wildlife habitats and is the ancestral home of the Haida, whose ancient sites and totem poles are of significant cultural value (see Anthony Island ).
BC has the largest provincial parks system in Canada. These are classified into four types: recreation areas; class A parks, which are usually campsites and picnic grounds; larger class B parks, which include very large areas such as Garibaldi , Strathcona (BC's first provincial park in 1911) and Tweedsmuir; and class C parks, which are small local recreation areas. Approximately 20 million people visit BC’s provincial parks and protected areas each year.
Government and Politics
Provincial Government
British Columbia is governed by a legislative assembly of 85 members elected from single-constituency ridings. Prior to the implementation of the Fisher Commission’s recommendations in 1991 two person ridings were common because of the disproportionate concentration of population living in the urban areas around Vancouver. After the commission’s recommendations were imposed new electoral districts were created that returned only one member each to the Legislative Assembly. A lieutenant-governor, appointed by Canada's governor general on the advice of the prime minister, is the head of the provincial government in title only. Power resides with the premier of the province, who is the leader of the political party that won the most seats in the legislature in the previous election, which is held every four years on the second Tuesday in May. A cabinet is chosen by the premier from the majority party, and government service is provided by a civil service headed by deputy ministers with headquarters in Victoria. (See also Premiers of British Columbia ; Lieutenant-Governors of British Columbia .)
Early 20th Century
The federal party lines of Liberal and Conservative were not introduced to the province until 1903, when Conservative Richard McBride became premier. The Liberal Party formed its first government in 1916, led by H.C. Brewster , and the Conservatives regained power in 1928 under Simon Tolmie .
Many labour leaders had come from Great Britain in the early 20th century and brought their experience as organizers with them. They gained early success in BC when legislation for improved working conditions and social services was introduced. The Labour Party elected members in 1920, 1924, 1928 and 1933.
Progressive and socialist parties emerged with the serious economic difficulties of the Great Depression . The Conservatives were nearly wiped out in the 1933 election, finishing behind the new Co-Operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), which won seven seats and 31 per cent of the vote, and the new Liberal government of Premier T.D. Pattullo which ruled for the next eight years. In the following years Premiers John Hart (1941–47) and Byron I. Johnson (1947–52), both Liberals, were called upon to lead coalition governments .
Post Second World War
In 1952 a new party led by W.A.C. Bennett broke away from the Conservative Party and called itself Social Credit , after a similar party in Alberta. This party won a minority government in 1952 and then governed the province for 20 years during a period of enormous resource development and growth. This was particularly true in the interior of the province, which was being better interconnected and linked to the southwest coast by road-building programs and the northern extension of the British Columbia Railway to the Peace River area.
The New Democratic Party (formerly the CCF) became the Official Opposition in the 1960s with the virtual disappearance of the provincial Liberal and Conservative parties. The NDP formed government for the first time in 1972, led by David Barrett . The electorate tended to polarize in roughly equal numbers around the two parties, with Social Credit advocating free enterprise and government restraint, and the NDP advocating moderate socialism, and government economic and social involvement.
Late 20th Century to Present
Social Credit regained power in 1975, led by William Bennett , son of W.A.C. Bennett, and was re-elected in 1979, 1983, and again in 1986 under a new leader, William Vander Zalm . Rita Johnston , Canada's first female premier, succeeded Vander Zalm as leader of the scandal-plagued party as premier in 1991, only to be defeated at the polls later that year by the NDP, led by former mayor of Vancouver Michael Harcourt . That election saw Social Credit reduced to little more than a rump party and the return of the Liberals as a major force in BC provincial politics, forming the Official Opposition for the first time in 40 years. In 1996 the NDP won their second consecutive mandate, under Glen Clark . He resigned, under pressure, in August 1999. In 2001, Liberal Gordon Campbell came to power, and was re-elected with majorities in 2005 and 2009. In 2010, suffering from low popularity linked mostly to his imposition of the HST, Campbell stepped down as premier. He was succeeded by former deputy minister Christy Clark , who led the Liberals to a surprise majority in 2013. Although Clark did not win her seat in the May election, she won a by-election in Westside-Kelowna in July 2013.
Judiciary
The highest court in BC is the Court of Appeal, made up of a panel of three judges most of the time, with panels of five judges sitting for some important cases. The Supreme Court is lower than the Court of Appeal and has a Chief Justice, an Associate Chief Justice and 86 other justices. The Supreme Court hears both civil and criminal cases, and has jurisdiction over the trial of serious crimes in the province. BC also has provincial courts which hear criminal, family, child protection, small claims, traffic and criminal cases involving youth offenders. The Lieutenant Governor in Council (the Crown, in effect) appoints all provincial judges on the recommendation of the Judicial Council, which is made up of nine members. The attorney general is the chief law officer of the province, empowered to act in all litigation in which the province is a party. The Ministry of Justice is responsible for the administration of justice, policing and the provision of legal services.
Public Finance
Most of the provincial government’s revenue comes from taxes levied on a wide range of property and on the sales and incomes of citizens, companies and corporations. For example, there are taxes on non-municipal lands, gasoline, liquor and tobacco, and a general provincial sales tax. Provincial licences and permit fees include charges for the right to cut timber on crown land and for the use of other natural resources. A harmonized sales tax that combined the Provincial Sales Tax and the federal Goods and Services Tax was introduced in 2009, but was rejected in a 2011 referendum and the province returned to the old system in April 2013. The province receives a share of income tax which is collected by the federal government and returned to the province as part of various federal-provincial tax-sharing arrangements.
Most of the government’s expenditures go to education, health and social services. The latter includes hospitals, medical care, welfare and social-assistance payments. Part of public expenditure pays the salaries of civil servants who administer the government bureaucracy and provide services to citizens. The government also maintains ferries, which are more important in British Columbia than in other provinces, as well as roads and bridges.
Federal Representation
BC has six appointed senators in the federal Senate and 42 elected members in the federal House of Commons in Ottawa .
Local Government
Local governance in British Columbia includes municipal governments with elected mayors and councillors, and regional districts governed by a board of directors. There are 27 regional districts in the province, and each is further subdivided into electoral districts. Directors are elected from each electoral district, and every municipality in a regional district appoints one or more council members to the regional board. Established in the mid-1960s, regional districts are responsible for providing services to rural communities that do not have incorporated municipalities. Elections for both the regional boards and the municipal governments are held every three years. BC does not have township and county administrative units like other parts of Canada do.
Health
The British Columbia government runs the Medical Services Plan, which pays for most health costs, such as doctors, medical tests and treatments. The government’s Fair Pharmacare program provides assistance, tied to a family’s net income, with the cost of eligible prescription drugs and medical supplies, as well as dispensing fees. BC has six health authorities, five of which service various regions within the province. The sixth is the Provincial Health Services Authority, which operates provincial agencies such as the BC Children’s Hospital, BC Cancer Agency and BC Transplant, and ensures that residents of the province have access to specialized health care services. These health authorities operate under the guidance of the Ministry of Health, which sets province-wide goals, standards and performance agreements.
Education
Elementary schools were established in Victoria in 1852, a few years after a fort was built there by the Hudson's Bay Co., and after 1858 they were maintained by the colonial government. The Public School Act of 1872 established a free provincial school system. The first secondary schools were available in Victoria in 1876 and in Vancouver in 1890.
The elementary and secondary education system in BC consists of kindergarten to grade 12. Public school education is provided for children from five to 19. The system is administered by local school boards, made up of elected local citizens, with financial support mainly from the provincial government. School is compulsory for children between the ages of 6 and 16.
Children who live in isolated areas or who are unable to attend school can study via distance learning (known as distributed learning in BC) where students are instructed by a BC certified teacher. Many of these courses are also available to adults wishing to finish their high school education. The curricula for school courses and programs are established by the Ministry of Education and are usually similar throughout all the schools in the province, which allows for student transfers from one district to another. Within this structure, however, individual schools and classes may adapt the curriculum for local needs. The BC College of Teachers is responsible for the certification of teachers in the province and examining qualifications of teachers from other areas.
Private schools include Catholic, various Protestant, Waldorf, Montessori, Jewish, Sikh, Muslim and non-denominational schools. Schools that meet provincial curriculum and teacher certification criteria have access to partial funding.
