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Which American city is home to the Basketball side 'The Rockets'? | Rockets hand Jazz worst home loss, 125-80
Rockets hand Jazz worst home loss, 125-80
LYNN DeBRUIN
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From left, Houston Rockets' Chandler Parsons, Jeremy Lin, Patrick Patterson, Carlos Delfino and Greg Smith celebrate a teammate's 3-pointer against the Utah Jazz in the fourth quarter of their NBA basketball game, Monday, Jan. 28, 2013, in Salt Lake City. The Rockets won 125-80. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)
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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — The Houston Rockets had plenty of trouble getting to Salt Lake City as a blizzard left them grounded for a while in western Colorado.
Once they arrived, they made the Jazz pay, rolling to a 125-80 victory on Monday night and handing Utah the most-lopsided home loss in franchise history.
"We could have had Michael Jordan in his prime with us tonight . and it wouldn't have mattered (the way we played)," Jazz center Al Jefferson lamented.
"It was like everything went wrong. They came ready to play. I don't know where our energy was."
The Rockets, after recently suffering through a seven-game slide, are out of that funk. They have now won three straight and four of their last five.
"That's the way we have to play," Houston coach Kevin McHale said. "We have to play with pace. We have to move the ball. The ball can't get sticky. It's got to go from side to side. And guys just got to make plays."
James Harden continued to do most of the damage, scoring 25 points despite sitting the entire fourth quarter with the rest of the Rockets starters.
Harden, selected as an All-Star for the first time recently, has averaged 27.2 points in his last five games.
When he wasn't driving the lane, the Rockets were pouring in 3-pointers.
They hit 16 of 34 on the night to tie their season high for shots made beyond the arc.
But it was their pace that floored the Jazz, outscoring Utah 26-2 on the break.
"That's how we play," Harden said. "If you watch Rockets basketball, you know we get out in transition and we get some stops. We just try to do a good job of that for 48 minutes."
The Rockets held Utah to 39.5 percent shooting, and the Jazz made just 5 of 18 3-pointers.
Carlos Delfino and Marcus Morris each hit four 3-pointers alone for Houston and Omer Asik tied a career high with 19 rebounds.
Every Rockets player scored, including six in double figures, with Morris adding 16 and Delfino 14.
"It was just fun because everyone was getting involved," said Chandler Parsons, who added 12 points. "And it was right from the tip. We wanted to emphasize transition defense and taking care of the ball. We did those two things beautifully tonight and played unselfish. Everyone was just having fun out there and it's a lot more fun to play that way."
Houston led by 21 points in the second, by 35 in the third and kept pouring it on in the fourth.
The Rockets closed the third with three straight 3s — two by Morris and one by Harden — then saw Morris drain another 3 to open the fourth.
By then the fans were already booing and heading for the exits.
"We should have been booing ourselves," said Jefferson, who had 10 points on 5-of-13 shooting.
Randy Foye led Utah with 12 points.
Utah trailed by 50 points before a driving layup by Alec Burks and 3-pointer by rookie Kevin Murphy in the final 20 seconds.
Utah's previous most-lopsided loss at home was by 33 points to Milwaukee on Nov. 18, 1980. It was the fifth worst overall for the franchise.
"I don't think this ruins us," said Gordon Hayward, who did not play because of a sprained shoulder.
Still, the Jazz hardly looked like the team that had won nine of their previous 12.
They had been undefeated at home in January — 6-0 — with their last loss in Salt Lake City coming Dec. 28 against the Los Angeles Clippers in which they blew a 21-point lead.
Unlike the Jazz, the Rockets weren't about to blow this one.
"I think this is something we definitely needed," said guard Jeremy Lin, who took only five shots Monday but made all five to finish with 12 points.
It was a special trip for Lin, who arrived in Salt Lake City early enough Sunday night to slip in for the last screening of the documentary "Linsanity" during the Sundance Film Festival.
The movie premiered about a year after Lin began catapulting to worldwide stardom in New York. He was an afterthought only a month before, cut by the Rockets on Christmas Day and claimed by the Knicks off waivers.
If his rise to fame was crazy, so was Monday's game.
"It's a testament to how the ball moved tonight and how everyone was looking for everybody. When you have a team play like that, play so unselfishly, it's a beautiful thing to watch," Lin said.
NOTES: Eighty-nine-year-old Wataru Misaka, the first player of Asian descent to play in the NBA, was at Monday's game to watch Lin warm up. Misaka, once discriminated against because of his Japanese ancestry, recalled writing Lin a note of encouragement "when he was with Oakland back in the dark days when things didn't look too good for him. He didn't have all these fans at this time but he's made a lot of progress since then and I think he's in a much better place now." Misaka, who lives in nearby Bountiful, is a former point guard who played for the New York Knicks in the 1947-48 season and led the University of Utah to the 1944 NCAA championship. "He broke a lot of barriers and racial stereotypes," Lin told the Houston Chronicle of Misaka. "You have to pay respect to the people who came before you." Lin is the first American-born NBA player of Chinese or Taiwanese descent.
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| Houston |
In World War II, how was the Japanese aircraft, the Mitsubishi A6M known to the Allies? | Discount Houston Rockets Tickets | All Basketball Games, All NBA Season | Houston Rockets Tickets for Sale
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Which Shakespeare play contains the characters | Shakespeare's Plays
Shakespeare's Plays
Before the publication of the First Folio in 1623, nineteen of the thirty-seven plays in Shakespeare's canon had appeared in quarto format. With the exception of Othello (1622), all of the quartos were published prior to the date of Shakespeare's retirement from the theatre in about 1611. It is unlikely that Shakespeare was involved directly with the printing of any of his plays, although it should be noted that two of his poems, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece were almost certainly printed under his direct supervision.
Here you will find the complete text of Shakespeare's plays, based primarily on the First Folio, and a variety of helpful resources, including extensive explanatory notes, character analysis, source information, and articles and book excerpts on a wide range of topics unique to each drama.
Tragedies
The story of Mark Antony, Roman military leader and triumvir, who is madly in love with Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt.
Earliest known text: First Folio (1623).
Coriolanus (1607-1608)
The last of Shakespeare's great political tragedies, chronicling the life of the mighty warrior Caius Marcius Coriolanus.
Earliest known text: First Folio (1623).
Hamlet (1600-1601)
Since its first recorded production, Hamlet has engrossed playgoers, thrilled readers, and challenged actors more so than any other play in the Western canon. No other single work of fiction has produced more commonly used expressions .
Earliest known text: Quarto (1603).
Although there were earlier Elizabethan plays on the subject of Julius Caesar and his turbulent rule, Shakespeare's penetrating study of political life in ancient Rome is the only version to recount the demise of Brutus and the other conspirators.
Earliest known text: First Folio (1623).
The story of King Lear, an aging monarch who decides to divide his kingdom amongst his three daughters, according to which one recites the best declaration of love.
Earliest known text: Quarto (1608).
Macbeth (1605-1606)
Macbeth is one of Shakespeare's most stimulating and popular dramas. Renaissance records of Shakespeare's plays in performance are scarce, but a detailed account of an original production of Macbeth has survived, thanks to Dr. Simon Forman .
Earliest known text: First Folio (1623).
Othello (1604-1605)
Othello, a valiant Moorish general in the service of Venice, falls prey to the devious schemes of his false friend, Iago.
Earliest known text: Quarto (1622).
Celebrated for the radiance of its lyric poetry, Romeo and Juliet was tremendously popular from its first performance. The sweet whispers shared by young Tudor lovers throughout the realm were often referred to as "naught but pure Romeo and Juliet."
Earliest known text: Quarto (1597).
Written late in Shakespeare's career, Timon of Athens is criticized as an underdeveloped tragedy, likely co-written by George Wilkins or Cyril Tourneur. Read the play and see if you agree.
Earliest known text: First Folio (1623).
Titus Andronicus (1593-1594)
A sordid tale of revenge and political turmoil, overflowing with bloodshed and unthinkable brutality. The play was not printed with Shakespeare credited as author during his lifetime, and critics are divided between whether it is the product of another dramatist or simply Shakespeare's first attempt at the genre.
Earliest known text: Quarto (1594).
Histories
One of Shakespeare's most popular plays, featuring the opportunistic miscreant, Sir John Falstaff.
Earliest known text: Quarto (1598).
This is the third play in the second tetralogy of history plays, along with Richard II, Henry IV, Part 1, and Henry V.
Earliest known text: Quarto (1600).
Henry V is the last in the second tetralogy sequence. King Henry is considered Shakespeare's ideal monarch.
Earliest known text: Quarto (1600).
The first in Shakespeare's trilogy about the War of the Roses between the houses of Lancaster and York.
Earliest known text: First Folio (1623).
Part two of Shakespeare's chronicle play. Based on Hall's work, the play contains some historical inaccuracies.
Earliest known text: Quarto (1594).
Part three begins in medias res, with the duke of Suffolk dead and the duke of York being named Henry VI's heir.
Earliest known text: Quarto (1595).
Many believe Henry VIII to be Shakespeare's last play, but others firmly believe that he had little, if anything, to do with its creation.
Earliest known text: First Folio (1623).
In the shadow of Shakespeare�s second tetralogy of history plays lies the neglected masterpiece, King John. Although seldom read or performed today, King John was once one of Shakespeare's most popular histories, praised for its poetic brilliance.
Earliest known text: First Folio (1623).
More so than Shakespeare's earlier history plays, Richard II is notable for its well-rounded characters.
Earliest known text: Quarto (1597).
The devious machinations of the deformed villain, Richard, duke of Gloucester, made this play an Elizabethan favorite.
Earliest known text: Quarto (1597).
Comedies
All's Well That Ends Well (1602-1603)
In 1767, a scholar named Richard Farmer concluded that this play is really the revision of Shakespeare's missing Love's Labour's Won, which was likely written around 1592. It is considered a problem play, due primarily to the character Helena and her ambiguous nature. Is she a virtuous lady or a crafty temptress?
Earliest known text: First Folio (1623).
As You Like It is considered by many to be one of Shakespeare's greatest comedies, and the heroine, Rosalind, is praised as one of his most inspiring characters.
Earliest known text: First Folio (1623).
This is Shakespeare's shortest play, which he based on Menaechmi by Plautus.
Earliest known text: First Folio (1623).
Cymbeline (1609-1610)
This play, modeled after Boccaccio's Decameron, is often classified as a romance. It features the beautiful Imogen, considered by many to be Shakespeare's most admirable female character.
Earliest known text: First Folio (1623).
Love's Labour's Lost is a play of witty banter and little plot, written during the early part of Shakespeare's literary career, when his focus was on fancy conceits and the playful nature of love.
Earliest known text: Quarto (1598).
Considered a "dark" comedy, Measure for Measure was inspired by Cinthio's Epitia and Whetstone's Promos and Cassandra.
Earliest known text: First Folio (1623).
The character of Shylock has raised a debate over whether the play should be condemned as anti-Semitic, and this controversy has overshadowed many other aspects of the play.
Earliest known text: Quarto (1600).
The Merry Wives is unique amongst Shakespeare's plays because it is set in Shakespeare's England. It features the Bard's beloved character, Falstaff.
Earliest known text: Quarto (1602).
A magical exploration of the mysteries of love, and one of Shakespeare's best-known comedies.
Earliest known text: Quarto (1600).
The story of two very different sets of lovers, Beatrice and Benedick and Claudio and Hero. The witty banter between Beatrice and Benedick is the highlight of the play.
Earliest known text: Quarto (1600).
Pericles, Prince of Tyre (1608-1609)
Portions of Pericles are ripe with imagery and symbolism but the first three acts and scenes v and vi (the notorious brothel scenes) of Act IV are considered inadequate and likely the work of two other dramatists. The play was not included in the First Folio of 1623. In Shakespeare's sources, Pericles is named Apollonius.
Earliest known text: Quarto (1609).
The Taming of the Shrew revolves around the troubled relationship between Katharina and her suitor, Petruchio, who is determined to mold Katharina into a suitable wife.
Earliest known text: First Folio (1623).
Hailed as a stunning climax to the career of England�s favorite dramatist, The Tempest is a play praising the glories of reconciliation and forgiveness. Some believe that Prospero�s final speeches signify Shakespeare�s personal adieu from the stage.
Earliest known text: First Folio (1623).
Troilus and Cressida is difficult to categorize because it lacks elements vital to both comedies and tragedies. But, for now, it is classified as a comedy.
Earliest known text: Quarto (1609).
Shakespeare loved to use the device of mistaken identity, and nowhere does he use this convention more skillfully than in Twelfth Night.
Earliest known text: First Folio (1623).
The tale of two friends who travel to Milan and learn about the chaotic world of courting.
Earliest known text: First Folio (1623).
The Winter's Tale is considered a romantic comedy, but tragic elements are woven throughout the play. We have a first-hand account of a production of the play at the Globe in 1611. It is one of Shakespeare's final plays.
Earliest known text: First Folio (1623).
Today's Guess the Play
| Troilus and Cressida |
In which Shakespeare play will you find 'Dull', 'Costard' and 'Moth'? | Shakespeare's Plays
Shakespeare's Plays
Before the publication of the First Folio in 1623, nineteen of the thirty-seven plays in Shakespeare's canon had appeared in quarto format. With the exception of Othello (1622), all of the quartos were published prior to the date of Shakespeare's retirement from the theatre in about 1611. It is unlikely that Shakespeare was involved directly with the printing of any of his plays, although it should be noted that two of his poems, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece were almost certainly printed under his direct supervision.
Here you will find the complete text of Shakespeare's plays, based primarily on the First Folio, and a variety of helpful resources, including extensive explanatory notes, character analysis, source information, and articles and book excerpts on a wide range of topics unique to each drama.
Tragedies
The story of Mark Antony, Roman military leader and triumvir, who is madly in love with Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt.
Earliest known text: First Folio (1623).
Coriolanus (1607-1608)
The last of Shakespeare's great political tragedies, chronicling the life of the mighty warrior Caius Marcius Coriolanus.
Earliest known text: First Folio (1623).
Hamlet (1600-1601)
Since its first recorded production, Hamlet has engrossed playgoers, thrilled readers, and challenged actors more so than any other play in the Western canon. No other single work of fiction has produced more commonly used expressions .
Earliest known text: Quarto (1603).
Although there were earlier Elizabethan plays on the subject of Julius Caesar and his turbulent rule, Shakespeare's penetrating study of political life in ancient Rome is the only version to recount the demise of Brutus and the other conspirators.
Earliest known text: First Folio (1623).
The story of King Lear, an aging monarch who decides to divide his kingdom amongst his three daughters, according to which one recites the best declaration of love.
Earliest known text: Quarto (1608).
Macbeth (1605-1606)
Macbeth is one of Shakespeare's most stimulating and popular dramas. Renaissance records of Shakespeare's plays in performance are scarce, but a detailed account of an original production of Macbeth has survived, thanks to Dr. Simon Forman .
Earliest known text: First Folio (1623).
Othello (1604-1605)
Othello, a valiant Moorish general in the service of Venice, falls prey to the devious schemes of his false friend, Iago.
Earliest known text: Quarto (1622).
Celebrated for the radiance of its lyric poetry, Romeo and Juliet was tremendously popular from its first performance. The sweet whispers shared by young Tudor lovers throughout the realm were often referred to as "naught but pure Romeo and Juliet."
Earliest known text: Quarto (1597).
Written late in Shakespeare's career, Timon of Athens is criticized as an underdeveloped tragedy, likely co-written by George Wilkins or Cyril Tourneur. Read the play and see if you agree.
Earliest known text: First Folio (1623).
Titus Andronicus (1593-1594)
A sordid tale of revenge and political turmoil, overflowing with bloodshed and unthinkable brutality. The play was not printed with Shakespeare credited as author during his lifetime, and critics are divided between whether it is the product of another dramatist or simply Shakespeare's first attempt at the genre.
Earliest known text: Quarto (1594).
Histories
One of Shakespeare's most popular plays, featuring the opportunistic miscreant, Sir John Falstaff.
Earliest known text: Quarto (1598).
This is the third play in the second tetralogy of history plays, along with Richard II, Henry IV, Part 1, and Henry V.
Earliest known text: Quarto (1600).
Henry V is the last in the second tetralogy sequence. King Henry is considered Shakespeare's ideal monarch.
Earliest known text: Quarto (1600).
The first in Shakespeare's trilogy about the War of the Roses between the houses of Lancaster and York.
Earliest known text: First Folio (1623).
Part two of Shakespeare's chronicle play. Based on Hall's work, the play contains some historical inaccuracies.
Earliest known text: Quarto (1594).
Part three begins in medias res, with the duke of Suffolk dead and the duke of York being named Henry VI's heir.
Earliest known text: Quarto (1595).
Many believe Henry VIII to be Shakespeare's last play, but others firmly believe that he had little, if anything, to do with its creation.
Earliest known text: First Folio (1623).
In the shadow of Shakespeare�s second tetralogy of history plays lies the neglected masterpiece, King John. Although seldom read or performed today, King John was once one of Shakespeare's most popular histories, praised for its poetic brilliance.
Earliest known text: First Folio (1623).
More so than Shakespeare's earlier history plays, Richard II is notable for its well-rounded characters.
Earliest known text: Quarto (1597).
The devious machinations of the deformed villain, Richard, duke of Gloucester, made this play an Elizabethan favorite.
Earliest known text: Quarto (1597).
Comedies
All's Well That Ends Well (1602-1603)
In 1767, a scholar named Richard Farmer concluded that this play is really the revision of Shakespeare's missing Love's Labour's Won, which was likely written around 1592. It is considered a problem play, due primarily to the character Helena and her ambiguous nature. Is she a virtuous lady or a crafty temptress?
Earliest known text: First Folio (1623).
As You Like It is considered by many to be one of Shakespeare's greatest comedies, and the heroine, Rosalind, is praised as one of his most inspiring characters.
Earliest known text: First Folio (1623).
This is Shakespeare's shortest play, which he based on Menaechmi by Plautus.
Earliest known text: First Folio (1623).
Cymbeline (1609-1610)
This play, modeled after Boccaccio's Decameron, is often classified as a romance. It features the beautiful Imogen, considered by many to be Shakespeare's most admirable female character.
Earliest known text: First Folio (1623).
Love's Labour's Lost is a play of witty banter and little plot, written during the early part of Shakespeare's literary career, when his focus was on fancy conceits and the playful nature of love.
Earliest known text: Quarto (1598).
Considered a "dark" comedy, Measure for Measure was inspired by Cinthio's Epitia and Whetstone's Promos and Cassandra.
Earliest known text: First Folio (1623).
The character of Shylock has raised a debate over whether the play should be condemned as anti-Semitic, and this controversy has overshadowed many other aspects of the play.
Earliest known text: Quarto (1600).
The Merry Wives is unique amongst Shakespeare's plays because it is set in Shakespeare's England. It features the Bard's beloved character, Falstaff.
Earliest known text: Quarto (1602).
A magical exploration of the mysteries of love, and one of Shakespeare's best-known comedies.
Earliest known text: Quarto (1600).
The story of two very different sets of lovers, Beatrice and Benedick and Claudio and Hero. The witty banter between Beatrice and Benedick is the highlight of the play.
Earliest known text: Quarto (1600).
Pericles, Prince of Tyre (1608-1609)
Portions of Pericles are ripe with imagery and symbolism but the first three acts and scenes v and vi (the notorious brothel scenes) of Act IV are considered inadequate and likely the work of two other dramatists. The play was not included in the First Folio of 1623. In Shakespeare's sources, Pericles is named Apollonius.
Earliest known text: Quarto (1609).
The Taming of the Shrew revolves around the troubled relationship between Katharina and her suitor, Petruchio, who is determined to mold Katharina into a suitable wife.
Earliest known text: First Folio (1623).
Hailed as a stunning climax to the career of England�s favorite dramatist, The Tempest is a play praising the glories of reconciliation and forgiveness. Some believe that Prospero�s final speeches signify Shakespeare�s personal adieu from the stage.
Earliest known text: First Folio (1623).
Troilus and Cressida is difficult to categorize because it lacks elements vital to both comedies and tragedies. But, for now, it is classified as a comedy.
Earliest known text: Quarto (1609).
Shakespeare loved to use the device of mistaken identity, and nowhere does he use this convention more skillfully than in Twelfth Night.
Earliest known text: First Folio (1623).
The tale of two friends who travel to Milan and learn about the chaotic world of courting.
Earliest known text: First Folio (1623).
The Winter's Tale is considered a romantic comedy, but tragic elements are woven throughout the play. We have a first-hand account of a production of the play at the Globe in 1611. It is one of Shakespeare's final plays.
Earliest known text: First Folio (1623).
Today's Guess the Play
| i don't know |
Which American city is home to the Basketball side 'The Supersonics'? | Seattle SuperSonics play final home game on April 13, 2008. - HistoryLink.org
HistoryLink.org
Seattle SuperSonics play final home game on April 13, 2008.
By Jim Kershner
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On April 13, 2008, the Seattle SuperSonics play their final NBA game in Seattle, thus ending a 41-year run as one of the city's most successful sports franchises. A KeyArena crowd of 15,000 -- huge by the standards of this final, sorry season -- chants "Save Our Sonics!" They also direct an obscene chant toward Clay Bennett, the Sonics owner who plans to move the franchise to Oklahoma City. Former Sonics star Gary Payton is introduced in the stands and is greeted with a long, heartfelt standing ovation. Rookie star Kevin Durant says, "I almost cried, to be honest with you" (Bell). Other icons of the team's glorious past are in evidence, including the banner from the team's 1979 NBA championship -- in 2008 still Seattle's only major men's pro sports championship. The Sonics, inspired by this outpouring of fan emotion, pull off a comeback 99-95 victory over the Dallas Mavericks. In the larger sense, however, there will be no miracle comeback for the Seattle Sonics. They will soon cease to exist.
SuperSonics Sold
The SuperSonics' demise was set in motion a year-and-a-half earlier, when an ownership group led by Clay Bennett purchased the team in October 2006.
Bennett, an Oklahoma City oilman, said at the time that he wanted the team to remain in Seattle. Yet Bennett had already made it clear that -- if the team were to remain viable in Seattle -- a new modern arena had to be built. And he wanted the state or city to foot a large portion of the bill.
But state taxpayers were in no mood to finance another expensive sports arena -- especially not for the Sonics, which had fallen steadily in popularity and attendance over the last three years. In April 2007, Governor Christine Gregoire refused to call a special legislative session to consider funding a new $500 million arena. Bennett immediately announced that this meant the 2007-2008 would likely be the team's last in Seattle.
Basketball boosters in Oklahoma City already began crowing. "Tough love for Seattle," wrote sports columnist Berry Tramel from the Daily Oklahoman. "Blessed hope for Oklahoma City" (Tramel).
SuperSonics Sold Out
It wasn't long before word leaked out from other members of the ownership group that Oklahoma City had always been the destination. "We didn't buy the team to keep it in Seattle," said Aubrey McClendon. "To the great amazement and surprise of everyone in Seattle, some rednecks from Oklahoma, which we've been called, made off with the team" ("Investment group").
Even the most optimistic Sonics boosters soon realized that the owners had little interest in reaching a Seattle solution. "I had some level of self-denial for a while," said Jack Sikma, one of the most beloved players from the 1979 championship team. "But after time it became very apparent that [moving the team] is the end game" (Booth, "Farewell).
Yet the struggle over the Sonics was far from over. In March 2008, the City of Seattle announced a $300 million plan to renovate KeyArena. Several Seattle business barons, including Steve Ballmer of Microsoft, agreed to foot half the bill. The city and state would pay for the rest.
When the Washington state legislature met later that month, an airplane towed a banner above the capitol reading, "Save our Sonics." Yet the legislators adjourned without approving funding for its portion of the plan, saying that those millions could be put to better use on a whole list of other priorities.
So by the time of that last home game on April 13, 2008, the Sonics' fate seemed sealed. Payton, interviewed at that game, called it a "disaster."
Barricading the Highway to Oklahoma
The highway to Oklahoma City still had a few roadblocks. The first was swept away a week later when the NBA's board of governors approved the move by a vote of 28 to 2, with only Dallas and Portland voting against.
The second roadblock was more formidable. The City of Seattle took Bennett to court to force him to honor the last two years of the team's lease with KeyArena. A victory would keep the Sonics in town through 2010 -- although as a lame-duck team.
The June 2008 trial had its moments of drama -- and comedy. Bennett admitted at one point that Seattle fans had become so hostile toward him that he couldn’t attend his own team's games.
Sherman Alexie, Washington's National Book Award winning novelist and a lifelong Sonics fan, was put on the stand to testify about the team's importance to the community. He said that as an American Indian he often felt isolated in an overwhelmingly white city. He said that loneliness vanishes when he sees the melting pot of fans and players at KeyArena. He called the NBA a "celebration of poverty," representing the hopes of poor kids. He said he wanted two more years of "the great gods" (Johnson).
Then Alexie complained that, since Bennett's group took over ownership, there had been no free popcorn or cucumber sandwiches for season ticket holders such as himself, nor did the new club personnel know who he was. Sonics lawyer Brad Keller responded, "I'm sorry the locker guy didn't know who you are. I'm sorry there wasn't any popcorn" (Johnson).
HOOPLESS in Seattle
In the end, the city settled the suit when Bennett agreed to pay $45 million to wriggle out of the last two years of the lease. (Bennett will have to pay another $30 million if the city renovates KeyArena and doesn't have a new NBA franchise by 2013.)
"HOOPLESS," blared the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's front page headline on July 3, 2008.
"Forty-one years," lamented Spokane Spokesman-Review columnist John Blanchette. "Even at $75 million, they went cheap."
Still another lawsuit provided one last desperate hope for Sonics fans. Howard Schultz, the former Sonics owner who sold the team to Bennett, filed suit to rescind the sale. Schultz said Bennett lied to him about wanting to keep the team in Seattle. But in August 2008, Schultz dropped his lawsuit as well.
Thunderless in Oklahoma City
Oklahoma City took possession of the team, renamed the Oklahoma City Thunder, and started the 2008-2009 season with high hopes. Enthusiastic boosters predicted they were bound to go straight up the Western Conference standings. Sonics fans ended up with only this consolation: The team did no such thing.
The Thunder got off to a 3-29 start, a record of futility unmatched by the Sonics in its entire 41-year history.
SuperSonics forward Gary Payton
Courtesy Seattle SuperSonics
Sources: Frank Hughes, "NBA Board Approves New Ownership," Spokesman-Review, October 25, 2006, p. C-4 (originally from the Tacoma News Tribune); Associated Press, "Sonics Owner Predicts Move After 2007-8," Ibid., April 18, 2007, p. B-6; Berry Tramel, "Oklahoma City Would Welcome Sonics," Ibid., July 24, 2007, p. C-5 (originally from the Daily Oklahoman); Associated Press, "Oklahoma City Mogul Speaks Out," Ibid., August 14, 2007, p. C-1; Tim Booth, Associated Press, "Seattle Quartet Steps Up with Goal to Save Sonics," Ibid., March 7, 2008, p. C-1; Richard Roesler, "Lawmakers on Sonics," Ibid., March 20, 2008, p. V-1; Tim Booth, Associated Press, "This Could Be Farewell," Ibid., April 13, 2008, p. C-4; Gregg Bell, Associated Press, "Sonics Win Possible Key Finale," Ibid., April 14, 2008, p. C-1; Associated Press, "Bennett Wins Exit Poll," Ibid., April 19, 2008, p. C-1; Associated Press, "Anger Sets in Over Sonics," Ibid., April 20, 2008, p. C-4; Associated Press, "Schultz Makes Play to Get Sonics Back," Ibid., April 23, 2008, p. C-2; Associated Press, "Oklahoma City Stakes Claim to Sonics," Ibid., May 10, 2008, p. C-2; Associated Press, "Trial Over Sonics Home Begins," Ibid., June 17, 2008, p. C-2; Gregg Bell and Gene Johnson, Associated Press, "Bennett Testifies to Commitment," Ibid., June 18, 2008, p. C-3; Associated Press, "Sonics Owner Admits to Making Mistakes," Ibid., June 19, 2008, p. C-2; Gene Johnson, Associated Press, "Alexie Takes Seattle Side," Ibid., June 20, 2008, p. C-1; John Blanchette, "Rich History, Cheap Price," Ibid., July 3, 2008, p. C-1; Tim Booth, Associated Press, "Seattle's NBA Future Up in the Air," Ibid., July 4, 2008, p. C-3; Associated Press, "Settlement Reached for Sonics' Move," Ibid., August 20, 2008, p. C-2.
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What was the forename of Mr. Royce founder of the famous car company? | Seattle SuperSonics - TrueHoop Blog - ESPN
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Nick Collison, right, is one of two Thunder players who can tell you what it's like to be a Sonic.
LOS ANGELES -- Nick Collison built a career in Seattle.
He built a life in Seattle.
But when Collison looks around his locker room these days, there’s little left of where he, and the franchise he’s only ever known, came from.
“There’s three guys -- me, the equipment manager and strength coach -- from before [GM Sam Presti] got there,” Collison said. “And then Kevin [Durant] had the one year. So yeah. We’ve changed a lot. We’re in a new city, new ownership, new front office. So it does feel like a totally different organization.”
While the photos of a lean and fresh-faced Durant wearing a white Seattle cap on draft day 2007 will forever tie him to the Pacific Northwest, and though Durant has since expressed his appreciation to the “first city that I lived on my own,” only Collison can tell you what a KeyArena playoff crowd sounds like, or what it’s like to see Flip Murray come out of nowhere and drop 20.
Or the sting the city has felt since owner Clay Bennett moved the franchise to Oklahoma City, where its identity and image were reconstructed largely through Presti’s brains and Durant’s athletic brilliance.
Collision is the longest-tenured player currently with the franchise, with four seasons in Seattle and another five in OKC tacked to his player page. He’s also one of the longest-tenured players with one franchise in the league, right up there with the Kobes and Dirks and Duncans; he’s currently signed for two more, having signed a four-year extension that kicked in two seasons ago.
Seattle is also now home; the Iowa Falls, Iowa, native and his family still live there in the summers. In the documentary “ Sonicsgate ,” which details the Sonics’ transition to the Thunder, and all the backlash and backdoor dealings that greased the process, Collison appears in a Seattle Mariners cap.
So like everyone else in King County, Collison is keeping an eye on reported negotiations between the Maloof family, owners of the Sacramento Kings , and a Seattle-based group that intends to purchase the team for a hefty sum and move the franchise up north.
“I watch it,” Collison said Friday night before the machine that is now the Thunder steamrolled the Los Angeles Lakers at Staples Center. He’s certainly not alone. Several Seattle-based NBA players, including Nate Robinson and Spencer Hawes , have recently expressed excitement -- some more tempered than others -- over the potential move.
But Collison knows it’s a complicated situation.
For the mega-rich guys hashing out any deal. For Kings fans, who Collison sympathizes with. For Seattle fans, who he also sympathizes with. And himself.
If a team is shipped to Seattle, and the city is looking to pick up where it left off, as the SuperSonics, will the team’s history, which is owned by Bennett, be returned? And what will happen to the Kings’ records if Seattle gets its back?
“It’s not a perfect situation,” Collison said. “Lucky for me I don’t have to worry about where I rank on the all-time lists in any statistical categories. Any way they do it is gonna be strange. But there’s nothing you can really do about it. It’s just the way it is, I guess.”
In the meantime, he’s waiting, and watching, with the rest of us.
The Thunder, meanwhile, are now 28-8, tied for the top spot in the Western Conference, and eying a second straight trip to the NBA Finals.
“It’s just a unique situation,” Collison said. “It doesn’t happen very often that you pack up the whole organization and move.”
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What name is given to any chemical that fixes a dye to the fibres of a textile by combining with both? | Terms & Definitions
Terms & Definitions
Textile people really do speak their own language. And besides the terms used in spinning, we also need to understand the terms fiber producers use. And then the dyers and weavers definitely have their own language.
If you think of terms that should be added (or definitions changed), please send me a note through Rosemary Brock .
Alpaca
Specialty hair fiber from the alpaca , a member of the South American llama family. It is softer, finer, more lustrous and stronger than sheep's wool, but in relatively short supply. Fibers are prized for their strength, durability and beauty. Please see McColl's Darkroom in Cyberspace for drawings showing a close-up of fiber.
Aniline Dyes
A class of synthetic, organic dyes originally obtained from aniline (coal tars),and were the first synthetic dyes. Today the term is used with reference to any synthetic organic dyes and pigments, in contrast to animal or vegetable coloring materials, and synthetic inorganic pigments. Aniline dyes are classified according to their degree of brightness or their light fastness. Also called "coal tar dyes."
Anthrax
A highly dangerous, infectious disease cased by Bacillus anthracis. In humans, a form of this disease is commonly called "wool sorter's disease". It may be contracted, most likely through skin abrasion from handling fleeces from infected animals. More information about this disease may be found at the HealthScout's site .
Bags
In the United States, the commercial wool growers have their fleeces loaded into large cloth bags for shipping to the wool mills. In Australia and New Zealand, the fleeces are packed into " bales " -- which load better in the ship holds for export abroad.
Balanced
A plied yarn that doesn't twist back on itself. If you hold ~10 inches of yarn by the ends, then slowly move your hands closer together until they are ~2 inches apart, a balanced yarn will drape itself into an elongated U. An over-spun yarn will ply back on itself.
Bales
In countries where the fleece traditionally has been shipped, the fleeces are packed into bales -- which load better in the ship holds for export abroad. Depending on the country, the bales weigh different amounts. Australian and New Zealand bales weigh 150 kg (330 lb), whereas South American bales weight approximately 1,000 lb (454 kg).
Cotton also is shipped in 500-pound bales.
Basic Dyes
A class of dyes, usually synthetic, that act as bases, and which are actually aniline dyes. Their color base is not water soluble but can be made so by converting the base into a salt. The basic dyes, while possessing great tinctorial strength and brightness, are not generally light-fast.
Belly Wool
The wool that grows on the belly of the sheep and occasionally extends up the side in irregular patches. It is usually an uneven, different grade from the body of the fleece. It is shorter and less desirable because of its poor lock formation, and it usually lacks the character of the body of the fleece.
Black Wool
Any wool containing non-white fibers. A fleece having only a few black fibers is rejected by a grader and goes into the black wool bag because there is no way of separating the few black fibers in the manufacturing processes. Black wool is usually run in lots that are to be dyed.
Black-top Wool
Wool containing a large amount of wool grease combined at the tip of the wool staples with dirt, usually from a Merino. This wool is usually fine in quality, of good character, and desirable in type, but the shrinkage is high.
Blocker
A frame for drying wool. A fine picture of one can be found at the CyberFiber site. This is a open frame that rests on two supports with a handle on one side. You wind the damp yarn under even tension across the frame -- not trying to line anything up. Rather like winding a bobbin for weaving. After the yarn dries, you can usually slide the whole skein off of one end. Edward Worst's book "How to Weave Linens" has directions for making a blocker. Sadly, this book is out of print.
Blocking
The process of drying a skein of wool under tension. This can be done by drying a skein on a blocker. More prosaically, it can done by winding around an upended-chair's legs or by hanging a weight in the bottom of a skein. A #2 can of tomatoes is often used as you don't get a sharp crease.
Blood or Blood Grade
This refers to the fineness of the wool, measured as low 1/4, 1/4, 3/8, and 1/2 blood. It reflects the amount of Merino blood in a breed. 'More blood' refers to a larger amount of Merino in a sheep which should produce a finer wool. Please see Wool Grades .
Body
A term applied to wool when the staple has a good " hand " (full and with bounce). It can also refer to the fullness of a fabric. This is a subjective quality and has to do with a lack of limpness and/or stiffness. A fabric is said to have a good body when it has a full, rich, and supple hand.
Bold
I saw one definition that said, "A term applied well-grown wool of good character." Can you have wool with a bad character, i.e., from a bad neighborhood? I suspect that this is another one of those nebulous terms that apply to the wool's " hand ".
Bradford Count or Bradford System
The British standard is based on the Bradford Spinning Count System. This originated in the 19th century and is based on the number of 560-yard worsted skeins that can be produced from one pound of clean wool. The clean wool is then thoroughly oiled which aids in producing a smooth, lustrous yarn for suiting. With this system the larger number will be a finer wool. Please see wool grades .
Break
Weak at a certain point, but strong above and below the weak spot, as opposed to " tender ", which signifies a generally weak fiber. This can be caused by a sudden change in pasture, feed, illness, or lambing. Please see McColl's Darkroom in Cyberspace for drawings showing a close-up of fiber. Please also see: "Testing the Wool".
Breech or Britch Wool
Wool from the thigh and rear region of the sheep. It is the coarsest and poorest wool on the entire fleece. It is usually manure-encrusted and urine-stained fiber. It should be " skirted " and removed from a fleece for a hand spinner.
Britch
This is the short, curly fibers found in the groin and belly area of sheep. It has a very different character from the rest of the fleece and should be skirted out. In a perfect world, spinners would never see this.
Broadcloth
A fine, closely woven, lustrous cotton or cotton/poly blend made in plain weave with a fine rib in the weft. The filling yarn is heavier and has less twist than the warp. The cloth is usually mercerized, and has a soft, firm finish.
Buck Fleece
A fleece from a ram. The wool usually has a heave shrinkage due to excessive wool grease; thus wool of this type is not worth as much in the grease as a similar wool from ewes or wethers. Some buck fleeces have a distinctive odor that many find objectionable.
Bump
A cylinder of coiled, prepared fibers ready for spinning. This is how commercially prepared fibers are delivered. Rather like if you had access to a really big ball winder and used it to wind the top you had just hand combed.
Cabled Yarn
Two or more plied yarns twisted together. One or more part of a cabled yarn can be a single. So if you took two 2-ply and plied them again, you would have a cabled yarn. It is important to remember that you reverse the twist for each step. So if you spun your singles Z, the 2-ply would be spun S, and the cabled yarn would be produced by plying Z. You will need to have extra twist in the singles and the first ply to produce a " balanced yarn ". Please check Mabel Ross' book "Essentials of Yarn Design for Hand spinners" for detailed directions.
A 3-2 cable refers to three 2-ply.
Calendering
The process of passing fabric through a machine consisting of heavy rollers which rotate under pressure to smooth and flatten fabric, to close the intersection between the yarns, or to confer surface glaze. (Often used with cellulose fibrics like linen and cotton.)
Carders
Also known as hand carders (as opposed to " drum carders "). Some of the carders have curved backs, some straight backs. There is some belief that the reason why modern hand cards have the curved backs is because they were modeled after museum pieces. Unfortunately, the museum pieces were warped (curved). Early plans for carders show the straight backs.