Post-Secondary Education
The public post-secondary education system in BC is structured to meet the increasing demand for advanced education and training, and has 11 universities. The original university in the province was the University of British Columbia , located on a scenic peninsula adjoining the western edge of Vancouver. Victoria College, affiliated with UBC, provided students with the first two years of university education; it was expanded to university status in 1963 (see University of Victoria ). A new university, Simon Fraser , was built in Burnaby in 1965 to accommodate the greatly increased population of metropolitan Vancouver. In the mid-1990s three new universities opened their doors: University of Northern British Columbia (1994), Royal Roads University (1995) and the Technical University of British Columbia (1997). In 2008, five postsecondary institutions, including some university colleges, were changed to universities. These new universities were the University of the Fraser Valley, Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Vancouver Island University, Emily Carr University of Art + Design and Capilano University. Most of these new universities serve a specific geographic area, and are designated as “special purpose teaching universities.”
In 1978 the provincial government created the Open Learning Institute, which in 1988 was combined with the Knowledge Network, BC’s educational television network, to form the Open Learning Agency, of which the British Columbia Open University was a part. In 2005 the distance education section of the Open Learning Agency, and British Columbia Open University’s courses and programs, were transferred to the Thompson Rivers University Open Learning program.
There are 11 public colleges in BC which attempt to meet the specific needs of the geographic region they serve. These are comprehensive institutions that provide programs ranging from literacy and academic upgrading to vocational and trades training. They also offer technical or career training and first- and second-year university transfer programs.
Cultural Life
Arts and Sports
Settlers and entrepreneurs from England came directly to the colonies and the new province, which meant that British influences were strong among the European population in the 19th century. In the 20th century British cultural characteristics were diversified by people from Eastern Canada who had second- or third-generation British origins. After 1950, internal migration from Eastern Canada rapidly increased BC's population and brought the institutions, societies and cultural events, and activities found across the rest of Canada to BC. Many of Canada's finest writers, such as Phyllis Webb and George Bowering , reside in BC.
The mixture of people from India, Pakistan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Japan and China add to West Coast culture, and Chinatown remains an enduring part of the urban landscape of central Vancouver.
Visual Art
West Coast Aboriginal art has a long history in the province (see Northwest Coast Aboriginal Art ). Aboriginal arts and crafts have been revived in recent decades and have left their imprint on the broader society. The province's most famous artist, Emily Carr , was profoundly influenced by Aboriginal art, and Bill Reid was a famous Haida artist whose work gained international acclaim.
The BC government gives financial assistance to arts and cultural activity through the British Columbia Arts Council, an arms-length organization created in 1995. After the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Vancouver the provincial government also established the Sports and Arts Legacy to support British Columbians’ involvement in these fields.
Museums
Major museums, archives and art galleries are located in Vancouver and Victoria, and local museums are also maintained in several smaller cities in the interior. The Centennial Museum, H.R. MacMillan Planetarium and Gordon Southam Observatory, located on the waterfront in the western part of Vancouver, adjoin the Vancouver City Archives and the distinctive Vancouver Maritime Museum. The latter, in which the famous RCMP schooner St Roch is preserved, emphasizes the importance of the sea in Vancouver's past and present.
The Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria is noted for its lifelike panoramas and displays and for the several floors of material illustrating the natural environment as well as Aboriginal and early European settlements. The UBC Museum of Anthropology, designed by Arthur Erickson , houses an impressive collection of Northwest Coast Aboriginal artifacts.
Performing Arts
Numerous theatrical companies perform in Victoria and Vancouver. The Arts Club, the largest theatre company in Western Canada, operates three stages in Vancouver, and the Electric Company Theatre presents original works on its Vancouver stage. In Victoria, The Other Guys Theatre Company and the Blue Bridge Repertory Theatre offer works reflecting the culture of the area and productions of famous plays from the past.
Sports
The Vancouver Canucks have been in the NHL since the 1970–71 season and the British Columbia Lions in the CFL since 1954. The latter now play in BC Place — Canada's first covered stadium. Vancouver acquired a professional basketball team in 1994, though they were sold and moved to Memphis in 2001.
Vancouver was host city for the 1954 British Empire Games (see Commonwealth Games ) and Expo 86. Forty years later, Victoria was the host for the Commonwealth Games. In 2010, Vancouver hosted the XXI Olympic Winter Games, where Canadian athletes won the most medals the country has ever won at a winter games, and set a record for the most gold medals won by a country at a single winter games.
Communications
All of the major cities have daily newspapers and the smaller coastal and interior cities publish weekly newspapers. Similarly, the major television and radio stations are in Vancouver and Victoria, but many smaller communities have their own radio and television stations. Most of the province's book and magazine publishers are in Vancouver, which is both an attractive market for eastern publishers and media, and has a large enough share of the British Columbia population and income to be a sustainable market for local firms.
Heritage Sites
British Columbia’s historic sites include Fort Langley , the first fur-trading post in the Lower Fraser Valley, Barkerville , and Fort Steele . The provincial government also has numerous historical signs at scenic pull-off sites along all major highways.
Province
Suggested Reading
G.P.V. and H.B. Akrigg, British Columbia Chronicle, 1847–71 (1977); Mary L. Barker, Natural Resources of British Columbia and Yukon (1977); M.L. Cuddy and J. Scott, British Columbia in Books (1974); Albert L. Farley, Atlas of British Columbia (1979); Robin Fisher, Contact and Conflict (1977); Cole Harris, Making Native Space: Colonialism, Resistance, and Reserves in British Columbia (2002);Margaret A. Ormsby, British Columbia (1958); Adele Perry, On the Edge of Empire: Gender, Race, and the Making of British Columbia, 1849–1871 (2001); H.K. Ralston and J. Friesen, eds., Historical Essays on British Columbia (1976); J. Lewis Robinson, British Columbia (1973); Patricia E. Roy, The Triumph of Citizenship: The Japanese and Chinese in Canada 1941–67 (2007); Patricia E. Roy and John Herd Thompson, British Columbia: Land of Promises (2005); Marie Tippett and Douglas Cole, From Desolation to Splendour (1977).
Links to other sites
| British Columbia |
The youngest son of 'William the Conqueror' succeeded to the throne after his brother William. Who was he? | Place Names - The Canadian Encyclopedia
Rayburn, Alan. "Place Names". The Canadian Encyclopedia. Toronto: Historica Canada, 2007. Web. 28 Sep 2007.
Rayburn, Alan. "Place Names". The Canadian Encyclopedia. Toronto: Historica Canada, 2007. Web. 28 Sep 2007.
APA 6th Edition
Rayburn, A.. R. The Canadian Encyclopedia. (2007). Place names. Retrieved January 19, 2017 From http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/place-names/.
Rayburn, A.. R. The Canadian Encyclopedia. (2007). Place names. Retrieved January 19, 2017 From http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/place-names/.
Chicago 16th Edition
Rayburn, Alan. "Place Names." In The Canadian Encyclopedia. Historica Canada, 1985—. Article published September 28, 2007
Rayburn, Alan. "Place Names." In The Canadian Encyclopedia. Historica Canada, 1985—. Article published September 28, 2007
Turabian
Rayburn, Alan. 2007. Place Names. The Canadian Encyclopedia http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/place-names/ (accessed January 19, 2017).
Rayburn, Alan. 2007. Place Names. The Canadian Encyclopedia http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/place-names/ (accessed January 19, 2017).
While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions.
Geography
Place Names
Canada has about 350,000 official place names. These include names of populated places, water bodies (e.g. lakes) and geographical features (e.g. mountains).
Canada has about 350,000 official place names. These include names of populated places, water bodies (e.g. lakes) and geographical features (e.g. mountains). Many geographical features are still unnamed, at least officially. Canadian place names have a variety of origins, including Aboriginal languages, royalty, famous people and religion.
Origin of the name Canada
In 1535, Jacques Cartier noted that Donnacona , an Iroquoian leader, called an area centered on the present site of Québec City kanata, meaning “a cluster of dwellings.” The name clearly impressed Cartier, for "Canada" appears in the Saguenay and Gaspé regions on the various maps compiled shortly after his historic voyages.
For a number of years the name Québec ("narrow passage" in the Algonquian languages) was assigned to the French territory from the Gulf of St Lawrence to the Ohio River. Similarly, from 1763-91 the British adopted "Province of Quebec" as the name of British lands or territories in present-day Ontario and Québec . By 1791, the name Canada was restored to the area of present southern Québec (Lower Canada) and southern Ontario (Upper Canada); from 1841 to 1867, these territories, united as the Province of Canada , were known as Canada East and Canada West, although Lower Canada and Upper Canada retained extensive usage.
Names of the Provinces
Besides Québec , three other provinces and two territories have names of Aboriginal origin. Ontario is often reported to mean "handsome lake," with the Huron word Ontare and Iroquois word Oniatare both meaning "lake," followed by “io,” suggesting "good" or "beautiful." The present spelling of the lake's name appeared on mid-17th-century maps.
Manitoba , first given to the lake, is said to be derived from the roaring noise ("strait of the spirit") at the narrows of Lake Manitoba . Saskatchewan comes from the Cree word for "swift flowing river." Yukon means "great river" in Gwich'in and was first noted (as "Youcon") by John Bell (1799-1868) in 1846. Nunavut means "our land" in Inuktitut.
Newfoundland may be the oldest European name for a Canadian place in continuous literary and cartographic use, dating from a letter from 1502. Nova Scotia could have come down in history as simply New Scotland, but the form in the Latin text of Sir William Alexander's grant of 1621 was preserved as a distinctive name. New Brunswick was chosen in 1784 to honour King George III (1760-1820), who was descended from the House of Brunswick.
Canada's smallest province was known as Isle de Saint Jean to the French, and then St John's Island from 1759 to 1798, when its present name — Prince Edward Island (for the Duke of Kent then in command of troops in Halifax) — was chosen to reduce the confusion among various places called St John's and Saint John. However, neither St John's , Newfoundland (possibly named on 24 June 1497), nor Saint John , New Brunswick (named by royal charter in 1785 after the river discovered by Pierre Du Gua de Monts and Samuel de Champlain on 24 June 1604) has changed its name to resolve toponymic confusion.
The name British Columbia dates from 1858 when Queen Victoria selected it over New Caledonia. The Columbia River had been named in 1792 by the American explorer Robert Gray for his ship. The word "British" was added to distinguish the province from the South American country, Colombia. Queen Victoria's son-in-law, the marquess of Lorne , suggested Alberta in 1882 for a district of the then North-West Territories in honour of his wife, Princess Louise Caroline Alberta. Lake Louise was also named for her.
Names of Aboriginal Origin
The names that are, on the whole, truly unique to Canada are those used by the Aboriginal people of Canada, who spoke a multitude of tongues, including Cree and Mi’kmaq in the east, Blackfoot and Haida in the west and Chipewyan and Inuktitut in the north. Most of their names describe an outstanding physical characteristic of each feature, while others reflect a significant incident, relate to an activity or denote a band or tribe. So rarely was a personal name applied that such names in the official records, for example, Muskoka and Donnacona , are probably company titles or designations given by European settlers.
In many instances meanings of names are unreliable, and frequently the language source is uncertain. Well-known names relating to physical characteristics include Niagara ("neck," in reference to the peninsula between the lakes), Restigouche ("fine river"), Gaspé ("end place"), Nepisiguit ("rough waters"), Mississauga ("large outlet"), Saguenay ( "water flows out"), Nipissing ("little body of water," in contrast to the Great Lakes), Chicoutimi ("end of deep water"), Timiskaming ("deep water"), Caughnawaga ("rapids"), Athabasca ("where there are reeds"), Kamloops ("meeting of the waters"), Keewatin ("north wind"), Minnedosa ("swift water") and Winnipeg ("murky water").
Names associated with occupancy or the tribes themselves include Ottawa ("traders"), Toronto ("trees standing in water," in reference to the appearance of fish weirs seen from a distance), Kitimat ("people of the snow"), Kootenay ("water people"), Penticton ("always place," i.e., permanently settled), Nanaimo ("big strong people") and Assiniboine ("cook by placing hot stones in water").
Kelowna means "grizzly bear," Aklavik , "place of bear" and Tuktoyaktuk , "reindeer that looks like caribou." Inuvik , "place of man," was assigned in 1958 to the new town set up to replace Aklavik. Saskatoon was named for a wild berry found in abundance by the first settlers in 1882.
Other place names are translations of Aboriginal designations, for example: Medicine Hat , Moose Jaw , Yellowknife , Peace River , Qu'Appelle River, Swift Current, Thunder Bay , Battle River, Red Deer , Crowsnest Pass and Grand-Mère . Relatively recently, some Aboriginal communities with English or French names have had their Aboriginal designation recognized. In 1980, for example, Fort-Chimo, Québec , became Kuujjuaq; in 1987 Frobisher Bay, Northwest Territories, was changed to Iqaluit ; and in 1996 Coppermine, Northwest Territories, was changed to Kugluktuk .
Names of Spanish Origin
Canada's relations with Spain date back several centuries to the voyages of the Basque fishermen to the Atlantic coast and to Spanish exploration of the Pacific coast. Basque expeditions are recalled in names such as Channel-Port aux Basques and Île aux Basques. Archaeologists have uncovered traces of a 16th-century Basque whaling station at Red Bay , Newfoundland and Labrador .
The numerous Spanish explorations on the Pacific coast between 1542 and 1792 are recalled in names such as Alberni , Laredo Strait, Carmelo Strait, Mazaredo Sound, Galiano Island , Juan de Fuca Strait , Tofino, Mount Bodega, Quadra Rocks and Narvaez Bay. At one time Vancouver Island was called Quadra and Vancouver's Island to commemorate the friendship between the Spanish navigator Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra and English Captain George Vancouver .
Royal Names
Virtually every province has a city, town or village named after Queen Victoria . The most widely known, Victoria, British Columbia, was given in 1843 to the Hudson's Bay Company fort. In 1882, the marquess of Lorne gave the Queen's Latin title, Regina , to the capital of what was then the North-West Territories, replacing the Aboriginal name Wascana and its English derivative, Pile O'Bones. Prince Albert is named for Victoria's consort. Royalty is also reflected in names such as Queen Elizabeth Foreland — adjacent to Baffin Island and named for Elizabeth I — and the Queen Elizabeth Islands in the Arctic Archipelago , named for Elizabeth II.
Annapolis Royal was named in 1710 for Queen Anne, replacing Port-Royal , established in the area in 1605 by Pierre Du Gua de Monts and Samuel de Champlain . George III was honoured in Georgetown , Prince Edward Island; Prince George , British Columbia; and Kingston and Lancaster Township in Ontario. His wife, Charlotte, is named in the adjoining Charlottenburgh Township, and their children, beginning with the duke of Cornwall, in adjacent townships. Charlottetown was named for Queen Charlotte. Fredericton was named for their son in 1785. The city of Guelph was named by John Galt after the German ancestral family of George IV.
In 1906, the name of Prince Rupert (the first governor of the Hudson's Bay Company) was chosen after a national competition was sponsored by the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway . The last major island in the Canadian Arctic was discovered in 1948, and named for the newly born Prince Charles . Non-British royalty honoured include King Christian of Denmark in the name of an island in the Arctic, Prince Gustaf Adolf of Sweden in a sea in the Arctic Ocean, and King Louis XIV of France in Louisbourg .
Names that Honour Politicians and Soldiers
Many of the same reasons for using royal names (e.g. respect, allegiance and hope for continued financial support) applied to the practice of honouring political leaders, government officials and military commanders, for example: Rivière Richelieu (duc de Richelieu, 1585-1642), Île d'Orléans (duc d'Orléans, son of François Ier) and Churchill River (duke of Marlborough, 1650-1722). Churchill Falls in Labrador was named for Winston Churchill. Perhaps regrettably, Hamilton River, named in the early 1800s for Sir Charles Hamilton, was changed to Churchill River by provincial legislation, meaning two major Canadian river systems have the same name.
Among British political leaders, the duke of Wellington (Arthur Wellesley), the earl of Chatham (William Pitt), the earl of Halifax (George Montagu Dunk) and the earl of Beaconsfield (Benjamin Disraeli), have been honoured several times. Brandon derives its name from Brandon House, a Hudson's Bay Company post established in 1793 and named for the duke of Brandon, a company shareholder. There has been a trend away from honouring foreign leaders, one of the last being John F. Kennedy, whose name was assigned in 1964 to a mountain in the Yukon .