Now, having said that, let me add that if you like using curved-back cards, you should do so. I have a pair of Ashford hand cards (with curved backs) that I just love. As much hand carding as I do, this isn't a problem for me.
A more critical requirement is that your cards have offset handles. This will save wear-and-tear on your hands.
Carding
Carding is the process used to open out fleece so that it can be more evenly spun into a " woolen " yarn. The process by which the fibers are opened out into an even film. The etching, La Cardeuse (The Wool Carder) , shows a woman carding with flat-backed carders. And, Celerina's site has an animation showing hand carding .
Carding Cloth
The Woolly Designs site has a close-up of Carding Cloth . The material is used on hand cards, drum carders, and carding boards. The spacing of the tines causes it to be classified as 'fine' or 'coarse'. Many manufacturers refer to their combs as 'cotton cards' or 'wool cards'.
Carpet Wool
Coarse, harsh, strong wool that is more suitable for carpets than for fabrics. Very little of this type is produced in the U.S. Some of the choicer carpet wools are used to make tweeds or other rough sport clothing. Some breeds, like Karakul , are mainly used for rugs.
Charka
Charka (means wheel) was developed in India by Ghandi in early 1920's so the people of India could spin cotton thread and not be dependent on foreign materials. A wonderful description of the 'Khadi' or 'Swadeshi' movement can be found in "A philosophy... handspun" by G. Janani at the Hindu.com site.
The book-size Charka is a mobile, self-contained charka. Charkas are designed for spinning fine fibers such as cotton, silk, angora, and cashmere, etc.
Class-one Wool
Merino sheep produce the best wool which is relatively short, but the fiber is strong, fine, and elastic and has good working properties. Merino fiber has the greatest amount of crimp of all wool fibers and has a maximum number of " scales ": two factors which contribute to its superior warmth and spinning properties. These sheep produce class one wool.
Class-two Wool
Class-two wools are not quite as good as the Merino wool, but this variety is nevertheless a very good quality wool. It is 50-200 mm in length, has a large number of " scales ", and has good working properties. This class of sheep originated in England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales.
Class-three Wool
These fibres are about 100-455 mm long, are coarser, and have fewer " scales " and less crimp than Merino and Class-two wools. As a result, they are smoother, and therefore, they have more lustre. These wools are less elastic and resilient. They are nevertheless of good quality to be used for clothing. This class of sheep originated in the United Kingdom.
Cotton
A cellulose fiber collected from the perennial shrub from the genus Gossypium; predominantly G. hirsutum (upland or long-staple cotton), but also some G. barbadense (Pima or extra-long-staple cotton). A vegetable fiber consisting of unicellular hairs attached to the seed of the cotton plant. Most cotton is colored a light to dark cream, and its chemical composition is almost pure cellulose. Colored cottons in shades of tan, greens, blue, and rust are also less commonly available. A distinct feature of the mature fiber is its spirality or twist. For more information on cotton, you might want to look at: "Queen Cotton" by Susan Druding from the Textile Arts Forum.
Cotton Count
The cotton count expresses the number of hanks required to make a pound of yarn. A hank of cotton is equal to 840 yards. So 1 cc = 840 yards of cotton, the coarsest cotton yarn. A 3 cc yarn would then be one third as course and would be expressed as 3/1 cc show that it is a single strand. Likewise plies are designated by two numbers separated by a slash such as 4/2 cc. This equals 3360 yards (4 x 840) of two-ply yarn. This yields 1680 yards of yarn per pound (3360/2). An 8/4 cc yarns would yield the same number of yards per pound, but would be a 4 plies of finer yarn. So a Number 8 four-ply yarn is the same diameter as a Number 4 two ply yarn.
Cotty Wool
Wool that has matted or felted on the sheep's back. Caused by insufficient wool grease being produced by the sheep, usually due to breeding, injury, or sickness. This type of defective wool is more common in the medium to coarse wools. The fibers cannot be separated without excessive breakage in manufacturing.
Count
The number given to a yarn of any material, usually indicating the number of hanks per pound of that yarn. May also refer to the fineness to which a fleece may be spun. There are at least three definitions. In raw wool, a number used to indicate fineness, see " micron count ". In worsted yarn, the number of 560-yard skeins weighing one pound (Bradford method). In woolen yarn, the number of 256-yard skeins weighing one pound (Yorkshire method).
Crabbing
A term used in the textile industry. Crabbing sets the cloth and yarn twist by rotating the fabric over cylinders through a hot-water bath, or through a series of progressively hotter baths, followed by a cold-water bath. Crabbing is done to stabilize the fabric before dyeing and finishing and is necessary only for worsted fabrics.
Curl Yarn
A type of yarn which presents curls or loops of various sizes all along its surface. It is usually produced as follows: Two threads, a thick and a thin are twisted together, the thin being held tightly and the thick thread slackly twisted around it. This two-fold yarn is then twisted in the reverse direction with another thin thread, this untwisting throwing up the thick thread as a loop, the two fine threads holding the loops firmly.
Cuticle
The outer layer of cells of a fiber which are hard, flattened and do not fit together evenly and whose tips point away from the fiber shaft forming serrated edges. These serrated edges cause the fibers to grip together during processing and manufacturing. See also " scales ".
Direct Dyes
A class of aniline dyes, so called because they have such great affinity for cellulose fibers, i.e., cotton and linen. While both these and acid dyes are sodium salts of dye acids, direct dyes do not require the use of a mordant. Their shades are duller than those of either acid or basic dyes and they tend to have less tinctorial value than the basic dyes; however, they have the very important advantages of being much more lightfast than the basic dyes and possibly more so than acid dyes.
Direction of Twist
(S twist or Z twist) To determine twist, hold yarn in a vertical position and examine the angle of the spiral. The angle of the S twist will correspond to the center portion of the S. The angle of the Z twist will correspond to the center portion of the Z. When spinning, the wheel should rotate counter clockwise for an S twist and rotate clockwise for a Z twist.
Diz
The small tool that is used to help form and even top in wool combing. Traditionally a diz was made out of carved horn. You can also make (or buy) very nice ones out of wood. A cheap, none-classy alternative is to trim a piece of plastic and punch or drill a hole in the middle of it. I've seen this done with the bottom corners of a plastic milk jug or a crescent cut from a section of PVC pipe. As always, if it involves worsted spinning, please see "Hand Woolcombing and Spinning" by Peter Teal.
Dobby
A general term for a fabric woven on a special dobby loom, which allows the weaving of small, geometric figures. A dobby weave can often be distinguished from a plain weave by the patterns are beyond the range of simple looms.
Down Twist
This is one of the two terms that Alden Amos uses when discussing plying. This refers to an " S-Twist ". Alden maintains that people get so hung up trying to remember whether an S-Twist is spun clockwise, that they lose track of process. It really doesn't matter whether your singles are spun S or Z, you just need to ply them in the opposite direction.
Down Wool
Allso called 'Hill Wool'. Wool of medium fineness produced by such breeds as the Southdown and the Shropshire. These sheep are distinguised by their fine and curly wool of short staple, which is especially adapted for making loose, rough, moss-like, felted, carded yars for the production of clothing. These wools are lofty and well suited for woolen . Much of the down wool runs 1/4 to 3/8 blood in quality. This can be a great wool for felting.
Felting Property
The property of wool and some other fibers to interlock with each other to create felt. Felting is caused by the directional friction effect of scales on the fiber surfaces. The factors involved in felting are the fiber structure, the crimp of the fibers, the ease of deformation of the fiber and the fiber's power of recovery from deformation.
Fiber
The fundamental component used in making textile yarns and fabrics. Fibres are fine substances with a high ratio of length to thickness. They can be either natural or synthetic (man-made). Natural fibres are of animal origin (wool, mohair, etc.) or vegetable origin (cotton, linen, etc.) or mineral origin (asbestos). Synthetic fibres are produced from naturally occurring material, mainly wood pulp or cotton lint, and the most commonly used example of this form of fibre is rayon. Manmade fibres are produced directly by the polymerisation of synthetic chemicals at present obtained as by-products of the petro-chemical industry: typical examples are nylong and polyester.
Filament
A fiber of indefinite or extreme length, some of them miles long. Silk is a natural filament, while nylon and polyester are synthetic filaments. Filament fibers are generally made into yarn without the spinning operation required of shorter fibers, such as wool and cotton. Filament yarns are smoother and more lustrous than spun yarns.
Fine Wool
The finest grade of wool -- 64's or finer, according to the numerical count grade OR wool with an 18 to 24 micron count. Also, the wool from any of the Merino breeds of sheep. Fine wools may have as many as 30 crimps per inch.
Leas Ties
Also known as lees ties and lease ties. This is such an interesting term that pops in and out of textiles. I asked a longtime weaver which was correct. She said it wasn't so much correct but where you learned to weave. The fact that a term used in measuring linen yarns is "lea" makes me think leas ties came from that direction. So what are they? They are the short threads tied around hanks of yarn to help keep them from tangling while being washed, dyed, and stored. They are also the short threads tied around a warp to allow you carry it from the warping board/mill to the loom. They serve the same process of keeping the threads in order. They are tied by running a thread at right angles to the warp/hank and interweaving through and coming back at opposite angles. Kind of a series of sideways figure 8's.
Resilience
The power of recovery to original shape and size after removal of the strain which caused the deformation. A fiber may possess this quality to spring back to its original state after being crushed or wrinkled. Resilience is sometimes referred to as memory.
Retayne
A cationic dye fixing agent. Used on cotton fabrics to improve wet fastness of direct dyes and to color paper pulp. Is helpful as an after treatment for reactive dyes where washing facilities are not adequate for complete washout, though tends to lower light fastness qualities.
This is the process in flax production that weakens the fibers in the flax plant. Several retting methods are used:
Dew or Grass Retting. Small bundles of the uprooted flax plants are left outdoors for 3-5 weeks.
Pond Retting. Small bundles are left submerged for 4-8 days. Many books refer to an unpleasant stench as a side effect of this process.
Stream Retting. Small bundles are anchored in a body of moving water. This is the quickest and the cleanest of the processes.
Apparently efforts are underway to perfect a process using enzymes to replicate the dew process. Retting occurs in flax fiber production after 'rippling' and before 'breaking.
Scales
Cuticle cells form a scale-like formation on the surface of the fiber, resembling shingles on a roof. These scales on the surface of the fiber open from base to tip, causing an interlocking or felting action when fibers are randomly mixed during processing. Please see McColl's Darkroom in Cyberspace for drawings showing a close-up of fiber.
Scotch Tension
A single band drives the flyer. The bobbin has an adjustable friction band to slow it. When tension on the yarn is released, the bobbin rotations is stopped by the break band and the flyer winds the yarn onto the bobbin. Because this only involves one simple adjustment, many 'beginner' wheels use Scotch Tension. A well-known example of this would be the Ashford Traditional .
Scouring
The process of washing or cleansing wool of grease, soil, and suint in a water/soap/alkali solution. When scouring is done commercially, a normal fleece goes through at least three washings. During the scouring process, a fleece may loose up to 50% of its original weight.
Setting the Twist
After you have plyed your wool, you need to set the twist. There are several approaches to this. One school of thought says that you wash your yarn and then dry it under tension. This approach is fairly popular with weavers. Another approach says that you wash your yarn and don't dry it under tension. This approach is more popular with knitters. Yet another approach, promoted by Judith MacKenzie, says, really shock your wool and let it do what it's going to do. This is done by washing in alternating hot and cold baths. A more detailed description is written up by Marie-Christine Mahe in "Yarn Abuse" .
Slub Yarns
A yarn which is made with slubs or lumps -- possibly of various materials or colors -- at various distances apart, according to the type of yarn desired. (This is being done on purpose, and consistently, as opposed to when you first start spinning. It's not fair to call your first yarn produced a 'slub yarn'. rb)
Snapping
A method of testing the individual locks of raw wool. This is done by holding the two ends of a lock of wool and pulling your hands quickly apart. There should be a audible snapping sound -- but no damage to the lock.
This is also done, on a very different scale, with a just-washed skein of yarn. For this situation, put your arms through a skein and 'pop' the skein. This will even out most kinks in the skein.
Stock Dyeing
" Dyed-in-the-wool " is another term for stock dyeing because the fiber is still in the form of loose fleece. Most stock-dyed wool is made into woolen yarns. Worsted wool is never dyed until after it is combed and dyeing at this stage is called top dyeing. Both methods produce the highest penetration of dye and the highest quality of colored yarns. Wool dyed this way is also used to make speckled yarns of mixed colors and subtle heathers.
Storage Bobbins
Bobbins used to store the yarn for subsequent plying. Depending on your school of thought, using a storage bobbin allows you more evenly wind on (then when you were spinning). This means that the plying process should also be more even.
Suint
Generally referred to as the perspiration of sheep and is naturally excreted from the glands at the roots of the wool. Suint consists of soapy compunds of potash and fatty acids, together with a little free fatty acid and saline matter. It is soluble in water. This is one part of what is called the grease on an unwashed fleece.
Superfine Wool
Superfine wool-from about 15 to 18 microns-is in a class by itself, comparable to fine cashmere, and is used to make fabrics of the highest quality. Superfine wool comes from strains of Merino sheep that have been developed to produce especially fine fibers. Sharlea .
Swift
A swift has an expanding core that can be adjusted to fit various skeins. This allows spinners to help keep the hank of yarn in some kind of order while unwinding it. I know of two main kinds of swifts: the umbrella and squirrel cage. The Le Clerc site has an image of a umbrella swift.
Wether
A male sheep or goat castrated before sexual maturity. Because it's (the operative phrase) isn't caught up breeding, all of it's nutrition goes into the fiber thus producing a better quality fiber. Fleeces from wethers can't be entered into most wool shows but are worth watching for.
Wet-Spun Flax
The process of spinning line flax where the fibers are smoothed by moistening them as they are spun. Traditionally, spinners licked their fingers and drank a lot of beer. More prosaically, you can get little wooden buckets to hold the water and can hang by a leather thong from the wheel. Or even a bowl of water. You should coat the inside part of the bobbin (where the fibers wind around) with paraffin or some other sealant if you don't want to damage your bobbin.
Woolen Spinning System
In this system, fiber is carded two or three times but not combed and goes directly from cards to the spinning process. Generally wool used for this system are shorter, have more crimp and better felting qualities. With this system it is possible to use wools of different types, lengths and character together in blends.
Worsted
Worsted refers to two different processes which are combined to produce a smooth, clean yarn. Originally it referred to a woolen yarn manufactured in Worstead, Norfolk, England. It now refers to yarn (and fabric) made of long fibers, combed, and tightly twisted in spinning. Fabrics made from worsted yarns are smooth and cool to wear.
Fiber Preparation: Yarns spun from wool where the wool fibers are markedly 'parallelized' as distinct from woolen yarns in which anything but a parallel position is noticeable. In commercial yarns, almost without exception, worsted yarns are combed yarns. One of my reference texts states: "...but it is quite conceivable that wool fibres might be so parallelized by careful drawing and spinning that practically a yarn of worsted characteristics might be produced without combing." ["Analysis of Woven Fabrics" by A.F. Barker & E. Midgley] For me, the important word is 'practically'. Traditionally, worsted yarns were from fibers 3+ inches in length, but this is no longer true as now many shorter wools are also worsted spun.
Spinning: The spinning process where the twist is not allowed into the drafting triangle. They are usually plied yarns, and are finer and more tightly twisted than woolen yarns.
Worsted Count
The worsted count also expresses the number of hanks required to make a pound of yarn. A hank of worsted wool is equal to 560 yards. So 1 wc = 560 yards of cotton, the coarsest worsted yarn. Worsted sizes are expressed the reverse of cotton sizes. A two-ply number 6 worsted yarn would be expressed as 2/6 wc and would yield 1680 yards per pound. You can covert worsted count to cotton count by multiplying the cc by 1.5, or wc = cc x 1.5. See " Bradford Count ".
Worsted Spinning System
A system of yarn production designed for medium or longer wools, and other fibers. The suitable fiber lengths vary from 2.5 to 7 inches. The process includes, opening, blending, cleaning, carding, followed by combing, drawing and spinning. These yarns are compact, smooth and more even and stronger than similar yarns spun using the woolen system.
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Brian Huggett, the father of 'Casualty' actress Sandra Huggett is a former star at which sport? | Terms & Definitions
Terms & Definitions
Textile people really do speak their own language. And besides the terms used in spinning, we also need to understand the terms fiber producers use. And then the dyers and weavers definitely have their own language.
If you think of terms that should be added (or definitions changed), please send me a note through Rosemary Brock .
Alpaca
Specialty hair fiber from the alpaca , a member of the South American llama family. It is softer, finer, more lustrous and stronger than sheep's wool, but in relatively short supply. Fibers are prized for their strength, durability and beauty. Please see McColl's Darkroom in Cyberspace for drawings showing a close-up of fiber.
Aniline Dyes
A class of synthetic, organic dyes originally obtained from aniline (coal tars),and were the first synthetic dyes. Today the term is used with reference to any synthetic organic dyes and pigments, in contrast to animal or vegetable coloring materials, and synthetic inorganic pigments. Aniline dyes are classified according to their degree of brightness or their light fastness. Also called "coal tar dyes."
Anthrax
A highly dangerous, infectious disease cased by Bacillus anthracis. In humans, a form of this disease is commonly called "wool sorter's disease". It may be contracted, most likely through skin abrasion from handling fleeces from infected animals. More information about this disease may be found at the HealthScout's site .
Bags
In the United States, the commercial wool growers have their fleeces loaded into large cloth bags for shipping to the wool mills. In Australia and New Zealand, the fleeces are packed into " bales " -- which load better in the ship holds for export abroad.
Balanced
A plied yarn that doesn't twist back on itself. If you hold ~10 inches of yarn by the ends, then slowly move your hands closer together until they are ~2 inches apart, a balanced yarn will drape itself into an elongated U. An over-spun yarn will ply back on itself.
Bales
In countries where the fleece traditionally has been shipped, the fleeces are packed into bales -- which load better in the ship holds for export abroad. Depending on the country, the bales weigh different amounts. Australian and New Zealand bales weigh 150 kg (330 lb), whereas South American bales weight approximately 1,000 lb (454 kg).
Cotton also is shipped in 500-pound bales.
Basic Dyes
A class of dyes, usually synthetic, that act as bases, and which are actually aniline dyes. Their color base is not water soluble but can be made so by converting the base into a salt. The basic dyes, while possessing great tinctorial strength and brightness, are not generally light-fast.
Belly Wool
The wool that grows on the belly of the sheep and occasionally extends up the side in irregular patches. It is usually an uneven, different grade from the body of the fleece. It is shorter and less desirable because of its poor lock formation, and it usually lacks the character of the body of the fleece.
Black Wool
Any wool containing non-white fibers. A fleece having only a few black fibers is rejected by a grader and goes into the black wool bag because there is no way of separating the few black fibers in the manufacturing processes. Black wool is usually run in lots that are to be dyed.
Black-top Wool
Wool containing a large amount of wool grease combined at the tip of the wool staples with dirt, usually from a Merino. This wool is usually fine in quality, of good character, and desirable in type, but the shrinkage is high.
Blocker
A frame for drying wool. A fine picture of one can be found at the CyberFiber site. This is a open frame that rests on two supports with a handle on one side. You wind the damp yarn under even tension across the frame -- not trying to line anything up. Rather like winding a bobbin for weaving. After the yarn dries, you can usually slide the whole skein off of one end. Edward Worst's book "How to Weave Linens" has directions for making a blocker. Sadly, this book is out of print.
Blocking
The process of drying a skein of wool under tension. This can be done by drying a skein on a blocker. More prosaically, it can done by winding around an upended-chair's legs or by hanging a weight in the bottom of a skein. A #2 can of tomatoes is often used as you don't get a sharp crease.
Blood or Blood Grade
This refers to the fineness of the wool, measured as low 1/4, 1/4, 3/8, and 1/2 blood. It reflects the amount of Merino blood in a breed. 'More blood' refers to a larger amount of Merino in a sheep which should produce a finer wool. Please see Wool Grades .
Body
A term applied to wool when the staple has a good " hand " (full and with bounce). It can also refer to the fullness of a fabric. This is a subjective quality and has to do with a lack of limpness and/or stiffness. A fabric is said to have a good body when it has a full, rich, and supple hand.
Bold
I saw one definition that said, "A term applied well-grown wool of good character." Can you have wool with a bad character, i.e., from a bad neighborhood? I suspect that this is another one of those nebulous terms that apply to the wool's " hand ".
Bradford Count or Bradford System
The British standard is based on the Bradford Spinning Count System. This originated in the 19th century and is based on the number of 560-yard worsted skeins that can be produced from one pound of clean wool. The clean wool is then thoroughly oiled which aids in producing a smooth, lustrous yarn for suiting. With this system the larger number will be a finer wool. Please see wool grades .
Break
Weak at a certain point, but strong above and below the weak spot, as opposed to " tender ", which signifies a generally weak fiber. This can be caused by a sudden change in pasture, feed, illness, or lambing. Please see McColl's Darkroom in Cyberspace for drawings showing a close-up of fiber. Please also see: "Testing the Wool".
Breech or Britch Wool
Wool from the thigh and rear region of the sheep. It is the coarsest and poorest wool on the entire fleece. It is usually manure-encrusted and urine-stained fiber. It should be " skirted " and removed from a fleece for a hand spinner.
Britch
This is the short, curly fibers found in the groin and belly area of sheep. It has a very different character from the rest of the fleece and should be skirted out. In a perfect world, spinners would never see this.
Broadcloth
A fine, closely woven, lustrous cotton or cotton/poly blend made in plain weave with a fine rib in the weft. The filling yarn is heavier and has less twist than the warp. The cloth is usually mercerized, and has a soft, firm finish.
Buck Fleece
A fleece from a ram. The wool usually has a heave shrinkage due to excessive wool grease; thus wool of this type is not worth as much in the grease as a similar wool from ewes or wethers. Some buck fleeces have a distinctive odor that many find objectionable.
Bump
A cylinder of coiled, prepared fibers ready for spinning. This is how commercially prepared fibers are delivered. Rather like if you had access to a really big ball winder and used it to wind the top you had just hand combed.
Cabled Yarn
Two or more plied yarns twisted together. One or more part of a cabled yarn can be a single. So if you took two 2-ply and plied them again, you would have a cabled yarn. It is important to remember that you reverse the twist for each step. So if you spun your singles Z, the 2-ply would be spun S, and the cabled yarn would be produced by plying Z. You will need to have extra twist in the singles and the first ply to produce a " balanced yarn ". Please check Mabel Ross' book "Essentials of Yarn Design for Hand spinners" for detailed directions.
A 3-2 cable refers to three 2-ply.
Calendering
The process of passing fabric through a machine consisting of heavy rollers which rotate under pressure to smooth and flatten fabric, to close the intersection between the yarns, or to confer surface glaze. (Often used with cellulose fibrics like linen and cotton.)
Carders
Also known as hand carders (as opposed to " drum carders "). Some of the carders have curved backs, some straight backs. There is some belief that the reason why modern hand cards have the curved backs is because they were modeled after museum pieces. Unfortunately, the museum pieces were warped (curved). Early plans for carders show the straight backs.
Now, having said that, let me add that if you like using curved-back cards, you should do so. I have a pair of Ashford hand cards (with curved backs) that I just love. As much hand carding as I do, this isn't a problem for me.
A more critical requirement is that your cards have offset handles. This will save wear-and-tear on your hands.
Carding
Carding is the process used to open out fleece so that it can be more evenly spun into a " woolen " yarn. The process by which the fibers are opened out into an even film. The etching, La Cardeuse (The Wool Carder) , shows a woman carding with flat-backed carders. And, Celerina's site has an animation showing hand carding .
Carding Cloth
The Woolly Designs site has a close-up of Carding Cloth . The material is used on hand cards, drum carders, and carding boards. The spacing of the tines causes it to be classified as 'fine' or 'coarse'. Many manufacturers refer to their combs as 'cotton cards' or 'wool cards'.
Carpet Wool
Coarse, harsh, strong wool that is more suitable for carpets than for fabrics. Very little of this type is produced in the U.S. Some of the choicer carpet wools are used to make tweeds or other rough sport clothing. Some breeds, like Karakul , are mainly used for rugs.
Charka
Charka (means wheel) was developed in India by Ghandi in early 1920's so the people of India could spin cotton thread and not be dependent on foreign materials. A wonderful description of the 'Khadi' or 'Swadeshi' movement can be found in "A philosophy... handspun" by G. Janani at the Hindu.com site.
The book-size Charka is a mobile, self-contained charka. Charkas are designed for spinning fine fibers such as cotton, silk, angora, and cashmere, etc.
Class-one Wool
Merino sheep produce the best wool which is relatively short, but the fiber is strong, fine, and elastic and has good working properties. Merino fiber has the greatest amount of crimp of all wool fibers and has a maximum number of " scales ": two factors which contribute to its superior warmth and spinning properties. These sheep produce class one wool.
Class-two Wool
Class-two wools are not quite as good as the Merino wool, but this variety is nevertheless a very good quality wool. It is 50-200 mm in length, has a large number of " scales ", and has good working properties. This class of sheep originated in England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales.
Class-three Wool
These fibres are about 100-455 mm long, are coarser, and have fewer " scales " and less crimp than Merino and Class-two wools. As a result, they are smoother, and therefore, they have more lustre. These wools are less elastic and resilient. They are nevertheless of good quality to be used for clothing. This class of sheep originated in the United Kingdom.
Cotton
A cellulose fiber collected from the perennial shrub from the genus Gossypium; predominantly G. hirsutum (upland or long-staple cotton), but also some G. barbadense (Pima or extra-long-staple cotton). A vegetable fiber consisting of unicellular hairs attached to the seed of the cotton plant. Most cotton is colored a light to dark cream, and its chemical composition is almost pure cellulose. Colored cottons in shades of tan, greens, blue, and rust are also less commonly available. A distinct feature of the mature fiber is its spirality or twist. For more information on cotton, you might want to look at: "Queen Cotton" by Susan Druding from the Textile Arts Forum.
Cotton Count
The cotton count expresses the number of hanks required to make a pound of yarn. A hank of cotton is equal to 840 yards. So 1 cc = 840 yards of cotton, the coarsest cotton yarn. A 3 cc yarn would then be one third as course and would be expressed as 3/1 cc show that it is a single strand. Likewise plies are designated by two numbers separated by a slash such as 4/2 cc. This equals 3360 yards (4 x 840) of two-ply yarn. This yields 1680 yards of yarn per pound (3360/2). An 8/4 cc yarns would yield the same number of yards per pound, but would be a 4 plies of finer yarn. So a Number 8 four-ply yarn is the same diameter as a Number 4 two ply yarn.
Cotty Wool
Wool that has matted or felted on the sheep's back. Caused by insufficient wool grease being produced by the sheep, usually due to breeding, injury, or sickness. This type of defective wool is more common in the medium to coarse wools. The fibers cannot be separated without excessive breakage in manufacturing.
Count
The number given to a yarn of any material, usually indicating the number of hanks per pound of that yarn. May also refer to the fineness to which a fleece may be spun. There are at least three definitions. In raw wool, a number used to indicate fineness, see " micron count ". In worsted yarn, the number of 560-yard skeins weighing one pound (Bradford method). In woolen yarn, the number of 256-yard skeins weighing one pound (Yorkshire method).
Crabbing
A term used in the textile industry. Crabbing sets the cloth and yarn twist by rotating the fabric over cylinders through a hot-water bath, or through a series of progressively hotter baths, followed by a cold-water bath. Crabbing is done to stabilize the fabric before dyeing and finishing and is necessary only for worsted fabrics.
Curl Yarn
A type of yarn which presents curls or loops of various sizes all along its surface. It is usually produced as follows: Two threads, a thick and a thin are twisted together, the thin being held tightly and the thick thread slackly twisted around it. This two-fold yarn is then twisted in the reverse direction with another thin thread, this untwisting throwing up the thick thread as a loop, the two fine threads holding the loops firmly.
Cuticle
The outer layer of cells of a fiber which are hard, flattened and do not fit together evenly and whose tips point away from the fiber shaft forming serrated edges. These serrated edges cause the fibers to grip together during processing and manufacturing. See also " scales ".
Direct Dyes
A class of aniline dyes, so called because they have such great affinity for cellulose fibers, i.e., cotton and linen. While both these and acid dyes are sodium salts of dye acids, direct dyes do not require the use of a mordant. Their shades are duller than those of either acid or basic dyes and they tend to have less tinctorial value than the basic dyes; however, they have the very important advantages of being much more lightfast than the basic dyes and possibly more so than acid dyes.
Direction of Twist
(S twist or Z twist) To determine twist, hold yarn in a vertical position and examine the angle of the spiral. The angle of the S twist will correspond to the center portion of the S. The angle of the Z twist will correspond to the center portion of the Z. When spinning, the wheel should rotate counter clockwise for an S twist and rotate clockwise for a Z twist.
Diz
The small tool that is used to help form and even top in wool combing. Traditionally a diz was made out of carved horn. You can also make (or buy) very nice ones out of wood. A cheap, none-classy alternative is to trim a piece of plastic and punch or drill a hole in the middle of it. I've seen this done with the bottom corners of a plastic milk jug or a crescent cut from a section of PVC pipe. As always, if it involves worsted spinning, please see "Hand Woolcombing and Spinning" by Peter Teal.
Dobby
A general term for a fabric woven on a special dobby loom, which allows the weaving of small, geometric figures. A dobby weave can often be distinguished from a plain weave by the patterns are beyond the range of simple looms.
Down Twist
This is one of the two terms that Alden Amos uses when discussing plying. This refers to an " S-Twist ". Alden maintains that people get so hung up trying to remember whether an S-Twist is spun clockwise, that they lose track of process. It really doesn't matter whether your singles are spun S or Z, you just need to ply them in the opposite direction.
Down Wool
Allso called 'Hill Wool'. Wool of medium fineness produced by such breeds as the Southdown and the Shropshire. These sheep are distinguised by their fine and curly wool of short staple, which is especially adapted for making loose, rough, moss-like, felted, carded yars for the production of clothing. These wools are lofty and well suited for woolen . Much of the down wool runs 1/4 to 3/8 blood in quality. This can be a great wool for felting.
Felting Property
The property of wool and some other fibers to interlock with each other to create felt. Felting is caused by the directional friction effect of scales on the fiber surfaces. The factors involved in felting are the fiber structure, the crimp of the fibers, the ease of deformation of the fiber and the fiber's power of recovery from deformation.
Fiber
The fundamental component used in making textile yarns and fabrics. Fibres are fine substances with a high ratio of length to thickness. They can be either natural or synthetic (man-made). Natural fibres are of animal origin (wool, mohair, etc.) or vegetable origin (cotton, linen, etc.) or mineral origin (asbestos). Synthetic fibres are produced from naturally occurring material, mainly wood pulp or cotton lint, and the most commonly used example of this form of fibre is rayon. Manmade fibres are produced directly by the polymerisation of synthetic chemicals at present obtained as by-products of the petro-chemical industry: typical examples are nylong and polyester.
Filament
A fiber of indefinite or extreme length, some of them miles long. Silk is a natural filament, while nylon and polyester are synthetic filaments. Filament fibers are generally made into yarn without the spinning operation required of shorter fibers, such as wool and cotton. Filament yarns are smoother and more lustrous than spun yarns.
Fine Wool
The finest grade of wool -- 64's or finer, according to the numerical count grade OR wool with an 18 to 24 micron count. Also, the wool from any of the Merino breeds of sheep. Fine wools may have as many as 30 crimps per inch.
Leas Ties
Also known as lees ties and lease ties. This is such an interesting term that pops in and out of textiles. I asked a longtime weaver which was correct. She said it wasn't so much correct but where you learned to weave. The fact that a term used in measuring linen yarns is "lea" makes me think leas ties came from that direction. So what are they? They are the short threads tied around hanks of yarn to help keep them from tangling while being washed, dyed, and stored. They are also the short threads tied around a warp to allow you carry it from the warping board/mill to the loom. They serve the same process of keeping the threads in order. They are tied by running a thread at right angles to the warp/hank and interweaving through and coming back at opposite angles. Kind of a series of sideways figure 8's.
Resilience
The power of recovery to original shape and size after removal of the strain which caused the deformation. A fiber may possess this quality to spring back to its original state after being crushed or wrinkled. Resilience is sometimes referred to as memory.
Retayne
A cationic dye fixing agent. Used on cotton fabrics to improve wet fastness of direct dyes and to color paper pulp. Is helpful as an after treatment for reactive dyes where washing facilities are not adequate for complete washout, though tends to lower light fastness qualities.
This is the process in flax production that weakens the fibers in the flax plant. Several retting methods are used:
Dew or Grass Retting. Small bundles of the uprooted flax plants are left outdoors for 3-5 weeks.
Pond Retting. Small bundles are left submerged for 4-8 days. Many books refer to an unpleasant stench as a side effect of this process.
Stream Retting. Small bundles are anchored in a body of moving water. This is the quickest and the cleanest of the processes.
Apparently efforts are underway to perfect a process using enzymes to replicate the dew process. Retting occurs in flax fiber production after 'rippling' and before 'breaking.
Scales
Cuticle cells form a scale-like formation on the surface of the fiber, resembling shingles on a roof. These scales on the surface of the fiber open from base to tip, causing an interlocking or felting action when fibers are randomly mixed during processing. Please see McColl's Darkroom in Cyberspace for drawings showing a close-up of fiber.
Scotch Tension
A single band drives the flyer. The bobbin has an adjustable friction band to slow it. When tension on the yarn is released, the bobbin rotations is stopped by the break band and the flyer winds the yarn onto the bobbin. Because this only involves one simple adjustment, many 'beginner' wheels use Scotch Tension. A well-known example of this would be the Ashford Traditional .
Scouring
The process of washing or cleansing wool of grease, soil, and suint in a water/soap/alkali solution. When scouring is done commercially, a normal fleece goes through at least three washings. During the scouring process, a fleece may loose up to 50% of its original weight.
Setting the Twist
After you have plyed your wool, you need to set the twist. There are several approaches to this. One school of thought says that you wash your yarn and then dry it under tension. This approach is fairly popular with weavers. Another approach says that you wash your yarn and don't dry it under tension. This approach is more popular with knitters. Yet another approach, promoted by Judith MacKenzie, says, really shock your wool and let it do what it's going to do. This is done by washing in alternating hot and cold baths. A more detailed description is written up by Marie-Christine Mahe in "Yarn Abuse" .
Slub Yarns
A yarn which is made with slubs or lumps -- possibly of various materials or colors -- at various distances apart, according to the type of yarn desired. (This is being done on purpose, and consistently, as opposed to when you first start spinning. It's not fair to call your first yarn produced a 'slub yarn'. rb)
Snapping
A method of testing the individual locks of raw wool. This is done by holding the two ends of a lock of wool and pulling your hands quickly apart. There should be a audible snapping sound -- but no damage to the lock.
This is also done, on a very different scale, with a just-washed skein of yarn. For this situation, put your arms through a skein and 'pop' the skein. This will even out most kinks in the skein.
Stock Dyeing
" Dyed-in-the-wool " is another term for stock dyeing because the fiber is still in the form of loose fleece. Most stock-dyed wool is made into woolen yarns. Worsted wool is never dyed until after it is combed and dyeing at this stage is called top dyeing. Both methods produce the highest penetration of dye and the highest quality of colored yarns. Wool dyed this way is also used to make speckled yarns of mixed colors and subtle heathers.
Storage Bobbins
Bobbins used to store the yarn for subsequent plying. Depending on your school of thought, using a storage bobbin allows you more evenly wind on (then when you were spinning). This means that the plying process should also be more even.
Suint
Generally referred to as the perspiration of sheep and is naturally excreted from the glands at the roots of the wool. Suint consists of soapy compunds of potash and fatty acids, together with a little free fatty acid and saline matter. It is soluble in water. This is one part of what is called the grease on an unwashed fleece.
Superfine Wool
Superfine wool-from about 15 to 18 microns-is in a class by itself, comparable to fine cashmere, and is used to make fabrics of the highest quality. Superfine wool comes from strains of Merino sheep that have been developed to produce especially fine fibers. Sharlea .
Swift
A swift has an expanding core that can be adjusted to fit various skeins. This allows spinners to help keep the hank of yarn in some kind of order while unwinding it. I know of two main kinds of swifts: the umbrella and squirrel cage. The Le Clerc site has an image of a umbrella swift.
Wether
A male sheep or goat castrated before sexual maturity. Because it's (the operative phrase) isn't caught up breeding, all of it's nutrition goes into the fiber thus producing a better quality fiber. Fleeces from wethers can't be entered into most wool shows but are worth watching for.
Wet-Spun Flax
The process of spinning line flax where the fibers are smoothed by moistening them as they are spun. Traditionally, spinners licked their fingers and drank a lot of beer. More prosaically, you can get little wooden buckets to hold the water and can hang by a leather thong from the wheel. Or even a bowl of water. You should coat the inside part of the bobbin (where the fibers wind around) with paraffin or some other sealant if you don't want to damage your bobbin.
Woolen Spinning System
In this system, fiber is carded two or three times but not combed and goes directly from cards to the spinning process. Generally wool used for this system are shorter, have more crimp and better felting qualities. With this system it is possible to use wools of different types, lengths and character together in blends.
Worsted
Worsted refers to two different processes which are combined to produce a smooth, clean yarn. Originally it referred to a woolen yarn manufactured in Worstead, Norfolk, England. It now refers to yarn (and fabric) made of long fibers, combed, and tightly twisted in spinning. Fabrics made from worsted yarns are smooth and cool to wear.
Fiber Preparation: Yarns spun from wool where the wool fibers are markedly 'parallelized' as distinct from woolen yarns in which anything but a parallel position is noticeable. In commercial yarns, almost without exception, worsted yarns are combed yarns. One of my reference texts states: "...but it is quite conceivable that wool fibres might be so parallelized by careful drawing and spinning that practically a yarn of worsted characteristics might be produced without combing." ["Analysis of Woven Fabrics" by A.F. Barker & E. Midgley] For me, the important word is 'practically'. Traditionally, worsted yarns were from fibers 3+ inches in length, but this is no longer true as now many shorter wools are also worsted spun.
Spinning: The spinning process where the twist is not allowed into the drafting triangle. They are usually plied yarns, and are finer and more tightly twisted than woolen yarns.