Great military leaders, for example, Louis-Joseph de Montcalm and James Wolfe , had their names applied to a number of places; Robert Monckton was honoured in the name Moncton (efforts to respell it in the 1920s were sharply rejected); Jeffery Amherst , the victor at Louisbourg , in Amherst ( Nova Scotia ), and Amherstburg ( Ontario ); Isaac Brock , the hero of the War of 1812 , in Brockville ; Garnet Wolseley , leader of the Red River Expedition in 1870, in Wolseley ( Saskatchewan ); and Lord Horatio Herbert Kitchener, after whose death at sea in 1916 Berlin (the centre of German immigration in southwestern Ontario) was renamed Kitchener .
Several supporters of early exploration have also been honoured. For example, Sir Felix Booth, a London distiller, in the name Boothia Peninsula , and Axel Heiberg and Amund and Ellef Ringnes, patrons of Otto Sverdrup's expedition at the turn of this century, in the names of islands adjacent to Ellesmere Island .
Some of those who first mapped and described the interior of the country are remembered in Lake Champlain ( Samuel de Champlain ), Mackenzie River ( Alexander Mackenzie ), Fraser River ( Simon Fraser ), Thompson River ( David Thompson ) and Dawson and Dawson Creek ( George M. Dawson ).
Prominent Canadian political leaders, statesmen, industrialists and scientists have often been honoured. Numerous features commemorate John A. Macdonald , Wilfrid Laurier , Robert Borden and Mackenzie King . In recent years the names Mount Louis St. Laurent and Mount Lester Pearson have been given to mountains in British Columbia's Premier Range, and Lake Diefenbaker has been assigned to a huge reservoir on the South Saskatchewan River .
The earl of Dalhousie, Sir Guy Carleton and Sir John Sherbrooke are among governors-in-chief honoured; since Confederation , numerous places and features have been named for their successors, from the earl of Dufferin and Earl Grey to Roland Michener. The official naming of Mount Michener in 1979 with Michener present was a rare event in Canada's toponymic history. Georges-Philéas Vanier is remembered in many features and places.
Names Honouring Community Founders
Personal names of local developers, community founders and settlement promoters have provided an extensive source for Canadian names. Hamilton was named for George Hamilton (1787-1835), Timmins for Noah Timmins , Lloydminster for Reverend (later Bishop) George Lloyd (1861-1940), Joliette for Barthélemy Joliette (1789-1850) and Lethbridge for William Lethbridge (1824-1901). Forenames as well as surnames have been used for place names, for example, Peterborough ( Peter Robinson ), Belleville (Arabella Wentworth Gore) and Orangeville (Orange Lawrence) in Ontario , Melville ( Charles Melville Hays ) in Saskatchewan , Raymond (Raymond Knight) in Alberta and Rossland (Ross Thompson) in British Columbia .
At one time the assigning of personal names was done quite liberally, for example, Kirkland Lake was named in 1907 after a secretary in the Ontario Department of Mines. In recent years the approval of personal names has been stringently controlled by the names authorities in all the provinces and territories.
Saints' Names
A distinctive characteristic of Canada's toponymy, especially in Québec , is the profusion of saints' names; the Québec toponymic records list over 2,200 of them. Many of the hagionyms not only recall specific saints but were also the forenames of certain community founders, missionaries and priests. They include St-Hyacinthe , for Hyacinthe Delorme who purchased the seigneury there in 1753, St-Lambert , for Raphael Lambert Closse, a 17th-century merchant in the Montréal area, Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu , for Jean Phélypeaux, a French minister of marine, and Ste-Thérèse , for Thérèse de Blainville.
Others across Canada include St Albert ( Alberta ) for Father Albert Lacombe ; St Thomas for Thomas Talbot , who developed a large part of southwestern Ontario ; St Marys (Ontario) for Mary Strachan Jones, daughter of Bishop John Strachan ; and St Catharines (Ontario) first known as St Catherines after Catherine Hamilton (née Askin), the mother of Hamilton's founder, and respelled in 1849 after Catharine Prendergast, wife of postmaster William Hamilton Merritt . Religious naming extends to Île Jésus, and Maniwaki , or "place of Mary", (Québec), Trinity Bay and Conception Bay ( Newfoundland ) and Bay of Gods Mercy ( Northwest Territories ).
Names of Anglo-Celtic Origin
From the Avalon Peninsula in the east to New Westminster in the west, Canada's linguistic mosaic preponderantly reflects Anglo-Celtic influences. Calgary traces its roots to the Isle of Mull in Scotland and Edmonton to the suburbs of London. Ontario has a multitude of Anglo-Celtic names, for example, Renfrew , Pembroke , Sudbury , Windsor , Woodstock , Dublin, Listowel , Stratford , Brampton ; as does Québec , for example, Hull , Windsor, Thetford Mines , Thurso, Armagh, Bedford , Buckingham ; and the Atlantic provinces, for example, Truro , Windsor , Perth-Andover, Newcastle and Kensington .
Evidence of the French as the first Europeans to occupy large parts of Canada is not only revealed in Québec , where 80 per cent of the names are of French origin, but in every one of the provinces and territories — Rideau River , Point Pelée, Lake Superior and Sault Ste Marie (Ontario), Portage la Prairie (Manitoba), Lac la Ronge (Saskatchewan), Lac La Biche (Alberta), Cariboo (British Columbia), Liard River (British Columbia, Yukon, Northwest Territories), Bay of Fundy (New Brunswick, Nova Scotia), Minas Basin and Cape Breton (Nova Scotia); and in Newfoundland, Port aux Basques , Notre Dame Bay , Strait of Belle Isle. Montréal is generally accepted to be a variant of Jacques Cartier's "Mont Roiall," or Mount Royal, for that city's most distinctive feature.
Names transferred from other countries include Dresden and New Hamburg (Germany), Gimli (Iceland), Delhi and Lucknow (India), Zurich (Switzerland), Florence (Italy), Brussels (Belgium), Copenhagen (Denmark), Odessa (Ukraine), Moscow (Russia), Ladysmith (South Africa) and Corunna (Spain). The personal names of settlers and early postmasters from European countries provide a fascinating array of community names from languages other than English and French, but few of them are widely known beyond their own immediate regions.
Classical and Descriptive Names
Several of Canada's names reflect classical origins, for example, Acadia , given by Giovanni da Verrazzano in 1524, suggests a land of rustic peace; Avalon Peninsula , assigned by Sir George Calvert in the early 1600s; Sarnia , given by Sir John Colborne in 1839 for the Roman name of Guernsey; and Athens, named in 1888 to replace the prosaic Farmersville.
Perhaps the most common type of name in Canada is descriptive, either of physical characteristics or of fauna, flora or minerals. Examples are Percé , Trois-Rivières , Rivière-du-Loup , Glace Bay , Midland , North Bay , Sturgeon Falls , Broadview, Grande Prairie , Cobalt , Asbestos , Petrolia , Val-d'Or , Gypsumville, Coppermine River , Whitehorse (referring to rapids in the Yukon River resembling a horse's mane) and Old Man on His Back Plateau, Rivière Qui-Mène-du-Train, Pinchgut Tickle, Cape Gargantua and Giants Castle.
Newfoundland's share of unusual names includes Joe Batt's Arm, Tickle Bay, Blow Me Down Bluff, Come By Chance , Little Seldom, Happy Valley , Pick Eyes, Bareneed, Hearts Delight, Bay d'Espoir (meaning "hope" but pronounced "despair") and Lushes Bight. Ecum Secum is in Nova Scotia and Peekaboo Corner is in New Brunswick . In Québec there is Saint-Louis-du-Ha!Ha!, the expression "ha ha" implying "dead end" or "one way." Punkeydoodles Corners near Kitchener , Ontario, presumably derives from a German farmer who raised only pumpkins . Flin Flon is derived from a character in the novel The Sunless City named Josiah Flintabbatey Flonatin.
Saskatchewan has Eyebrow and Elbow ; Alberta , Hairy Hill and Pincher Creek ; British Columbia has Kleena Kleene, Bella Bella, Horsefly. Snafu Creek in the Yukon recalls an indelicate Second World War expression assigned by army engineers who also baptized Tarfu Creek. “SNAFU” stood for “Situation Normal: All Fouled Up,” while “TARFU” stood for “Things Are Really Fouled Up.” Old Lady's Ghost Creek and Man Drowned Himself Lake are in the Northwest Territories ; and Nunavut has Sons of the Clergy Islands. Some names have resulted from a single incident or unusual circumstance. Lachine , Québec, dates from 1688 when Cavelier de La Salle failed to reach China.
In New Brunswick , when land grants laid out across a lake in 1784 were considered as impossible to attain as the perfection ascribed to Utopia, the lake was appropriately named Lake Utopia. Kicking Horse Pass in the Rockies was named for an 1858 incident when James Hector was kicked by one of his packhorses. Lindsay , Ontario, may have been named for an assistant surveyor who died after being accidentally shot while doing a street survey there in 1834.
In 1905, the adjoining places of Keewatin, Norman and Rat Portage provided initial letters for Kenora . Arvida, now part of the city of Jonquière , Québec, was bestowed in honour of Arthur Vining Davis, an official of the Aluminum Company of Canada. Noranda , Québec, was derived from "North Canada," the name of the mining company established there in 1922. In Saskatchewan, Robert Kerr, a Canadian Pacific Railway traffic manager, is remembered in Kerrobert. Castlegar , British Columbia, is derived from Castle Gardens, a former immigration centre in New York; the community's railway station reminded the namer of the New York structure.
National and international literary figures have been commemorated in a number of place names, from Shakespeare and Haliburton in Ontario to Carlyle and Lampman in Saskatchewan. In the Yukon, Stephen Leacock and Robert Service have been memorialized in the names of mountains. Gravenhurst , Bracebridge and Nokomis are derived from literary references.
Duplicate and Controversial Names
The problem of duplication of names, for example, Trout River, Wolf Lake and Mud Lake, has frequently bothered map users. Although some efforts have been made to change some of the more common names and to discourage the use of such names in the future, arbitrary substitution by authorities has usually not been successful, especially when local people have been ignored in the process. The best-known example was the change of Castle Mountain to Mount Eisenhower in 1946. During the following 30 years, several efforts were made to reverse this decision. Late in 1979, the federal and Alberta authorities agreed to restore Castle Mountain, and assigned the name Eisenhower Peak to its most prominent summit.
Attempts to change names considered by authorities to be repugnant have usually not been supported locally. In 1826, there was an effort to replace Pugwash (Nova Scotia) with Waterford, but the former, of Mi’kmaq origin, was retained. In Ontario, the residents of Swastika, in the town of Kirkland Lake , have resisted attempts to change their name, given in 1906 in reference to a good luck charm. Residents of Strassburg, Saskatchewan, and Berlin, Ontario, were given little choice in being assigned the new names Strasbourg and Kitchener . In 1986, the Ontario Legislature replaced the name of Stalin Township with Hansen Township, for "man-in-motion" Rick Hansen .
In recent years, Galt, Hespeler and Preston have had the common name Cambridge , Ontario, superimposed, and Fort William and Port Arthur have been amalgamated to form Thunder Bay . The derivation or meanings of some names in Canada are disputed, for example, Gaspé (Québec), The Pas (Manitoba) and Mount Robson (British Columbia), and in many cases the records are not clear.
Spellings and Pronunciations
Almost every place name has a single correct form, but several are commonly misspelled. St Catharines (Ontario) is frequently written St Catherines, Edmundston (New Brunswick) is often written Edmunston and Athabasca River (Alberta) is sometimes spelled Athabaska River. Some names of features crossing provincial or international boundaries have more than one spelling. One often sees Temiskaming, but this is not one of the three official forms of the name; the regional county in Québec is Témiscamingue, the town in Québec is Témiscaming , the district in Ontario is Timiskaming. The Kootenay River in British Columbia becomes Kootenai River in the US.
Hyphens are used in all populated place names of Québec with two or more words of French origin, thus Ste-Marthe-du-Cap-de-la-Madeleine, although names with initial articles do not have hypens, for example, La Décharge, Le Grand-Village. Hyphens are not used in Québec names of non-French origin, for example, Campbell's Bay, Ayer's Cliff.
There are no fixed rules for name pronunciation. Some names like Toronto and Calgary seem to allow for more than one suitable pronunciation. Others often receive pronunciations not used by the people who live there, for example, Newfoundland , Elginburg (Ontario), Gleichen (Alberta) and Maugerville (New Brunswick). Some names receive different pronunciations when they occur in different locations, for example, Dalhousie (New Brunswick, Ontario) and Souris (Prince Edward Island, Manitoba).
names
Suggested Reading
G.P.V. and H.B. Akrigg, 1001 British Columbia Place Names (1973); Commission de toponymie du Québec, Noms et lieux du Québec (1994); R. Coutts, Yukon Places and Names (1980); P. Ham, Place Names of Manitoba (1980); W.B. Hamilton, The Macmillan Book of Canadian Place Names (1983) and Place Names of Atlantic Canada (1996); E.J. and P.M. Holmgran, Over 2000 Place Names of Alberta (1976); A. Karamitsanis, Place Names of Alberta vol I (1991) and vol II (1992), Tracey Harrison, vol III (1994) and Merrily Aubrey, vol IV (1996); N. and H. Mika, Places in Ontario, 3 vols (1977-83); W.L. Putnam, G.W. Boles and R.W. Laurilla, Place Names of the Canadian Alps (1990); Alan Rayburn, Geographical Names of Prince Edward Island (1973) and Geographical Names of New Brunswick (1975), Place Names of Ontario (1997) and Dictionary of Canadian Place Names (1997); E.T. Russell, What's in a Name: The Story Behind Saskatchewan Place Names (1980); E.R. Seary, Place Names of the Avalon Peninsula of the Island of Newfoundland (1971); J.T. Walbran, British Columbia Coast Names, 1592-1906: Their Origin and History (1909, repr 1977).
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Which Irish Rugby Union player scored a hat-trick of tries against France in the 2000 Six Nations Championships? | BBC Sport - Rugby Union - Ireland v France
Ireland v France
RBS Six Nations Championship
Venue: Aviva Stadium Date: Sunday, 13 February 2011 Kick-off: 1500 GMT
Coverage: Watch on BBC One, BBC HD channel, Red Button and BBC Sport website; full commentary on BBC 5 live, updates on local radio; text commentary on BBC Sport website and mobiles
MATCH PREVIEW
Two vastly different starts in the opening weekend of the Six Nations has left much to ponder. Ireland were as sloppy, insipid and lacking punch in their narrow win over Italy as the French were full of invention and verve in a pulsating victory over Scotland.
The Irish media came down hard on their team, but coach Declan Kidney has eschewed panic, and only one change shows his loyalty to an out-of-sorts side. Behind closed doors, however, concern must be growing given that it is a World Cup year. The pressure is now on for a big performance.
Ireland coach Declan Kidney has opted to make just one change to his team to play France
France coach Marc Lievremont must been have nervous ahead of the Scotland game, but his team blew away the cobwebs of their autumn of discontent. They delivered a performance that sent out a message that they have no intention of giving up the Six Nations trophy without a fight.
Sunday's match is expected to be decided in the scrum, with the respective front threes set to play the leading role. Ireland's Cian Healy, Rory Best and Mike Ross were given a tough afternoon by Italy's pitbull-like props. But if they think that was bad, it may prove to be a walk in the park compared with facing the French trio of Thomas Domingo, William Servat and Nicolas Mas.
Kidney has spent the build-up to this match urging his charges to rediscover the courage to have a go at teams after they looked so lifeless against Italy. He fears that if they play like that again and stand off the French they will be picked off at will.
Certainly the Gallic flair served up by France against Scotland was a joy to watch, but that said, it was a far from error-free performance as their 25 missed tackles testify to. If Ireland can get quick ball to their backs and take the game to the French like they did in their Grand Slam winning year of 2009, the first Six Nations game at the Aviva Stadium could be one to saviour.