Worsted Count
The worsted count also expresses the number of hanks required to make a pound of yarn. A hank of worsted wool is equal to 560 yards. So 1 wc = 560 yards of cotton, the coarsest worsted yarn. Worsted sizes are expressed the reverse of cotton sizes. A two-ply number 6 worsted yarn would be expressed as 2/6 wc and would yield 1680 yards per pound. You can covert worsted count to cotton count by multiplying the cc by 1.5, or wc = cc x 1.5. See " Bradford Count ".
Worsted Spinning System
A system of yarn production designed for medium or longer wools, and other fibers. The suitable fiber lengths vary from 2.5 to 7 inches. The process includes, opening, blending, cleaning, carding, followed by combing, drawing and spinning. These yarns are compact, smooth and more even and stronger than similar yarns spun using the woolen system.
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Robert Menzies was Prime Minister of which country? | Robert Menzies - Australia's PMs - Australia's Prime Ministers
AUSTRALIA'S PRIME MINISTERS
Home > Australia's PMs > Robert Menzies
Robert Menzies
Robert Gordon Menzies was Australia’s longest serving Prime Minister. He held the office twice, from 1939 to 1941 and from 1949 to 1966. Altogether he was Prime Minister for over 18 years – still the record term for an Australian Prime Minister.
Prime Minister Robert Menzies escorts Queen Elizabeth II at the State banquet at Parliament House, Canberra on 16 February 1954, with Pattie Menzies and the Duke of Edinburgh following.
NAA: A1773, RV490
Born into humble circumstances, Menzies obtained a first-class secondary and university education by winning a series of scholarships. He established himself as one of Australia’s leading constitutional lawyers, then entered the Victorian parliament in 1928. He won a seat in the federal parliament in 1934 and served as Attorney-General and Minister for Industry in the United Australia Party government of Joseph Lyons.
Menzies was Prime Minister when World War II began in 1939. In 1941 he lost the confidence of members of Cabinet and his party and was forced to resign. As an Opposition backbencher during the war years, he helped create the Liberal Party and became Leader of the Opposition in 1946. At the 1949 federal election, he defeated Ben Chifley’s Labor Party and once again became Australia’s Prime Minister.
Menzies’ second period as Prime Minister laid the foundations for 22 consecutive years in government for the Liberal–Country Party Coalition.
Menzies was often characterised as an extreme monarchist and ‘British to his bootstraps’ (which he was), but as Prime Minister he upgraded Australia’s strong defence alliance with the United States. During his second period in office the ANZUS and SEATO treaties were signed, Australian troops were sent to support US-led forces in Korea, and Australia made its first commitment of combat forces to Vietnam.
Menzies retired as Prime Minister and from parliament in 1966. Knighted in 1963, he was further honoured in 1965 by being appointed Constable of Dover Castle and Warden of the Cinque Ports.
Robert Gordon Menzies died on 15 May 1978.
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'Eric the Eel' and 'Paula the Trawler' represented which country at the Sydney Olympics? | Australian Governments 1939-1945
During the official wartime period, Australia had five prime ministers - Robert Menzies, Arthur Fadden, John Curtin, Frank Forde and Ben Chifley.
Australian governments in the lead-up to war
In the federal elections held in October 1937, the United Australia Party (UAP) - Country Party Coalition Government was returned to office, winning 43 seats in the House of Representatives (27 UAP and 16 Country Party). The Australian Labor Party (ALP), led by John Curtin, won 29 seats and two seats were won by conservative Independents. In the Senate Labor made gains, winning 16 seats, while the UAP won 3; from July 1938 the Senate had 20 coalition and 16 ALP Senators. Joseph Lyons, as leader of the UAP, the larger party in the coalition, was Prime Minister. The Deputy Leader of the UAP, Robert Menzies, served as Attorney-General and Minister of Industry while Earle Page led the Country Party.
On 20 March 1939 Menzies resigned from the coalition ministry in protest at Cabinet's decision, under pressure from the Country Party, to repeal the pension provisions in the recently passed National Insurance Bill. Menzies was thus a backbencher when less than a month later, on 7 April, Prime Minister Joseph Lyons suddenly died. Lyons had driven from The Lodge in Canberra to Sydney, when he suffered a heart attack, dying in hospital in Sydney on Good Friday.
Deputy Prime Minister Earle Page formed an interim administration until the UAP, lacking a deputy leader due to Menzies' resignation, could elect a new leader. In the party room meeting of 18 April 1939, Menzies was elected leader of the UAP and two days later in Parliament, Page launched a vitriolic attack on Menzies, giving vent to the years of political hostility and personal bitterness between the two men.
Page refused to serve in a government headed by Menzies and withdrew the Country Party from the coalition. The new government which took office on 26 April consisted only of UAP members and relied on Country Party support to remain in office.
26 April 1939 to 28 August 1941
Minority United Australia Party Government
26 April 1939 to 14 March 1940
When war broke out in September 1939, Robert Menzies was Prime Minister of Australia, heading a minority UAP Government. He had been leader for just over four months when, in a radio broadcast at 9.15 pm on Sunday 3 September, he informed the Australian people that ‘in consequence of a persistence by Germany in her invasion of Poland, Great Britain has declared war upon her, and that, as a result, Australia is also at war’.
With the coming of war, Earle Page offered Country Party support to form a composite government but Menzies refused, unwilling to allow Page a role in the Cabinet. The Country Party elected Archie Cameron as leader soon after but it was not until 14 March 1940 that a UAP-Country Party Coalition Government was formed, after the government had lost a by election to Labor following the resignation of Richard Casey to become Australia’s first ambassador to Washington. Cameron acceded to Menzies' right to final say over who would hold Cabinet posts.
United Australia Party-Country Party Coalition Government
14 March 1940 to 28 August 1941
The Menzies Coalition Government was seriously weakened in August 1940 when three senior ministers were amongst those killed when a Royal Australian Air Force plane crashed while approaching Canberra’s airfield. The ministers, James Fairbairn, Henry Gullett and Geoffrey Street, were strong and loyal supporters of Menzies.
The political situation changed dramatically after the federal election held some five weeks later on 21 September. Following the ballot the ALP and the Coalition parties (23 UAP and 13 Country Party) each held 36 seats in the House of Representatives, leaving two Victorian Independents, Alex Wilson and A.W. Coles, holding the balance of power. In the Senate, the UAP and Country Party won 16 Senate seats and Labor won 3; from July 1941 the Senate had 19 government and 17 Labor Senators.
Menzies had hoped for a clear decision but the Coalition Government now relied on the support of the two Independents to remain in office. ALP leader John Curtin, while supporting the war effort, resisted Menzies' offers to form an all party national government. Menzies was forced to make compromises in his ministry, with Earle Page taking on the position of Minister for Commerce. Menzies also reluctantly accepted Curtin's proposal for the establishment of an Advisory War Council on which Government and Opposition would have equal representation, and which the Government could inform and consult on all matters to do with the conduct of the war.
In the wake of the federal election, Archie Cameron lost the Country Party leadership and in October 1940, Arthur Fadden became acting leader, also taking on the role of Treasurer. He was confirmed as leader of the Country Party on 12 March the following year.
Menzies left for London in late January 1941, returning to Australia in May and Fadden was acting Prime Minister over this four month period. On Menzies return, he found the coalition deep in political intrigue. Under pressure from his own party and his coalition partner to resign, he he stood down as Prime Minister and as leader of the UAP on 28 August 1941. WM Hughes replaced Menzies as UAP leader and a joint UAP-Country Party meeting chose Arthur Fadden to lead the Coalition government. Fadden was sworn in as Prime Minister the next day.
29 August to 7 October 1941
United Australia Party-Country Party Coalition Government
29 August to 7 October 1941
The UAP-Country Party Coalition Government continued in office with the minority party now providing the leader. Prime Minister Fadden's Government however lasted only 40 days. On 3 October 1941 it was defeated during the budget debate on a no confidence motion when the two Independents, Wilson and Coles, crossed the floor to vote with Labor. Fadden was unable to retain majority support in the House of Representatives and he advised the Governor-General that ALP leader John Curtin should be commissioned as Prime Minister.
7 October 1941 - 5 July 1945
Minority Australian Labor Party Government
7 October 1941 to 21 August 1943
Curtin was sworn in as prime minister on 7 October but without a majority in either House of Parliament, though the position was eased a little when the non Labor Speaker and Chairman of Committees in the House of Representatives, W M Nairn (UAP) and JH Prowse (Country Party), both agreed to remain in those positions.
However, party political matters returned to the forefront in 1943 when the threat of invasion by Japan was significantly diminished. On June 21 Nairn and Prowse resigned ahead of a no confidence motion against the Curtin Government. Aided by Coles’ vote, the Labor Government survived by the narrow margin of 27 votes to 26.
Australian Labor Party Government
21 August 1943 to 5 July 1945
Labor's position improved dramatically with the Curtin Government's landslide win in the federal election of 21 August giving Labor 49 seats in the House of Representatives to the Coalition’s 23 (14 UAP and 9 Country Party) and two Independents (Coles and Wilson). In the Senate, the ALP won all 19 Senate seats contested; from 1 July 1944 the ALP had 22 Senate seats to 14 for the Coalition, the first time since the conscription split in 1916 that Labor had controlled both Houses of the Commonwealth Parliament.
Curtin's health deteriorated in his last year as prime minister. He suffered a coronary occlusion in November 1944, resumed official duties in late January 1945 and was unwell again from late April. While he lived to see the end of the War in Europe, Curtin died on 5 July 1945, some six weeks before the end of the War in the Pacific. Deputy Leader Francis Forde took over the prime ministership until the ALP Caucus elected Joseph Chifley as leader.
6 July 1945 to 13 July 1945
Australian Labor Party Government
6 July 1945 to 13 July 1945
Frank Forde was Prime Minister for only eight days, from 6 July to 13 July 1945, the shortest term for any Australian prime minister.
| i don't know |
What would a Cockney want to drink, if he ordered a 'Vera' in a pub? | Cockney Rhyming Slang Dictionary |
1st (first class degree)
Geoff Hurst
He managed a Geoff [Geoff Hurst was a soccer player who played for England 49 times - Thanks to L H Webber]
2:2 (lower second class degree)
Desmond Tutu
He’s got his Desmond [Thanks to John Curtis-Rouse]
3rd (third class degree)
I got a Desmond but he only managed a Douglas [Thanks to Tim Herman]
All Dayer (all day drinking session)
Leo Sayer
Let's make it a Leo Sayer. [Thanks to Sean Gillespie]
All Dayer (all day drinking)
Gary Player
Let's make it a Gary Player [Thanks to J. Jeffreys]
Alone
Jack Jones
He went to the pub all Jack. [This doubtless comes from a Music Hall song sung, somewhere between 1900 and 1914, by the Cockney songster Gus Elen entitled " 'E dunno where 'e are". Gus is buried in Streatham Park Cemetery, London. I believe he died about 1944. The song is about a bloke, Jack Jones, who comes into a sum of money and thinks himself too good for his former mates:
"When he's up at Covint Gardin you can see 'im a standin' all alone, / Won't join in a quiet little Tommy Dodd (half-pint of beer), drinking Scotch and Soda on 'is own, / 'E 'as the cheek and impidence to call 'is muvver 'is Ma, / Since Jack Jones came into a little bit o' splosh, well 'e dunno where 'e are." - Thanks to Frank Haigh for the explanation of the source]
Alone
I'm all pat tonight. [Thanks to Alan Little]
Alone
Todd Sloan
Looks like I'm on my Todd tonight. [Thanks to Jeff McCartney. - Frank Baynham reports that Todd Sloan was a famous jockey (I've found a listing for him at the Wikiup ranch in Northern California) who had a tendency to run at the front of the pack... all alone.]
Arm
He was promoted in the daft. [Thanks to Alan Little]
Army
Kate Karney
He's off and joined the Kate. [Kate Carney (1869-1950), a comedienne, was born into a music hall family in London. She made her first stage appearance at the Albert Music Hall, Canning Town, and later became famous for her cockney character songs. These songs established her at the top of the bill and she was described as 'The Cockney Queen'. - Thanks to Cab for the information on Kate]
Arse
April in Paris
I’m ‘aving terrible trouble with me April [How can such a simple word have so many convoluted references? April in Paris - Aris (from Aristotle - bottle which is from bottle and glass - arse.) Whew – Thanks to Peter Chrisp]
Arse
Aristotle
I gave him a good kick up the Aris. (Aristotle=Bottle=Bottle and Glass=Arse; therefore, Aris=Arse) See also bottle.
Arse
I gave him a good kick up the bottle.
Arse
Stick it up your khyber.
Arse
Rolf Harris
She kicked him in the Rolf [Rolf Harris wrote "My Boomerang Won't Come Back". See the reference above to Aristotle. Thanks to Matt Fisher]
Arsehole
He's a bit of an elephant [Thanks to Steve Fuller]
Arsehole
That geezer is a right jam roll. [Thanks to Robert Lynch]
Arsehole
‘e’s a bit of a merry old soul [Thanks to Sanor]
Aunt
He didn't know what to get his Mrs. Chant for Christmas [Thanks to Alan Little]
Back
Me cadbury's playing me up [Thanks to Pete Powis]
Back
Ooh! Me 'ammer and tack's playing me up again. [Thanks to James]
Back
He fell off the roof and broke his hat rack [Thanks to Martin Hillier]
Back
My old Union Jack's giving me gyp something chronic [Thanks to Ray Wells]
Bad
That dinner was a bit sorry.
Balls (testicles)
Me pants are too tight and making me berlins wobbly [Thanks to Stephen Hartwig]
Balls (testicles)
Cobbler's Awls
Go on! Kick him in the cobblers! [Can also be used to express disbelief, such as "Cobblers! That's not the way it is."]
Balls (testicles)
Coffee Stalls
He gave him a kick in the corfies [Thanks to Rick Hardy - the pronunciation is reported to be corfie, not coffee]
Balls (testicles)
I got him in his niagara's [Thanks to Alan Little]
Balls (testicles)
He nearly got hit in the orchestra [Thanks to Alan Little]
Balls (testicles)
I kicked this geezer straight in the Royal Alberts [Thanks to Steve Smith]
Banana
Gertie Gitana
I like a gertie on my cereal [Possibly an old music hall star - Thanks to Christopher Webb. Sue Lawrence adds: "Gertie Gitana was indeed a music hall performer. My mother, now ninety-two, spent her early life in Dalston and used to go and see her at the Hackney Empire.]
Bank
Armitage Shank
I’m off to the armitage [Armitage Shank is the maker of fine porcelain fixtures found in washrooms everywhere - Thanks to Ed Leveque.]
Bank
I won't be long - just going to the cab rank [Thanks to Mike Smith]
Bank
He lost his house to the iron.
Bank
Gotta get a cock & hen from the J Arthur [Thanks to Aaron Marchant]
Bank
He's off to the Sherman [Thanks to Iain Gordon]
Bank
Tommy Tank
I'm going 'round the tommy to pay in a gooses. [See also Wank - thanks to Christopher Webb]
Bar (pub)
Jack Tar
I'm off to the Jack. [See also 'Alone' and Bar (pub). Could be very confusing if you're going alone - "I'm off to the jack jack". Or, if you were telling your brother Jack, "I'm off to the jack jack, Jack"]
Bar (pub)
I saw him at the near.
Barber
I’m off to Dover to get me barnet sorted [Thanks to Mark Vernon]
Barking (mad)
Three stops down from Plaistow
He’s three stops down from Plaistow [from the London Underground District Line – thanks to Matthew Jackson]
Barrow
Cock Sparrow
He's wheeling his cock 'round the market. [Lenny notes that in the north this expression can also refer to a friend, as in "Hello me old cock sparrow"]
Bath
I’m just going for a steffi [Thanks to David Shea]
Bed
I'm off to Uncle Ted.
Beer
Can I buy you a pig?
Beers
'ow about a Brittney?" [Brittney Spears is a popular singer. Thanks to Ben Allen]
Believe
I don't Adam and Eve it! [Usually full slang expression is used]
Belly
I punched him in the Auntie but he didn't even notice.
Belly
Derby Kelly
That's the stuff for you Derby Kell; makes you fit and it makes you well [From old cockney song Boiled Beef and Carrots - pronounced Darby. Thanks to Christopher Webb]
Belly
Look at the new delhi on him! [Thanks to Daniel Williams]
Bender (homosexual)
Leo Fender
That blokes a bit leo after all. [The late Leo Fender was the inventor of the Stratocaster guitar - thanks to Richard English]
Bent (criminal)
'e's stoke he is. [Thanks to Alan Little. See also 'Bent (gay)']
Bent (homosexual)
Behind with the Rent
You're not behind with the rent? [Thanks to Gez who heard this in the film 'Layer Cake'
Bent (homosexual)
Bet you any money e's a duke [Thanks to Tom Hoyle]
Bent (homosexual)
That bloke's a bit stoke [Thanks to Alex Wood. See also 'Bent (criminal)']
Best
I'm Mae West at Cockney Rhyming Slang [Thanks to Kris Grissom]
Beverage
Edna Everage
Would you like an Edna? [Edna Everage (aka Dame Edna) is a star, darling! Thanks to Sue Cope.]
Bill (statement)
I got my Beecham's from the tax people.
Bill (statement)
I'm going home - can I have my Jack? [See also Hill]
Bill (statement)
Jimmy Hill
Have we paid the Jimmy Hill yet? [Thanks to Magnus Spencer. Jimmy Hill is a football pundit and former player]
Bird
Look what that bloody Richard's done to my car!
Bird (woman)
I’m off to see me lemon [Thanks to Jesse Wynne]
Bitter (beer)
I've tried that new apple but I prefer my salmon [Salmon and trout - stout].
Bitter (beer)
Give us a pint of gary [Thanks to Gareth Evans]
Bitter (beer)
'ere. I could use a giggle. [Thanks to Martin McKerrell]
Bitter (beer)
A pint of kitty litter please [Thanks to Mark]
Blind
Are you completely bacon? [Thanks to Damon]
Blonde
I pulled a top magic wand last night [Thanks to Lee Henderson]
Boat
I took my nanny out on the river.
Bog (toilet)
Sorry mate - where's the kermit [Thanks to Ray Wells]
Boil
'e'd be nice looking once his canov's clear up. [Thanks to Marie Gordon]
Boil
Conan Doyle
'e's got a conan on his bottle the size of me fist! [Thanks to Marie Gordon. John Mahony adds that very often the expression used is "Sir Arthur", as in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - He's got a Sir Arfur on his bushel]
Bollocks
Jackson Pollock
This modern art's a load of old Jacksons [Thanks to Justin Ellis. Pollock is a "20th Century strange artist".]
Bones
Ooh, me toms are clicking [Thanks to Hefin Gill]
Book
I've read the new fish by Deighton.
Boots
You can't go out in the rain without your daisies.
Booze
I need some Tom [Thanks to Christopher Loosemore]
Boozer (pub)
Battle Cruiser
I'm going to pop round the battle before I go to the party [Thanks to Peter Cotterell and Robert Manikiam]]
Boss
Never trust a joe [Joe Goss was a talented boxer - Thanks to Sanor]
Boss
My bloody pitch kept me late again.
Bottle
Aristotle
If you want milk, put the Ari on the doorstep. [Every now and again they throw a curve at you. One person has suggested that, not being familiar with Aristotle, early Cockney's might have assumed the name was Harry Stottle! Heard from John Mahony who says that when one uses the expression "lose your bottle" it means to lose the contents of your arse, i.e. "he's shit it", but Ken Caleno says it means to lose your courage (from Courage's bottled beer)]
Bra
Tung Chee Hwa
I'm off to buy a tung for the troubles birthday [Admittedly this isn't in common usage - the person who submitted it is an ex-pat living in Hong Kong - I just think it's neat that we Brits will try to bugger up the language of every country we visit! Tung Chee Hwa is the Chief Executive of Hong Kong.]
Braces
He's got his new airs on.
Brandy
A small drop of fine would suit me.
Bread
Hey, mum. Can I have some Uncle Fred with this?
Bread (money)
Where's he stashed his poppy [Thanks to Emyr Marks]
Breast
‘ave a look at her easts [Thanks to Sanor]
Broke (financial)
I'm skint mate. Bleedin' hearts.
Brother
Manhole Cover
My manhole cover is coming for a visit. [How does manhole cover rhyme with brother you ask? Simple... if you pronounce brother as "bruvver"!]
Brother
'ere's me one and t'other now. [Thanks to Bernie Albert]
Brussel Sprout
Without a brussel mate [Thanks to Chris Ducker]
Brussel Sprout
Give us a brussel when you're up to it.
Bug
The bed was full of steamers [Thanks to Roger]
Bum
He just sat on his kingdom all day [Thanks to Alan Little]
Bunion
Oooh – ‘e’s stepped on me Spanish onion [Thanks to Kristin]
Bunk (bed)
I could use a couple of hours in the pineapple [Thanks to B. Hygate]
Burst (urinate)
Geoff Hurst
I'm dying for a Geoff. [Geoff Hurst's World Cup Final hat-trick v West Germany at Wembley in 1966 and six goals v Sunderland (19.10.68) two years later, have been woven into the fabric of football folklore. Thanks to Stuart Burgess & Gordon Leel]
Bus
So Say All Of Us
hurry - here's the sosay [Thanks to Peter Duggan]
Butter
Would you like some talk on your toast [Thanks to Barry Greenaway]
Cab (taxi)
See if you can flag down a flounder [Thanks to Chris Webb]
Cab (taxi)
'e's been on the sherbet for five years (driving a cab). [Thanks to John Butt]
Cab (taxi)
Let's look for a smash and grab [Thanks to Simon Inger]
Café (pronounced caff)
I'm off to the riff raff [Thanks to Mike Leith]
Cake
Sexton Blake
ow about a nice slice of sexton? [Possible that Sexton Blake was a detective in comic book stories (?) - thanks to Christopher Webb]
Candle
Look at all the Harry's on his cake.
Cans (headphones)
'ere - put your desperates on [Thanks to Chris Hanley]
Car
Bloody jam is down again.
Car
Kareem Abdul Jabbar
Bloody kareem is down again. [Kareem Abdul Jabbar is a basketball player in the U.S. How he got into rhyming slang I'll never know! Thanks to Richard English]
Cardy (cardigan)
Oh my God – look at that awful Linda he’s wearing [Thanks to Richard Grieve]
Cash
That blokes not short of Arthur [Thanks to Andrew Turner]
Cash
Bangers and Mash
I knew his cheques were dodgy, so I got him to pay me in bangers [Thanks to John Basquill - see also Sausage and Mash]
Cash
That blokes not short of Crosby [Thanks to Andrew Turner]
Cash
Harry Nash
There’s a discount if you’re paying Harry Nash [Thanks to Phil Woodford – if anyone knows the origin of this I’d appreciate it]
Cash
Oscar Asche
Haven't got an Oscar [Oscar Asche (1871-1936) was an actor and producer or some renown. Thanks to Ruth Summers]
Cash
Sausage and Mash
I haven't got a sausage. [A little bit different, but fairly common in many English-speaking countries - see also bangers and mash].
Cash
I haven't any slap dash on me [Thanks to Anonymous]
Cell
I've got three more years in this flower.
Chair
Have a lion's while you wait.
Chalk
All I got for my birthday is a bit of duke.
Chancer (someone not qualified)
Bengal Lancer
News paper adds would state no bengal lancers when advertising for tradesmen. [Thanks to Ray Davis]
Change
I haven’t got and rifle for the bus [Thanks to Claire Reed]
Chat
Let’s get together for a bowler [Thanks to Simon Bray-Stacey]
Cheek
He kissed me on my hide and seek [Thanks to Gillian White]
Cheese
I'm meeting the big John Cleese today at work [Thanks to Mitchell]
Cheese
Stand at Ease
Wouldn't mind a bit of ease. [For whatever reason this one is backwards - the only rule is that there are no rules!].
Cheque
He stuck me with a bouncing goose.
Cheque
Gregory Peck
I never 'ad any bread on me, so I 'ad to pay by Gregory. [Thanks to Peter Cotterell] or, [another example from Kevin McKerrell] - I'm going down to the iron to sausage a gregory.
Cheque
I'll send you a Jeff Beck [Thanks to Jimmy Horowitz]
Chest
I had to punch him in the bird's nest. [Thanks to Robert Lynch]
Chest
George Best
(In football) Over 'ere son, on me Georgie [Thanks to S. Sexton. George Best is a famous footballer]
Chest
This cough is killing me pants and vest
Child Molester
Charlie Chester
Have you seen how young ‘is bird is? He’s a right Charlie Chester [Thanks to Tim B]
Child Molester
He's a bit of an Uncle Fester [Thanks to Graham Taylor]
Chin
He's got a big biscuit [Thanks to Keith Cole]
Chink (Chinese)
We're going to get rinky take-away. [Thanks to Sparky James]
Chink (Chinese)
Tiddley Wink
‘e’s not from around these parts. I think e’s a tiddley [Thanks to Stewart Stallworthy]
Chips
I'll have a large plate of jockey's [Thanks to Paul Aylett]
Chum
How yer doing, my old fruit [Thanks to Nick Williams]
Cider
Pint of Easy Rider please [Thanks to Jo Miller]
Cider
Sue Ryder
Give us a pint of Sue, mate [Thanks to Graham Taylor - The Sue Ryder Foundation works for the sick and disabled]
Cider
Can I get two pints of winona please [Thanks to Tony Whelan]
Cigar
La-di-da
I enjoy a good la-di-da after me meal [Thanks to Sparky James. Lenny wrote to say that Michael Caine (a somewhat well known Cockney) once asked if he could light up a lardy in his taxi.]
Clanger (mistake)
Coat Hanger
He dropped a coat [Thanks to Neil Devlin. A clanger is when you really put your foot in it.]
Class
He don't have the bottle [Thanks to Rob O'Connor]
Clink (jail)
Kitchen Sink
After that last episode he'll be in the kitchen for a while [Thanks to Wendy Shaw]
Clock
Dickory Dock
What's the time on the dickory? [Paul Millington writes that cabbies used the expression to refer to the meter [“What’s on the hickory then?)]
Clue
He ain't got a danny. [Thanks to Charly Large]
Clue
'e hasn't got a pot of glue [Thanks to Martin Groves]
Clue
I haven't got a scooby [Thanks to Jonathan Harris]
Clue
He hasn’t got a bloody vinda [Thanks to Carla Forbes Pool]
Coat
Put your nannies on - it's taters out. [Thanks to Martin McKerrell]
Coat
I left my weasel in the pub. [See also throat]
Cockney Rhyming Slang
We're talking about chitty chitty on this web site [Thanks to Hywel Jones]
Coffee
I’ll have an everton [Thanks to Andrew Mkandawire]
Cold
Blimey – it’s taters out there [Thanks to Sparky James]
Cold
Cor, taters out there init? [Thanks to Ossie Mair]
Cook
My missus couldn't babble to save her life. [See also Crook]
Copper (police)
He got nabbed by the grasshoppers.
Coppers (police)
Blimey - I think the bottles are on to me!
Corner
I'll meet you 'round the Johnnie.
Cough
That’s a nasty Boris you’ve got there mate [Thanks to Paul Liney]
Cough
That’s a nasty old boris you’ve got there son [Thanks to Paul Liney]
Cough
Darren Gough
This Darren is killing me pants and vest [Darren Gough is one heck of a cricketer.]
Crabs (pubic lice)
E's got a right case of marbles [Thanks to Chris Webb]
Crap
Macca
I'm off for a macca [Mark Crowe admits this ones a bit convoluted but apparently it's common in some areas so I've included it. Comes from Macaroni = pony; Pony & Trap = Crap]
Crap
Pony and Trap
'Ang on, mate. Just gotta 'ave a pony [Thanks to Peter Cotterell]. Or, another usage if something's a bit off (i.e.. not of good quality) - That's a bit pony mate! [Thanks to Jon Hughes]
Crash
He was in a fearsome sausage.
Crime
Not one lemon reported all night [Thanks to Alan Little]
Cripple
The old boy's a raspberry [Thanks to Sparky James]
Crook
He's always on the babble. [Meaning he's always planning something crooked. See also Cook].
Cuddle
Come and give us a nice mix and muddle [Thanks to Claire Reed]
C**t
C**t
Ethan Hunt
He's a right Ethan [Ethan Hunt is the main characters name in the Mission: Impossible movies. Thanks to Steve Fuller]
C**t
He's after your grumble [Thanks to Chris Webb]
C**t
That ones a right struggle.
Cupboard
There's nothing in the mother.
Curry
Ruby Murray
I'm going for a ruby. [Thanks to Mark Pearson][Ruby Murray was a singer in Glasgow back in the 30's or 40's - thanks to Peter Cotterell for the Ruby Murray info. N. Matthews tells me that Ruby was an Irish singer (1935-1996) popular in the mid to late 1950's. Got a note from Sandy Everitt who knew Ruby Murray – Ruby was a top recording star in the 1950’s who achieved the rare feat of having five songs in the top 20 at one time. Ruby died in 1996]
Curtains
Shut the Richards - I'm trying to get some kip [Thanks to Ray Wells]
Darlin'
You look lovely tonight, me old briney.
Daughter
I'm taking me bricks and mortar shopping. [Thanks to Geoff and Niki Sams]
Daughter
He brought his didn't oughta [Thanks to Chris Webb]
Daughter
That blokes lamb is a real stunner [Thanks to Peter Schlosser]
Dead
I'm telling you, mate. He's brown bread [Thanks to Peter Cotterell]
Dead
Old Jim is hovis [Thanks to Jeremy Williams]
Deaf
Mutt and Jeff
Poor buggers mutt and jeff. [Usually full slang expression is used. Keith Turner reports that very often the expression is shortened to mutton as in "Poor buggers mutton".]
Decks (turntables)
Posh ‘n Becks
Have you got yer posh ‘n becks yet [Thanks to anonymous – see Sex - Posh ‘n Becks]
Dick (penis)
Hampton Wick
He got his hampton out in the pub last night [Thanks to David Agius. John Parker adds: The best use of this was the Goon Show which for a long time had a mythical character called Hugh Hampton where the Hugh was mispronounced as Huge. This running joke was totally missed by the BBC management, who would never have let anything like that on the radio in the 50s/60s. Graham recalls that the characters name was actually Hugh Jampton - same end result.]
Dick (penis)
She couldn't keep her jazz bands off my three card trick [Thanks to Peter Norman]
Dictionary
I’ll just check the meaning in the tom [Thanks to Leon Walker]
Dinner
Is my Jim ready yet?
Dinner
What’s for lilly and skinner [Thanks to Jud Chimp]
Dinner
Michael Winner
I’m Hank Marvin. I could use some top Jackie for me Michael Winner. [Thanks to Simon Rowan. Michael Winner is the food critic for the Sunday Times]
Doddle (easy or straight forward)
Glenn Hoddle
That jobs a Glen Hoddle. [Glenn Hoddle is the coach of the English football team replacing Terry Venables. Thanks to Dave Brown]
Dog
My bloody cherry is off again.
Dole (welfare)
Ear’ole (Ear Hole)
If I get the tin tack I’m going on the ear’ole [Thanks to Paul Liney]
Dole (welfare)
Nat King Cole
I've got to sign on the old Nat King [Thanks to Hywel Jones. Ray Wells says it's also known as Old King Cole]
Dole (welfare)
Rock and Roll
'e hasn't worked a day in 'is life... 'e's always been on the rock and roll. [Thanks to Mark Moule]
Dole (welfare)
He ain't worked in years - he's on the sausage. [Thanks to Martin McKerrell]
Dollar
Oxford Scholar
Stupid horse cost me an Oxford. [Pre-war the dollar was worth just less than 5 shillings, so an Oxford is worth 5 shillings or a crown - thanks to Jim Williams]
Door
They broke the 'enry down at number thirty two [Thanks to Alan Little]
Dope (marijuana)
I think he’s been smoking a bit of Bob Hope [Thanks to Phil Woodford]
Draft
There's a bit of a george in here. [Thanks to Jim Battman]
Drink
Tiddley Wink
Just one more tiddley and I'm off; or, He's popped down to the pub for a tiddle.
Drugs
‘ere mate. Got any Persians? [Thanks to David Rolph]
Drunk
He shouldn't be driving! He's bloody elephant's.
Dump (shit)
Camel's Hump
Just going for a quick camels [Thanks to Kevin Lowther who tells me this one was used in Abu Dhabi]
Dump (shit)
I've got to go for a donald [Thanks to Peter Conway]
Dump (shit)
Forrest Gump
"Off out in 10 minutes?" "Yeah, just got to have a Forrest first". [Thanks to Richard English]
Dyke (Lesbian)
Magnus Pike
She looks like a right Magnus [Thanks to Steve Vincent - Magnus Pike was an 'off the wall' TV personality who would (and could) explain complex scientific concepts to kids]
Dyke (lesbian)
She’s a right Raleigh [Thanks to Claire Reed]
Dyke (Lesbian)
Three Wheel Trike
She's a bit of a three wheeler [Thanks to Barry Smith. Ray Wells has heard the expression rusy bike as well]
Early
‘e’s never gotten here liz [Thanks to Paul Woodford
Earner
The jobs not much but it's a nice little bunsen [Thanks to Laurie Bamford]
Ears
Look at the size of 'is ten speeds [Thanks to Billy Wade]
Engineer
He knows his stuff. He is a ginger, after all.
Erection
He's holding a standing election in his callards [Thanks to Buddy]
Evening Post
Go and buy the beans on toast will you son [Thanks to Hefin Gill]
Eyes
Fable
Railway Timetable
(After someone tells you a tall tale) What’s he been doin’? Reading a railway table. [Might also be substituted with bus timetable – Thanks to Paul Island]
Face
Nice legs, shame about the boat. [Also a good song by The Monks]
Face
It's too cold outside; no good for my cod [Thanks to Mark Elston]
Face
She's got a lovely Chevy Chase [Thanks to Adrian Calvin and Paul Beer]
Face
Jem Mace
Wipe that look off your jem [Thanks to Chris Webb - Jem Mace was a boxer in the late 19th century]
Facts
'Ere, you've got your brass wrong! [Thanks to Alan Little]
Fag (cigarette)
I’m going out for a quick cough and drag [Thanks to Trevor Baker]
Fag (cigarette)
Have you got a harry? [Frank Baynham reports that Harry Wragg was a famous jockey]
Fag (cigarette)
Melvynn Bragg
Oi, mate. Can I scrounge a melvynn of you [Thanks to Mark Holmans who reports that Melvynn was a television host]
Fag (cigarette)
Give us an oily. [Thanks to David Hughes]
Fag (cigarette)
Toe Rag / Tow Rag
Lend us a sprarsy - I wanna get some toe-rags [Thanks to Mike Smith. Mike says he thinks toe-rags refer to the rags people used to wrap around their feet when they didn't have shoes… we used to call our socks toe-rags which is probably the same origin. He also says his old dad used to call some people a toe-rag and suspects it might have been an insult (reference to fag = queer).]
[Martin McKerrell adds that toe rag referred to a small time petty thief, in his words "the sort of dirty little toe rag who would live next door and break into your house and nick the Christmas presents".] [Gillian adds "term is commonly used, at least in Scotland, meaning just a bit stronger than "rascal" and probably spelled without the e: 'You little torag.' I always thought it did come from terms used to refer to travelling people."][And Michael Kendix adds: I heard that "Toe rag" came from "Taureg" a nomadic people living in the Arabian desert, regarded by colonial powers as "low life's". So, it would be insulting to refer to someone as a "Toe rag", which, as you say, could be used to describe a ne'er do well! And Paul offers a somewhat disturbing image: In the times of Nelsons navy paper was too expensive to use in the head (toilet) and so sailors would get a short length of rope (toe) and unravel it until it resemble rags (toe-rag), this would then be used instead of paper and had the added benefit that t could be washed and re-used.]
Fake
Sexton Blake
He wears a Cartier but it's a sexton [Thanks to Martyn Tracy. See also 'Sexton Blake-cake']
Fanny
Auntie Annie
She’s just sitting at home on her Auntie Annie [Thanks to “the boys at CHS]
Fanny
She's just sitting at home on her Jack and Danny [Thanks to Glenn Collignon]
Farmer (see usage)
Arnold Palmer
'e's a right Arnold [Thanks to Nick Williams. I love this one - it refers to a golfer who spends a lot of time in the long grass around a course]
Farrahs (trousers)
Bow and Arrows
Nice pair of bow and arrows [Use your best Cockney accent here. The reference is to Farrah slacks – Thanks to Simon Mahon]
Fart
D'Oyly Carte
Have you done a d’oyly? [D’Oyly Carte is a light opera company – thanks to David Poulten]
Fart
Have you just horse & carted? [Thanks to Paul Beer]
Fart
Orson (i.e. Horse ‘n Cart)
He’s dropped an orson [Thanks to Paul Gardner]
Fart
He blew a raspberry. [Thanks to Tobias Bard]
Favour
Do us a cheesy, put it on your web site. [Thanks to Ed Wright]
Feel
I fancy an orange of her Bristols! [Thanks to Chris Webb)
Feet
Me dogs are barking [Meaning my feet are tired. Thanks to Sparky]
Feet
Get your plates of the table.
Fibs (lies)
Scott Gibbs
He’s been telling scotts again [Scott Gibbs is a rugby star – thanks to Hefin Gill]
Fight
He'd rather read than walk away.
Fine
I'm calvin today. [Thanks to Tony Alderton]
Fish
Good day at the stream. Got a pair of Lilian's.
Fist
Next thing I know he's got his Oliver in my face.
Fiver (£5 note)
Ere, that bloke still owes me lady! [Thanks to Peter Cotterell]
Fiver (£5 note)
'ere - you owe me a taxi [Thanks to David]
Flares (wide bottom trousers)
Lionel Blaire
Got on his best lionels for the evening. [Lionel Blaire is a performer. Thanks to Josh Holmes]
Flash
Don’t act so lemon [Thanks to Simon Mahon]
Flash (natty)
'e was alway a bit of an 'arry [Thanks to Sparky James]
Flowers
I forgot it was my anniversary, so I picked some aprils on the way home.
Flying Squad
Here comes the Sweeney [the Flying Squad are the police]
Fork
Keep your fingers out of your grub, man. Use a duke [Thanks to Sparky James]
Function
Garage
Steve Claridge
I've just gotta go down the Steve for some petrol [Thanks to Jon Simmons. It helps if you realize that garage, which commonly rhymes with mirage in North America, more usually rhymes with carriage in Britain. A great Tony Hancock piece has him trying to act all condescending and pronouncing it the American way, confusing the ears off a local constable. Steve Claridge is a venerable striker, late of Leicester.]