Kidney expects tough French test
If they don't, calls for a re-jig of Ireland's team will get louder with the World Cup just seven months away. They have stagnated somewhat since the Grand Slam and the last time they put in a performance to get the pulses racing was against Wales in last year's Six Nations.
The popular theory is that the national team's form is mirroring that of Munster's at club level, whose reliance on aging and out-of-form stars has seen them endure a poor season. While Kidney may not need to take an axe to his squad, defeat on Sunday will surely push him into freshening up his XV, while he waits for key players to return from injury.
MATCH FACTS
Head-to-head
• France have won eight of the last nine meetings between the sides including victories at the 2003 and 2007 Rugby World Cups. Ireland's solitary win was at the start of their 2009 Grand Slam season.
• This will be the 87th meeting between the sides. France have won 52, Ireland 29, with five draws.
• Two players from either squad have scored a hat-trick of tries in this fixture. Brian O'Driscoll in 2000 and France's Vincent Clerc in 2007.
Ireland
• Ireland have lost a total of only seven matches in the last five Six Nations Championships since 2006.
• Their starting line-up have scored a total of 87 Test tries, Brian O'Driscoll accounts for 42 of those.
• O'Driscoll needs one try to draw level with Scotland's Ian Smith (24 tries) as the highest try scorer in Five/Six Nations history.
• Ronan O'Gara is the leading points scorer in Six Nations history with 530 points. He stands two points behind England's Jonny Wilkinson in the Five/Six Nations overall records (532 points to 530).
France
• France have only failed to score a try once in their last 37 meetings with Ireland (in 2003).
• France have won the Six Nations Championship five times: 2002, 2004, 2006, 2007 and 2010. They did the Grand Slam in 2002, 2004 and 2010.
• The French have either finished first or third in the last five Six Nations Championships.
TEAM LINE-UPS
Ireland: 15-Luke Fitzgerald, 14-Fergus McFadden, 13-Brian O'Driscoll (captain), 12-Gordon D'Arcy, 11-Keith Earls, 10-Jonathan Sexton, 9-Tomas O'Leary; 1-Cian Healy, 2-Rory Best, 3-Mike Ross, 4-Donncha O'Callaghan, 5-Paul O'Connell, 6-Sean O'Brien, 7-David Wallace, 8-Jamie Heaslip
Replacements: 16-Sean Cronin, 17-Tom Court, 18-Leo Cullen, 19-Denis Leamy, 20-Eoin Reddan, 21-Ronan O'Gara, 22-Paddy Wallace.
France: 15-Clement Poitrenaud 14-Yoann Huget, 13-Aurelien Rougerie, 12-Damien Traille, 11-Maxime Medard, 10-Francois Thrinh-Duc, 9-Morgan Parra, 8-Imanol Harinordoquy, 7-Julien Bonnaire, 6-Thierry Dusautoir (captain), 5-Lionel Nallet, 4-Julien Pierre, 3-Nicolas Mas, 2-William Servat, 1-Thomas Domingo.
Replacements: 16-Guilhem Guirado, 17-Sylvain Marconnet, 18-Jerome Thion, 19-Sebastien Chabal, 20-Dimitri Yachvili, 21-Vincent Clerc, 22-Yannick Jauzion.
MATCH OFFICIALS
Touch judges: Wayne Barnes (ENG) & David Changleng (SCO)
TV: Geoff Warren (ENG)
| Brian O'Driscoll |
Which Canadian Province, with a border on Hudson Bay, has Winnipeg as its capital? | Ireland national rugby union team | Rugby Union | Fandom powered by Wikia
Ireland national rugby union team
Ireland national rugby union team
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Ireland
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The Ireland rugby union team, represents both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland in rugby union , a popular sport throughout Ireland although the dominant one only in limited geographical areas. Ireland compete annually in the Six Nations Championship (which they have won ten times outright and of which they have shared the championship eight times) and in the Rugby World Cup every four years where they have been eliminated at the quarter-final stage in all but one competition. They also form a quarter of the British and Irish Lions .
Historically, Ireland have been the least successful of the rugby union home nations , with the fewest number of Six Nations Championships (10) and Grand Slams (one). Ireland have also been regular winners of the wooden spoon in the Six Nations Championship and its predecessor tournaments. However, Irish rugby union is widely acknowledged [1] to have made the transition to professionalism more successfully than other middle-ranking rugby powers (such as Wales and Scotland) and Ireland have churned out good results, especially for a nation with a population of only six million (when combining the Republic and the North) with strong competition for players with Gaelic Games and soccer . They have won three Triple Crowns in the last four years. Outside centre Brian O'Driscoll , the current captain and Ireland's current all-time leading try scorer, is frequently named as one of the finest rugby players in the world. Other world class players on the side include centre Gordon D'Arcy ; wing Denis Hickie , currently second to O'Driscoll on the Ireland try scoring list; eight, Denis Leamy ; lock, Paul O'Connell ; out half and all-time leading Ireland points scorer Ronan O'Gara ; and back row forward, David Wallace . In the recent past, Keith Wood , O'Driscoll's predecessor as Ireland captain before retiring in 2003, was the inaugural IRB International Player of the Year in 2001 .
After their 2006 Autumn internationals match against Australia , Ireland climbed to third in the world on the International Rugby Board (IRB) World Rankings ; a position they had not seen since the ratings began in 2003. [2] Despite remaining unbeaten in the end of year Tests, they dropped to fifth in the world rankings, before rising to fourth after their opening 2007 Six Nations victory over Wales , but have recently dropped back to fifth after the 2007 Six Nations defeat to France but bounced back in their follow up match against England with a record 43-13 victory. They recently won the 2007 Triple Crown trophy narrowly defeating Scotland 19-18 in Murrayfield, [2] and lost the 2007 Six Nations Championship to France when Elvis Vermeulen of Les Bleus was awarded a try by the Irish television match official at the death against Scotland that gave them the championship on points difference. Ireland performed well below par in the 2007 World Cup. They were knocked out in the pool stages after losing to Argentina.
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Caid is an ancient sport played in Ireland with strong similarities to rugby, it was played within a defined space and between a predetermined number of players. However, rugby does not seem to have evolved out of caid. The Cork born Peter Shorten founded a club at Joe's chipper in 1854, in Cork. By 1867, Trinity second XV were playing matches against St. Columba’s College and Hume High Street, two Leinster schools and, importantly for the game in the north of the country, Royal School, Dungannon. Following the adoption of a set of official rules in 1868, rugby football began to spread quickly throughout Ireland.
File:Ireland-1st-Team-1875.jpg
In 1874, the Irish Football Union (reconstituted as the Irish Rugby Football Union after unification with the North of Ireland Union) was formed. Ireland lost their first test match against England 7-0 at the Oval on the 15th February 1875. Interestingly, both teams fielded 20 players in this match. [1] Ireland's first home game was also against England in the same year held at the Leinster Cricket Club in Rathmines as Lansdowne Road was deemed unsuitable. The first match at Lansdowne Road was held on March 11, 1878 with England beating Ireland by 2 goals and 1 try to nil.
It was not until 1881 that they first won a test, against Scotland at Ormeau in Belfast. Ireland turned up two men short for their game in Cardiff in 1884 and had to borrow two Welsh players. The first victory Ireland had at Lansdowne Road took place on February 5th, 1887. It was also their first win over England, by two goals to nil. On the third of March 1888, Ireland recorded their first win over Wales with a goal, a try and a drop goal to nil.
In 1894 for the first time, Ireland followed the Welsh model of using seven backs instead of six. After victory over England at Blackheath, Ireland won back-to-back matches for the first time when recording their first win over Scotland on 24 February 1894. Ireland went on to beat Wales in Belfast and win the Triple Crown for the first time.
In the 1890s Rugby was primarily a game for the Protestant middle class, the only Catholic in Edmund Forrest’s 1894 team was Tom Crean . Of the eighteen players used in the three games, thirteen were from three Dublin clubs –Wanderers, Dublin University and Bective Rangers – and the remaining five were from Ulster. They went on to win the Home international championship twice more before the old century was out (1896 and 1899), so that by 1900 all four of the Home Unions had tasted success at a game that was growing in popularity with players and spectators.