Gargle (drunk)
'e's right Authur'd [Thanks to John Claffey]
Gay (homosexual)
Bale of Hay
Don't bother Britany - he's bale. [Thanks to Uncle Custard who also provided the example of usage… just who do you suppose Britany is?]
Gay (homosexual)
Doctor Dre
E’s a bit of a doctor [Dr. Dre is a rap artist – Thanks to Will Sowden]
Gay (homosexual)
That boozer is Finlay ub [Thanks to Stuart Taylor –Finlay Quaye is a musician]
Gay (homosexual)
He's a right first [Thanks to Jeremy Williams]
Gay (homosexual)
Ted Ray
He's a bit Ted. [Ted Ray was an actor/comedian in the sixties. This association actually comes from a particularly bad movie "My Wife's Family" where he played a character called Jack Gay. Thanks to Stuart Burgess & Gordon Leel]
Geezer
He’s a right fridge [Thanks to Tomma]
Geezer
'e's not a bad old ice cream [Thanks to Vince Scott]
Geezer
'ere, look at the 'ampsteads on that Julius [Thanks to Dudley]
Geezer
I saw that lemon we met in the rub-a-dub last night [Thanks to Mark Foster]
Ghost
Looks like he’s seen a pillar [Thanks to Neil Gemmill]
Gin
Another mothers would sit well.
Gin
I'll have a small needle and tonic.
Gin
I'll have a drop of nose and chin [Thanks to Philip Hart]
Gin
I enjoy a bit of thick and thin [Thanks to Beanage]
Gin
Vera Lynn
I'll have one more Vera before I hit the frog and toad. [Thanks to Mark Hamnett]
Girl
Come over here, me old Cadbury [Thanks to Jonathan Burroughs]
Girl
She looks like a nice twist [Thanks to Alan Little]
Git (twit)
That bloke's a right strawberry [Thanks to Dennis Wise]
Gloves
Where's me turtle dove's [Thanks to John Ioannou]
Go
Scapa Flow
Scapa! [Actually pronounced 'Scarper' - just one example of not being satisfied with the slang, they then mispronounce the word to thoroughly confuse everyone. Robert Benoist sent me the following which I found interesting: Scapa Floe was a Royal Naval base established in the 20th Century and famous for the scuttling of the German fleet in 1919 and a subsequent WW11 battle. Before 1919 it is doubtful whether anyone in the country let alone cockneys would have heard of it.
In Mayhew's London Labour and the London Poor (vol 3 1851) there is a chapter on Punch Talk (basically the slang language used by traveling Italian Punch and Judy men and entertainers). This slang contains both English and Italian roots. In Punch Talk "To get away quickly" e.g. from the police or authority is spoken and written as scarper. This comes from the Italian Scappare. Punch talk formed one of the roots of Polari which also incorporated rhyming slang and was used first by the east end street traders, and then the west end street traders, and finally by homosexuals in the 40's and 50's. There are almost as many Polari expressions currently used as there are rhyming slang. It is probable that after 1919 it was imagined that the word had originated in the rhyming slang after Scapa Floe but I think the evidence firmly points to its Italian Origins.]
Gob (mouth)
He's got a big gang [Thanks to Dave Connolly]
Good
That sounds like it's robin [Thanks to Alan Little]
Gossip
Rex Mossop
What's the latest Rex, love? [Thanks to Rebecca Marks who tells me Rex is an Aussie sports commentator]
Grand (1000)
He owes me a bag [Thanks to Keith Cole]
Gravy
Can I have some army for my mashed?
Greek
Bubble and Squeak
'E's not a bad bloke for a bubble. [Bubble and squeak is a uniquely British dish of fried mashed potatoes and something green (usually cabbage, but left over brussel sprouts work well). Thanks to Mark Pearson]
Guts (stomach)
Newington Butts
Me Newingtons are playing me up. [Thanks to Mark Crowe and Martin McKerrell - Michael Faraday (the magnet fellow) born in Newington Butts, the area of London now known as the Elephant and Castle]
Gutter
Found him laying in the bread and butter. [Usually full slang expression is used]
Gym
Fatboy Slim
I’m going down to the fatboy [Fatboy Slim is a recording artist – thanks to Martin Rowe]
Haddock
Fanny and chips for supper? [Thanks to Sparky James]
Hair
She must be going out - she's got her Barnet done.
Hair
Biffo the Bear
Me biffo’s not looking the best today [Biffo the Bear was on the cover of Beano from 1948 to 1974. Thanks to Gillian White]
Hair
She's got beautiful shiny bonney.
Half (a pint)
Cow and Calf
I could use a cow and calf [Thanks to Nick Williams. He reports that there's a pub in Grenoside (near Sheffield) called the Cow and Calf]
Hand
I had it in my St. Martins a minute ago [Thanks to Alan Little]
Hands
Get your germans off my missus.
Hands
Get yer jazz bands off me [Thanks to Peter Norman]
Hat
Titfer (Tit for Tat)
Lovely titfer. [This one uses the first two words - probably because saying "lovely tit" proved awkward]
Head
Don't just stand there - use your loaf.
Head (fellatio)
She likes to give blood. [Thanks to Kirk Whitworth]
Heart
Me strawberry belongs to you [Thanks to John Curnow]
Hell
My knee is giving me gyp today. [Thanks to Chris Webb]
Hemorrhoid
Oooh, me clements! [Thanks to Ian Coppell]
Hemorrhoids
Emma Freuds
Me Emma's are playing me up. [Emma is a BBC DJ on Radio 1 - Thanks to Stuart Burgess & Gordon Leel]
Heroin
Vera Lynn
Goodbye Vera Lynn [from Pink Floyd – “Goodbye Vera Lynn.
I'm leaving you today" meaning I’m giving up heroin, written at that time for Gilmore. Thanks to Joe Lovick for the slang and the references]
Hill
The store is up the jack. [See also Bill]
Hole
Let's pop 'round to my drum (referring to someone's house). [Thanks to Dave Hughes]
Home
Let's pop 'round his pope and fetch him.
Host
Who’s the pillar and post for tonight? [Thanks to Dave]
Hot
Don't touch that - it's bloody peasy.
House
Went 'round to his cat to wake him up.
House
Mickey Mouse
I'm taking my missus to the mickey tonight. [Usually means a theatre rather than a residence]
Howler (mistake)
I made a right Robbie yesterday [Thanks to John Revell – Robbie Fowler plays for Liverpool]
Hymen
Bill Wyman
Virgin? Don’t think so mate – not a bill in sight [Thanks to Benjamin Smith. Bill Wyman is, of course, with the Rolling Stones and Benjamin reports he had a bit of a penchant for the younger cadburys]
Ice
I'll have a Gold and Blind [Thanks to John Gibson]
Jacket
Desmond Hackett
He's sporting a new Desmond [Thanks to Chris Webb - Mr. Hackett is a renowned Daily Express sports reporter]
Jacket
I bought a new tennis racquet [Thanks to Laura Clifford]
Jail
One drink too many and I get seven days in the bucket.
Jail
'e's doing time in the ginger. [Thanks to Wendy Shaw]
Jeans
Harpers and Queens
He's sporting a new pair of harpers [Thanks to Neale Davison. Harpers and Queen is a woman's magazine "Published in London for the World"]
Jeans
How do you like me new runners [Thanks to Darren Foreman]
Jeans
Me new steves are a bit tight [Thanks to Mark Holmans]
Jew
If you're a fiver then today's your Sabbath.
Jew
He's not from around here - he's a four.
Jewellery
That bloke looks a flash, look at all his tom. [Thank the Peter Cotterell]
Jive
She can’t half duck and dive [Thanks to Podster]
Job
'e can't afford it - 'e ain't got a corn [Thanks to Mike Smith]
Job
Me new motor is just the dog's knob [Thanks to Nick Williams]
Jock (Scot)
Sweaty Sock
There was an Englishman, an Irishman and a sweaty on a boat... [This term is usually derogatory. Thanks to Dave Brown]
Joke
Go on then, tell us another rum and coke [Thanks to Martin Hillier]
Joker
Who's this double yoker [Thanks to Joel Glover]
Judge
I'm up in front of the Barnaby tomorrow morning.
Jugs (breasts)
That girls has a lovely set of carpets [Thanks to Benjamin Smith]
Kebab (shish kebab)
Bloody hell, boys, I'm proper Oliver'd - anyone fancy a Phil? [Thanks to John Loveday]
Keen
She's a bit torvill on my mate Barry [Thanks to Darryl Middleton]
Kettle
I put the Hansel on for a nice cup of Rosy [Thanks to Peter Robinson]
Key
Where’s me brenda’s? [Thanks to Nick Webster]
Key
Where's me Vivian? [Thanks to John Kitley]
Keys
Have you seen me brucies? [Thanks to Graham Cooper]
Keys
‘ave you seen me johns [Thanks to Mathew]
Keys
Have you got your knobblies with you? [Thanks to Beeman]
Kidney
Me bo’s are giving me gyp [Thanks to Jay]
Kids
A nice girl but too many dustbin's.
Kids
Couldn't hear a thing 'cause of all the Godfor's.
Kids
I'm forever buy clothes for the saucepan lids [Thanks to Peter Cotterell - see also 'Yid']
Kids
I'm taking my little teapot to country.
Kids
Tin Lids
I can't put me foot down without stepping on one of the tin lids. [Thanks to Bernie Albert]
Kiss
C’mon me turtle, give us an ‘eavenly [Thanks to Rebecca Coonan]
Kiss
How about a bit of hit and miss [Thanks to Doosh]
Knackered (tired)
I'm cream crackered, mate. [Thanks to David Carruthers]
Knackered (tired)
Kerry Packer
I'm right Kerry'd [Thanks to David Bennett - Kerry Packer is an Australian media magnate (and bleeding rich!)]
Knackers (testicles)
That toe-rag kicked me in the Jacobs [Thanks to Bryan Rayner]
Knees
I've been on my biscuits all day.
Knickers
Alan Whickers
The 'lastics gone in me alans. [Alan Whicker used to host a TV programme called Whickers World - Thanks to Peter Cotterell]
Knob (penis)
‘e’s a bit proud of his Uncle Bob [Thanks to “the boys at CHS”]
Kraut (German)
Bloody rainbows beat us at football last night! [Thanks to Alex Gordon]
Lager
Mines a forsythe [Thanks to Den Frankham]
Lager
How about a couple of Mick Jaggers over here? [Thanks to Colin Reid]
Lark (fun)
Always one for a tufnell [Thanks to Michael Mundy]
Late
Cilla Black
You’re a bit Cilla today, mate [Thanks to Justyn Olby who explains that this comes from Cilla Black’s Blind Date TV programme that was popular]
Late
You’re a bit Terry Waite [Thanks to Paul Woodford]
Later
I'll see ya baked. [Thanks to Eric Van Zanten]
Later
See you Christian Slater [Thanks to Kris Grissom]
Laugh
You're 'avin a bubble aren't ya? [Thanks to Neil Churchard]
Laugh
Your having a cows calf, ain't you [Thanks to Graham Todd]
Laugh
You're havin' a giraffe, mate. [Thanks to Ed Balch]
Laugh
You're having a Steffi [Thanks to Peter Grewal]
Laugh
He's havin' a turkish. [Thanks to Chris Baylis]
Laugh
He's having a wally [Thanks to Keith Cole]
Legs
Lovely set of bacons [James Robinson notes that this can be Ham & Eggs as well].
Legs
Dolly Pegs
'ave a butchers at the dollies on 'er [This comes from the old style wooden clothes pegs that little girls used to draw faces on and make little dresses and hats/hair for, hence the dolly peg. Thanks to Simon]
Legs
Stand on your own mumbleys [Thanks to Sanor]
Legs
Nutmegs
He was nutmegged [this is a common football term for when the ball is kicked between an opponents legs and then the other player runs around to get control of the ball again – thanks to Allen Keep]
Legs
I was so surprised I nearly fell off me pins [Thanks to Sparky James]
Legs
Scotch Pegs
Sit down and take a load off your pegs. [For whatever reason, the common usage is the rhyming word rather than the first]
Leicester Square
Euan Blair
We're getting off the train at Euan Blair station [Thanks to Vix. Mark points out that Euan Blair (Prime minister's underage son) was found drunk by police in Leicester Square earlier this year. Hence the slang.]
Lesbian
She's a lovely girl but she is west end, you know. [Thanks to Richard English]
Liar
Bob Cryer
Shut up you Bob - yer talking out yer aris [Sergeant Bob Cryer is a character in "The Bill". Thanks to Kelly Webb]
Liar
‘e’s a bit of a dunlop [Thanks to Donald Burk]
Liar
‘e’s a bit of a holy friar [Thanks to Donald Burk]
Lies
Blimey - he gets two pigs (beers) in him and he starts telling porkies.
Life
Nelly Duff
Not on your nelly, mate. [The expression 'not on your nelly', meaning 'not on your life' (meaning that the person would never do something), is from Nelly Duff which rhymes with puff which means breath which is another way of saying life... convoluted little devil, isn't it? From everything I researched it would seem Nelly Duff was a fictional character but this is not certain. Thanks to Cathleen Kelly]
Life (term)
'e's doing a stay in the porridge. [Thanks to Alan Morgan]
Liver
Cheerful Giver
Lovely - cheerful for dinner tonight. [Mike King has written to say that he that the slang for liver comes from "The Lord loves a cheerful giver", which was then shortened to Lord... Lovely - we're have the Lord for dinner tonight.]
Liver
Swanee River
We're having swanee for dinner again? [Thanks to John Gibson who actually heard this in an interview with Ian Drury who, talking about his colon cancer, said, "... it's in me swanee now".]
Lodger
She's taken in an artful to help pay the way.
Look
Here - take a butcher's at this.
Look
I just went over there for a captain [Thanks to Ashleigh Mills]
Loot (money)
Fibre of your fabric
C'mon, let me feel the fibre of your fabric [Thanks to Olli Black - fabric=suit=loot]
Lot (Serving or share)
Hopping Pot
That's your hopping mate. [Meaning, that's all you get. Thanks to James Vosper who says that this may have originated with Londoners who traveled to Kent and other districts to gather hops for beer]
Love
All right me old turtle [Thanks to Vince Scott]
Luck
How's your Donald? [Thanks to Charly Large]
Luck
'E always had a bit of friar tuck. [Thanks to Martyn Tracy]
Mad
He's a bit mum and dad. [Thanks to Louis and Natalie Brinks]
Marriage
e's off to his 'orse and carriage [Thanks to Emma]
Married
Poor bloke got cashed on the weekend.
Matches
Do you have any cuts?
Mate
How are you, my old china?
Mate
He’s an old garden gate from school [Thanks to Martin Hillier]
Meetin' (meeting)
We'll see you at the Buster [Thanks to Kris Grissom]
Mental
He's a bit radio [Thanks to Louis and Natalie Brinks]
Mental (crazy)
It was chicken oriental down the nuclear on Friday night [Thanks to Phil Vondra]
Merry
E’s a tommy bloke [Thanks to Sparky James]
Mess
My drum's a right Elliot [Thanks to Nick Williams]
Milk
Acker Bilk
Would you like Acker in your coffee? [Thanks to Barry Greenaway. Acker Bilk (born Bernard Stanley Bilk) was born in 1929 is a master of the clarinet and leader of the Paramount Jazz Band. Interestingly, his nickname Acker is a Somerset term meaning friend or mate]
Mind
You're out of you little chinese mate. [Thanks to Danny O'Sullivan]
Miss
She's a cute little cuddle.
Missus (Mrs)
Where did your love and kisses go? [Thanks to Alan Little]
Missus (Mrs)
How's the plates getting on then? [Thanks to Alan Little]
Money
Can't go in there without any bees.
Money
Let's drink with him - he's got bread. [This one has enjoyed very common usage]
Money
Bugs Bunny
I've got some Bugs bunny in me sky rocket and I'm off down the rub-a-dub-dub. [Thanks to Nigel Ritson]
Motor (car)
I’ve gone and locked me keys in the haddock [Thanks to Alistair Steadman]
Mouth
I gave him a punch up the north.
Mug (chump)
I'm tired of people taking me for a toby [Thanks to Roger Gillespie]
Neck
He's got a bushel like tree trunk.
Neck
Wind you Gregory in [Thanks to Graham Todd]
Nerves
e's got a bad case of the West Ham's [Thanks to Martin Elliot]
News
Did you catch the wooden pews yesterday [Thanks to LO]
Nick (prison)
He's spending a bit of time in the shovel. [Thanks to John Butt]
Nightmare
I'm havin' a right lionel [Lionel Blaire is a performer. Thanks to Jonathan Harris]
Nightmare
Weston-Super-Mare
Went for an interview yesterday - it was a total Weston-Super [Weston Super Mare is the main coastal resort of North Somerset. Thanks to Christian Martinsen]
Nipple
Raspberry Ripple
Look at the thup'neys on her, raspberries like cigar buts! [Can also mean cripple. Thanks to Dave Brown]
Nippy (cold)
George and Zippy
It’s a bit George [Thanks to Sam Murray – Eli Davenport reports that George & Zippy are from an old BBC kids show called Rainbow]
Noise
Hold your box - they can hear you miles away!
Nose
Look at the size of his fireman's [Thanks to Keith Cole]
Nose
Fray Bentos
Look at the Fray Bentos on that poor sod [Fray Bentos is a maker of a fabulous Steak & Kidney Pie (and other treats). Thanks to Ray Wells]
Nose
That rotten drunk gave me a clip on me I suppose.
Nose
She gave me a kiss on my Irish.
Nun
My meanest teachers were currents [Thanks to Aziz McMahon]
Nutter (crazy)
Roll and Butter
That blokes a bloody roland [Like titfer meaning hat, this expression uses the first two words rather than just the first. Thanks to Rhian]
Off (take off, leave)
Frank Bough
I'm gonna do the Frank [see 'scoff'. Frank Bough was a television personality - Thanks to Tom Kimber]
Old Man (Father or Husband)
Pot and Pan
I was talking to me old pot just yesterday. [Thanks to Bernie Albert and Colin]
On My Own
He's over there on his toblerone [Thanks to Laura Clifford
Out of Order
Allan Border
He's bang Allan [used when someone does something to another person that is not looked upon favourably. Allan Border was the Australian cricket captain in the late 80's/early 90's so we now have our first example of international rhyming slang.]
Paddy
Did you know Kevin is a tea caddy? [Thanks to Kevin Moynihan]
Pager
Me John Major’s just gone off [Thanks to Ian Nelson]
Pakistani
Bacon Sarnie
They've hired a new bloke at the shop - he's a bacon [Thanks to Nathaniel Espino. Sarnie is a slang term for sandwich (and if you haven't eaten a cold bacon sandwich you haven't lived. Nathaniel notes that this expression may be considered offensive]
Pakistani
Reg Varney
Martin's new bird's a Reg [Thanks to Jonny Morris. Reg played Stan Butler on 'On the Buses', one of the 1970's BritComs]
Pants
Get your adam’s on [Thanks to Mike Leith]
Pants
Blimey, I have no clean surreys [Thanks to Oliver Dick]
Paper (newspaper)
Has the morning linen come yet?
Parcel
Wot you got ‘ere then, a bleedin’ elephant [Thanks to Paul Island]
Park
I'm taking my misses to the Noah.
Party
Mental morry mate [Thanks to Simon Mahon]
Party
Russell Harty
I've phoned for a sherbert to take us to the Russell [Thanks to Jo Walker - Russell Harty is a TV host]]
Peas
Eat yer John Cleese - they're good for you [Thank to Mike Leith]
Peas
We’re havin’ sexton and knobblies [Thanks to Mathew]
Pee
I’m off for a gypsy [Thanks to John Trimmer]
Pest
Fred West
Here comes that Fred West again [Fred West was and alleged mass murderer found hanged in his jail sail in 1995. Thanks to Kevin Wade]
Tonic
I'll have a Vera and Phil (gin and tonic) [Thanks to Michael Hawkins]
Phone
He’s always on the al capone [Thanks to Mike Agnes]
Phone
She's always on the dog.
Piano
Joanna
He sparkles on the joanna. [Just to confuse you, they mispronounce the word you're trying say, so instead of 'piano' they call it a 'piana']
Pictures
Going out to the Dolly Mixtures tonight [Thanks to Philip Hart - Dolly Mixtures are ]
Piddle (urinate)
I've had three pints - I could use a jimmy.
Piles
Me Nuremberg's are really playing me up [Thanks to Barry Greenaway]
Piles (hemorrhoids)
Me chalfonts are playing up. [Thanks to Paul Costello]
Piles (hemorrhoids)
Blimey, I ain't 'alf suffering from me farmers [Thanks to David Hughes]
Piles (hemorrhoids)
Nobby Stiles
Me nobbies are acting up again [Nobby Stiles was a great footballer from years gone by - Thanks to David Hughes]
Piles (hemorrhoids)
Rockford Files
Me Jim Rockford's are giving me gip! [Jim Rockford was the central character in the TV show The Rockford Files. Thanks to Paul Darbyshire]
Piles (hemorrhoids)
I'll stand if you don't mind - me sieg heils are acting up today.
Piles (hemorrhoids)
Slay 'em in the aisles
Me slay 'ems are playing me up. [Thanks to Stuart Burgess & Gordon Leel]
Pill (birth control)
She's on the Jack [Thanks to Justyn Olby]
Pillow
'ere. Get yer head off my weeping willow [Thanks to Graham Allen]
Pill
I must remember to take my strawberry tonight [Thanks to Jonathan Wills]
Pills
Where's me Jack n Jills [Thanks to Brian Kemp]
Pills
Mick Mills
‘e’s always ‘ad a weakness for the Mick Mills [Thanks to Phil Woodford. Mick Mills played for Ipswich in the ‘70s]
Pinch (steal)
Someone's half-inched me pint! [Thanks to Mark Schofield]
Pipe
Cherry Ripe
He does a cherry [Cherry Ripe is an Australian chocolate bar - although this may be Aussie slang rather than Cockney I've included it since I've received so many submissions for it. Thanks to Ben Murphy et al]
Piss
Arthur Bliss
I'm just popping out for an Arthur [Arthur Bliss was a famous English composer (1891-1975). Thanks to Robert Harper]
Piss
Blimey - no more beer till I've 'ad a gypsy's.
Piss
I've got to have a hit before we go out.
Piss (Make fun of)
Mickey Bliss
He’s always taking the mickey out of someone [Mickey is short for a mythical 'Mickey Bliss,' providing the rhyme for 'piss and has been in widespread use since the late 1940s. The original idea was that of deflating someone, recalling the description of a self-important blusterer as 'all piss and wind.' Thanks to Brown Terriers]
Pissed (angry)
I'm really hit today [Thanks to Michael G]
Pissed (drunk)
Brahms and Liszt
He's well Brahms and Liszt , don't give him any more to drink. [Thanks to Ray Davis. Sometimes the expression "Mozart & Liszt is used.]
Pissed (drunk)
Oliver Twist
I 'ad one over the eight last night and got completely Olivered. [Thanks to Peter Cotterell]
Pissed (drunk)
I'm a bit schindlers after a too many forsythes [Thanks to Den Frankham]
Pissed (drunk)
Scotch Mist
'e was completely scotch mist last night. [Thanks to Alan Little. Thanks to Marie Gordon for the example of usage.]
Plate
Don’t try and scarper before you’ve washed those alexanders [Thanks to Paul Island]
Play
Let's grass and hay down the park [Thanks to Oliver Nunn]
Pocket
Keep it in your Lucy.
Pocket
I've got nothing in my skies.
Poof (homosexual)
He's a bit of an iron. [Also Horses Hoof]
Poof (homosexual)
I think he might be a tin roof [Thanks to Kron]
Porn
Is there any Frankie on the telly tonight? [Thanks to Jason Rankin]
Porn
Johnny Vaughn
I enjoy a bit of Johnny [Johnny Vaughn was the star of The Big Breakfast – thanks to Dan Longhurst]
Powder (cocaine)
He's off doing a bit of Nikki [Thanks to Jim Smith)
Prat (arse)
He's a bit of a paper [Thanks to Justin Semmens]
Prayer
Weavers' Chair
Haven't got a weaver's of getting into her alans. [Thanks to Cormac Kennedy. A weaver's chair has a low profile back allowing free movement of the arms.]
Prick
He gets on my wick. [Don't even try to understand this one - just accept it]
Pride
You lost your jekyll or something? [Thanks to Joe Mills]
Prison
'e's off to the boom for a bit. [Thanks to Mike Shepherd]
Pub
I'll meet you down the nuclear at 5 o'clock [Thanks to Robert Lynch]
Pub
Rub-a-dub-dub
I'm off to the rub-a-dub-dub. [Comes from the children's rhyme Rub-a-dub-dub, three men in a tub...]
Pube (pubic hair)
When your having a shower make sure you wash your rubric's [Thanks to Andrew Turner]
Puff (marijuana)
Here, mate. Got any Mickey? [Thanks to Nortsqaf2]
Punter (gambler or odds maker)
Hillman Hunter
‘ere comes another load of Hillmans [the Hillman was a fine auto introduced in 1966. Thanks to Steve Trice]
Purse
Someone's alf-inched me gypsy [Thanks to Martin Grove]
Quarter
Farmers Daughter
My Nan want me to get her three farmers of rosie (3/4 lb of tea) [Thanks to Peter Summersgill]
Queen (homosexual)
He’s a right old torvill [Thanks to Tony Johnson]
Queer (homosexual)
That blokes a bit of a Brighton [Thanks to S. Sexton]
Queer (homosexual)
He's a bit ginger [Thanks to Steve Robinson. See Queer (odd) below]
Queer (homosexual)
e's a bit King Lear. [Thanks to Leslie Munday]
Queer (odd)
Ginger Beer
I don't know about that - sounds a bit ginger. [Heard from Chris and Colin who have heard the expression "very glass", meaning very strange (from Glass of Beer), based on this rhyme. Also, see Queer (homosexual) above]
Quid
Lend us a bin [Thanks to Richard Hall]
Quid
I'm down a teapot already.
Rail
Look out for the christmas [Thanks to Sparky James]
Rain
Any more pleasure and we'll be swimming.
Rave (dance)
Comedy Dave
You coming to the comedy? [Comedy Dave is a Radio 1 DJ – Thanks to Hefin Gill]
Readies (pound notes)
'e's got a pile of nelsons! [Thanks to Julia Jones]
Rent
They've raised my burton again.
Rent
I'm having a tough time coming up with me Clark [Thanks to Richard Robinson]
Rent
I can't afford to pay the Duke of Kent this week [Thanks to Mike Smith]
Rich
'e's got scratch [Thanks to Richard Lee]
Right
Isle of Wight
Down the High Road to the lights and make an Isle. [Thanks to Daniel Maurer. Also seen used as slang for "all right" but not in common usage]
River
He jumped right into the shake [Thanks to Alan Little]
Road
Don't ride your bike on the frog. [See Road = Kermit]
Road
Kermit
'e took off down the kermit. [From Kermit the Frog = frog and toad = road. Thanks to Gavin Wallace]
Rotten
Dot Cotton
I’m feeling a bit dot [Dot Cotton is a character from Eastenders – thanks to Rachel Walmsley]
Row (argument)
Barn Owl
Went up to the dole office today. 'Ad a bit of a barney with the geezer behind the desk. [Thanks to Peter Cotterell][[Not satisfied with the slang, the word is extended to 'Barney' to thoroughly confuse everyone]
Row (argument)
Had a right bull with my misses last night.
Rum
A wee bit of Tom and I'm off.
Sack (fired)
He got the tin tack the other day [Thanks to Duncan Whitesmith]
Saloon Bar
I'll be at the balloon.
Sauce
Pass the dead horse [Thanks to Brad Spencer]
Scar
Mars Bar
I fell down the apple and pears trying to answer the dog & bone, hit my head and ended up with a mars bar [Thanks to David Bancroft]
Scoff (food)
Frank Bough
I’m going to get some frank [see 'off'. Frank Bough was a television personality – thanks to Martin Brewer]
Score
Bobby Moore
You know the Bobby [Bobby Moore was a great footballer who died in 1993. Thanks to Graham Todd]
Score
Hampden Roar
You know the hampden [Thanks to Andrew Mkandawire who goes on to explain that the Hampden Roar is is a commonly used term that refers to the noise made when fans cheer on Scotland at Hampden Park]
Score (£20)
I gave me last apple to that old paraffin [Thanks to Kevin Moynihan]
Scotch
I'll have a gold watch and ten [Thanks to Del Sinnott]
Scotch
He enjoys a good pimple.
Scotch (Whisky)
'E enjoys his gold watch [Thanks to Martyn Tracy]
Scouser (Liverpudlian)
'E's a mickey mouser [Refers to someone from Liverpool. Thanks to César Lozano]
Scouts
He's always been a brussel.
Scran (food)
Jackie Chan
I’m Hank Marvin. I could use some top Jackie for me Michael Winner [Thanks to Simon Rowan]
Sex
Posh ‘n Becks
Had a bit of posh with the missus last night [Thanks to Iain Sisson– Posh refers to Posh Spice (Victoria Adams) of the Spice Girls while Becks refers to David Beckham, the famous footballer she married. Another example of Rhyming Slang evolving to reflect the times. See also Decks - Posh ‘n Becks]
Shabby
He's turned out a bit westminster today [Thanks to Sparky James]
Shag
He's off for a billy [Billy Bragg is a singer/songwriter. Thanks to Robert Christian]
Shank (golf term)
J. R.
You really JR'd that one mate. [Abbreviated reference to J. Arthur Rank. In golf, a shank is a ball that goes in a decidedly unexpected direction. Thanks to Bern Summers]
Shave
I'm off for a chas [Thanks to Conor Keeling]
Shave
A quick shower and dig and I'll be ready to go.
Shiner (black eye)
Ocean Liner
I punched him right in the mincer and gave him an ocean liner [Thanks to a somewhat violent Claire Reed]
Shirt
Put your dicky dirt on before the company gets here.
Shirt
I've got to press my uncle.
Shit
Just off or a brace [Thanks to P Loynd]
Shit
I right need a Brad Pitt [Thanks to Big Bill]
Shit
I'm going for an Eartha [See also 'Tit' - Thanks to Peter Cotterell for this variation]
Shit
I'm going for a Tom Tit. [Thanks to David Carruthers.]
Shite
I’m off for a tom [Thanks to Denis Daly]
Shite
They’re playing completely Turkish today [Thanks to Paul Island]
Shite (shit)
I need a Barry White [Thanks to Oli Hickman]
Shits (diarrhoea)
I’ve got a real case of the two-bob bits [Thanks to Steven Elder]
Shitter (rectum)
Council Gritter
When I sat down there was a pin on my chair! Right up the council! [Thanks to Uncle Custard. He reports that a council gritter is the machine that comes around and puts grit on icy roads]
Shitter (rectum)
He kicked him right up the Gary [Thanks to Neil Churchard]
Shitter (toilet or rectum)
Rick Whitter
Back in a sec - I'm off to the rick [Rick Whitter is a singer in the group Shed7 - thanks to Dan Collins and Keith Uden]
Shocker
That's a Barry Crocker [Barry Crocker is an Aussie performer - thanks to Dan McGivern]
Shocker
Costantino Rocca
Played a round of golf yesterday - had a complete Costantino [Costantino Rocca is an Italian golfer - thanks to Christian Martinsen]
Shoe
Where are me Scooby's? [Thanks to Mark Chinery & Michael Lloyd]
Shoe
Get yer ghosts on [Thanks to Richard Lee]
Shoes
Where's me one 'n two's? [Thanks to John Ioannou]
Shoes
'e's got himself a new pair of St. Louis' [Thanks to Doug Sammons]
Shoes
Get your rhythm and blues on [Thanks to Jack Summers and Neil Devlin]
Shoes
Yabba-Dabba-Doo
Nice pair of yabba’s mate [For them what don’t have a classical education, “Yabba-Dabba-Doo” was the catch phrase of Fred Flintstone. Thanks to Jon Evans]
Shout (round)
Wally Grout
It's your wally, mate (ie. It's your turn to buy a round of drinks). [Wally Grout was an Australian cricketer who died in 1968 - Thanks to Mark Redding]
Shower
David Gower
I'd just got out of the David Gower [Thanks to Mark Crowe - David Gower is an English cricketer]
Shower
I’m going for an Eiffel Tower.
Sick
I'm feeling a bit Moby today. [Thanks to Elaine MacGregor]
Sick
Spotted Dick
We don’t have a goalie – John’s spotted [Spotted Dick is a dessert make with raisins – thanks to Andrew Black]
Sick
Tom and Dick
He's feeling a bit Tom. [There is also an expression "Feeling a bit dicky" as in not quite right that comes from this slang. Paul Morgan says that it’s also used as “Bob and Dick”]
Sick
I can't come out tonight - I'm feeling a bit Uncle Dick [Thanks to Chris Keeley]
Sight
Website
Get out of me website [Thanks to Antony Kennedy who says this was taken from the Human Traffic film]
Silly
Daffy Down Dilly
'e's a bit daffy. [Daffy Down Dilly is a line of dolls from Madam Alexander. Thanks to Peter Bendall]
Silly
I've always said he was piccadilly [Thanks to Martin McKerrell]
Simple
She’s a bit Dolly Dimple [Thanks to Simon Mahon]
Sister
She may be his blister but she's nothing like him.
Six
Tim Mix
He rolled a Tom Mix [Thanks to Jude Saffron who says this expression is common in casino's when referring to dice games]
Skin (cigarette paper)
Got any vera's? [Thanks to Paul Cheese]
Skint (broke)
Borassic Lint
He's right boric. [Thanks to Peter Langdale who's a chemist in the UK for correcting this one]
Skint (broke)
Larry Flint
I'm completely larry mate [Larry Flint is an American publisher of adult magazines. Thanks to Rob Haynes]
Skint (broke)
I'm polo'd [Thanks to Kieran Cooney]
Slag (prostitute)
Oily Rag
She's a bit of an oily rag [Oily Rag is also slang for fag (cigarette). One can't help but wonder how many times a simply "Can you spot me an oily?" might have been misinterpreted. Thanks to Matthew Wilson]
Slag (prostitute)
Toe Rag / Tow Rag
She’s a right toe rag [Thanks to Chris Roberts. Mike Lyons adds: It should be 'Tow Rag'. When a car towed another in times past, (broken down car) behind it, it was/is common practice to tie a piece of rag halfway along the rope between the two vehicles. This was to indicate the rope's presence to pedestriams, particularly when stopped in traffic. (i.e. to stop people tripping over it when walking between the cars). As this piece of rag was literally dragging or 'always in' the dirt all the time, it was compared with someone who was shifty, untrustworthy, criminal, loafer, a general 'low life'. Such a person was called a tow rag, example "don't trust him, he's a bit of a tow rag".] Thus, a tow rag could refer to a male or female of dubious character.
Slap
I’m gonna give you a Watford ‘round yer chevy [Thanks to Glenn Buss]
Slash (piss)
I'm absolutely dying for a Pat Cash [Thanks to Bryan Rowe]
Slash (piss)
I’m poppin’ out for a pie and mash [Thanks to Paul Ingram]
Sleep
What I need is a good bo-peep. [Thanks to Bernie Albert]
Sleep
You need a bit of sooty [Thanks to John Gowland]
Smell
He don't half Aunt Nell [Thanks to Jo Miller]
Smoke (cigarette)
I’m going for a laugh [Thanks to Winston Gutkowski]
Sneeze
I hate allergies - one good bread after another.
Snide
‘e’s a bit Jeckyll [Thanks to Simon Mahon]
Snout (cigarette)
Salmon and Trout
'Ere mate, give us a salmon, I'm right out. [Thanks to Peter Cotterell] [If you know where the expression 'snout' for cigarette comes from I'd like to include it][ [Martin McKerrell has written that Snout comes from snout rag meaning handkerchief (I'm thinking snot rag - JA) so Snout Rag = Fag = cigarrette. Also, Richard Beveridge has suggested that the term snout comes from prison life when the prisoners, who would take their daily exercise in silence, would signal a tobacco supplier that he needed cigarettes by touching his nose.] - See "ins and outs"
Snouts (Cigarettes)
'ere mate, got any ins and outs? [Thanks to James Hotston] (See Salmon and Trout)
Soap
Go wash yourself - and use the cape.
Soap
Where's the faith and hope, I wanna wash me 'ands [Thanks to Mike Smith]
Socks
Wouldn't it be nice if your almonds matched?
Socks
Bombay Docks
Anyone seen me bombays? [Thanks to Julie Lanham-Hathaway. Phil Diaper suggests the expression is actually Tilbury Docks]
Socks
Pull yer Joe's up [Thanks to Jim Hyde]
Son
He's awfully proud of his currant.
Song
Ding Dong
Everyone gather round the piano for a ding dong. [Usually the full slang expression is used]
Soup
Nothing like a good loop on a cold day.
Spanner (wrench)
Can I borrow your elsie [Thanks to Alan Little]
Sparrow
Bow and Arrow
Little bow and arrow fell out of the nest. [Usually the full slang expression is used]
Speak
I won't bubble [Thanks to Justyn Olby who credits John Le Carre's book "Night Manager"]
Specs (spectacles)
Where’s me gregs [Thanks to Marcia Woodman]
Specs [Spectacles)
Where did I put me Mikkel's? [Thanks to Mark Crowe - Mikkel Beck is a footballer]
Splinter
Alan Minter
Picked up this wood and got a terrible Alan in me finger [Thanks to Barry Greenaway. Alan Minter is a British boxer with a current record of 39-9 (23 by KO)]
Spoon
Pass me a daniel [Thanks to Andy Powell]
Spoon
Pass me that David Boon [Thanks to Mark Crowe - David Boon is an Australian cricketer]
Spot (acne)
I've got a great big randolph on my chin [Thanks to Matt Stammers]
Spouse
Me boiler's always yammerin' on. [Thanks to John Butt]
Sprouts
I love bubble and squeak made with Twist and Shouts [Thanks to Mike Leith]
Spunk (semen)
Harry Monk
This glue's as sticky as a load of Harry [Harry Monk was an old music hall entertainer. Thanks to Jon Bard]
Spunk (semen)
Pineapple Chunk
Is that laundry powder on your jeans? Looks like pineapple chunks to me [Thanks to Tom Dowling]
Stairs
Get yourself up the apples and pears.
Stairs
Daisy Dancers
Get yerself up the daisy dancers [This one's a bit convoluted: Daisy Dancer = Dancing Bears = Stairs. The daisy dancer reference is a twist on the Dancing Bears=Stairs slang. Thanks to Mike Tombs]
Stairs
Get yerself up the dancing bears [Thanks to Mike Tombs]
Starved
"Lunch in a bit?" "Yeah, I'm a bit pear." [Thanks to Richard English]
Starvin'
Hank Marvin
I'm bloody Hank Marvin. I haven't eaten all day [Hank Marvin was the guitarist for The Shadows from the 1960's to the 1990's. Thanks to Neil Churchard]
Starvin'
Lee Marvin
I'm Lee Marvin [Thanks to Peter Conway who wrote all the way from Dubai - he adds that if you're really hungry you could say, "I'm Hank, and his brother Lee". Lee Marvin was an American actor. See other entry for starvin' (Hank Marvin). And no - they're not related.]
State (anguish)
He's in a two and eight over it. [Usually the full slang expression is used]
Steak and Kidney
Kate and Sydney
A lovely Kate and Sydney pie [Not really rhyming slang - more a matter of getting your mords wixed up]
Stella (beer)
A couple of nelsons please [Thanks to Alan Little. Stella refers to Stella Artois]
Stella (beer)
Paul Weller
Give us a Paul Weller [Thanks to Gary Williams - Paul Weller is (or was) a musician with The Jam. Stella refers to Stella Artois]
Stella (beer)
Mines a Uri [Thanks to Martin Harrison]
Stella Artois (beer)
I’ll have an ooh aah [Thanks to Steve Kensington]
Stench
A right Dame Judy in here [Thanks to Dean Cavanagh]
Stick (walking)
I've forgot me hackney wick back at the last pub [Thanks to Alan Rawling]
Stink
That's a bit of a pen and ink.
Story
Ye late! What’s the jackanory then? [Thanks to Podster]
Stout (beer)
Stop by and have a salmon.
Stranger
Who’s that Queen’s Park Ranger standing over there? [Thanks to Danny Robinson]
Stranger
This pub is full of Texas Rangers these days [Thanks to Danny Robinson]
Stray
That Mary's a bit of a gamma [Thanks to Dan Collins and Keith Uden]
Street
He out standing in the field, waiting for a bus.
Strides (trousers)
He's wearing black donkeys [Thanks to Keith Cole]
Strides [trousers)
Just bought a new pair of Jekylls
Stripper
I love me jack the rippers [Thanks to John Ioannou]
Strong
I need a ping pong drink [Thanks to Chris Keeley]
Sub (pay advance)
Guvnor Give us a rub a dub till pay day. [Thanks to Ray Davis]
Subaru
Let's have a go in ya scooby-doo [Thanks to J. Mulroy]
Suit
Bag of Fruit
He turned up dressed in a bag [Thanks to Bill Smith who quite rightly points out that while Whistle and Flute can refer to a nice looking suit, Bag of Fruit depicts a very different image of an old and shapeless suit]
Suit
Are you wearing your bowl of fruit tonight? [Thanks to Brad Spencer]
Suit
I’ll be wearing me tin flute [Thanks to Duncan Whitesmith]
Suit
He bought himself a new whistle for the wedding.
Sun
Old current bun's out today [Thanks to Ray Davis.]
Supper
You can sing for your Tommy.
Sweetheart
Treacle Tart
She's a right treacle [Thanks to Kate Odgers - note that there is reportedly a negative connotation for this expression, meaning a woman of easy virtues, but it's not very commonly used]
Table
Sit yourself at the cain and I'll bring you your Tommy (Tommy Tucker - supper).
Tablet (pill)
Gary Ablett
He was off his nuts on the old Gary Abletts wasn't he [Gary Ablett was a footballer in the 80's - thanks to Majik Khan]
Tail
He's always wagging his alderman's.
Talk
Rabbit and Pork
He's always rabbitting on about something [Andrew Black says his sister used to say he had “too much bunny” (or more rabbit than Sainsbury’s!). You can be sure that wasn’t a compliment]
Talker
Murray Walker
She’s a real murray – just can’t get her to shut up! [Thanks to Tony Kibble]
Tan
Peter Pan
I’m off to the pool to top up me peter pan. [Thanks to Lee Henderson]
Tanner (sixpence)
Sprarsy Anna
Lend us a sprarsy - I wanna get some toe-rags (cigarettes) [Thanks to Mike Smith - he wonders if Sprarsy might have something to do with the old Indian coin called an "anna". If you have any more info please let me know]
Tart
Is this a lads night or are we taking the kicks [Thanks to Tony Merrington]
Taxi
Joe Baxi
Mind if I share your Joe Baxi? [Thanks to Mike Doles. William Coward says Joe Baxi was a heavyweight boxer who knocked out British champ George Woodcock around 1950.]
Tea
Where’s me bleeding cuppa arf past? [Thanks to Simon Buckridge]
Tea
I've just put the rosy on.
Tea
Fancy a cup of you and me? [Thanks to Barry Greenaway]
Tears
She's off doing a Britney [Thanks to Jade]
Teeth
Edward Heath
He got smacked in the Edwards [Thanks to John Curtis-Rouse. Edward Heath was PM in the early 1970’s]
Teeth
His hampsteads (hamps) are a crime.
Telly (TV)
As usual, nothing on the custard tonight.
Telly (TV)
What’s on the Liza? [Thanks to Yorgos Elissaios]
Ten
I didn't get much change back from a cock [Thanks to Peter Cotterell]
Tenner (£10)
Paul McKenna
I’m don to me last Paul McKenna [Thanks to Richard Hall. Paul McKenna is a famous hypnotist]
Tenner (10 pound note)
Ayrton Senna
'ere, lend us an ayrton me old china [Ayrton Senna was a Formula One driver - thanks to Tom Harvey]
Tenner (10 pound note)
Louise Wener
'ere, lend us a louise. [Louise Wener is a singer with the band Sleeper - thanks to Richard English]
Thief
Tea Leaf
He's always been a bit of a tea leaf. [Usually the fully slang expression is used]
Think
Cocoa Drink
I should cocoa [Said in a somewhat facetious manner, this phrase actually means "I should think not" - thanks to Kathryn Polley]
Thirst
Geoff Hurst
I've got a Geoff on tonight [Sir Geoff Hurst was the only footballer to score three goals in a World Cup final. Thanks to Graham Todd]
Throat
I've got a sore billy goat [Thanks to Paul Robinson]
Throat
‘e cleared his groat whilst wiping his mincers with ‘is germans [Thanks to Mike Basquill]
Throat
Get that down your nanny [Thanks to Chris Roberts]
Throat
'is weasel's playing him up [Thanks to Roy Sharp. See also Coat]
Thunder
What a storm! Did you hear the crash and blunder [Thanks to David Reynolds]
Ticket
I've got a bat for tonight's train.
Ticket
Wilson Picket
I want to go to New York, but I can’t afford the wilsons [Thanks to Tony Merrington]
Tie
I'm putting on me best whistle and me new peckham. [Thanks to Martin McKerrell]
Till (Cash register)
Jack & Jill
'E got nicked with 'is 'ands in the old jack and jill [Thanks to Martyn Tracy]
Time
Bird Lime
What's the bird? [Also commonly used to refer to doing time, as in prison. Thanks to John Gowland]
Time
Harry Lime
What's the Harry Lime? [Thanks to Barry Greenaway. Harry Lime is a character in 'The Third Man']
Time
Oi mate - what's the lemon & lime [Thanks to Anonymous]
Tit (breast)
Nice pair of brads [Thanks to Justyn Olby]
Tits (breasts)
Ballroom Blitz
She’s got marvellous ballrooms [Ballroom Blitz is a song by a group named Sweet - thanks to David Rolph]
Tits (breasts)
Nice Eartha's [Thanks to Louis and Natalie Brink]
Tits (breasts)
Wouldn’t mind getting me germans on her faintings [Thanks to Phil Woodford]
Tits (breasts)
Look at the Thr'penny's on her. [Thank to David Carruthers]
Titties (breasts)
Bristol Cities
She's got a lovely pair of Bristols. [BristolPirate2003 (I'm assuming a nom de plume) sent the following: The saying goes back hundreds of years from when sailors sailed to the "New World", between Bristol, England (the second largest port outside of London at the time) and the USA, traveling on to the tobacco plantations at Bristol, Virginia.
It was known as, "Going between the Bristol's" and became a sexual reference for what sailors would do to their women folk on returning to dry land!.
Titty (breast)
She's got a lovely set of walters [Thanks to Dean Cavanagh]
Toast
How about another round of 'oly. [Thanks to Jack Summers]
Toe
Bromley by Bow
You might want to fight, but I'm going to have it on me bromleys [ie. run away. Thanks to David Aqius]
Toker
That guy is an Al [Thanks to Andrew Backs]
Tonic
How about a nice Vera and super (Gin & Tonic) [Thanks to Vaughan Hully]
Toss
I couldn't give a Kate Moss. [Thanks to Alex Marsh]
Towel
Baden Powell
'ere, wrap a baden powell around you. Nobody wants to see that! [Thanks to Lord Russell Grineau]
Train
I missed me Michael [Thanks to Mike Hale]
Trainers (running shoes)
Claire Rayners
I've got me new Claire Rayners on [Thanks to John Tsang - Claire Rayner is an author]
Trainers (running shoes)
That's a nice pair of Gloria's [Thanks to John Ioannou]
Tramp (hobo)
I gave me last apple to that old paraffin [Thanks to Kevin Moynihan]
Tramp (hobo)
Thirteen Amp
Look at that bunch of thirteen amps over there. [Thanks to Steve Vincent - thirteen amps is the standard electrical receptacle in Britain]
Trouble
Stay away from him. He's right Barney.
Trousers
Lards
‘e was caught with ‘is lards down [Lards is from Callards & Bowsers, makers of fine toffee’s. Thanks to Duncan Reed. Lenny has noted that often the full expression, i.e. "'e was caught with his callards down" is used to avoid confusion with lardy meaning cigar (la-di-da).]
Trousers
Round the Houses
'e's got hisself a new set of round the houses [Thanks to Christopher Webb. Also used is "Council Houses" as in "'is councils haven't seen an pressing this year" - thanks to Gary Chatfield]
Turd (shit)
I need to dump a Douglas [Thanks to Mathew Dalton. Douglas Hurd is a politician.]
Turd (shit)
Richard the Third
He's a bit of a Richard. [Thanks to Ray Davis. Elaine MacGregor reports that this is also used as in "I'm just going for a Richard". Andrew notes that sometimes Edward the Third is also used.]
Umbrella
Wonderful - it's starting to rain and me without my Auntie Ella.
Voice
What's the matter with 'is 'obsons [Thanks to Roy Sharp]
Vomit
One more pint and I’ll Wallace, mate [Thanks to Mark Holmans]
Wages
I've blown the greengages down at the dogs [Thanks to Mike Smith]
Walk
After a heavy meal I like quick ball round the square.
Wank (masturbate)
Armitage Shank
He's havin' an armitage [Thanks to Ben Dear - Armitage Shank are makers of fine porcelain bathroom fixtures]
Wank (masturbate)
Jodrell Bank
Just off for a Jodrell [Jodrell Bank was the site of a University of Manchester botanical station, about 20 miles south of Manchester, back in the 1940's. Today, Jodrell Bank is a leading radio astronomy facility. Thanks to P Loynd]
Wank (masturbate)
He's having a barclays. [Thanks to Peter Cotterell]
Wank (masturbate)
'e's off having a J. Arthur [Thanks to Mike Dowding and Sparky James]
Wank (masturbate)
'e's having a lamb [Thanks to Alan Heard]
Wank (masturbate)
I'm going for a midland [Thanks to Jonathan Harris]
Wank (masturbate)
I'm off for a peddle! [Thanks to Aziz McMahon]
Wank (masturbate)
e's a right sherman [Thanks to David Hughes]
Wank (masturbate)
Tommy Tank
She's probably at home doing a tommy. [Thanks to Barbara Wilson – from Thomas the Tank Engine, a child's program]
Wanker
'e's a bit of a cab ranker [Thanks to Steve Tuffin]
Wanker
He’s a bit of a Kuwaiti tanker [Thanks to Daryl Egerton]
Wanker
He's a right merchant [Thanks to Justyn Olby]
Wanker
That referee is a right Ravi [Thanks to Justin Ellis]
Wanker
Sefton Branker
He’s a right Sefton Branker [Thanks to Paul Lundy – Sefton Branker was a Major, and later Air Vice Marshall, who was posted to India in the early 20th century]
Wanker
He’s a bit of a swiss banker [Thanks to Morris Childers]
Wanks
They’re a bunch of gordons [Thanks to Paul Island]
Watch (fob watch)
Kettle and Hob
That's a lovely kettle [Thanks to Mark Sparrow. I got the following from Dudley who wondered about the connection between a kettle and a watch - he passed on the following story:
It was commonplace for everyone to wear a pocket watch and chain in the waistcoat & it was also equally commonplace for the watch to be in the pawn shop as an interim loan security - however no one was keen for people to know that this situation was necessary, so the chain would be kept and worn as normal. In the kitchens of the day the fire would be an open one and there would be a bar or hook above it from which a length of chain would be secured and from there the kettle would be suspended above the fire to boil. So with this in mind, if the pocket watch chain, with no weight on it to hold it in the pocket, fell out and dangled minus the missing watch, there would always be some clever Charlie ready to pipe up "What's that for then, your bleedin' kettle?"
Dave Walker provided the following: The origin of "kettle" comes from illicit spirit making, distilled in what were large coppers known as kettles, hence, kettle of scotch = watch. I have always understood this to be the true origin, and it does rhyme, after all.
Water
Ten Furlongs (Mile and a quarter)
I'll have a gold watch and ten [Thanks to Del Sinnott]
Web Site
Check out me wind and kite [Thanks to Mark Holmans]
Weight
She'd better watch her pieces of eight [Thanks to Dave Connolly]
Whisky
I'll have a gay and I'm off. [Be careful where you use this]
White Wine
Plink Plonk
Open a bottle of plonk [The rhyme here is a bit convoluted – Plink Plonk rhymes with Vin Blanc which is, of course, a white wine. Thanks to Claire Reed]
Whore
She’s a bit of a four by four [Thanks to Dave Collard]
Whore
Roger Moore
I was trying to get my trousers back on, and the dirty roger is running up the street with my wallet [Thanks to Mark Adams]
Whore
She a right Thomas [Thanks to Pete Masters]
Wife
Now my old dutch, where are we off to tonight?
Wife
I'm taking my trouble dancing tonight.
Wig
I think that blokes wearing an Irish [Thanks to Martin Elliot]
Wig
What a syrup. [Thanks to Mark Pearson]
Window
Burnt Cinder
Close the bloody burnt [This works if you mispronounce window... winda - and cinder... cinda as any good Englishman would. Thanks to Sparky James]
Windshield Wiper
Billie Piper
You’d better put your billies on [Billie Piper is a pop singer - Thanks to Deane]
Windy
Mork and Mindy
Cor, it's bloody mork today [shows you that the slang is constantly evolving - thanks to Alan Little. Can also refer to someone who is a bit windy - "Don't feed him brussel sprouts again - he gets all Mork & Mindy" - thanks to Sparky James]
Wine
Where’s the porc waiter [Thanks to Tony Merrington]
Word
He left without so much as a dicky.
Wrong
Falun Gong
It seems to have all gone a bit falun gong [From semi-obscure evil Chinese cult with tendency to inaccuracy, therefore appropriate. Thanks to Keith Hale]
Wrong
Pete Tong
It's all gone a bit Pete [Pete Tong is an English DJ - thanks to Dan Collins and Keith Uden]
Yank
Septic Tank
He's not very bright... septic, you know. [Thanks to Peter Langdale for this one. Tony Alderton reports that this can also be shorted to Sepo]
Yank
Then this wooden bloke walked in [Thanks to Ian Coppell]
Yawn
Johnny Vaughn
Can’t hold back a good Johnny [Johnny Vaughn was the star of The Big Breakfast – thanks to Will Sowden]
Years
Ain't seen you in donkeys mate. [Thanks to Ossie Mair]
Yid
| gin vera lynn |
The Treaty of Westphalia ended which European war? | Cockney Rhyming Slang Dictionary |
1st (first class degree)
Geoff Hurst
He managed a Geoff [Geoff Hurst was a soccer player who played for England 49 times - Thanks to L H Webber]
2:2 (lower second class degree)
Desmond Tutu
He’s got his Desmond [Thanks to John Curtis-Rouse]
3rd (third class degree)
I got a Desmond but he only managed a Douglas [Thanks to Tim Herman]
All Dayer (all day drinking session)
Leo Sayer
Let's make it a Leo Sayer. [Thanks to Sean Gillespie]
All Dayer (all day drinking)
Gary Player
Let's make it a Gary Player [Thanks to J. Jeffreys]
Alone
Jack Jones
He went to the pub all Jack. [This doubtless comes from a Music Hall song sung, somewhere between 1900 and 1914, by the Cockney songster Gus Elen entitled " 'E dunno where 'e are". Gus is buried in Streatham Park Cemetery, London. I believe he died about 1944. The song is about a bloke, Jack Jones, who comes into a sum of money and thinks himself too good for his former mates:
"When he's up at Covint Gardin you can see 'im a standin' all alone, / Won't join in a quiet little Tommy Dodd (half-pint of beer), drinking Scotch and Soda on 'is own, / 'E 'as the cheek and impidence to call 'is muvver 'is Ma, / Since Jack Jones came into a little bit o' splosh, well 'e dunno where 'e are." - Thanks to Frank Haigh for the explanation of the source]
Alone
I'm all pat tonight. [Thanks to Alan Little]
Alone
Todd Sloan
Looks like I'm on my Todd tonight. [Thanks to Jeff McCartney. - Frank Baynham reports that Todd Sloan was a famous jockey (I've found a listing for him at the Wikiup ranch in Northern California) who had a tendency to run at the front of the pack... all alone.]
Arm
He was promoted in the daft. [Thanks to Alan Little]
Army
Kate Karney
He's off and joined the Kate. [Kate Carney (1869-1950), a comedienne, was born into a music hall family in London. She made her first stage appearance at the Albert Music Hall, Canning Town, and later became famous for her cockney character songs. These songs established her at the top of the bill and she was described as 'The Cockney Queen'. - Thanks to Cab for the information on Kate]
Arse
April in Paris
I’m ‘aving terrible trouble with me April [How can such a simple word have so many convoluted references? April in Paris - Aris (from Aristotle - bottle which is from bottle and glass - arse.) Whew – Thanks to Peter Chrisp]
Arse
Aristotle
I gave him a good kick up the Aris. (Aristotle=Bottle=Bottle and Glass=Arse; therefore, Aris=Arse) See also bottle.
Arse
I gave him a good kick up the bottle.
Arse
Stick it up your khyber.
Arse
Rolf Harris
She kicked him in the Rolf [Rolf Harris wrote "My Boomerang Won't Come Back". See the reference above to Aristotle. Thanks to Matt Fisher]
Arsehole
He's a bit of an elephant [Thanks to Steve Fuller]
Arsehole
That geezer is a right jam roll. [Thanks to Robert Lynch]
Arsehole
‘e’s a bit of a merry old soul [Thanks to Sanor]
Aunt
He didn't know what to get his Mrs. Chant for Christmas [Thanks to Alan Little]
Back
Me cadbury's playing me up [Thanks to Pete Powis]
Back
Ooh! Me 'ammer and tack's playing me up again. [Thanks to James]
Back
He fell off the roof and broke his hat rack [Thanks to Martin Hillier]
Back
My old Union Jack's giving me gyp something chronic [Thanks to Ray Wells]
Bad
That dinner was a bit sorry.
Balls (testicles)
Me pants are too tight and making me berlins wobbly [Thanks to Stephen Hartwig]
Balls (testicles)
Cobbler's Awls
Go on! Kick him in the cobblers! [Can also be used to express disbelief, such as "Cobblers! That's not the way it is."]
Balls (testicles)
Coffee Stalls
He gave him a kick in the corfies [Thanks to Rick Hardy - the pronunciation is reported to be corfie, not coffee]
Balls (testicles)
I got him in his niagara's [Thanks to Alan Little]
Balls (testicles)
He nearly got hit in the orchestra [Thanks to Alan Little]
Balls (testicles)
I kicked this geezer straight in the Royal Alberts [Thanks to Steve Smith]
Banana
Gertie Gitana
I like a gertie on my cereal [Possibly an old music hall star - Thanks to Christopher Webb. Sue Lawrence adds: "Gertie Gitana was indeed a music hall performer. My mother, now ninety-two, spent her early life in Dalston and used to go and see her at the Hackney Empire.]
Bank
Armitage Shank
I’m off to the armitage [Armitage Shank is the maker of fine porcelain fixtures found in washrooms everywhere - Thanks to Ed Leveque.]
Bank
I won't be long - just going to the cab rank [Thanks to Mike Smith]
Bank
He lost his house to the iron.
Bank
Gotta get a cock & hen from the J Arthur [Thanks to Aaron Marchant]
Bank
He's off to the Sherman [Thanks to Iain Gordon]
Bank
Tommy Tank
I'm going 'round the tommy to pay in a gooses. [See also Wank - thanks to Christopher Webb]
Bar (pub)
Jack Tar
I'm off to the Jack. [See also 'Alone' and Bar (pub). Could be very confusing if you're going alone - "I'm off to the jack jack". Or, if you were telling your brother Jack, "I'm off to the jack jack, Jack"]
Bar (pub)
I saw him at the near.
Barber
I’m off to Dover to get me barnet sorted [Thanks to Mark Vernon]
Barking (mad)
Three stops down from Plaistow
He’s three stops down from Plaistow [from the London Underground District Line – thanks to Matthew Jackson]
Barrow
Cock Sparrow
He's wheeling his cock 'round the market. [Lenny notes that in the north this expression can also refer to a friend, as in "Hello me old cock sparrow"]
Bath
I’m just going for a steffi [Thanks to David Shea]
Bed
I'm off to Uncle Ted.
Beer
Can I buy you a pig?
Beers
'ow about a Brittney?" [Brittney Spears is a popular singer. Thanks to Ben Allen]
Believe
I don't Adam and Eve it! [Usually full slang expression is used]
Belly
I punched him in the Auntie but he didn't even notice.
Belly
Derby Kelly
That's the stuff for you Derby Kell; makes you fit and it makes you well [From old cockney song Boiled Beef and Carrots - pronounced Darby. Thanks to Christopher Webb]
Belly
Look at the new delhi on him! [Thanks to Daniel Williams]
Bender (homosexual)
Leo Fender
That blokes a bit leo after all. [The late Leo Fender was the inventor of the Stratocaster guitar - thanks to Richard English]
Bent (criminal)
'e's stoke he is. [Thanks to Alan Little. See also 'Bent (gay)']
Bent (homosexual)
Behind with the Rent
You're not behind with the rent? [Thanks to Gez who heard this in the film 'Layer Cake'
Bent (homosexual)
Bet you any money e's a duke [Thanks to Tom Hoyle]
Bent (homosexual)
That bloke's a bit stoke [Thanks to Alex Wood. See also 'Bent (criminal)']
Best
I'm Mae West at Cockney Rhyming Slang [Thanks to Kris Grissom]
Beverage
Edna Everage
Would you like an Edna? [Edna Everage (aka Dame Edna) is a star, darling! Thanks to Sue Cope.]
Bill (statement)
I got my Beecham's from the tax people.
Bill (statement)
I'm going home - can I have my Jack? [See also Hill]
Bill (statement)
Jimmy Hill
Have we paid the Jimmy Hill yet? [Thanks to Magnus Spencer. Jimmy Hill is a football pundit and former player]
Bird
Look what that bloody Richard's done to my car!
Bird (woman)
I’m off to see me lemon [Thanks to Jesse Wynne]
Bitter (beer)
I've tried that new apple but I prefer my salmon [Salmon and trout - stout].
Bitter (beer)
Give us a pint of gary [Thanks to Gareth Evans]
Bitter (beer)
'ere. I could use a giggle. [Thanks to Martin McKerrell]
Bitter (beer)
A pint of kitty litter please [Thanks to Mark]
Blind
Are you completely bacon? [Thanks to Damon]
Blonde
I pulled a top magic wand last night [Thanks to Lee Henderson]
Boat
I took my nanny out on the river.
Bog (toilet)
Sorry mate - where's the kermit [Thanks to Ray Wells]
Boil
'e'd be nice looking once his canov's clear up. [Thanks to Marie Gordon]
Boil
Conan Doyle
'e's got a conan on his bottle the size of me fist! [Thanks to Marie Gordon. John Mahony adds that very often the expression used is "Sir Arthur", as in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - He's got a Sir Arfur on his bushel]
Bollocks
Jackson Pollock
This modern art's a load of old Jacksons [Thanks to Justin Ellis. Pollock is a "20th Century strange artist".]
Bones
Ooh, me toms are clicking [Thanks to Hefin Gill]
Book
I've read the new fish by Deighton.
Boots
You can't go out in the rain without your daisies.
Booze
I need some Tom [Thanks to Christopher Loosemore]
Boozer (pub)
Battle Cruiser
I'm going to pop round the battle before I go to the party [Thanks to Peter Cotterell and Robert Manikiam]]
Boss
Never trust a joe [Joe Goss was a talented boxer - Thanks to Sanor]
Boss
My bloody pitch kept me late again.
Bottle
Aristotle
If you want milk, put the Ari on the doorstep. [Every now and again they throw a curve at you. One person has suggested that, not being familiar with Aristotle, early Cockney's might have assumed the name was Harry Stottle! Heard from John Mahony who says that when one uses the expression "lose your bottle" it means to lose the contents of your arse, i.e. "he's shit it", but Ken Caleno says it means to lose your courage (from Courage's bottled beer)]
Bra
Tung Chee Hwa
I'm off to buy a tung for the troubles birthday [Admittedly this isn't in common usage - the person who submitted it is an ex-pat living in Hong Kong - I just think it's neat that we Brits will try to bugger up the language of every country we visit! Tung Chee Hwa is the Chief Executive of Hong Kong.]
Braces
He's got his new airs on.
Brandy
A small drop of fine would suit me.
Bread
Hey, mum. Can I have some Uncle Fred with this?
Bread (money)
Where's he stashed his poppy [Thanks to Emyr Marks]
Breast
‘ave a look at her easts [Thanks to Sanor]
Broke (financial)
I'm skint mate. Bleedin' hearts.
Brother
Manhole Cover
My manhole cover is coming for a visit. [How does manhole cover rhyme with brother you ask? Simple... if you pronounce brother as "bruvver"!]
Brother
'ere's me one and t'other now. [Thanks to Bernie Albert]
Brussel Sprout
Without a brussel mate [Thanks to Chris Ducker]
Brussel Sprout
Give us a brussel when you're up to it.
Bug
The bed was full of steamers [Thanks to Roger]
Bum
He just sat on his kingdom all day [Thanks to Alan Little]
Bunion
Oooh – ‘e’s stepped on me Spanish onion [Thanks to Kristin]
Bunk (bed)
I could use a couple of hours in the pineapple [Thanks to B. Hygate]
Burst (urinate)
Geoff Hurst
I'm dying for a Geoff. [Geoff Hurst's World Cup Final hat-trick v West Germany at Wembley in 1966 and six goals v Sunderland (19.10.68) two years later, have been woven into the fabric of football folklore. Thanks to Stuart Burgess & Gordon Leel]
Bus
So Say All Of Us
hurry - here's the sosay [Thanks to Peter Duggan]
Butter
Would you like some talk on your toast [Thanks to Barry Greenaway]
Cab (taxi)
See if you can flag down a flounder [Thanks to Chris Webb]
Cab (taxi)
'e's been on the sherbet for five years (driving a cab). [Thanks to John Butt]
Cab (taxi)
Let's look for a smash and grab [Thanks to Simon Inger]
Café (pronounced caff)
I'm off to the riff raff [Thanks to Mike Leith]
Cake
Sexton Blake
ow about a nice slice of sexton? [Possible that Sexton Blake was a detective in comic book stories (?) - thanks to Christopher Webb]
Candle
Look at all the Harry's on his cake.
Cans (headphones)
'ere - put your desperates on [Thanks to Chris Hanley]
Car
Bloody jam is down again.
Car
Kareem Abdul Jabbar
Bloody kareem is down again. [Kareem Abdul Jabbar is a basketball player in the U.S. How he got into rhyming slang I'll never know! Thanks to Richard English]
Cardy (cardigan)
Oh my God – look at that awful Linda he’s wearing [Thanks to Richard Grieve]
Cash
That blokes not short of Arthur [Thanks to Andrew Turner]
Cash
Bangers and Mash
I knew his cheques were dodgy, so I got him to pay me in bangers [Thanks to John Basquill - see also Sausage and Mash]
Cash
That blokes not short of Crosby [Thanks to Andrew Turner]
Cash
Harry Nash
There’s a discount if you’re paying Harry Nash [Thanks to Phil Woodford – if anyone knows the origin of this I’d appreciate it]
Cash
Oscar Asche
Haven't got an Oscar [Oscar Asche (1871-1936) was an actor and producer or some renown. Thanks to Ruth Summers]
Cash
Sausage and Mash
I haven't got a sausage. [A little bit different, but fairly common in many English-speaking countries - see also bangers and mash].
Cash
I haven't any slap dash on me [Thanks to Anonymous]
Cell
I've got three more years in this flower.
Chair
Have a lion's while you wait.
Chalk
All I got for my birthday is a bit of duke.
Chancer (someone not qualified)
Bengal Lancer
News paper adds would state no bengal lancers when advertising for tradesmen. [Thanks to Ray Davis]
Change
I haven’t got and rifle for the bus [Thanks to Claire Reed]
Chat
Let’s get together for a bowler [Thanks to Simon Bray-Stacey]
Cheek
He kissed me on my hide and seek [Thanks to Gillian White]
Cheese
I'm meeting the big John Cleese today at work [Thanks to Mitchell]
Cheese
Stand at Ease
Wouldn't mind a bit of ease. [For whatever reason this one is backwards - the only rule is that there are no rules!].
Cheque
He stuck me with a bouncing goose.
Cheque
Gregory Peck
I never 'ad any bread on me, so I 'ad to pay by Gregory. [Thanks to Peter Cotterell] or, [another example from Kevin McKerrell] - I'm going down to the iron to sausage a gregory.
Cheque
I'll send you a Jeff Beck [Thanks to Jimmy Horowitz]
Chest
I had to punch him in the bird's nest. [Thanks to Robert Lynch]
Chest
George Best
(In football) Over 'ere son, on me Georgie [Thanks to S. Sexton. George Best is a famous footballer]
Chest
This cough is killing me pants and vest
Child Molester
Charlie Chester
Have you seen how young ‘is bird is? He’s a right Charlie Chester [Thanks to Tim B]
Child Molester
He's a bit of an Uncle Fester [Thanks to Graham Taylor]
Chin
He's got a big biscuit [Thanks to Keith Cole]
Chink (Chinese)
We're going to get rinky take-away. [Thanks to Sparky James]
Chink (Chinese)
Tiddley Wink
‘e’s not from around these parts. I think e’s a tiddley [Thanks to Stewart Stallworthy]
Chips
I'll have a large plate of jockey's [Thanks to Paul Aylett]
Chum
How yer doing, my old fruit [Thanks to Nick Williams]
Cider
Pint of Easy Rider please [Thanks to Jo Miller]
Cider
Sue Ryder
Give us a pint of Sue, mate [Thanks to Graham Taylor - The Sue Ryder Foundation works for the sick and disabled]
Cider
Can I get two pints of winona please [Thanks to Tony Whelan]
Cigar
La-di-da
I enjoy a good la-di-da after me meal [Thanks to Sparky James. Lenny wrote to say that Michael Caine (a somewhat well known Cockney) once asked if he could light up a lardy in his taxi.]
Clanger (mistake)
Coat Hanger
He dropped a coat [Thanks to Neil Devlin. A clanger is when you really put your foot in it.]
Class
He don't have the bottle [Thanks to Rob O'Connor]
Clink (jail)
Kitchen Sink
After that last episode he'll be in the kitchen for a while [Thanks to Wendy Shaw]
Clock
Dickory Dock
What's the time on the dickory? [Paul Millington writes that cabbies used the expression to refer to the meter [“What’s on the hickory then?)]
Clue
He ain't got a danny. [Thanks to Charly Large]
Clue
'e hasn't got a pot of glue [Thanks to Martin Groves]
Clue
I haven't got a scooby [Thanks to Jonathan Harris]
Clue
He hasn’t got a bloody vinda [Thanks to Carla Forbes Pool]
Coat
Put your nannies on - it's taters out. [Thanks to Martin McKerrell]
Coat
I left my weasel in the pub. [See also throat]
Cockney Rhyming Slang
We're talking about chitty chitty on this web site [Thanks to Hywel Jones]
Coffee
I’ll have an everton [Thanks to Andrew Mkandawire]
Cold
Blimey – it’s taters out there [Thanks to Sparky James]
Cold
Cor, taters out there init? [Thanks to Ossie Mair]
Cook
My missus couldn't babble to save her life. [See also Crook]
Copper (police)
He got nabbed by the grasshoppers.
Coppers (police)
Blimey - I think the bottles are on to me!
Corner
I'll meet you 'round the Johnnie.
Cough
That’s a nasty Boris you’ve got there mate [Thanks to Paul Liney]
Cough
That’s a nasty old boris you’ve got there son [Thanks to Paul Liney]
Cough
Darren Gough
This Darren is killing me pants and vest [Darren Gough is one heck of a cricketer.]
Crabs (pubic lice)
E's got a right case of marbles [Thanks to Chris Webb]
Crap
Macca
I'm off for a macca [Mark Crowe admits this ones a bit convoluted but apparently it's common in some areas so I've included it. Comes from Macaroni = pony; Pony & Trap = Crap]
Crap
Pony and Trap
'Ang on, mate. Just gotta 'ave a pony [Thanks to Peter Cotterell]. Or, another usage if something's a bit off (i.e.. not of good quality) - That's a bit pony mate! [Thanks to Jon Hughes]
Crash
He was in a fearsome sausage.
Crime
Not one lemon reported all night [Thanks to Alan Little]
Cripple
The old boy's a raspberry [Thanks to Sparky James]
Crook
He's always on the babble. [Meaning he's always planning something crooked. See also Cook].
Cuddle
Come and give us a nice mix and muddle [Thanks to Claire Reed]
C**t
C**t
Ethan Hunt
He's a right Ethan [Ethan Hunt is the main characters name in the Mission: Impossible movies. Thanks to Steve Fuller]
C**t
He's after your grumble [Thanks to Chris Webb]
C**t
That ones a right struggle.
Cupboard
There's nothing in the mother.
Curry
Ruby Murray
I'm going for a ruby. [Thanks to Mark Pearson][Ruby Murray was a singer in Glasgow back in the 30's or 40's - thanks to Peter Cotterell for the Ruby Murray info. N. Matthews tells me that Ruby was an Irish singer (1935-1996) popular in the mid to late 1950's. Got a note from Sandy Everitt who knew Ruby Murray – Ruby was a top recording star in the 1950’s who achieved the rare feat of having five songs in the top 20 at one time. Ruby died in 1996]
Curtains
Shut the Richards - I'm trying to get some kip [Thanks to Ray Wells]
Darlin'
You look lovely tonight, me old briney.
Daughter
I'm taking me bricks and mortar shopping. [Thanks to Geoff and Niki Sams]
Daughter
He brought his didn't oughta [Thanks to Chris Webb]
Daughter
That blokes lamb is a real stunner [Thanks to Peter Schlosser]
Dead
I'm telling you, mate. He's brown bread [Thanks to Peter Cotterell]
Dead
Old Jim is hovis [Thanks to Jeremy Williams]
Deaf
Mutt and Jeff
Poor buggers mutt and jeff. [Usually full slang expression is used. Keith Turner reports that very often the expression is shortened to mutton as in "Poor buggers mutton".]
Decks (turntables)
Posh ‘n Becks
Have you got yer posh ‘n becks yet [Thanks to anonymous – see Sex - Posh ‘n Becks]
Dick (penis)
Hampton Wick
He got his hampton out in the pub last night [Thanks to David Agius. John Parker adds: The best use of this was the Goon Show which for a long time had a mythical character called Hugh Hampton where the Hugh was mispronounced as Huge. This running joke was totally missed by the BBC management, who would never have let anything like that on the radio in the 50s/60s. Graham recalls that the characters name was actually Hugh Jampton - same end result.]
Dick (penis)
She couldn't keep her jazz bands off my three card trick [Thanks to Peter Norman]
Dictionary
I’ll just check the meaning in the tom [Thanks to Leon Walker]
Dinner
Is my Jim ready yet?
Dinner
What’s for lilly and skinner [Thanks to Jud Chimp]
Dinner
Michael Winner
I’m Hank Marvin. I could use some top Jackie for me Michael Winner. [Thanks to Simon Rowan. Michael Winner is the food critic for the Sunday Times]
Doddle (easy or straight forward)
Glenn Hoddle
That jobs a Glen Hoddle. [Glenn Hoddle is the coach of the English football team replacing Terry Venables. Thanks to Dave Brown]
Dog
My bloody cherry is off again.
Dole (welfare)
Ear’ole (Ear Hole)
If I get the tin tack I’m going on the ear’ole [Thanks to Paul Liney]
Dole (welfare)
Nat King Cole
I've got to sign on the old Nat King [Thanks to Hywel Jones. Ray Wells says it's also known as Old King Cole]
Dole (welfare)
Rock and Roll
'e hasn't worked a day in 'is life... 'e's always been on the rock and roll. [Thanks to Mark Moule]
Dole (welfare)
He ain't worked in years - he's on the sausage. [Thanks to Martin McKerrell]
Dollar
Oxford Scholar
Stupid horse cost me an Oxford. [Pre-war the dollar was worth just less than 5 shillings, so an Oxford is worth 5 shillings or a crown - thanks to Jim Williams]
Door
They broke the 'enry down at number thirty two [Thanks to Alan Little]
Dope (marijuana)
I think he’s been smoking a bit of Bob Hope [Thanks to Phil Woodford]
Draft
There's a bit of a george in here. [Thanks to Jim Battman]
Drink
Tiddley Wink
Just one more tiddley and I'm off; or, He's popped down to the pub for a tiddle.
Drugs
‘ere mate. Got any Persians? [Thanks to David Rolph]
Drunk
He shouldn't be driving! He's bloody elephant's.