Twentieth century
File:Ireland-v-Wales-1920.jpg
Such was the level of interest in the visit of the first All Blacks team to Dublin in November 1905 that the IRFU made the match the first all-ticket rugby international in history. Ireland played only seven forwards, copying the then New Zealand method of playing a "rover". The game ended New Zealand 15 Ireland 0.
On March 20 1909, Ireland played France for the first time, beating them 19-8. This was Ireland's biggest victory in international rugby at that time, their highest points tally and a record five tries. November 30, 1912 was the first time the Springboks met Ireland at Lansdowne Road, the 1906 tour game having been played at Ravenhill. Ireland with seven new caps were overwhelmed by a record margin of 38-0, still a record loss to South Africa who scored 10 tries. In 1926, Ireland went into their final Five Nations match unbeaten and with the Grand Slam at stake lost to Wales in Swansea. Ireland again came close to a grand slam in 1927 when their sole loss was a 8-6 defeat by England.
Post war
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Ireland's finest hour arguably came in 1948 when, inspired by tactician and fly-half Jack Kyle , they beat France in Paris, England at Twickenham and a 6-0 win over Scotland at Lansdowne Road. They clinched their only Grand Slam in the Five Nations with a win against Wales at Ravenhill, Belfast. Ireland were champions and Triple Crown winners again in 1949.
The Irish used only 19 players in clinching the 1949 Championship and Triple Crown, only the fourth time that the Triple Crown had been retained by a home nation.
In 1951, Ireland were once more crowned outright Five Nations champions and were unbeaten going into their final game. They failed to win the Grand Slam or Triple Crown following a 3-3 draw with Wales in Cardiff.
The year of 1952 saw only Ireland's second overseas tour, the first for over half a century - as they headed to Argentina for a nine-match trip which included two Test matches. Ireland won six, drew two and lost one of the matches, their Test record being won one, drawn one.
On February 27 1954, Ireland were due to play Scotland at Ravenhill in Belfast . The new Irish captain, Jim McCarthy, told IRFU president Sarsfield Hogan that the eleven Republic-based players would not stand for "God save the Queen" alongside the Scottish team. It was agreed that an abbreviated anthem, known in Ulster as "the Salute", would be played that afternoon and that the Irish team would never play again at Ravenhill. Ireland went on to beat Scotland 6-0 but would not play in Northern Ireland again until 2007. [2]
On January 18, 1958 Ireland beat Australia 9-6 in Dublin, this was the first time a major touring team had been defeated.
Sixties and seventies
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Ireland managed just three victories in the Five Nations Championship; against England in 1961, Wales in 1963 and England again in 1964. There were also draws against England and Wales at Lansdowne Road to the end of 1964.
1965 saw an improvement as Ireland drew with France before beating England and Scotland, only for their Triple Crown hopes disappear against Wales in Cardiff. On April 10, 1965 Ireland recorded their first ever win over South Africa. The match, held at Lansdowne Road, was heading for a draw with the score at six points each, when Tom Kiernan won the match for Ireland with a late penalty. Ireland beat Australia again in Dublin in 1967 and became the first of the home nations to win in the Southern Hemisphere when they beat Australia in Sydney in May 1967.
On the 26th of October 1968, Ireland made it four successive wins over the Wallabies with a 16-3 win at Lansdowne Road.
In 1969, Ireland claimed a 17-9 victory over France at Lansdowne Road in the Five Nations, a first victory over Les Bleus in 11 years. They were again unbeaten going into their final game in Cardiff but Wales denied them a Grand Slam for the third time. In the autumn of 1969, the Irish Rugby Football Union decided to appoint a coach for the national team for the first time, the role went to Ronnie Dawson .
The 1972 Five Nations Championship was not completed when Scotland and then Wales refused to play in Ireland following threatening letters to players, purportedly from the IRA . The championship remained unresolved with Wales and Ireland unbeaten. In 1973, despite similar threats, England fulfilled their fixture and were given a standing ovation that lasted for five minutes. Ireland won 18-9 and at the after-match dinner the England captain, John Pullin famously remarked "We might not be very good but at least we turn up". Ireland came close to a first win over the All Blacks on January 20, 1973 but with the score at 10-10 an Irish conversion attempt was pushed wide by a gust of wind. In the final match of the 1974 season, Ireland won their first six nations championship since 1951. Roly Meates was national coach from 1975 to 1977.
Eighties and nineties
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In 1982 Ireland came close to winning a Grand Slam but were beaten by France in Paris. They beat Scotland, Wales and England to win the championship and their first Triple Crown in 33 years.
Three years after their last Triple Crown win, Ireland, coached by Mick Doyle , came out in 1985 and won the Championship and the Triple Crown again. They beat Scotland and Wales. The French again prevented Ireland from claiming a Grand Slam after a 15-15 draw in Dublin. Ireland played England at Lansdowne Road and won the championship with a last minute drop goal from Michael Kiernan. The match ended 13-10 to Ireland. It would be Ireland's last silverware until 2004.
Ireland were whitewashed in the 1986 Five Nations Championship but on November 1, 1986, Ireland made history when they scored 10 tries against Romania in a 60-0 win. It was the biggest win in international rugby at the time, equaling the French record set in 1967.
At the inaugural World Cup in 1987, two straightforward victories over Tonga and Canada were enough to see Ireland through to the quarter-finals, when they travelled to Sydney to face the joint hosts Australia, only to be beaten 35-15.
In the Five Nations, England and France were dominant throughout the decade, resulting in the others scrapping around for the odd Championship title. Ireland didn't manage to win the trophy once in the whole decade and worse never finished outside the bottom two.
The second Rugby World Cup took place in Britain, Ireland and France in 1991. Ireland found themselves in the same pool as Scotland. After two easy wins over Japan and Zimbabwe, Scotland sneaked a 28-25 win at Murrayfield. Ireland would play the Wallabies at Lansdowne Road in the quarter final. Ireland appeared to be on the verge of a shock victory over Australia, when Michael Lynagh scored the winning try to clinch a 19-18 win for Australia.
At the 1994 Five Nations Championship, Ireland beat Will Carling's all-conquering England at Twickenham.
At the 1995 World Cup in South Africa, Ireland were in a group containing the All Blacks and Wales. In a close game in Johannesburg, Ireland sneaked through 24-23 against Wales to make their third consecutive quarter-final appearance. Unfortunately France proved too strong, with Ireland going down 36-12.
Professional era
File:Croke park 2.jpg
Three years running Ireland finished bottom in the Five Nations Championship (1996, 1997 and 1998). Englishman Brian Ashton was head coach between 1997 and 1998. Ashton had been awarded a six year contract by the IRFU but resigned barely 12 months later after a series of disappointing results. Warren Gatland took over as coach in 1998. 1999 was the first time Ireland had failed to reach the last eight at a Rugby World Cup. From this nadir, however, Irish rugby improved rapidly. With the advent of professionalism, the Irish Rugby Football Union decided to convert the four representative provincial sides into de facto club sides, with the financial capacity to retain top talent in Ireland, yet retaining strong links with amateur clubs and schools to enable young talent to be brought up through the ranks. The close geographical proximity of most of the Irish international squad helped cement relationships between the players in a way that would not have been possible had they left for English, French and Southern Hemisphere clubs. The later formation of the Celtic League (Now Magners League) cemented this strategy by ensuring that provincial sides had a regular diet of competitive rugby.
The 1999 World Cup was staged in Wales though Ireland played all their pool games in Dublin. A defeat to the Wallabies meant Ireland having to go down the play-off route. Playing away from Lansdowne Road for the first time in the competition, Ireland were beaten 28-24 by Argentina in Lens.
The advent of the new Six Nations format coincided with this Irish resurgence, and they became the strongest of the Celtic nations. In 2001 the rugby union season was disrupted due to the foot and mouth crisis in Britain. Ireland were good enough to beat France but were unable to play Scotland until the Autumn and were caught cold losing 32-10. They were still good enough to beat England, spoiling their hopes of a Grand Slam, and finishing second on points difference. Eddie O'Sullivan took over as coach from Warren Gatland in November 2001 following the New Zealander's sacking.