Dump (shit)
Camel's Hump
Just going for a quick camels [Thanks to Kevin Lowther who tells me this one was used in Abu Dhabi]
Dump (shit)
I've got to go for a donald [Thanks to Peter Conway]
Dump (shit)
Forrest Gump
"Off out in 10 minutes?" "Yeah, just got to have a Forrest first". [Thanks to Richard English]
Dyke (Lesbian)
Magnus Pike
She looks like a right Magnus [Thanks to Steve Vincent - Magnus Pike was an 'off the wall' TV personality who would (and could) explain complex scientific concepts to kids]
Dyke (lesbian)
She’s a right Raleigh [Thanks to Claire Reed]
Dyke (Lesbian)
Three Wheel Trike
She's a bit of a three wheeler [Thanks to Barry Smith. Ray Wells has heard the expression rusy bike as well]
Early
‘e’s never gotten here liz [Thanks to Paul Woodford
Earner
The jobs not much but it's a nice little bunsen [Thanks to Laurie Bamford]
Ears
Look at the size of 'is ten speeds [Thanks to Billy Wade]
Engineer
He knows his stuff. He is a ginger, after all.
Erection
He's holding a standing election in his callards [Thanks to Buddy]
Evening Post
Go and buy the beans on toast will you son [Thanks to Hefin Gill]
Eyes
Fable
Railway Timetable
(After someone tells you a tall tale) What’s he been doin’? Reading a railway table. [Might also be substituted with bus timetable – Thanks to Paul Island]
Face
Nice legs, shame about the boat. [Also a good song by The Monks]
Face
It's too cold outside; no good for my cod [Thanks to Mark Elston]
Face
She's got a lovely Chevy Chase [Thanks to Adrian Calvin and Paul Beer]
Face
Jem Mace
Wipe that look off your jem [Thanks to Chris Webb - Jem Mace was a boxer in the late 19th century]
Facts
'Ere, you've got your brass wrong! [Thanks to Alan Little]
Fag (cigarette)
I’m going out for a quick cough and drag [Thanks to Trevor Baker]
Fag (cigarette)
Have you got a harry? [Frank Baynham reports that Harry Wragg was a famous jockey]
Fag (cigarette)
Melvynn Bragg
Oi, mate. Can I scrounge a melvynn of you [Thanks to Mark Holmans who reports that Melvynn was a television host]
Fag (cigarette)
Give us an oily. [Thanks to David Hughes]
Fag (cigarette)
Toe Rag / Tow Rag
Lend us a sprarsy - I wanna get some toe-rags [Thanks to Mike Smith. Mike says he thinks toe-rags refer to the rags people used to wrap around their feet when they didn't have shoes… we used to call our socks toe-rags which is probably the same origin. He also says his old dad used to call some people a toe-rag and suspects it might have been an insult (reference to fag = queer).]
[Martin McKerrell adds that toe rag referred to a small time petty thief, in his words "the sort of dirty little toe rag who would live next door and break into your house and nick the Christmas presents".] [Gillian adds "term is commonly used, at least in Scotland, meaning just a bit stronger than "rascal" and probably spelled without the e: 'You little torag.' I always thought it did come from terms used to refer to travelling people."][And Michael Kendix adds: I heard that "Toe rag" came from "Taureg" a nomadic people living in the Arabian desert, regarded by colonial powers as "low life's". So, it would be insulting to refer to someone as a "Toe rag", which, as you say, could be used to describe a ne'er do well! And Paul offers a somewhat disturbing image: In the times of Nelsons navy paper was too expensive to use in the head (toilet) and so sailors would get a short length of rope (toe) and unravel it until it resemble rags (toe-rag), this would then be used instead of paper and had the added benefit that t could be washed and re-used.]
Fake
Sexton Blake
He wears a Cartier but it's a sexton [Thanks to Martyn Tracy. See also 'Sexton Blake-cake']
Fanny
Auntie Annie
She’s just sitting at home on her Auntie Annie [Thanks to “the boys at CHS]
Fanny
She's just sitting at home on her Jack and Danny [Thanks to Glenn Collignon]
Farmer (see usage)
Arnold Palmer
'e's a right Arnold [Thanks to Nick Williams. I love this one - it refers to a golfer who spends a lot of time in the long grass around a course]
Farrahs (trousers)
Bow and Arrows
Nice pair of bow and arrows [Use your best Cockney accent here. The reference is to Farrah slacks – Thanks to Simon Mahon]
Fart
D'Oyly Carte
Have you done a d’oyly? [D’Oyly Carte is a light opera company – thanks to David Poulten]
Fart
Have you just horse & carted? [Thanks to Paul Beer]
Fart
Orson (i.e. Horse ‘n Cart)
He’s dropped an orson [Thanks to Paul Gardner]
Fart
He blew a raspberry. [Thanks to Tobias Bard]
Favour
Do us a cheesy, put it on your web site. [Thanks to Ed Wright]
Feel
I fancy an orange of her Bristols! [Thanks to Chris Webb)
Feet
Me dogs are barking [Meaning my feet are tired. Thanks to Sparky]
Feet
Get your plates of the table.
Fibs (lies)
Scott Gibbs
He’s been telling scotts again [Scott Gibbs is a rugby star – thanks to Hefin Gill]
Fight
He'd rather read than walk away.
Fine
I'm calvin today. [Thanks to Tony Alderton]
Fish
Good day at the stream. Got a pair of Lilian's.
Fist
Next thing I know he's got his Oliver in my face.
Fiver (£5 note)
Ere, that bloke still owes me lady! [Thanks to Peter Cotterell]
Fiver (£5 note)
'ere - you owe me a taxi [Thanks to David]
Flares (wide bottom trousers)
Lionel Blaire
Got on his best lionels for the evening. [Lionel Blaire is a performer. Thanks to Josh Holmes]
Flash
Don’t act so lemon [Thanks to Simon Mahon]
Flash (natty)
'e was alway a bit of an 'arry [Thanks to Sparky James]
Flowers
I forgot it was my anniversary, so I picked some aprils on the way home.
Flying Squad
Here comes the Sweeney [the Flying Squad are the police]
Fork
Keep your fingers out of your grub, man. Use a duke [Thanks to Sparky James]
Function
Garage
Steve Claridge
I've just gotta go down the Steve for some petrol [Thanks to Jon Simmons. It helps if you realize that garage, which commonly rhymes with mirage in North America, more usually rhymes with carriage in Britain. A great Tony Hancock piece has him trying to act all condescending and pronouncing it the American way, confusing the ears off a local constable. Steve Claridge is a venerable striker, late of Leicester.]
Gargle (drunk)
'e's right Authur'd [Thanks to John Claffey]
Gay (homosexual)
Bale of Hay
Don't bother Britany - he's bale. [Thanks to Uncle Custard who also provided the example of usage… just who do you suppose Britany is?]
Gay (homosexual)
Doctor Dre
E’s a bit of a doctor [Dr. Dre is a rap artist – Thanks to Will Sowden]
Gay (homosexual)
That boozer is Finlay ub [Thanks to Stuart Taylor –Finlay Quaye is a musician]
Gay (homosexual)
He's a right first [Thanks to Jeremy Williams]
Gay (homosexual)
Ted Ray
He's a bit Ted. [Ted Ray was an actor/comedian in the sixties. This association actually comes from a particularly bad movie "My Wife's Family" where he played a character called Jack Gay. Thanks to Stuart Burgess & Gordon Leel]
Geezer
He’s a right fridge [Thanks to Tomma]
Geezer
'e's not a bad old ice cream [Thanks to Vince Scott]
Geezer
'ere, look at the 'ampsteads on that Julius [Thanks to Dudley]
Geezer
I saw that lemon we met in the rub-a-dub last night [Thanks to Mark Foster]
Ghost
Looks like he’s seen a pillar [Thanks to Neil Gemmill]
Gin
Another mothers would sit well.
Gin
I'll have a small needle and tonic.
Gin
I'll have a drop of nose and chin [Thanks to Philip Hart]
Gin
I enjoy a bit of thick and thin [Thanks to Beanage]
Gin
Vera Lynn
I'll have one more Vera before I hit the frog and toad. [Thanks to Mark Hamnett]
Girl
Come over here, me old Cadbury [Thanks to Jonathan Burroughs]
Girl
She looks like a nice twist [Thanks to Alan Little]
Git (twit)
That bloke's a right strawberry [Thanks to Dennis Wise]
Gloves
Where's me turtle dove's [Thanks to John Ioannou]
Go
Scapa Flow
Scapa! [Actually pronounced 'Scarper' - just one example of not being satisfied with the slang, they then mispronounce the word to thoroughly confuse everyone. Robert Benoist sent me the following which I found interesting: Scapa Floe was a Royal Naval base established in the 20th Century and famous for the scuttling of the German fleet in 1919 and a subsequent WW11 battle. Before 1919 it is doubtful whether anyone in the country let alone cockneys would have heard of it.
In Mayhew's London Labour and the London Poor (vol 3 1851) there is a chapter on Punch Talk (basically the slang language used by traveling Italian Punch and Judy men and entertainers). This slang contains both English and Italian roots. In Punch Talk "To get away quickly" e.g. from the police or authority is spoken and written as scarper. This comes from the Italian Scappare. Punch talk formed one of the roots of Polari which also incorporated rhyming slang and was used first by the east end street traders, and then the west end street traders, and finally by homosexuals in the 40's and 50's. There are almost as many Polari expressions currently used as there are rhyming slang. It is probable that after 1919 it was imagined that the word had originated in the rhyming slang after Scapa Floe but I think the evidence firmly points to its Italian Origins.]
Gob (mouth)
He's got a big gang [Thanks to Dave Connolly]
Good
That sounds like it's robin [Thanks to Alan Little]
Gossip
Rex Mossop
What's the latest Rex, love? [Thanks to Rebecca Marks who tells me Rex is an Aussie sports commentator]
Grand (1000)
He owes me a bag [Thanks to Keith Cole]
Gravy
Can I have some army for my mashed?
Greek
Bubble and Squeak
'E's not a bad bloke for a bubble. [Bubble and squeak is a uniquely British dish of fried mashed potatoes and something green (usually cabbage, but left over brussel sprouts work well). Thanks to Mark Pearson]
Guts (stomach)
Newington Butts
Me Newingtons are playing me up. [Thanks to Mark Crowe and Martin McKerrell - Michael Faraday (the magnet fellow) born in Newington Butts, the area of London now known as the Elephant and Castle]
Gutter
Found him laying in the bread and butter. [Usually full slang expression is used]
Gym
Fatboy Slim
I’m going down to the fatboy [Fatboy Slim is a recording artist – thanks to Martin Rowe]
Haddock
Fanny and chips for supper? [Thanks to Sparky James]
Hair
She must be going out - she's got her Barnet done.
Hair
Biffo the Bear
Me biffo’s not looking the best today [Biffo the Bear was on the cover of Beano from 1948 to 1974. Thanks to Gillian White]
Hair
She's got beautiful shiny bonney.
Half (a pint)
Cow and Calf
I could use a cow and calf [Thanks to Nick Williams. He reports that there's a pub in Grenoside (near Sheffield) called the Cow and Calf]
Hand
I had it in my St. Martins a minute ago [Thanks to Alan Little]
Hands
Get your germans off my missus.
Hands
Get yer jazz bands off me [Thanks to Peter Norman]
Hat
Titfer (Tit for Tat)
Lovely titfer. [This one uses the first two words - probably because saying "lovely tit" proved awkward]
Head
Don't just stand there - use your loaf.
Head (fellatio)
She likes to give blood. [Thanks to Kirk Whitworth]
Heart
Me strawberry belongs to you [Thanks to John Curnow]
Hell
My knee is giving me gyp today. [Thanks to Chris Webb]
Hemorrhoid
Oooh, me clements! [Thanks to Ian Coppell]
Hemorrhoids
Emma Freuds
Me Emma's are playing me up. [Emma is a BBC DJ on Radio 1 - Thanks to Stuart Burgess & Gordon Leel]
Heroin
Vera Lynn
Goodbye Vera Lynn [from Pink Floyd – “Goodbye Vera Lynn.
I'm leaving you today" meaning I’m giving up heroin, written at that time for Gilmore. Thanks to Joe Lovick for the slang and the references]
Hill
The store is up the jack. [See also Bill]
Hole
Let's pop 'round to my drum (referring to someone's house). [Thanks to Dave Hughes]
Home
Let's pop 'round his pope and fetch him.
Host
Who’s the pillar and post for tonight? [Thanks to Dave]
Hot
Don't touch that - it's bloody peasy.
House
Went 'round to his cat to wake him up.
House
Mickey Mouse
I'm taking my missus to the mickey tonight. [Usually means a theatre rather than a residence]
Howler (mistake)
I made a right Robbie yesterday [Thanks to John Revell – Robbie Fowler plays for Liverpool]
Hymen
Bill Wyman
Virgin? Don’t think so mate – not a bill in sight [Thanks to Benjamin Smith. Bill Wyman is, of course, with the Rolling Stones and Benjamin reports he had a bit of a penchant for the younger cadburys]
Ice
I'll have a Gold and Blind [Thanks to John Gibson]
Jacket
Desmond Hackett
He's sporting a new Desmond [Thanks to Chris Webb - Mr. Hackett is a renowned Daily Express sports reporter]
Jacket
I bought a new tennis racquet [Thanks to Laura Clifford]
Jail
One drink too many and I get seven days in the bucket.
Jail
'e's doing time in the ginger. [Thanks to Wendy Shaw]
Jeans
Harpers and Queens
He's sporting a new pair of harpers [Thanks to Neale Davison. Harpers and Queen is a woman's magazine "Published in London for the World"]
Jeans
How do you like me new runners [Thanks to Darren Foreman]
Jeans
Me new steves are a bit tight [Thanks to Mark Holmans]
Jew
If you're a fiver then today's your Sabbath.
Jew
He's not from around here - he's a four.
Jewellery
That bloke looks a flash, look at all his tom. [Thank the Peter Cotterell]
Jive
She can’t half duck and dive [Thanks to Podster]
Job
'e can't afford it - 'e ain't got a corn [Thanks to Mike Smith]
Job
Me new motor is just the dog's knob [Thanks to Nick Williams]
Jock (Scot)
Sweaty Sock
There was an Englishman, an Irishman and a sweaty on a boat... [This term is usually derogatory. Thanks to Dave Brown]
Joke
Go on then, tell us another rum and coke [Thanks to Martin Hillier]
Joker
Who's this double yoker [Thanks to Joel Glover]
Judge
I'm up in front of the Barnaby tomorrow morning.
Jugs (breasts)
That girls has a lovely set of carpets [Thanks to Benjamin Smith]
Kebab (shish kebab)
Bloody hell, boys, I'm proper Oliver'd - anyone fancy a Phil? [Thanks to John Loveday]
Keen
She's a bit torvill on my mate Barry [Thanks to Darryl Middleton]
Kettle
I put the Hansel on for a nice cup of Rosy [Thanks to Peter Robinson]
Key
Where’s me brenda’s? [Thanks to Nick Webster]
Key
Where's me Vivian? [Thanks to John Kitley]
Keys
Have you seen me brucies? [Thanks to Graham Cooper]
Keys
‘ave you seen me johns [Thanks to Mathew]
Keys
Have you got your knobblies with you? [Thanks to Beeman]
Kidney
Me bo’s are giving me gyp [Thanks to Jay]
Kids
A nice girl but too many dustbin's.
Kids
Couldn't hear a thing 'cause of all the Godfor's.
Kids
I'm forever buy clothes for the saucepan lids [Thanks to Peter Cotterell - see also 'Yid']
Kids
I'm taking my little teapot to country.
Kids
Tin Lids
I can't put me foot down without stepping on one of the tin lids. [Thanks to Bernie Albert]
Kiss
C’mon me turtle, give us an ‘eavenly [Thanks to Rebecca Coonan]
Kiss
How about a bit of hit and miss [Thanks to Doosh]
Knackered (tired)
I'm cream crackered, mate. [Thanks to David Carruthers]
Knackered (tired)
Kerry Packer
I'm right Kerry'd [Thanks to David Bennett - Kerry Packer is an Australian media magnate (and bleeding rich!)]
Knackers (testicles)
That toe-rag kicked me in the Jacobs [Thanks to Bryan Rayner]
Knees
I've been on my biscuits all day.
Knickers
Alan Whickers
The 'lastics gone in me alans. [Alan Whicker used to host a TV programme called Whickers World - Thanks to Peter Cotterell]
Knob (penis)
‘e’s a bit proud of his Uncle Bob [Thanks to “the boys at CHS”]
Kraut (German)
Bloody rainbows beat us at football last night! [Thanks to Alex Gordon]
Lager
Mines a forsythe [Thanks to Den Frankham]
Lager
How about a couple of Mick Jaggers over here? [Thanks to Colin Reid]
Lark (fun)
Always one for a tufnell [Thanks to Michael Mundy]
Late
Cilla Black
You’re a bit Cilla today, mate [Thanks to Justyn Olby who explains that this comes from Cilla Black’s Blind Date TV programme that was popular]
Late
You’re a bit Terry Waite [Thanks to Paul Woodford]
Later
I'll see ya baked. [Thanks to Eric Van Zanten]
Later
See you Christian Slater [Thanks to Kris Grissom]
Laugh
You're 'avin a bubble aren't ya? [Thanks to Neil Churchard]
Laugh
Your having a cows calf, ain't you [Thanks to Graham Todd]
Laugh
You're havin' a giraffe, mate. [Thanks to Ed Balch]
Laugh
You're having a Steffi [Thanks to Peter Grewal]
Laugh
He's havin' a turkish. [Thanks to Chris Baylis]
Laugh
He's having a wally [Thanks to Keith Cole]
Legs
Lovely set of bacons [James Robinson notes that this can be Ham & Eggs as well].
Legs
Dolly Pegs
'ave a butchers at the dollies on 'er [This comes from the old style wooden clothes pegs that little girls used to draw faces on and make little dresses and hats/hair for, hence the dolly peg. Thanks to Simon]
Legs
Stand on your own mumbleys [Thanks to Sanor]
Legs
Nutmegs
He was nutmegged [this is a common football term for when the ball is kicked between an opponents legs and then the other player runs around to get control of the ball again – thanks to Allen Keep]
Legs
I was so surprised I nearly fell off me pins [Thanks to Sparky James]
Legs
Scotch Pegs
Sit down and take a load off your pegs. [For whatever reason, the common usage is the rhyming word rather than the first]
Leicester Square
Euan Blair
We're getting off the train at Euan Blair station [Thanks to Vix. Mark points out that Euan Blair (Prime minister's underage son) was found drunk by police in Leicester Square earlier this year. Hence the slang.]
Lesbian
She's a lovely girl but she is west end, you know. [Thanks to Richard English]
Liar
Bob Cryer
Shut up you Bob - yer talking out yer aris [Sergeant Bob Cryer is a character in "The Bill". Thanks to Kelly Webb]
Liar
‘e’s a bit of a dunlop [Thanks to Donald Burk]
Liar
‘e’s a bit of a holy friar [Thanks to Donald Burk]
Lies
Blimey - he gets two pigs (beers) in him and he starts telling porkies.
Life
Nelly Duff
Not on your nelly, mate. [The expression 'not on your nelly', meaning 'not on your life' (meaning that the person would never do something), is from Nelly Duff which rhymes with puff which means breath which is another way of saying life... convoluted little devil, isn't it? From everything I researched it would seem Nelly Duff was a fictional character but this is not certain. Thanks to Cathleen Kelly]
Life (term)
'e's doing a stay in the porridge. [Thanks to Alan Morgan]
Liver
Cheerful Giver
Lovely - cheerful for dinner tonight. [Mike King has written to say that he that the slang for liver comes from "The Lord loves a cheerful giver", which was then shortened to Lord... Lovely - we're have the Lord for dinner tonight.]
Liver
Swanee River
We're having swanee for dinner again? [Thanks to John Gibson who actually heard this in an interview with Ian Drury who, talking about his colon cancer, said, "... it's in me swanee now".]
Lodger
She's taken in an artful to help pay the way.
Look
Here - take a butcher's at this.
Look
I just went over there for a captain [Thanks to Ashleigh Mills]
Loot (money)
Fibre of your fabric
C'mon, let me feel the fibre of your fabric [Thanks to Olli Black - fabric=suit=loot]
Lot (Serving or share)
Hopping Pot
That's your hopping mate. [Meaning, that's all you get. Thanks to James Vosper who says that this may have originated with Londoners who traveled to Kent and other districts to gather hops for beer]
Love
All right me old turtle [Thanks to Vince Scott]
Luck
How's your Donald? [Thanks to Charly Large]
Luck
'E always had a bit of friar tuck. [Thanks to Martyn Tracy]
Mad
He's a bit mum and dad. [Thanks to Louis and Natalie Brinks]
Marriage
e's off to his 'orse and carriage [Thanks to Emma]
Married
Poor bloke got cashed on the weekend.
Matches
Do you have any cuts?
Mate
How are you, my old china?
Mate
He’s an old garden gate from school [Thanks to Martin Hillier]
Meetin' (meeting)
We'll see you at the Buster [Thanks to Kris Grissom]
Mental
He's a bit radio [Thanks to Louis and Natalie Brinks]
Mental (crazy)
It was chicken oriental down the nuclear on Friday night [Thanks to Phil Vondra]
Merry
E’s a tommy bloke [Thanks to Sparky James]
Mess
My drum's a right Elliot [Thanks to Nick Williams]
Milk
Acker Bilk
Would you like Acker in your coffee? [Thanks to Barry Greenaway. Acker Bilk (born Bernard Stanley Bilk) was born in 1929 is a master of the clarinet and leader of the Paramount Jazz Band. Interestingly, his nickname Acker is a Somerset term meaning friend or mate]
Mind
You're out of you little chinese mate. [Thanks to Danny O'Sullivan]
Miss
She's a cute little cuddle.
Missus (Mrs)
Where did your love and kisses go? [Thanks to Alan Little]
Missus (Mrs)
How's the plates getting on then? [Thanks to Alan Little]
Money
Can't go in there without any bees.
Money
Let's drink with him - he's got bread. [This one has enjoyed very common usage]
Money
Bugs Bunny
I've got some Bugs bunny in me sky rocket and I'm off down the rub-a-dub-dub. [Thanks to Nigel Ritson]
Motor (car)
I’ve gone and locked me keys in the haddock [Thanks to Alistair Steadman]
Mouth
I gave him a punch up the north.
Mug (chump)
I'm tired of people taking me for a toby [Thanks to Roger Gillespie]
Neck
He's got a bushel like tree trunk.
Neck
Wind you Gregory in [Thanks to Graham Todd]
Nerves
e's got a bad case of the West Ham's [Thanks to Martin Elliot]
News
Did you catch the wooden pews yesterday [Thanks to LO]
Nick (prison)
He's spending a bit of time in the shovel. [Thanks to John Butt]
Nightmare
I'm havin' a right lionel [Lionel Blaire is a performer. Thanks to Jonathan Harris]
Nightmare
Weston-Super-Mare
Went for an interview yesterday - it was a total Weston-Super [Weston Super Mare is the main coastal resort of North Somerset. Thanks to Christian Martinsen]
Nipple
Raspberry Ripple
Look at the thup'neys on her, raspberries like cigar buts! [Can also mean cripple. Thanks to Dave Brown]
Nippy (cold)
George and Zippy
It’s a bit George [Thanks to Sam Murray – Eli Davenport reports that George & Zippy are from an old BBC kids show called Rainbow]
Noise
Hold your box - they can hear you miles away!
Nose
Look at the size of his fireman's [Thanks to Keith Cole]
Nose
Fray Bentos
Look at the Fray Bentos on that poor sod [Fray Bentos is a maker of a fabulous Steak & Kidney Pie (and other treats). Thanks to Ray Wells]
Nose
That rotten drunk gave me a clip on me I suppose.
Nose
She gave me a kiss on my Irish.
Nun
My meanest teachers were currents [Thanks to Aziz McMahon]
Nutter (crazy)
Roll and Butter
That blokes a bloody roland [Like titfer meaning hat, this expression uses the first two words rather than just the first. Thanks to Rhian]
Off (take off, leave)
Frank Bough
I'm gonna do the Frank [see 'scoff'. Frank Bough was a television personality - Thanks to Tom Kimber]
Old Man (Father or Husband)
Pot and Pan
I was talking to me old pot just yesterday. [Thanks to Bernie Albert and Colin]
On My Own
He's over there on his toblerone [Thanks to Laura Clifford
Out of Order
Allan Border
He's bang Allan [used when someone does something to another person that is not looked upon favourably. Allan Border was the Australian cricket captain in the late 80's/early 90's so we now have our first example of international rhyming slang.]
Paddy
Did you know Kevin is a tea caddy? [Thanks to Kevin Moynihan]
Pager
Me John Major’s just gone off [Thanks to Ian Nelson]
Pakistani
Bacon Sarnie
They've hired a new bloke at the shop - he's a bacon [Thanks to Nathaniel Espino. Sarnie is a slang term for sandwich (and if you haven't eaten a cold bacon sandwich you haven't lived. Nathaniel notes that this expression may be considered offensive]
Pakistani
Reg Varney
Martin's new bird's a Reg [Thanks to Jonny Morris. Reg played Stan Butler on 'On the Buses', one of the 1970's BritComs]
Pants
Get your adam’s on [Thanks to Mike Leith]
Pants
Blimey, I have no clean surreys [Thanks to Oliver Dick]
Paper (newspaper)
Has the morning linen come yet?
Parcel
Wot you got ‘ere then, a bleedin’ elephant [Thanks to Paul Island]
Park
I'm taking my misses to the Noah.
Party
Mental morry mate [Thanks to Simon Mahon]
Party
Russell Harty
I've phoned for a sherbert to take us to the Russell [Thanks to Jo Walker - Russell Harty is a TV host]]
Peas
Eat yer John Cleese - they're good for you [Thank to Mike Leith]
Peas
We’re havin’ sexton and knobblies [Thanks to Mathew]
Pee
I’m off for a gypsy [Thanks to John Trimmer]
Pest
Fred West
Here comes that Fred West again [Fred West was and alleged mass murderer found hanged in his jail sail in 1995. Thanks to Kevin Wade]
Tonic
I'll have a Vera and Phil (gin and tonic) [Thanks to Michael Hawkins]
Phone
He’s always on the al capone [Thanks to Mike Agnes]
Phone
She's always on the dog.
Piano
Joanna
He sparkles on the joanna. [Just to confuse you, they mispronounce the word you're trying say, so instead of 'piano' they call it a 'piana']
Pictures
Going out to the Dolly Mixtures tonight [Thanks to Philip Hart - Dolly Mixtures are ]
Piddle (urinate)
I've had three pints - I could use a jimmy.
Piles
Me Nuremberg's are really playing me up [Thanks to Barry Greenaway]
Piles (hemorrhoids)
Me chalfonts are playing up. [Thanks to Paul Costello]
Piles (hemorrhoids)
Blimey, I ain't 'alf suffering from me farmers [Thanks to David Hughes]
Piles (hemorrhoids)
Nobby Stiles
Me nobbies are acting up again [Nobby Stiles was a great footballer from years gone by - Thanks to David Hughes]
Piles (hemorrhoids)
Rockford Files
Me Jim Rockford's are giving me gip! [Jim Rockford was the central character in the TV show The Rockford Files. Thanks to Paul Darbyshire]
Piles (hemorrhoids)
I'll stand if you don't mind - me sieg heils are acting up today.
Piles (hemorrhoids)
Slay 'em in the aisles
Me slay 'ems are playing me up. [Thanks to Stuart Burgess & Gordon Leel]
Pill (birth control)
She's on the Jack [Thanks to Justyn Olby]
Pillow
'ere. Get yer head off my weeping willow [Thanks to Graham Allen]
Pill
I must remember to take my strawberry tonight [Thanks to Jonathan Wills]
Pills
Where's me Jack n Jills [Thanks to Brian Kemp]
Pills
Mick Mills
‘e’s always ‘ad a weakness for the Mick Mills [Thanks to Phil Woodford. Mick Mills played for Ipswich in the ‘70s]
Pinch (steal)
Someone's half-inched me pint! [Thanks to Mark Schofield]
Pipe
Cherry Ripe
He does a cherry [Cherry Ripe is an Australian chocolate bar - although this may be Aussie slang rather than Cockney I've included it since I've received so many submissions for it. Thanks to Ben Murphy et al]
Piss
Arthur Bliss
I'm just popping out for an Arthur [Arthur Bliss was a famous English composer (1891-1975). Thanks to Robert Harper]
Piss
Blimey - no more beer till I've 'ad a gypsy's.
Piss
I've got to have a hit before we go out.
Piss (Make fun of)
Mickey Bliss
He’s always taking the mickey out of someone [Mickey is short for a mythical 'Mickey Bliss,' providing the rhyme for 'piss and has been in widespread use since the late 1940s. The original idea was that of deflating someone, recalling the description of a self-important blusterer as 'all piss and wind.' Thanks to Brown Terriers]
Pissed (angry)
I'm really hit today [Thanks to Michael G]
Pissed (drunk)
Brahms and Liszt
He's well Brahms and Liszt , don't give him any more to drink. [Thanks to Ray Davis. Sometimes the expression "Mozart & Liszt is used.]
Pissed (drunk)
Oliver Twist
I 'ad one over the eight last night and got completely Olivered. [Thanks to Peter Cotterell]
Pissed (drunk)
I'm a bit schindlers after a too many forsythes [Thanks to Den Frankham]
Pissed (drunk)
Scotch Mist
'e was completely scotch mist last night. [Thanks to Alan Little. Thanks to Marie Gordon for the example of usage.]
Plate
Don’t try and scarper before you’ve washed those alexanders [Thanks to Paul Island]
Play
Let's grass and hay down the park [Thanks to Oliver Nunn]
Pocket
Keep it in your Lucy.
Pocket
I've got nothing in my skies.
Poof (homosexual)
He's a bit of an iron. [Also Horses Hoof]
Poof (homosexual)
I think he might be a tin roof [Thanks to Kron]
Porn
Is there any Frankie on the telly tonight? [Thanks to Jason Rankin]
Porn
Johnny Vaughn
I enjoy a bit of Johnny [Johnny Vaughn was the star of The Big Breakfast – thanks to Dan Longhurst]
Powder (cocaine)
He's off doing a bit of Nikki [Thanks to Jim Smith)
Prat (arse)
He's a bit of a paper [Thanks to Justin Semmens]
Prayer
Weavers' Chair
Haven't got a weaver's of getting into her alans. [Thanks to Cormac Kennedy. A weaver's chair has a low profile back allowing free movement of the arms.]
Prick
He gets on my wick. [Don't even try to understand this one - just accept it]
Pride
You lost your jekyll or something? [Thanks to Joe Mills]
Prison
'e's off to the boom for a bit. [Thanks to Mike Shepherd]
Pub
I'll meet you down the nuclear at 5 o'clock [Thanks to Robert Lynch]
Pub
Rub-a-dub-dub
I'm off to the rub-a-dub-dub. [Comes from the children's rhyme Rub-a-dub-dub, three men in a tub...]
Pube (pubic hair)
When your having a shower make sure you wash your rubric's [Thanks to Andrew Turner]
Puff (marijuana)
Here, mate. Got any Mickey? [Thanks to Nortsqaf2]
Punter (gambler or odds maker)
Hillman Hunter
‘ere comes another load of Hillmans [the Hillman was a fine auto introduced in 1966. Thanks to Steve Trice]
Purse
Someone's alf-inched me gypsy [Thanks to Martin Grove]
Quarter
Farmers Daughter
My Nan want me to get her three farmers of rosie (3/4 lb of tea) [Thanks to Peter Summersgill]
Queen (homosexual)
He’s a right old torvill [Thanks to Tony Johnson]
Queer (homosexual)
That blokes a bit of a Brighton [Thanks to S. Sexton]
Queer (homosexual)
He's a bit ginger [Thanks to Steve Robinson. See Queer (odd) below]
Queer (homosexual)
e's a bit King Lear. [Thanks to Leslie Munday]
Queer (odd)
Ginger Beer
I don't know about that - sounds a bit ginger. [Heard from Chris and Colin who have heard the expression "very glass", meaning very strange (from Glass of Beer), based on this rhyme. Also, see Queer (homosexual) above]
Quid
Lend us a bin [Thanks to Richard Hall]
Quid
I'm down a teapot already.
Rail
Look out for the christmas [Thanks to Sparky James]
Rain
Any more pleasure and we'll be swimming.
Rave (dance)
Comedy Dave
You coming to the comedy? [Comedy Dave is a Radio 1 DJ – Thanks to Hefin Gill]
Readies (pound notes)
'e's got a pile of nelsons! [Thanks to Julia Jones]
Rent
They've raised my burton again.
Rent
I'm having a tough time coming up with me Clark [Thanks to Richard Robinson]
Rent
I can't afford to pay the Duke of Kent this week [Thanks to Mike Smith]
Rich
'e's got scratch [Thanks to Richard Lee]
Right
Isle of Wight
Down the High Road to the lights and make an Isle. [Thanks to Daniel Maurer. Also seen used as slang for "all right" but not in common usage]
River
He jumped right into the shake [Thanks to Alan Little]
Road
Don't ride your bike on the frog. [See Road = Kermit]
Road
Kermit
'e took off down the kermit. [From Kermit the Frog = frog and toad = road. Thanks to Gavin Wallace]
Rotten
Dot Cotton
I’m feeling a bit dot [Dot Cotton is a character from Eastenders – thanks to Rachel Walmsley]
Row (argument)
Barn Owl
Went up to the dole office today. 'Ad a bit of a barney with the geezer behind the desk. [Thanks to Peter Cotterell][[Not satisfied with the slang, the word is extended to 'Barney' to thoroughly confuse everyone]
Row (argument)
Had a right bull with my misses last night.
Rum
A wee bit of Tom and I'm off.
Sack (fired)
He got the tin tack the other day [Thanks to Duncan Whitesmith]
Saloon Bar
I'll be at the balloon.
Sauce
Pass the dead horse [Thanks to Brad Spencer]
Scar
Mars Bar
I fell down the apple and pears trying to answer the dog & bone, hit my head and ended up with a mars bar [Thanks to David Bancroft]
Scoff (food)
Frank Bough
I’m going to get some frank [see 'off'. Frank Bough was a television personality – thanks to Martin Brewer]
Score
Bobby Moore
You know the Bobby [Bobby Moore was a great footballer who died in 1993. Thanks to Graham Todd]
Score
Hampden Roar
You know the hampden [Thanks to Andrew Mkandawire who goes on to explain that the Hampden Roar is is a commonly used term that refers to the noise made when fans cheer on Scotland at Hampden Park]
Score (£20)
I gave me last apple to that old paraffin [Thanks to Kevin Moynihan]
Scotch
I'll have a gold watch and ten [Thanks to Del Sinnott]
Scotch
He enjoys a good pimple.
Scotch (Whisky)
'E enjoys his gold watch [Thanks to Martyn Tracy]
Scouser (Liverpudlian)
'E's a mickey mouser [Refers to someone from Liverpool. Thanks to César Lozano]
Scouts
He's always been a brussel.
Scran (food)
Jackie Chan
I’m Hank Marvin. I could use some top Jackie for me Michael Winner [Thanks to Simon Rowan]
Sex
Posh ‘n Becks
Had a bit of posh with the missus last night [Thanks to Iain Sisson– Posh refers to Posh Spice (Victoria Adams) of the Spice Girls while Becks refers to David Beckham, the famous footballer she married. Another example of Rhyming Slang evolving to reflect the times. See also Decks - Posh ‘n Becks]
Shabby
He's turned out a bit westminster today [Thanks to Sparky James]
Shag
He's off for a billy [Billy Bragg is a singer/songwriter. Thanks to Robert Christian]
Shank (golf term)
J. R.
You really JR'd that one mate. [Abbreviated reference to J. Arthur Rank. In golf, a shank is a ball that goes in a decidedly unexpected direction. Thanks to Bern Summers]
Shave
I'm off for a chas [Thanks to Conor Keeling]
Shave
A quick shower and dig and I'll be ready to go.
Shiner (black eye)
Ocean Liner
I punched him right in the mincer and gave him an ocean liner [Thanks to a somewhat violent Claire Reed]
Shirt
Put your dicky dirt on before the company gets here.
Shirt
I've got to press my uncle.
Shit
Just off or a brace [Thanks to P Loynd]
Shit
I right need a Brad Pitt [Thanks to Big Bill]
Shit
I'm going for an Eartha [See also 'Tit' - Thanks to Peter Cotterell for this variation]
Shit
I'm going for a Tom Tit. [Thanks to David Carruthers.]
Shite
I’m off for a tom [Thanks to Denis Daly]
Shite
They’re playing completely Turkish today [Thanks to Paul Island]
Shite (shit)
I need a Barry White [Thanks to Oli Hickman]
Shits (diarrhoea)
I’ve got a real case of the two-bob bits [Thanks to Steven Elder]
Shitter (rectum)
Council Gritter
When I sat down there was a pin on my chair! Right up the council! [Thanks to Uncle Custard. He reports that a council gritter is the machine that comes around and puts grit on icy roads]
Shitter (rectum)
He kicked him right up the Gary [Thanks to Neil Churchard]
Shitter (toilet or rectum)
Rick Whitter
Back in a sec - I'm off to the rick [Rick Whitter is a singer in the group Shed7 - thanks to Dan Collins and Keith Uden]
Shocker
That's a Barry Crocker [Barry Crocker is an Aussie performer - thanks to Dan McGivern]
Shocker
Costantino Rocca
Played a round of golf yesterday - had a complete Costantino [Costantino Rocca is an Italian golfer - thanks to Christian Martinsen]
Shoe
Where are me Scooby's? [Thanks to Mark Chinery & Michael Lloyd]
Shoe
Get yer ghosts on [Thanks to Richard Lee]
Shoes
Where's me one 'n two's? [Thanks to John Ioannou]
Shoes
'e's got himself a new pair of St. Louis' [Thanks to Doug Sammons]
Shoes
Get your rhythm and blues on [Thanks to Jack Summers and Neil Devlin]
Shoes
Yabba-Dabba-Doo
Nice pair of yabba’s mate [For them what don’t have a classical education, “Yabba-Dabba-Doo” was the catch phrase of Fred Flintstone. Thanks to Jon Evans]
Shout (round)
Wally Grout
It's your wally, mate (ie. It's your turn to buy a round of drinks). [Wally Grout was an Australian cricketer who died in 1968 - Thanks to Mark Redding]
Shower
David Gower
I'd just got out of the David Gower [Thanks to Mark Crowe - David Gower is an English cricketer]
Shower
I’m going for an Eiffel Tower.
Sick
I'm feeling a bit Moby today. [Thanks to Elaine MacGregor]
Sick
Spotted Dick
We don’t have a goalie – John’s spotted [Spotted Dick is a dessert make with raisins – thanks to Andrew Black]
Sick
Tom and Dick
He's feeling a bit Tom. [There is also an expression "Feeling a bit dicky" as in not quite right that comes from this slang. Paul Morgan says that it’s also used as “Bob and Dick”]
Sick
I can't come out tonight - I'm feeling a bit Uncle Dick [Thanks to Chris Keeley]
Sight
Website
Get out of me website [Thanks to Antony Kennedy who says this was taken from the Human Traffic film]
Silly
Daffy Down Dilly
'e's a bit daffy. [Daffy Down Dilly is a line of dolls from Madam Alexander. Thanks to Peter Bendall]
Silly
I've always said he was piccadilly [Thanks to Martin McKerrell]
Simple
She’s a bit Dolly Dimple [Thanks to Simon Mahon]
Sister
She may be his blister but she's nothing like him.
Six
Tim Mix
He rolled a Tom Mix [Thanks to Jude Saffron who says this expression is common in casino's when referring to dice games]
Skin (cigarette paper)
Got any vera's? [Thanks to Paul Cheese]
Skint (broke)
Borassic Lint
He's right boric. [Thanks to Peter Langdale who's a chemist in the UK for correcting this one]
Skint (broke)
Larry Flint
I'm completely larry mate [Larry Flint is an American publisher of adult magazines. Thanks to Rob Haynes]
Skint (broke)
I'm polo'd [Thanks to Kieran Cooney]
Slag (prostitute)
Oily Rag
She's a bit of an oily rag [Oily Rag is also slang for fag (cigarette). One can't help but wonder how many times a simply "Can you spot me an oily?" might have been misinterpreted. Thanks to Matthew Wilson]
Slag (prostitute)
Toe Rag / Tow Rag
She’s a right toe rag [Thanks to Chris Roberts. Mike Lyons adds: It should be 'Tow Rag'. When a car towed another in times past, (broken down car) behind it, it was/is common practice to tie a piece of rag halfway along the rope between the two vehicles. This was to indicate the rope's presence to pedestriams, particularly when stopped in traffic. (i.e. to stop people tripping over it when walking between the cars). As this piece of rag was literally dragging or 'always in' the dirt all the time, it was compared with someone who was shifty, untrustworthy, criminal, loafer, a general 'low life'. Such a person was called a tow rag, example "don't trust him, he's a bit of a tow rag".] Thus, a tow rag could refer to a male or female of dubious character.
Slap
I’m gonna give you a Watford ‘round yer chevy [Thanks to Glenn Buss]
Slash (piss)
I'm absolutely dying for a Pat Cash [Thanks to Bryan Rowe]
Slash (piss)
I’m poppin’ out for a pie and mash [Thanks to Paul Ingram]
Sleep
What I need is a good bo-peep. [Thanks to Bernie Albert]
Sleep
You need a bit of sooty [Thanks to John Gowland]
Smell
He don't half Aunt Nell [Thanks to Jo Miller]
Smoke (cigarette)
I’m going for a laugh [Thanks to Winston Gutkowski]
Sneeze
I hate allergies - one good bread after another.
Snide
‘e’s a bit Jeckyll [Thanks to Simon Mahon]
Snout (cigarette)
Salmon and Trout
'Ere mate, give us a salmon, I'm right out. [Thanks to Peter Cotterell] [If you know where the expression 'snout' for cigarette comes from I'd like to include it][ [Martin McKerrell has written that Snout comes from snout rag meaning handkerchief (I'm thinking snot rag - JA) so Snout Rag = Fag = cigarrette. Also, Richard Beveridge has suggested that the term snout comes from prison life when the prisoners, who would take their daily exercise in silence, would signal a tobacco supplier that he needed cigarettes by touching his nose.] - See "ins and outs"
Snouts (Cigarettes)
'ere mate, got any ins and outs? [Thanks to James Hotston] (See Salmon and Trout)
Soap
Go wash yourself - and use the cape.
Soap
Where's the faith and hope, I wanna wash me 'ands [Thanks to Mike Smith]
Socks
Wouldn't it be nice if your almonds matched?
Socks
Bombay Docks
Anyone seen me bombays? [Thanks to Julie Lanham-Hathaway. Phil Diaper suggests the expression is actually Tilbury Docks]
Socks
Pull yer Joe's up [Thanks to Jim Hyde]
Son
He's awfully proud of his currant.
Song
Ding Dong
Everyone gather round the piano for a ding dong. [Usually the full slang expression is used]
Soup
Nothing like a good loop on a cold day.
Spanner (wrench)
Can I borrow your elsie [Thanks to Alan Little]
Sparrow
Bow and Arrow
Little bow and arrow fell out of the nest. [Usually the full slang expression is used]
Speak
I won't bubble [Thanks to Justyn Olby who credits John Le Carre's book "Night Manager"]
Specs (spectacles)
Where’s me gregs [Thanks to Marcia Woodman]
Specs [Spectacles)
Where did I put me Mikkel's? [Thanks to Mark Crowe - Mikkel Beck is a footballer]
Splinter
Alan Minter
Picked up this wood and got a terrible Alan in me finger [Thanks to Barry Greenaway. Alan Minter is a British boxer with a current record of 39-9 (23 by KO)]
Spoon
Pass me a daniel [Thanks to Andy Powell]
Spoon
Pass me that David Boon [Thanks to Mark Crowe - David Boon is an Australian cricketer]
Spot (acne)
I've got a great big randolph on my chin [Thanks to Matt Stammers]
Spouse
Me boiler's always yammerin' on. [Thanks to John Butt]
Sprouts
I love bubble and squeak made with Twist and Shouts [Thanks to Mike Leith]
Spunk (semen)
Harry Monk
This glue's as sticky as a load of Harry [Harry Monk was an old music hall entertainer. Thanks to Jon Bard]
Spunk (semen)
Pineapple Chunk
Is that laundry powder on your jeans? Looks like pineapple chunks to me [Thanks to Tom Dowling]
Stairs
Get yourself up the apples and pears.
Stairs
Daisy Dancers
Get yerself up the daisy dancers [This one's a bit convoluted: Daisy Dancer = Dancing Bears = Stairs. The daisy dancer reference is a twist on the Dancing Bears=Stairs slang. Thanks to Mike Tombs]
Stairs
Get yerself up the dancing bears [Thanks to Mike Tombs]
Starved
"Lunch in a bit?" "Yeah, I'm a bit pear." [Thanks to Richard English]
Starvin'
Hank Marvin
I'm bloody Hank Marvin. I haven't eaten all day [Hank Marvin was the guitarist for The Shadows from the 1960's to the 1990's. Thanks to Neil Churchard]
Starvin'
Lee Marvin
I'm Lee Marvin [Thanks to Peter Conway who wrote all the way from Dubai - he adds that if you're really hungry you could say, "I'm Hank, and his brother Lee". Lee Marvin was an American actor. See other entry for starvin' (Hank Marvin). And no - they're not related.]
State (anguish)
He's in a two and eight over it. [Usually the full slang expression is used]
Steak and Kidney
Kate and Sydney
A lovely Kate and Sydney pie [Not really rhyming slang - more a matter of getting your mords wixed up]
Stella (beer)
A couple of nelsons please [Thanks to Alan Little. Stella refers to Stella Artois]
Stella (beer)
Paul Weller
Give us a Paul Weller [Thanks to Gary Williams - Paul Weller is (or was) a musician with The Jam. Stella refers to Stella Artois]
Stella (beer)
Mines a Uri [Thanks to Martin Harrison]
Stella Artois (beer)
I’ll have an ooh aah [Thanks to Steve Kensington]
Stench
A right Dame Judy in here [Thanks to Dean Cavanagh]
Stick (walking)
I've forgot me hackney wick back at the last pub [Thanks to Alan Rawling]
Stink
That's a bit of a pen and ink.
Story
Ye late! What’s the jackanory then? [Thanks to Podster]
Stout (beer)
Stop by and have a salmon.
Stranger
Who’s that Queen’s Park Ranger standing over there? [Thanks to Danny Robinson]
Stranger
This pub is full of Texas Rangers these days [Thanks to Danny Robinson]
Stray
That Mary's a bit of a gamma [Thanks to Dan Collins and Keith Uden]
Street
He out standing in the field, waiting for a bus.
Strides (trousers)
He's wearing black donkeys [Thanks to Keith Cole]
Strides [trousers)
Just bought a new pair of Jekylls
Stripper
I love me jack the rippers [Thanks to John Ioannou]
Strong
I need a ping pong drink [Thanks to Chris Keeley]
Sub (pay advance)
Guvnor Give us a rub a dub till pay day. [Thanks to Ray Davis]
Subaru
Let's have a go in ya scooby-doo [Thanks to J. Mulroy]
Suit
Bag of Fruit
He turned up dressed in a bag [Thanks to Bill Smith who quite rightly points out that while Whistle and Flute can refer to a nice looking suit, Bag of Fruit depicts a very different image of an old and shapeless suit]
Suit
Are you wearing your bowl of fruit tonight? [Thanks to Brad Spencer]
Suit
I’ll be wearing me tin flute [Thanks to Duncan Whitesmith]
Suit
He bought himself a new whistle for the wedding.
Sun
Old current bun's out today [Thanks to Ray Davis.]
Supper
You can sing for your Tommy.
Sweetheart
Treacle Tart
She's a right treacle [Thanks to Kate Odgers - note that there is reportedly a negative connotation for this expression, meaning a woman of easy virtues, but it's not very commonly used]
Table
Sit yourself at the cain and I'll bring you your Tommy (Tommy Tucker - supper).
Tablet (pill)
Gary Ablett
He was off his nuts on the old Gary Abletts wasn't he [Gary Ablett was a footballer in the 80's - thanks to Majik Khan]
Tail
He's always wagging his alderman's.
Talk
Rabbit and Pork
He's always rabbitting on about something [Andrew Black says his sister used to say he had “too much bunny” (or more rabbit than Sainsbury’s!). You can be sure that wasn’t a compliment]
Talker
Murray Walker
She’s a real murray – just can’t get her to shut up! [Thanks to Tony Kibble]
Tan
Peter Pan
I’m off to the pool to top up me peter pan. [Thanks to Lee Henderson]
Tanner (sixpence)
Sprarsy Anna
Lend us a sprarsy - I wanna get some toe-rags (cigarettes) [Thanks to Mike Smith - he wonders if Sprarsy might have something to do with the old Indian coin called an "anna". If you have any more info please let me know]
Tart
Is this a lads night or are we taking the kicks [Thanks to Tony Merrington]
Taxi
Joe Baxi
Mind if I share your Joe Baxi? [Thanks to Mike Doles. William Coward says Joe Baxi was a heavyweight boxer who knocked out British champ George Woodcock around 1950.]
Tea
Where’s me bleeding cuppa arf past? [Thanks to Simon Buckridge]
Tea
I've just put the rosy on.
Tea
Fancy a cup of you and me? [Thanks to Barry Greenaway]
Tears
She's off doing a Britney [Thanks to Jade]
Teeth
Edward Heath
He got smacked in the Edwards [Thanks to John Curtis-Rouse. Edward Heath was PM in the early 1970’s]
Teeth
His hampsteads (hamps) are a crime.
Telly (TV)
As usual, nothing on the custard tonight.
Telly (TV)
What’s on the Liza? [Thanks to Yorgos Elissaios]
Ten
I didn't get much change back from a cock [Thanks to Peter Cotterell]
Tenner (£10)
Paul McKenna
I’m don to me last Paul McKenna [Thanks to Richard Hall. Paul McKenna is a famous hypnotist]
Tenner (10 pound note)
Ayrton Senna
'ere, lend us an ayrton me old china [Ayrton Senna was a Formula One driver - thanks to Tom Harvey]
Tenner (10 pound note)
Louise Wener
'ere, lend us a louise. [Louise Wener is a singer with the band Sleeper - thanks to Richard English]
Thief
Tea Leaf
He's always been a bit of a tea leaf. [Usually the fully slang expression is used]
Think
Cocoa Drink
I should cocoa [Said in a somewhat facetious manner, this phrase actually means "I should think not" - thanks to Kathryn Polley]
Thirst
Geoff Hurst
I've got a Geoff on tonight [Sir Geoff Hurst was the only footballer to score three goals in a World Cup final. Thanks to Graham Todd]
Throat
I've got a sore billy goat [Thanks to Paul Robinson]
Throat
‘e cleared his groat whilst wiping his mincers with ‘is germans [Thanks to Mike Basquill]
Throat
Get that down your nanny [Thanks to Chris Roberts]
Throat
'is weasel's playing him up [Thanks to Roy Sharp. See also Coat]
Thunder
What a storm! Did you hear the crash and blunder [Thanks to David Reynolds]
Ticket
I've got a bat for tonight's train.
Ticket
Wilson Picket
I want to go to New York, but I can’t afford the wilsons [Thanks to Tony Merrington]
Tie
I'm putting on me best whistle and me new peckham. [Thanks to Martin McKerrell]
Till (Cash register)
Jack & Jill
'E got nicked with 'is 'ands in the old jack and jill [Thanks to Martyn Tracy]
Time
Bird Lime
What's the bird? [Also commonly used to refer to doing time, as in prison. Thanks to John Gowland]
Time
Harry Lime
What's the Harry Lime? [Thanks to Barry Greenaway. Harry Lime is a character in 'The Third Man']
Time
Oi mate - what's the lemon & lime [Thanks to Anonymous]
Tit (breast)
Nice pair of brads [Thanks to Justyn Olby]
Tits (breasts)
Ballroom Blitz
She’s got marvellous ballrooms [Ballroom Blitz is a song by a group named Sweet - thanks to David Rolph]
Tits (breasts)
Nice Eartha's [Thanks to Louis and Natalie Brink]
Tits (breasts)
Wouldn’t mind getting me germans on her faintings [Thanks to Phil Woodford]
Tits (breasts)
Look at the Thr'penny's on her. [Thank to David Carruthers]
Titties (breasts)
Bristol Cities
She's got a lovely pair of Bristols. [BristolPirate2003 (I'm assuming a nom de plume) sent the following: The saying goes back hundreds of years from when sailors sailed to the "New World", between Bristol, England (the second largest port outside of London at the time) and the USA, traveling on to the tobacco plantations at Bristol, Virginia.
It was known as, "Going between the Bristol's" and became a sexual reference for what sailors would do to their women folk on returning to dry land!.
Titty (breast)
She's got a lovely set of walters [Thanks to Dean Cavanagh]
Toast
How about another round of 'oly. [Thanks to Jack Summers]
Toe
Bromley by Bow
You might want to fight, but I'm going to have it on me bromleys [ie. run away. Thanks to David Aqius]
Toker
That guy is an Al [Thanks to Andrew Backs]
Tonic
How about a nice Vera and super (Gin & Tonic) [Thanks to Vaughan Hully]
Toss
I couldn't give a Kate Moss. [Thanks to Alex Marsh]
Towel
Baden Powell
'ere, wrap a baden powell around you. Nobody wants to see that! [Thanks to Lord Russell Grineau]
Train
I missed me Michael [Thanks to Mike Hale]
Trainers (running shoes)
Claire Rayners
I've got me new Claire Rayners on [Thanks to John Tsang - Claire Rayner is an author]
Trainers (running shoes)
That's a nice pair of Gloria's [Thanks to John Ioannou]
Tramp (hobo)
I gave me last apple to that old paraffin [Thanks to Kevin Moynihan]
Tramp (hobo)
Thirteen Amp
Look at that bunch of thirteen amps over there. [Thanks to Steve Vincent - thirteen amps is the standard electrical receptacle in Britain]
Trouble
Stay away from him. He's right Barney.
Trousers
Lards
‘e was caught with ‘is lards down [Lards is from Callards & Bowsers, makers of fine toffee’s. Thanks to Duncan Reed. Lenny has noted that often the full expression, i.e. "'e was caught with his callards down" is used to avoid confusion with lardy meaning cigar (la-di-da).]
Trousers
Round the Houses
'e's got hisself a new set of round the houses [Thanks to Christopher Webb. Also used is "Council Houses" as in "'is councils haven't seen an pressing this year" - thanks to Gary Chatfield]
Turd (shit)
I need to dump a Douglas [Thanks to Mathew Dalton. Douglas Hurd is a politician.]
Turd (shit)
Richard the Third
He's a bit of a Richard. [Thanks to Ray Davis. Elaine MacGregor reports that this is also used as in "I'm just going for a Richard". Andrew notes that sometimes Edward the Third is also used.]
Umbrella
Wonderful - it's starting to rain and me without my Auntie Ella.
Voice
What's the matter with 'is 'obsons [Thanks to Roy Sharp]
Vomit
One more pint and I’ll Wallace, mate [Thanks to Mark Holmans]
Wages
I've blown the greengages down at the dogs [Thanks to Mike Smith]
Walk
After a heavy meal I like quick ball round the square.
Wank (masturbate)
Armitage Shank
He's havin' an armitage [Thanks to Ben Dear - Armitage Shank are makers of fine porcelain bathroom fixtures]
Wank (masturbate)
Jodrell Bank
Just off for a Jodrell [Jodrell Bank was the site of a University of Manchester botanical station, about 20 miles south of Manchester, back in the 1940's. Today, Jodrell Bank is a leading radio astronomy facility. Thanks to P Loynd]
Wank (masturbate)
He's having a barclays. [Thanks to Peter Cotterell]
Wank (masturbate)
'e's off having a J. Arthur [Thanks to Mike Dowding and Sparky James]
Wank (masturbate)
'e's having a lamb [Thanks to Alan Heard]
Wank (masturbate)
I'm going for a midland [Thanks to Jonathan Harris]
Wank (masturbate)
I'm off for a peddle! [Thanks to Aziz McMahon]
Wank (masturbate)
e's a right sherman [Thanks to David Hughes]
Wank (masturbate)
Tommy Tank
She's probably at home doing a tommy. [Thanks to Barbara Wilson – from Thomas the Tank Engine, a child's program]
Wanker
'e's a bit of a cab ranker [Thanks to Steve Tuffin]
Wanker
He’s a bit of a Kuwaiti tanker [Thanks to Daryl Egerton]
Wanker
He's a right merchant [Thanks to Justyn Olby]
Wanker
That referee is a right Ravi [Thanks to Justin Ellis]
Wanker
Sefton Branker
He’s a right Sefton Branker [Thanks to Paul Lundy – Sefton Branker was a Major, and later Air Vice Marshall, who was posted to India in the early 20th century]
Wanker
He’s a bit of a swiss banker [Thanks to Morris Childers]
Wanks
They’re a bunch of gordons [Thanks to Paul Island]
Watch (fob watch)
Kettle and Hob
That's a lovely kettle [Thanks to Mark Sparrow. I got the following from Dudley who wondered about the connection between a kettle and a watch - he passed on the following story:
It was commonplace for everyone to wear a pocket watch and chain in the waistcoat & it was also equally commonplace for the watch to be in the pawn shop as an interim loan security - however no one was keen for people to know that this situation was necessary, so the chain would be kept and worn as normal. In the kitchens of the day the fire would be an open one and there would be a bar or hook above it from which a length of chain would be secured and from there the kettle would be suspended above the fire to boil. So with this in mind, if the pocket watch chain, with no weight on it to hold it in the pocket, fell out and dangled minus the missing watch, there would always be some clever Charlie ready to pipe up "What's that for then, your bleedin' kettle?"
Dave Walker provided the following: The origin of "kettle" comes from illicit spirit making, distilled in what were large coppers known as kettles, hence, kettle of scotch = watch. I have always understood this to be the true origin, and it does rhyme, after all.
Water
Ten Furlongs (Mile and a quarter)
I'll have a gold watch and ten [Thanks to Del Sinnott]
Web Site
Check out me wind and kite [Thanks to Mark Holmans]
Weight
She'd better watch her pieces of eight [Thanks to Dave Connolly]
Whisky
I'll have a gay and I'm off. [Be careful where you use this]
White Wine
Plink Plonk
Open a bottle of plonk [The rhyme here is a bit convoluted – Plink Plonk rhymes with Vin Blanc which is, of course, a white wine. Thanks to Claire Reed]
Whore
She’s a bit of a four by four [Thanks to Dave Collard]
Whore
Roger Moore
I was trying to get my trousers back on, and the dirty roger is running up the street with my wallet [Thanks to Mark Adams]
Whore
She a right Thomas [Thanks to Pete Masters]
Wife
Now my old dutch, where are we off to tonight?
Wife
I'm taking my trouble dancing tonight.
Wig
I think that blokes wearing an Irish [Thanks to Martin Elliot]
Wig
What a syrup. [Thanks to Mark Pearson]
Window
Burnt Cinder
Close the bloody burnt [This works if you mispronounce window... winda - and cinder... cinda as any good Englishman would. Thanks to Sparky James]
Windshield Wiper
Billie Piper
You’d better put your billies on [Billie Piper is a pop singer - Thanks to Deane]
Windy
Mork and Mindy
Cor, it's bloody mork today [shows you that the slang is constantly evolving - thanks to Alan Little. Can also refer to someone who is a bit windy - "Don't feed him brussel sprouts again - he gets all Mork & Mindy" - thanks to Sparky James]
Wine
Where’s the porc waiter [Thanks to Tony Merrington]
Word
He left without so much as a dicky.
Wrong
Falun Gong
It seems to have all gone a bit falun gong [From semi-obscure evil Chinese cult with tendency to inaccuracy, therefore appropriate. Thanks to Keith Hale]
Wrong
Pete Tong
It's all gone a bit Pete [Pete Tong is an English DJ - thanks to Dan Collins and Keith Uden]
Yank
Septic Tank
He's not very bright... septic, you know. [Thanks to Peter Langdale for this one. Tony Alderton reports that this can also be shorted to Sepo]
Yank
Then this wooden bloke walked in [Thanks to Ian Coppell]
Yawn
Johnny Vaughn
Can’t hold back a good Johnny [Johnny Vaughn was the star of The Big Breakfast – thanks to Will Sowden]
Years
Ain't seen you in donkeys mate. [Thanks to Ossie Mair]
Yid
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"From which t.v. comedy series did the catchphrase ""We really want to see those fingers"" come?" | Shooting Stars - UKGameshows
Shooting Stars
"Angelos Epithemiou" (Dan Skinner) (2009)
Voiceovers:
"George Dawes" (Matt Lucas) (1995-2009)
"Angelos Epithemiou" (Dan Skinner) (2010-11)
Broadcast
BBC2, 27 December 1993 to 22 December 1997 (pilot + 31 episodes in 3 series, as part of At Home With Vic and Bob (1993))
BBC Choice, 13 January to 22 December 2002 (20 episodes in 2 series)
Pett Productions for BBC Two, 30 December 2008 to 12 September 2011 (18 episodes in 3 series + 2 specials)
Synopsis
Vic and Bob are a comedy double act you either like or you don't. That previous sentence probably makes more sense than any episode of Shooting Stars ever did!
Shooting Stars is the "quiz of the business we call show" where stars can win huge amounts of cash and prizes. The celebrity captains, comedian Mark Lamarr and uber-babe Ulrika Jonnson, are all introduced by Graham Skidmore ("Our Graham" from Blind Date ) usually to some made up rubbish about their private lives. When everybody has sat down, the resident grown-up baby scorekeeper George Dawes is introduced to the tune of "He's a baby! He's a baby!" Quite.
The original gang (not counting the pilot): Lamarr, Reeves, Dawes, Mortimer, Jonsson
One of three things will then happen, guaranteed:
(1) Vic will start rubbing his legs at the nearest female contestant. "Vic, don't rub your legs!"
(2) Bob will produce a massive frying pan and whack Vic in the face with it.
(3) They'll get on with the show and play True or False. Actually scratch that, the first two invariably happen every two or three minutes throughout the show anyway.
50/50
When they get around to the first round, each contestant is asked a True or False question of the style: "Jimmy Hill's chin is regularly used by the RNLI to save drowning passengers. Now is that true or is that false? But is it true or is it false? IS it true or false? Ulrika, true or false?" Expect this all show. After everyone has had a question, the eternal question would be asked: "What are the scores George Dawes?"
Dawes: he's a baby.
"BANG!BANG!BANG! Yes, I may be fat, but not quite as fat as your mother. Mark has two and the lovely Ulrika has three!"
"Let's see those fingers" - Vic Reeves (left) and Bob Mortimer
Clippety Clip
Hooray indeed. Round Two would be the Clips round where we'd see clips supposedly of real films except it was Vic, Bob, Mark, Ulrika and George messing about. A clip of The A-Team would satirically show them converting a car by putting toilet roll tubes and toothpaste on in order to make their car better. Sometimes the clips were really good and sometimes they were really poor, but there would be a question afterwards. After this, "What are the scores..."
Kissing the baby.
"BANGBANGBANG! DORIS! GET THAT ECCLES CAKE OUT OF YOUR ARSE, OUR CHILDREN MUST EAT! Mark has four, Ulrika has five!"
Make an impression
Ulllllllllrika-ka-ka-ka-ka! Round three was the Impression's round where Vic would sing a song "in the club style". This sounds a little bit like the song it was meant to be yet... doesn't. When somebody has got it correct then random people would be picked: "Random Factor, pick someone like a tractor."
Bird on high
Round Four would be The Dove From Above where everybody would coo so that a cardboard Dove (indeed, from above) would come down. Everybody did that then a superb running joke would happen. Vic would tell a dove related joke which would be met with about thirty seconds of silence, the sound of a funeral knell and a hit with the head with Bob's frying pan. That is unless you're Lynn Perrie, in which case, you can't control yourself and laugh unnecessarily. Once per series for one reason or another, Mark would tell the joke instead and this would be met with laughter and applause. It's great!
The dove descends in the 2009 series
Anyway, on the dove would be six categories of questions. If they get a question wrong they would hear this: "ERANU" and Vic will also pull a funny face. If they pick the special category they would win a prize and be met with "OOVAVO" and another silly face. These prizes would be extremely stupid, an Eyeball rester, a cream-cake selector or a prize from a home shopping catalogue (in which case the player would pick a number from 1-500 representing the pages, but they couldn't pick anything too expensive).
At least three times in this round, reference would be made to 50's throwback Mark Lamarr 's greasy hair. Subjects in this round include Men, and other irrelevant stuff such as Cakes, Curtains, Buckets whatever.
A promo pic from the 2010 series: Vic, Bob, Ulrika-ka-ka-ka-k-ka, new scorer Angelos Epithemiou, and Mr. Chuckles himself, Jack Dee.
Fingers on buzzers
The final round is the Quickfire round where we "really wanna see those fingers! We don't know when the time's up but when it is you'll hear this sound: [George] AAAGGGGHH!" These questions would either be about entertainment or of the type:
Q: Name a hairy dog.
A: St Bernard?'
Q: Oh I'm sorry - it was Golden Retriever.
The winning team gets to select someone to go through to the final challenge. They've already won one pound per point but here's a chance to win lots more! These would be different most weeks, but the all-time favourites must be:
Vibrosprout: Ulrika Johnson would stand on a vibrating machine holding a book. On that book were ten sprouts, at the end of the twenty seconds of vibration, every sprout still on the book was worth ten pounds. There was also a King Radish, this was worth £50.
Judy Finnigan: Jarvis Cocker has to throw Mini Baby-Bel cheeses at a giant picture of monster Judy Finnigan (doyenne of ITV's morning schedule). Each one was worth £5 if it hit the eyes and £10 if they hit the mouth. The only trouble was that "you have to throw them in the style of a girl." Brilliant.
And then they all dance. Sort of.
It made absolutely no sense but it was the show that brought Vic and Bob into the mainstream, and hooray for that.
Key moments
The Club singing round, the final Challenge, the Dove from Above (which some weeks became The Crow from Below, The Vest from the West and The Beast from the East).
George Dawes' song, a regular feature of the Dove From Above (etc.) round. Classics included "Baked Potato", "Lesbians" and above all, the fabulously, gloriously stupid "Peanuts".
Catchphrases
"Eranu" (tonight's special prize noise)
"Uvavu" (incorrect)
"He's just a big baby!" (re: George Dawes)
"We really wanna see those fingers"
"What's the scores, George Dawes?"
Inventor
Theme music
Lyrics:
Welcome to Shooting Stars, Welcome whoever you are, The guest have been greeted, The stars are now seated, So come along and let's start Shooting Stars.
Trivia
Vic and Bob had no idea what George Dawes (real name Matt Lucas) was going to say when giving the scores.
Matt Lucas's comedy partner, David Walliams , made a guest appearance in an end game that involved defending different sizes of fruit from knocking you off a pedestal. The final fruit was Walliams dressed up as a dandy called Soft Alan - the world's biggest "fruit".
Shooting Stars won a silver rose at the 1996 Montreux festival.
The pilot show differed in several ways. The team captains were Jonathan Ross and Danny Baker; the Dove from Above was a blue suitcase (referred to as the Bleu Valise); the contestants' names on the desks were their forenames not surnames; and the teams weren't called A and B, instead they were the Starbirds (with a plane logo) and the Helicopters (with a... you can guess).
At the start of the 2002 shows, the title sequence begins with the number 77 exploding. If you have any reason why, do write.
At the end of many 2002 shows you can see a random blonde woman dancing with the celebrities. This was Nancy Sorrell (Vic's then girlfriend and now wife) who was allowed to come on and dance at the end but - so the story goes - wasn't allowed to have a part in the show itself. Update! Here's reader Kyri Voskou from Cyprus to explain the mystery: "A year or two ago, there were a series of reruns on one of the Gold-type channels on Sky. These were longer than the original half hour shows, something like forty or fifty minutes, and contained a lot of material which was cut in the initial edit. Frequently, the questions to all the contestants were shown – something which never happened during the original screenings, and certainly doesn't happen with the current re-runs (which appear to be even more heavily cut to make the slot along with advertising time). During these longer shows, Nancy Sorrell did appear - I can remember one appearance for sure but I think there were more - when she came on to present a contestant with a gift, or something along those lines. I guess it's possible that she played a more substantial part in the show than we know, and was perhaps cut out in the edits to provide another ongoing joke to the viewers. If so, it certainly worked!"
Merchandise
| Shooting Stars |
Which jockey rode 'Devon Loch' in the 1956 Grand National? | Shooting Stars - UKGameshows
Shooting Stars
"Angelos Epithemiou" (Dan Skinner) (2009)
Voiceovers:
"George Dawes" (Matt Lucas) (1995-2009)
"Angelos Epithemiou" (Dan Skinner) (2010-11)
Broadcast
BBC2, 27 December 1993 to 22 December 1997 (pilot + 31 episodes in 3 series, as part of At Home With Vic and Bob (1993))
BBC Choice, 13 January to 22 December 2002 (20 episodes in 2 series)
Pett Productions for BBC Two, 30 December 2008 to 12 September 2011 (18 episodes in 3 series + 2 specials)
Synopsis
Vic and Bob are a comedy double act you either like or you don't. That previous sentence probably makes more sense than any episode of Shooting Stars ever did!
Shooting Stars is the "quiz of the business we call show" where stars can win huge amounts of cash and prizes. The celebrity captains, comedian Mark Lamarr and uber-babe Ulrika Jonnson, are all introduced by Graham Skidmore ("Our Graham" from Blind Date ) usually to some made up rubbish about their private lives. When everybody has sat down, the resident grown-up baby scorekeeper George Dawes is introduced to the tune of "He's a baby! He's a baby!" Quite.
The original gang (not counting the pilot): Lamarr, Reeves, Dawes, Mortimer, Jonsson
One of three things will then happen, guaranteed:
(1) Vic will start rubbing his legs at the nearest female contestant. "Vic, don't rub your legs!"
(2) Bob will produce a massive frying pan and whack Vic in the face with it.
(3) They'll get on with the show and play True or False. Actually scratch that, the first two invariably happen every two or three minutes throughout the show anyway.
50/50
When they get around to the first round, each contestant is asked a True or False question of the style: "Jimmy Hill's chin is regularly used by the RNLI to save drowning passengers. Now is that true or is that false? But is it true or is it false? IS it true or false? Ulrika, true or false?" Expect this all show. After everyone has had a question, the eternal question would be asked: "What are the scores George Dawes?"
Dawes: he's a baby.
"BANG!BANG!BANG! Yes, I may be fat, but not quite as fat as your mother. Mark has two and the lovely Ulrika has three!"
"Let's see those fingers" - Vic Reeves (left) and Bob Mortimer
Clippety Clip
Hooray indeed. Round Two would be the Clips round where we'd see clips supposedly of real films except it was Vic, Bob, Mark, Ulrika and George messing about. A clip of The A-Team would satirically show them converting a car by putting toilet roll tubes and toothpaste on in order to make their car better. Sometimes the clips were really good and sometimes they were really poor, but there would be a question afterwards. After this, "What are the scores..."
Kissing the baby.
"BANGBANGBANG! DORIS! GET THAT ECCLES CAKE OUT OF YOUR ARSE, OUR CHILDREN MUST EAT! Mark has four, Ulrika has five!"
Make an impression
Ulllllllllrika-ka-ka-ka-ka! Round three was the Impression's round where Vic would sing a song "in the club style". This sounds a little bit like the song it was meant to be yet... doesn't. When somebody has got it correct then random people would be picked: "Random Factor, pick someone like a tractor."
Bird on high
Round Four would be The Dove From Above where everybody would coo so that a cardboard Dove (indeed, from above) would come down. Everybody did that then a superb running joke would happen. Vic would tell a dove related joke which would be met with about thirty seconds of silence, the sound of a funeral knell and a hit with the head with Bob's frying pan. That is unless you're Lynn Perrie, in which case, you can't control yourself and laugh unnecessarily. Once per series for one reason or another, Mark would tell the joke instead and this would be met with laughter and applause. It's great!
The dove descends in the 2009 series
Anyway, on the dove would be six categories of questions. If they get a question wrong they would hear this: "ERANU" and Vic will also pull a funny face. If they pick the special category they would win a prize and be met with "OOVAVO" and another silly face. These prizes would be extremely stupid, an Eyeball rester, a cream-cake selector or a prize from a home shopping catalogue (in which case the player would pick a number from 1-500 representing the pages, but they couldn't pick anything too expensive).
At least three times in this round, reference would be made to 50's throwback Mark Lamarr 's greasy hair. Subjects in this round include Men, and other irrelevant stuff such as Cakes, Curtains, Buckets whatever.
A promo pic from the 2010 series: Vic, Bob, Ulrika-ka-ka-ka-k-ka, new scorer Angelos Epithemiou, and Mr. Chuckles himself, Jack Dee.
Fingers on buzzers
The final round is the Quickfire round where we "really wanna see those fingers! We don't know when the time's up but when it is you'll hear this sound: [George] AAAGGGGHH!" These questions would either be about entertainment or of the type:
Q: Name a hairy dog.
A: St Bernard?'
Q: Oh I'm sorry - it was Golden Retriever.
The winning team gets to select someone to go through to the final challenge. They've already won one pound per point but here's a chance to win lots more! These would be different most weeks, but the all-time favourites must be:
Vibrosprout: Ulrika Johnson would stand on a vibrating machine holding a book. On that book were ten sprouts, at the end of the twenty seconds of vibration, every sprout still on the book was worth ten pounds. There was also a King Radish, this was worth £50.
Judy Finnigan: Jarvis Cocker has to throw Mini Baby-Bel cheeses at a giant picture of monster Judy Finnigan (doyenne of ITV's morning schedule). Each one was worth £5 if it hit the eyes and £10 if they hit the mouth. The only trouble was that "you have to throw them in the style of a girl." Brilliant.
And then they all dance. Sort of.
It made absolutely no sense but it was the show that brought Vic and Bob into the mainstream, and hooray for that.
Key moments
The Club singing round, the final Challenge, the Dove from Above (which some weeks became The Crow from Below, The Vest from the West and The Beast from the East).
George Dawes' song, a regular feature of the Dove From Above (etc.) round. Classics included "Baked Potato", "Lesbians" and above all, the fabulously, gloriously stupid "Peanuts".
Catchphrases
"Eranu" (tonight's special prize noise)
"Uvavu" (incorrect)
"He's just a big baby!" (re: George Dawes)
"We really wanna see those fingers"
"What's the scores, George Dawes?"
Inventor
Theme music
Lyrics:
Welcome to Shooting Stars, Welcome whoever you are, The guest have been greeted, The stars are now seated, So come along and let's start Shooting Stars.
Trivia
Vic and Bob had no idea what George Dawes (real name Matt Lucas) was going to say when giving the scores.
Matt Lucas's comedy partner, David Walliams , made a guest appearance in an end game that involved defending different sizes of fruit from knocking you off a pedestal. The final fruit was Walliams dressed up as a dandy called Soft Alan - the world's biggest "fruit".
Shooting Stars won a silver rose at the 1996 Montreux festival.
The pilot show differed in several ways. The team captains were Jonathan Ross and Danny Baker; the Dove from Above was a blue suitcase (referred to as the Bleu Valise); the contestants' names on the desks were their forenames not surnames; and the teams weren't called A and B, instead they were the Starbirds (with a plane logo) and the Helicopters (with a... you can guess).
At the start of the 2002 shows, the title sequence begins with the number 77 exploding. If you have any reason why, do write.
At the end of many 2002 shows you can see a random blonde woman dancing with the celebrities. This was Nancy Sorrell (Vic's then girlfriend and now wife) who was allowed to come on and dance at the end but - so the story goes - wasn't allowed to have a part in the show itself. Update! Here's reader Kyri Voskou from Cyprus to explain the mystery: "A year or two ago, there were a series of reruns on one of the Gold-type channels on Sky. These were longer than the original half hour shows, something like forty or fifty minutes, and contained a lot of material which was cut in the initial edit. Frequently, the questions to all the contestants were shown – something which never happened during the original screenings, and certainly doesn't happen with the current re-runs (which appear to be even more heavily cut to make the slot along with advertising time). During these longer shows, Nancy Sorrell did appear - I can remember one appearance for sure but I think there were more - when she came on to present a contestant with a gift, or something along those lines. I guess it's possible that she played a more substantial part in the show than we know, and was perhaps cut out in the edits to provide another ongoing joke to the viewers. If so, it certainly worked!"
Merchandise
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Who in 1830 founded the Mormon religion in the USA? | Mormon Church established - Apr 06, 1830 - HISTORY.com
Mormon Church established
Publisher
A+E Networks
In Fayette Township, New York, Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon religion, organizes the Church of Christ during a meeting with a small group of believers.
Born in Vermont in 1805, Smith claimed in 1823 that he had been visited by a Christian angel named Moroni who spoke to him of an ancient Hebrew text that had been lost for 1,500 years. The holy text, supposedly engraved on gold plates by a Native American historian in the fourth century, related the story of Israelite peoples who had lived in America in ancient times. During the next six years, Smith dictated an English translation of this text to his wife and other scribes, and in 1830 The Book of Mormon was published. In the same year, Smith founded the Church of Christ–later known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints–in Fayette Township.