The 2003 Six Nations came down to the wire with Ireland and England playing a Grand Slam decider at Lansdowne Rd. England, however, won 42-6. That defeat ended an unbeaten run that stretched back 10 Tests to their Rugby World Cup qualifiers warm up against Romania in September 2002 and included defeats of Pool A rivals Australia and Argentina at Lansdowne Road. In 2004 they lost their opening game against France but became the first team to beat England following their World Cup win. They finished second in the table behind France and won the Triple Crown .
In 2005 Ireland were considered slight favourites entering the competition, and won their first three matches, including a 19-13 defeat of England in Dublin. However, Ireland's dreams of their first Grand Slam since 1948 were ended with a 26-19 home loss to France . In the final round, Wales defeated Ireland 32-20 at Millennium Stadium in Cardiff to win the Grand Slam. Ireland finished in 3rd place. In 2006, Ireland showed the capacity to play top class rugby, but only inconsistently - a rout of Wales was balanced by uncertain victories against England, Scotland and Italy and a comprehensive defeat by winners France. Ireland finished second and won the Triple Crown for the second time in three years, incidentally the first ever time a trophy had been awarded for the feat.
They then embarked on their annual tour to the southern hemisphere. There they ran New Zealand close twice before a tired Ireland were thumped by the Wallabies in Perth. They returned to their clubs before they gathered once more for the last Autumn Internationals at Lansdowne Road. The South Africans came with an experimental side with an eye on the Rugby World Cup 2007, which was soundly beaten by the Irish 32-15. Next to Lansdowne were Australia also experimenting, the weather ruined what many had tipped to be the battle of the backlines, although Geordan Murphy finished off a world class move in their 21-6 victory. That win propelled Ireland to a best ever height of 3rd in the IRB World Rankings. In the final international match at Lansdowne, Ireland thumped the Pacific Islanders 61-17,with Paddy Wallace putting in a man of the match performance with 26 points. The win completed a hat-trick of victories.
In March 2007 the IRFU created the "High Performance Select Group" of up and coming Irish players who have been earmarked for future Irish teams. This group includes Luke Fitzgerald , Barry Murphy, Tommy Bowe , Kieran Lewis, Ronnie McCormack, Trevor Hogan, Robert Kearney , Daniel Riordan, Stephen Ferris , Roger Wilson , Bryan Young and Jamie Heaslip some of whom have already been capped. The aim of the group is to provide these young players with the support and infrastructure available to the senior squad and to ease their future transition into the Irish team. [3]
With the announcement of the rebuilding of Lansdowne Road , a new venue was required to stage Ireland's home internationals. While Ireland are planning to play one of their warm up matches for the 2007 World Cup at Ravenhill , the only stadium in Ireland capable of holding major rugby internationals was Croke Park , home of the Gaelic Athletic Association . To accommodate this, the GAA temporarily relaxed its rule governing the playing of so-called "foreign games" on its property. Initially, two Six Nations games were played at Croke Park during 2007; the first was a 17-20 loss to France, and the second a 43 to 13 win over England.
Flags and anthems
File:Four Provinces Flag.svg
The Irish rugby union team is one of a few national sporting teams on the island that draws widespread support in both "Irelands" from both nationalist and unionist communities. As Ireland represents players from different sovereign territories, there has been controversy over the flags and anthems. When Irish internationals were played alternately in Belfast and Dublin, the British national anthem " God Save the Queen " was played for matches in Belfast and the national anthem of the Republic of Ireland " Amhrán na bhFiann " was played for matches in Dublin. No anthem was played at away games.
Since April 1995, a specially composed anthem, " Ireland's Call " has been used by the Irish team in away games. [3] This has prompted some players and supporters from the Republic to complain that "Amhrán na bhFiann" should be played. [4] At games played in Dublin "Ireland's Call" is always used alongside "Amhrán na bhFiann". [5] This use of "Amhrán na bhFiann" has caused similar complaints from players and supporters from Northern Ireland. With Ireland's friendly game against Italy in the run up to the Rugby World Cup scheduled to be held in Belfast, there were calls for "God Save the Queen" to be used alongside Ireland's Call but this was turned down by the IRFU [6] with the explanation given that it was not a 'home' match because the team would be playing "outside Ireland" [7] .
Similarly, the Irish tricolour , the official flag of the Republic of Ireland is flown only when playing in the Republic and even then not as being representative of the team. A flag with symbols representing the four provinces of Ireland, is flown alongside the Irish tricolour in Dublin, and is used exclusively when playing elsewhere. At some matches, the standard of the island's rugby union governing body, the Irish Rugby Football Union , is displayed on the field during pre-match ceremonies. Many supporters in the crowd at Ireland matches wave the tricolour of the Republic of Ireland, though part of Ireland is not in the Republic of Ireland. Many supporters in the crowd at Ulster games (one of the four professional Irish teams) wave Northern Ireland flags though part of Ulster is in the Republic of Ireland.
Home grounds
File:Leinster2006.jpg
The traditional home of Irish rugby is the Lansdowne Road stadium in Dublin , where most of Ireland's home matches are held. The stadium, owned by the Irish Rugby Football Union, was built in 1872 and is the oldest international rugby venue that is still used for the sport. In 1878 the ground hosted its first rugby Test, with Ireland playing host to the English (the first representative rugby match had taken place prior to the Test, a game between Ulster and Leinster). Lansdowne Road had a capacity of just over 49,000 before it was demolished in Summer 2007. The ground will be renovated up to a 50,000 all-seater by around 2009. The final Irish Test prior to work commencing on the stadium was against the Pacific Islanders in late 2006. With Lansdowne Road unavailable for use, Ireland was without a suitbale home ground for the subsequent Six Nations. The Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) owned Croke Park (an 82,500 capacity stadium) was made available for Ireland's two home games against France and England in 2007. It was the first time ever that rugby was played at the venue.
Although Ireland has never totally hosted the Rugby World Cup , select games from both the 1991 and 1999 World Cups were played throughout venues in Ireland. Pool B in 1991 was mainly played in Ireland and Scotland, with two games at Lansdowne Road (involving Ireland) and one (Zimbabwe v Japan) played at Ravenhill, Belfast. A quarter-final and a semi-final were also hosted by Dublin. A similar system was used in 1999, though in addition to Lansdowne and Ravenhill, Thomond Park was also a venue. Lansdowne Road was also the host of a quarter-final in 1999. Ireland were set to host matches at Lansdowne Road for the 2007 Rugby World Cup , but due to scheduling conflicts with the reconstruction of the stadium, they decided not to host any. [8] .
Record
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Ireland have competed at every Rugby World Cup since the tournament was first held in Australia and New Zealand in 1987. The furthest Ireland have progressed at any World Cup has been to the quarter-finals, which they have made four times. After a loss to Wales, Ireland finished second in their pool in 1987 but were then knocked out by Australia in their quarter final in Sydney. In 1991 Ireland again lost only the one match in pool play (to Scotland). They again met the Australians in the quarter-finals, who defeated them by one point. Runner-up in their pool in 1995 to the All Blacks , Ireland were defeated by France in their quarter-final in Durban.
Ireland finished second in their pool in 1999, behind Australia and went into the quarter-final play-offs (a system exclusive to the 1999 tournament). There they lost to Argentina, and thus, not being a quarter-finalists, they were not given automatic entry into 2003. They defeated Russia and Georgia to go through as Europe 1. They finished second to Australia in their pool, and were knocked out by France in the quarter finals.
They started in the so-called " Group of death " with hosts France, Argentina, Namibia and Georgia for the 2007 Rugby World Cup . Their abysmal performance against Namibia (the lowest ranked team in the World cup) in their opening game on September 9th, resulted in a laboured 32-17 win. On the back of 3 poor performances in the World cup warm-ups, O'Sullivan played a virtually full strength team against the minnows of the tournament but they failed to take control of the match, allowing Namibia to score two second-half tries and only secured victory by a penalty try and a dubious refereeing decision, allowing Flannery's knocked on ball to stand as a try. Their progress was then put further into doubt when they only managed to beat Georgia 14-10, not obtaining a bonus point. France's victory over Namibia 87-10 put Ireland's progression from the group in doubt, and this was compounded when the French defeated Ireland 25-3. Entering their last group match against Argentina, needing four tries to secure a bonus point without allowing Argentina anything, Ireland were defeated clinically by 30 points to 15. This brought their disappointing 2007 World Cup to an end.
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