The religion rapidly gained converts, and Smith set up Mormon communities in Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois. However, the Christian sect was also heavily criticized for its unorthodox practices, such as polygamy, and on June 27, 1844, Smith and his brother were murdered in a jail cell by an anti-Mormon mob in Carthage, Illinois.
Two years later, Smith’s successor, Brigham Young, led an exodus of persecuted Mormons from Nauvoo, Illinois, along the western wagon trails in search of religious and political freedom. In July 1847, the 148 initial Mormon pioneers reached Utah’s Valley of the Great Salt Lake. Upon viewing the valley, Young declared, “This is the place,” and the pioneers began preparations for the tens of thousands of Mormon migrants who would follow them and settle there.
Related Videos
| Joseph Smith |
'Juice FM 107.6' broadcasts from which town/city? | SparkNotes: The Pre-Civil War Era (1815–1850): Religious Revivalism: 1800–1850
The Pre-Civil War Era (1815–1850)
History SparkNotes
Changing Society and Culture: 1820–1860
Religious Revivalism: 1800–1850, page 2
page 1 of 3
1800 Second Great Awakening begins
1821 Charles G. Finney begins conducting Christian revivals
1825 New Harmony commune is founded
1826 American Temperance Society is founded
1830 Joseph Smith establishes Mormon Church
1841 Brook Farm commune is founded
1844 Millerites prepare for end of the world
1846 Mormons begin migration to Utah
1847 Oneida Community is founded
Key People
Charles G. Finney - Evangelical preacher who held fiery, popular camp-style meetings
Joseph Smith - Founder of the Mormon church, which attracted a large following
William Miller - Leader of the Millerite movement; projected 1844 as the end of the world
The Second Great Awakening and Revivalism
In addition to social and economic changes, the antebellum period was also marked by a flurry of religious revivalism that spread throughout every region of the United States. Beginning with the Second Great Awakening (a sudden evangelical movement that started around the turn of the nineteenth century), this renewed interest in religion arose primarily as a backlash against the Enlightenment and so-called “age of reason” that had inspired thinkers such as Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas Paine.
Hundreds of roving preachers began to spread a variety of gospels on circuit routes, setting up revivalist camps in rural areas that attracted thousands of new converts. Reverend Charles G. Finney, one of the most popular revivalists of the time, spread his version of the Good Word to thousands of Americans over the course of fifty years. His converted were often so overcome with religion that they would roll, jerk, shake, shout, and even bark in a frenzy of salvation.
The Burned-Over District
The epicenter of revivalism was the so-called Burned-Over District in western New York. Named for its overabundance of hellfire-and-damnation preaching, the region produced dozens of new denominations, communal societies, and reform movements. The abolitionist and temperance movements (see The Spirit of Reform , p. 57) also had some of their strongest roots in this region.
Methodists, Baptists, and Unitarians
Although southern and western Baptists and Methodists were known for their hellfire-and-damnation zeal, other sects and denominations were regarded for their appeal to reason. Unitarians in New England, for example, attracted a huge following because of their belief in a loving God, free will, and denial of original sin. The Unitarian movement attracted many of the nation’s foremost intellectuals, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and other Transcendentalists.
Millerites
Conservative revival preaching sometimes spawned radical new denominations such as the Millerites. William Miller’s movement, which flourished in the 1830s and early 1840s, attracted several hundred thousand Christians who believed that Jesus would return to Earth on October 22, 1844. Though many Millerites lost faith when Jesus failed to show up, the movement prevailed for several decades. Followers eventually reorganized themselves into the modern-day Seventh-Day Adventists.
Mormons
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, or Mormons, also emerged from western New York. Founded by Joseph Smith in 1830, the Mormons believed that God had entrusted them with a new set of scriptures called the Book of Mormon. Because some Mormons practiced polygamy, they were forced to follow Smith westward across the continent to find safe haven from persecution.
1
| i don't know |
'Air Pacific' is the national airline of which Pacific island country? | Getting There in South Pacific | Frommer's
Getting There
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The only practical way to, from, and among the islands is by air. Even though you can board a jetliner in Los Angeles or Sydney in the evening and be strolling under the palm trees of Tahiti by the crack of dawn, the distances are quite vast. So be prepared for long flights: 10 1/2 hours or more from Los Angeles to Fiji, 7 1/2 hours to Tahiti from Los Angeles or Sydney. It takes even longer from the U.K. and Europe.
Because populations are small, flights are not nearly as frequent to and among the islands as we Westerners are used to at home. There may be only one flight weekly between some countries, and flights scheduled today may be eliminated tomorrow. The local airlines have relatively few planes, so mechanical problems can cause delays.
Only a handful of the outer-island airstrips are lighted, so there are few connecting flights after dark. Consult a travel agent or contact the airlines to find out what's happening at present.
Reserve Early & Reconfirm -- Planes do not always fly between all the island countries every day in this sparsely populated, far-flung region. When planning your trip, therefore, first find out the airlines' schedules, which will determine the dates you can travel.
By all means book your domestic inter-island flights well in advance. You may not get on a plane at all if you wait until you arrive in the islands to take care of this important chore.
Although it's unnecessary for international flights, and for domestic flights within French Polynesia, always reconfirm your return flight as soon as you arrive on an outer island within Fiji, the Cook Islands, Samoa, American Samoa, and Tonga. Avoid booking a return flight from an outer island on the same day your international flight is due to leave for home; give yourself plenty of leeway in case the weather or mechanical or scheduling problems prevent the plane from getting to and from the outer island on time.
The Airports
Each island country has just one main international airport: Nadi (NAN) in Fiji; Papeete (PPT) on Tahiti in French Polynesia; Rarotonga (RAR) in the Cook Islands; Apia (APW) in Samoa; Pago Pago (PPG) in American Samoa; and Tongatapu (TBU), the main island in Tonga. Only Nadi (pronounced Nahn-dee) has enough international traffic to be considered a regional hub.
The Airlines
Here, in alphabetical order, are the airlines with service to the islands (their phone numbers are in the U.S. unless otherwise noted):
Air New Zealand (tel. 800/262-1234 or 310/615-1111; www.airnewzealand.com) flies between Auckland and all the island countries. It serves many other New Zealand cities and several in Australia, so Kiwis and Aussies can reach the islands either nonstop or by changing planes in Auckland. It's the only airline flying nonstop from Los Angeles to the Cook Islands, Samoa, and Tonga (the planes stop there on their way between Los Angeles and Auckland). It has service from Los Angeles to Fiji and Tahiti, although the planes are flown by Air Pacific and Air Tahiti Nui , on a code-share basis. It links the U.K. and Europe to Los Angeles, where passengers connect to the islands. It also flies from Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Seoul, Taipei, and Beijing to Auckland, with connections from there to the islands. It is a member of the Star Alliance, which includes United Airlines and several other carriers.
Air France (tel. 800/321-4538; www.airfrance.com) flies to Tahiti from Paris, and from London to Los Angeles, where you can connect to Tahiti.
Air Pacific (tel. 800/227-4446; www.airpacific.com), Fiji's international airline, has extensive service to Nadi from Sydney, Brisbane, and Melbourne in Australia, and Auckland, Wellington, and Christchurch in New Zealand. It flies its own planes 6 days a week between Nadi and Los Angeles, a service it code-shares with Air New Zealand and Qantas , and once weekly between Vancouver, B.C., and Nadi via Honolulu. One of its Nadi-Honolulu flights stops in Christmas Island in the central Pacific. It code-shares with American Airlines, which provides feeder service from many U.S. and Canadian cities to Los Angeles. Within the region, it links Nadi to Samoa and Tonga, and it goes west to Vanuatu and Solomon Islands. It also provides nonstop service between Fiji and Japan.
Air Tahiti Nui (tel. 877/824-4846; www.airtahitinui.com), French Polynesia's national airline, has more flights -- all on relatively new Airbus planes -- between Tahiti and Los Angeles than any other airline. Some of those depart early afternoon California time and arrive in Papeete before dark, so you can connect to Moorea that evening. Most return flights are overnight, but you arrive in Los Angeles early enough in the morning to make convenient connections. It also flies between New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport and Papeete. On the other end, the New York-Tahiti plane keeps going to Sydney in Australia. Air Tahiti Nui also links Paris, Tokyo, and Auckland to Papeete, and it has service between Paris and Tahiti via Los Angeles.
Airlines Tonga (tel. 26-125 in Tonga; [email protected]), the only domestic carrier in Tonga, has been flying twice a week between Nadi and Vava'u, which would be handy for whale-watchers and sailors headed to Vava'u. This service can be difficult to book, however, so let your whale-watching or yacht charter firms make your flight arrangements.
Hawaiian Airlines (tel. 800/367-5320 in the continental U.S., Alaska, and Canada, or 808/838-1555 in Honolulu; www.hawaiianair.com) flies from Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle to Tahiti and to American Samoa. You must change planes in Honolulu, which can result in delays and even an unexpected Hawaiian layover. Samoans heavily book the Pago Pago flights from June through August and during holiday periods, so make your reservations as soon as possible.
Korean Air (tel. 800/438-5000; www.koreanair.com) has service between Seoul and Fiji. Although it's a longer distance, a connection through Seoul can be quicker from the U.K. and Europe than flying through Los Angeles.
LAN Chile (tel. 800/735-5526; www.lan.com) flies at least weekly between Santiago, Chile, and Tahiti by way of Easter Island.
Pacific Blue (tel. 13-16-45 in Australia; 0800/67-0000 in New Zealand; www.flypacificblue.com), the international subsidiary of the Australian cut-rate airline Virgin Blue (itself an offshoot of Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Atlantic), has low-fare service from Australia and New Zealand to Fiji, the Cook Islands, and Tonga. It also flies to Samoa as Polynesian Blue .
Polynesian Airlines (tel. 21-261 in Samoa; www.polynesianairlines.com), the national carrier of Samoa, connects its home base at Apia to American Samoa.
Polynesian Blue (tel. 13-16-45 in Australia; 0800/67-0000 in New Zealand; www.polynesianblue.com), a successful joint venture between Polynesian Airlines and Pacific Blue, has low-fare service to Samoa from Sydney and Auckland.
Qantas Airways (tel. 800/227-4500; www.qantas.com), the Australian carrier, has flights from several Australian cities and Fiji, and between Los Angeles and Fiji (its Fiji-bound passengers fly on Air Pacific planes).
Note: This information was accurate when it was published, but can change without notice. Please be sure to confirm all rates and details directly with the companies in question before planning your trip.
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| Fiji (disambiguation) |
'Copa Airlines' is the national airline of which Central American country? | Profile on Fiji Airways | CAPA - Centre for Aviation
Outlook: Domestic Australia airline capacity truce; NZ prepares for new entry on regional routes
30-Sep-2015 10:37 AM
Reducing capacity in Australia is less a strategic decision than it is overdue common sense. Qantas and Virgin Australia appear finally to have settled into a more stable capacity approach, with growth largely a pivot of capacity away from Western Australia and back into the east coast as the commodities slowdown hits demand. A taste of profit for both carriers should head off the temptation for further scuffles.
With Australia more or less stable and international now back into expansion mode, the Qantas Group now looks set to take on Air New Zealand's domestic market with the expansion of Jetstar into regional services. While using idle assets to make a play at Air New Zealand’s monopoly, the move is likely to trigger an animated response – indeed, promotional fares have already been matched by the Kiwi incumbent and Air New Zealand is questioning the competition law implications.
Fiji Airways continues its quiet expansion in the South Pacific in the meantime while also looking to broaden its long haul markets into emerging inbound tourism markets such as China, Japan and Singapore. But the carrier is about to welcome its third CEO in three years and the shift back into expansion will require a steady hand to maintain the ruthless cost focus employed by previous CEO Stefan Pichler and prior, Dave Pflieger.
Delta Air Lines and Virgin Australia seek re-authorisation for US-Australia JV despite low growth
21-Jan-2015 10:31 AM
Delta Air Lines and Virgin Australia are seeking re-authorisation for 10 years from Australian regulators for their joint venture. The US DoT initially took longer to approve the alliance but gave indefinite approval. Virgin continues to need Delta as a partner more than Delta needs Virgin, owing to the numerous connections from US gateways Virgin needs access to. The two will account for 25% of 2015's seat capacity compared to a much larger 56% for Qantas, with the remaining 19% held by United.
There have been limited developments from the smaller carriers, and Delta and Virgin have offered little growth. Nor in their application do they suggest further growth is on the horizon. Virgin Australia is short on long-haul aircraft and anyway is focused on its core domestic market. Delta has a much larger globe to tend to. United has made incremental changes while Qantas has grown the most. Given market dynamics, there is little prospect for a new entrant.
Fiji Airways plans modest growth and focus on local market as profitability continues to improve
9-Sep-2014 11:13 AM
Fiji Airways is planning modest growth over the next five years as it focuses on further improving its profitability. The flag carrier has been profitable for four consecutive years and recorded a record half year profit in 1H2014 but CEO Stefan Pichler sees potential for even higher margins.
Mr Pichler just completed his first year at Fiji Airways and has been concentrating on improving the group’s management structure and customer service. He also has implemented a new five-year business plan that focuses on sustained profitability with an average growth of only 3.5% per annum.
Fiji Airways, which was known as Air Pacific until mid-2013, has benefited from widebody fleet renewal following the delivery of three A330-200s in 2013. In 2014 it has turned its attention to renewing the fleet at recently rebranded turboprop operation Fiji Link.
Fiji Airways' new MD Stefan Pichler sets his sights on the next five years for the rebranded airline
19-Sep-2013 1:26 PM
Fiji Airways' new MD Stefan Pichler has begun work on the development of a five-year strategic plan which will build on the airline’s new branding and structure and seek to increase connectivity through codeshare and interline agreements to grow Fiji’s tourism industry.
With the transition from Air Pacific to Fiji Airways almost complete and the last of three A330-200s due to arrive in Nov-2013, management attention has turned to the domestic and regional Pacific Island subsidiary Pacific Sun which has also completed a restructuring over the past three years and is likely to receive a fleet upgrade to accommodate expected market growth.
Mr Pichler said in his first week in the job that Fiji Airways is in a pivotal period of growth and change. “The combination of a strong brand, new fleet of A330-200s and refurbished Boeing 737s, as well as improved schedules and services opens up an exciting new chapter for the airline”.
Air NZ enjoys a monopoly on the Pacific, but potential competitors are circling
5-Jul-2013 12:06 PM
Air New Zealand has enjoyed a monopoly on the New Zealand to North American route since Qantas pulled out of the Auckland-Los Angeles route in May-2012 (which originated in Sydney). Since then Air NZ has increased capacity, in part to fill the void left by Qantas, but also in response to the strong growth in United States visitors to New Zealand and the recovering US economy.
A growing market with a single player would normally be expected to quickly attract a competitor, and to the extent that Hawaiian Airlines began flying between Honolulu and Auckland in Mar-2013, that has happened. Part of Hawaiian Airlines’ proposition is that Honolulu can serve as an alternative and less stressful transit point to its US destinations beyond the more congested west coast gateways of Los Angeles and San Francisco.
There is speculation that Qantas' oneworld partner American Airlines is considering establishing a direct Los Angeles-Auckland service within the next two years. American is reconfiguring its 777-200ER fleet with higher density two class capacity which could be suitable for a route that is dominated by leisure travellers.
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"About which of her fellow actresses did Bette Davis say ""She's slept with every star in Hollywood except Lassie""?" | Bette Davis the Hollywood bitch | Express Yourself | Comment | Daily Express
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Bette Davis the Hollywood bitch
SHE seduced her leading men and left her rivals quaking with fear. Here, to mark the centenary of her birth, we unravel the extraordinary lives of BETTE DAVIS.
00:00, Sat, Mar 22, 2008
STAR: Bette was famous for her mood swings
When Ruth Elizabeth “Bette” Davis was born on April 5 100 years ago, her mother screamed: “Take it away! It’s horrible!” So much for maternal feeling.
But it set the seal for the infant who grew up to be Bette Davis – a woman for whom it might have been predicted: “Fasten your seatbelts – it’s going to be a bumpy life.”
When Bette died in Neuilly, France, at the age of 81 from metastasised breast cancer, many of her fans refused to believe it. Of all the actresses ever to stalk the Hollywood screen, Bette seemed immortal.
She had weathered the storms of disfavour, flops and lawsuits – not to mention seeing off a quartet of husbands – resurrecting herself time and again to the point where she became a living legend. Death was not an option.
Bette in The Working Man with Hardie Albright
As things turned out, Bette was only human – just.
Born with none of the advantages that assist most budding young movie actresses (looks, malleability) and one that was relatively unimportant to the Hollywood suits (talent), Bette learned from an early age that the key to success was to fight for it. And if the fight had to be dirty, so be it.
After her parents divorced, Bette and her mentally unbalanced sister were raised by their strict mother Ruthie. From the very beginning, Bette demanded attention. She was misdiagnosed as frivolous and spoilt when in fact she was just cantankerous, demanding and highly precocious.
Anyone who says that life begins at 40 is full of it.
Bette Davis
She was also sexually naive. Unlike her arch-rival Joan Crawford, whose famously indiscriminate and voracious sexual appetite knew no bounds, Bette was repressed and anxious around men.
When a young actor called Henry Fonda kissed Bette chastely on her 17-year-old cheek, she thought she was pregnant. A few days later, Fonda was alarmed to receive a letter from Bette saying: “I’ve told mother about our lovely experience together in the moonlight. She will announce the engagement soon.”
Not surprisingly, Fonda ran for cover and avoided her for years.
Not that he should have worried. By the time Bette had turned up in Hollywood with a six-month contract with Universal Studios, she was determined to become a star at the expense of everything else – marriage, children, happiness.
By the age of 32 she drank for America and had had three abortions to avoid interrupting her punishing work schedules. A variety of husbands – with the exception of her second, Arthur Farnsworth, who died mysteriously of a brain haemorrhage as the result of a skull fracture – simply threw in the towel when they realised they couldn’t compete. Of her last husband, Gary Merrill, Bette said: “Gary was a macho man but none of my husbands was ever man enough to become Mr Bette Davis.”
At the Academy Awards
Psychoanalysts could make their careers exploring Bette Davis. Her mother was a tight-laced Victorian wannabe actress who projected her aspirations on to her daughter. Bette was only too willing to be pushed and ended up being the family breadwinner.
She pretty much supported all of her husbands, as well as her mother, sister and her daughter Barbara, who was born when Bette was 39. Barbara’s 1985 account of life with her, My Mother’s Keeper, makes Mommie Dearest (Joan Crawford’s daughter’s venomous memoir) read like Little Women in comparison. Bette never forgave her for dishing the dirt.
FACE OF A LEGEND: Bette refused to grow old gracefully
Bette has made excuses for her appalling behaviour by claiming that she was battling against all odds to do the best work that she could. Certainly, the legend lives on in such films as Now, Voyager, The Letter, All About Eve, Jezebel, Dangerous and Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?
Not blessed with conventional beauty she was happy to play grotesques, either internally or externally, applying layers of make-up and expressing extreme emotions. From the falling-apart woman in Mr Skeffington to the blinding and bizarre performance as a former child star in Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?, Bette was fearless in her approach to unsympathetic characters.
Unlike many actors who exhibit a need to be loved by the audience, Bette seemed to relish the reverse – the less sympathetic the role, the keener she was to play it.
Her reward was two Best Actress Oscars (for Dangerous and Jezebel), and eight other Academy Award nominations; in 1999 she was placed second behind Katharine Hepburn in the American Film Institute’s list of the greatest female stars of all time. Undoubtedly she would have had something pithy to say about that.
Waspish and witty, capricious and violent, Bette could swing from mood to mood with mercurial ease – a facility that made her a great actress if an unpredictable co-star.
Once she had discovered sex, (“God’s biggest joke on human beings”), she set about looking for the love of her life. She found him on the set of Jezebel in 1937. But director William Wyler, with whom she began an affair, was married and refused to leave his wife.
By the end of the Forties she had a reputation for being difficult. When Joseph L Mankiewicz announced that Bette would take over the role of Margo Channing in All About Eve, fellow director Edmund Goulding (who directed her in four films, including Dark Victory) wrote to him: “Dear boy, have you gone mad? This woman will destroy you, she will grind you down to a fine powder and blow you away. You are a writer, dear boy. She will come to the stage with a thick pad of long yellow paper. And pencils. She will write. And then she, not you, will direct. Mark my words.”
She was not above physical violence. During the shooting of the 1964 film Where Love Has Gone, she tore off her wig and began whipping her co-star Susan Hayward with it, screaming insults.
She wrested control from the writers and directors she considered too weak to do their jobs but it was her fellow actresses who suffered most. At times, Bette exhibited all the worst traits of Margo Channing, the jealous actress who would stop at nothing to get a role.
Bette, however, had a different view: “Margo Channing was not a bitch,” she said. “She was an actress who was getting older and was not too happy about it. And why should she? Anyone who says that life begins at 40 is full of it. As people get older their bodies begin to decay. They get sick. They forget things. What’s good about that?”
Bette’s most notable rival was Joan Crawford – an actress of a similar age who was everything Bette was not. While both had a certain artificiality when unchecked, Bette could lose herself in a role; Crawford took a character and moulded it around her own personality.
“She and I have never been friends,” said Bette. “I admire her and yet I feel uncomfortable with her. To me, she is the personification of the movie star. I have always felt her greatest performance is Crawford being Crawford.”
That was the nicest thing she ever said about Crawford. There are legions of quotes (“I wouldn’t p*** on her if she was on fire,” “She has slept with every male star at MGM except Lassie”) that make for rather more hair-raising reading.
The genius of casting these “two old broads” opposite each other in Baby Jane paid huge dividends, even if the actual shoot was alarming. Stories about the production have passed into Hollywood legend: the tale that Crawford, as the crippled sister, used to fill her pockets with lead weights so that Bette had to struggle to drag her across the floor; and that Bette didn’t hold back when her character delivered several vicious kicks to Crawford’s prone body.
The suggestion by Ed Sikov, in his biography Dark Victory, that their life-long feud began when Bette rejected Crawford’s advances is tremendously tantalising.
Vulnerable and vitriolic, friendly and ferocious, Bette Davis was the perfect example of the craziness that often afflicts great talents. She had a remarkable self-knowledge and knew better than anyone where she stood in the eyes of the world.
Having once remarked that when she died they would probably auction off her false eyelashes, she would have been amused to know that she was absolutely right. They fetched £300.
*****************************************************************
| Joan Crawford |
Who wrote the Elvis Presley hit 'Blue Suede Shoes'? | 1000+ images about Joan Crawford on Pinterest | Joan crawford, Mildred pierce and George hurrell
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Joan Crawford in a late 1920s photo by the legendary Hollywood photographer Hurrell. He was the first portrait photographer to erase freckles etc. Joan Crawford had a lot of freckles. He made everyone flawless. I love her makeup. You could do the same makeup now. Biddy Craft
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Which shrub is commonly known as the 'Butterfly bush'? | Butterfly Bush Shrubs, List of species in the Buddleja Genus
Image use (cc2)
There are about 100 species in the Buddleja Genus. Several species of Buddleja are popular garden plants, the genus and species are commonly known as butterfly bush due to their attractiveness to butterflies. Butterfly bushes have become quite well known for this reason, they are also attract bees and moths. Some species of Buddleja that have red flowers also attract hummingbirds.
Common garden, landscape Species of Butterfly Bush (Buddleja) include;
Buddleja globosa; Commonly known as Orange Ball Buddleia, from southern Chile, grown for its strongly honey scented orange globular flower heads.
Buddleja alternifolia; Commonly known as Fountain Butterfly Bush, has lilac colored flowers.
Popular garden, landscape "Varieties" of Buddleja include;
"Black Knight" with dark navy blue flowers
"Pink Delight" with pastel pink colored flowers
"Royal Red" with pink-red flowers
"Sungold" with golden yellow flowers
Breeding work has produced a more compact Buddleja, a dwarf variety Lo & Behold(TM) "Blue Chip"(TM) that reaches no more than 2-3 ft (0.61-0.91 m) tall.
Butterfly Bush (Buddleja) Form; most are shrubs, and a few being trees; the largest species reach 30 m (98 ft) tall. Most cultivated ornamental species rarely exceed 5 m (16 ft) tall.
Both Evergreen species of Butterfly Bush (Buddleja) and deciduous species exist.
Facts about the Buddleja Genus of Shrubs
Genus Scientific Name = Buddleja
Genus Common Names = Butterfly Bush
Number of Taxa in the Buddleja Genus = XX
List of Butterfly Bush Shrubs, Buddleja Genus - All known species, taxa on Earth, organized by scientific Latin botanical name first and common names second.
Botanical, Latin, Scientific Shrub Name
Common Shrub Name
| Buddleja |
Which horse led the 1973 Grand National field for most of the race only to be beaten by 'Red Rum'? | Butterfly Bush - Buddleia Shrubs - Brighter Blooms Nursery
The Complete Guide to Butterfly Bushes
The Butterfly Bush, or Buddleia Shrub, is aptly named for its gift in attracting butterflies with its large, cone-shaped flower heads. The shrub also invites more than its share of hummingbirds to the lawn or garden all summer long.
All butterfly bushes add fragrance and interest to your garden with very little maintenance. They can handle a variety of conditions and once established, should thrive with rain water only. The shrubs' height and versatility make them perfect for several spots in your garden. Use butterfly bushes for privacy, where you can bird watch from a window, or just downwind from a seating area to make the most of their fragrance. And be sure to complement the colors of your favorite butterfly bush with a low-growing shrub. For example, pair a Black Knight's violet blooms with your favorite yellow rose.
The Top Butterfly Bush Varieties
Black Knight- Known for its deep purple, fragrant blooms and low maintenance.
Pink Delight- With large, especially fragrant pink blooms that pollinators love and that you and guest will enjoy in cut arrangements.
White Profusion- An unusual form of butterfly bush with aromatic white blooms that grows up to six feet tall.
How and Where To Plant Butterfly Bushes
Butterfly bushes are hardy in zones 5 through 9, and will make it through the winter in cooler climates and in nearly any condition. But if you want to maximize the shrub's blooms, be sure to plant yours in an area of your garden that receives full sun. Consider the height and shade of nearby trees or your home when placing your butterfly bush.
Also consider the mature size of the butterfly bush. The shrubs grow quickly and can reach greater than six feet high and wide by the second growing season. You can plant butterfly bushes in spring or fall. Before planting, make sure the spot you've chosen has plenty of composted matter, and loosen the soil down to about a foot if possible. This will ensure that the soil around the plant's roots can collect, but not retain, moisture. Butterfly bushes need well-draining soil. You can add either acidic or alkaline organic matter for these shrubs, as long as you keep the pH level at about 6.0 to 7.0.
Your planting hole should be at least twice the diameter of the plant's root ball or that of the pot you've purchased. Water your new plant regularly until it's established, up to weekly during the hottest days of summer the first year.
Caring for Butterfly Bushes
Butterfly bushes are easy-care shrubs. It helps to add a little compost each spring, spread in a fine layer over the plant's roots. The best part of caring for a butterfly bush is the easy pruning. You don't have to think about where to cut or how. Simply prune old wood nearly to the ground each spring just before new branches begin emerging. This invigorates the new growth, and you'll see your shrub go from ground to taller than you by early summer.
As long as you are getting rain, an established butterfly bush should need no additional watering. Only water if in a period of drought. Deadheading spent blooms encourages more and longer flowering. Very few pests or problems bother butterfly bushes, and it's best not to spray them if you see signs of bugs such as spider mites because you'll also affect butterfly populations. Spider mites usually show up on the plant only when it is stressed from lack of water. If you plant several shrubs to create privacy or a hedge effect, be sure to allow for the shrubs' full size.
Facts About the Butterfly Bush
The butterfly bush hails from Chile but also is native to China. Horticulturalists continue to search the Himalayan mountains to identify new native varieties of the shrub. The shrub's leaves are also attractive, looking similar to large versions of culinary sage.
You might have heard that butterfly bush is invasive, but that's only a problem in a few select areas of the country. In most regions and with most cultivars, there is no problem with spread of buddleia, and it's even okay to leave some spent seed heads on in fall for birds to enjoy after you've had a full summer of fragrance, color and hummingbird and butterfly sightings.
Everyone Will Appreciate the Vibrant, Sweetly Scented Blooms of the Butterfly Bush!
The Butterfly Bush, also known as the Buddleia Shrub, has been a popular plant for gardeners all over the world due to its ability to attract butterflies and hummingbirds. For more colorful landscapes that are sure to demand the compliments of friends, family and neighbors, the Butterfly Bush is a wonderful choice.
Beautiful, nectar-filled clusters of flowers beckon to butterflies!
The Buddleia Shrub is known for its fragrant blooms. Colorful clusters of trumpet-shaped flowers appear on cone-like heads. These blooms practically call out to our flying friends, requesting that they come in for a landing and enjoy the feast.
A Brief History of the Butterfly Bush
The name, Buddleia comes from the Reverend Adam Buddle, who was an amateur botanist of the seventeenth century. The Butterfly Bush' botanical name was the result of a posthumous honor to Buddle in 1774, which is when this Chilean plant first reached England. Explorers of the Victorian era later found a wide array of Buddleia in China. Today, horticulturists worldwide continue to comb the foothills of the Himalayans for new varieties.
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Who am I, I was born in 1936 in Czechoslovakia, was a playwright and became a politician being the last President of Czechoslovakia (1989-92) and the first President of the Czech Republic (1993-2003)? | Vaclav Havel: Dissident playwright who became the first president of the new Czech Republic | The Independent
Vaclav Havel: Dissident playwright who became the first president of the new Czech Republic
Monday 19 December 2011 00:00 BST
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The Independent Online
Victory: Havel salutes the crowd at Prague Castle following his election as the last president of Czechoslovakia in December 1989 DIETHER ENDLICHER / AP
The Czech president and playwright Vaclav Havel was the most unexpected, and most brilliant, of the new leaders who emerged from east Europe's peaceful revolutions against Communism.
Poland's Lech Walesa matched Havel as a canny guide of anti-Communist opposition, but tarnished his reputation when he became his country's first post-Communist president. By contrast Havel's stature continued to grow after he was chosen head of state in December 1989.
The key to his achievement was an unusual combination of intellect, moral firmness tested by prison and persecution, and natural political savvy. The final ingredient was modesty, essential in a country whose people are famously undeferential. Havel had never aspired to lead the anti-Communist opposition or to become its presidential candidate. He simply emerged, uncontested, from among friends and colleagues whom he considered his equals.
For all his brilliance and seriousness he remained endearingly human. By his own account he was a "cheerful fellow", and certainly no angel. He smoked, drank and was naturally convivial: the attic of his country house was turned into a dormitory for guests to spend the night in after parties. He was also, like many Czech intellectuals, given to affairs of the heart, in spite of a remarkable marriage. Rumpled and shaggy in opposition, he cut his hair and put on a suit and tie when he moved into the presidential palace, but the effect was never quite convincing, like a small boy forced into his Sunday best.
He was driven into politics by a sense of duty. "I shall give all this up," he told a friend, "when we have decent politicians." Perhaps his greatest gift to his country was to restore the tradition of decent politics laid down by Tomas Masaryk, the philosopher-president of Czechoslovakia between the First and Second World Wars.
Vaclav Havel was born in 1936. His father was a successful civil engineer and architect, responsible for the splendid art nouveau Lucarna building in Wenceslas Square, Prague. Havel and his brother Ivan entertained friends in the restaurants of the Lucarna even after it had been nationalised by the Communist government that took power in 1948.
What he called his "pampered childhood" left him with a sense of isolation and inferiority. He was a fat boy – in his own words "a well-fed piglet" – and classmates tormented him by slapping his chubby thighs. The sense of being an interloper and in permanent danger of ridicule lasted many years. At moments of triumph, even when he was world famous, he would imagine his army sergeant raucously putting him back in his proper humble place. But this unease also drove him "to prove myself over and over again".
Abandoned by the West and terrorised by Hitler, post-war Czechoslovakia was readier than Poland or Hungary to accept Soviet tutelage. Many Czech intellectuals turned Communist; Havel was never tempted. Barred from higher education because of his "bourgeois" origins he went to night school, did his two years' military service and ended up, aged 24, a stage hand at Na zabradli ("Theatre on the Balustrade"), the most adventurous theatre in Prague.
Havel had been writing for several years and in 1963 the theatre staged his first play Nahradni Slavost (translated into English as The Garden Party, 1969). Over the next five years he wrote two more, Vyrozumeni (1965, translated as The Memorandum, 1980) and Ztizena Moznost Soustredeni (1968, translated as The Increased Difficulty of Concentration, 1972), establishing his reputation as the leading Czech playwright.
Havel lived and worked outside the Communist cultural system and wrote as though there were no censorship. All his plays, he said, dealt with the theme of human identity in crisis, a crisis particularly evident in a Communist society where rulers as well as ruled were prisoners of the same obfuscating official logic. The Memorandum, in which he invented "Ptidepe", a new government language whose least used words are the longest, was the mostsuccessful demonstration of his talent for the absurd.
In 1964 Havel married Olga Splichalova, whose strong character and working-class background helped liberate him from hang-ups about his own family. He came to think of Olga and himself as "faithful, lifelong fellow travellers". She was the first to read his new work, and he leaned on her heavily in the difficult years ahead.
After the horrors of Stalinism, the 1960s was a time of promise in Czechoslovakia, ending in the reform Communism of the benign Alexander Dubcek. In the spring of 1968 Havel was allowed to go to America for the US premiere of The Memorandum at the New York Shakespeare Festival, where it won the Obie prize. Returning to Prague and doubting the ability of the Communist leopard to change its spots, he championed the creation of a non-Marxist Social Democratic party. A few weeks later the Warsaw Pact invasion ended the Czech experiment.
The new president, Gustav Husak, put a blight on Czechoslovak life. There was no chance that Havel's plays would be performed in public again and, although he went on writing, he was drawn more and more into active opposition to a regime that was dogmatic yet fearful of its own people. In 1969 he co-authored Deset Bodu (Ten Points), one of the first attacks on the new regime, and from then on was under continuous police surveillance. Friends thought the years of pressure told on his creative writing, and that his first plays remained his best.
Havel wanted to avoid a declamatory and utopian opposition and tried to devise tactics for practical resistance. He also sought a philosophical and moral compass for those condemned to live under totalitarian rule. The tactical skills he developed ensured his eventual leadership of Czechoslovakia's peaceful overthrow of Communism; his philosophical struggle produced some of this century's best writing on the preservation of human dignity under dictatorship.
In 1975 he began Edice Expedice, a samizdat publishing house that produced 50 titles in its first three years. The same year he brought out his own essay "Dopis Dr Gustavu Husakovi" ("Letter to Dr Gustav Husak") in which he revealed the emptiness of a regime that by declaring its "socialism" perfect had, in effect, banished history and time (when Havel took over the president's office in 1989 he was not surprised to find it had no clocks). In another essay, "Moc Bezmocnych" ("The Power of the Powerless") he explored how, under Communism, it was still possible to "live in truth" – a phrase of the banned philosopher Jan Patocka who had inspired Havel in his early years at Na zabradli.
Havel used the example of a greengrocer who put in his shop window the slogan "Workers of the world unite". The greengrocer was not expected to believe the slogan, but by displaying it signalled he would give the regime no trouble. He could, though, reclaim his dignity by removing the sign and taking the consequences, though Havel knew this was to ask a lot of most of his fellow citizens. In a play in his Vanek trilogy he has a worker say to the writer hero, "I'm just the manure that makes your fancy principles grow."
Havel shared the average Czech's taste for orderliness and comfort. His spick-and-span farmhouse retreat at Hradecek in north Bohemia might have been on a different planet from the turbulent world of his friends in the Polish opposition. But in January 1977 he condemned himself to turbulence when he helped launch the opposition movement Charter 77, and with Professor Jan Patocka and Dubcek's foreign minister, Jiri Hajek, became one of its first spokesmen. Arrested within days, Havel was released after four months, the government letting it be known that he had agreed to give up opposition activities.
Havel had been tricked, but he was consumed with shame for he admitted prison had terrified him. When a four-and-a-half year sentence followed in 1979 he seized it as a chance to prove "that I am not a lightweight as many may have seen me, that I stand behind what I do". In a series of remarkable letters of sometimes religious intensity to his wife, later published as Dopisy Olze (1985, Letters to Olga), he continued his search for meaning and his battle against despair and resignation. "Those who do not lose hope and faith in life can never come to a bad end."
He was released in February 1983 after a serious bout of pneumonia, his standing immeasurably increased at home and abroad. Resuming his Charter activities in spite of harassment he maintained his message that even in an unfree society one can act as if one is free. Though most Czechs remained sour but silent critics of the regime, unofficial organisations did develop among intellectuals and young people, and Havel was their hero. During a last, short sentence in 1989 even the warders treated him with respect.
When, on 17 November that year, police attacked a demonstration of Prague students, the uproar showed the regime to be as shaky as its counterparts throughout east Europe. Havel hurried back from Hradecek for meetings that produced the opposition coalition Civic Forum, a responsible interlocutor for a by now terrified government. Most of the crowd at the first mammoth protest meeting in Wenceslas Square knew little or nothing about the slightly built man who addressed them hoarsely from a balcony, but within a month Havel had deftly negotiated the Communist surrender and become obvious candidate for president of the restored democratic republic of Czechoslovakia.
Havel never flattered the Czechs. In the 1990 parliamentary elections he reminded them that since a "relatively great part" of the population supported the Communist takeover, anti-Communist zeal ill became them. They should therefore vote for "decent, modest, matter-of-fact people" and avoid fanatics of all kinds. One of his first presidential acts was to apologise for the violence done to Germans expelled from Czech Sudetenland after the war. He would not countenance the argument that Germany's greater crimes against Czechs justified the misdeeds of the latter. He supported an official reconciliation with Germany that was only reached, after much difficulty, in 1996.
He also lectured the West on its slowness in repaying what he believed was its moral debt to the east European countries it first sacrificed to Hitler, and then to the Soviet Union. He campaigned for the early entry of his country into Nato and the European Union.
The divorce of Slovakia from the Czech lands distressed Havel but in 1993 he agreed to serve a new five year-term as president of the now Czech Republic. He was also unhappy with the right-wing economic policies of the Prime Minister Vaclav Klaus, a former colleague in the Civic Forum. It was some consolation that while Klaus was eventually voted out Havel remained in office, but after the death of Olga in 1996 and an operation for lung cancer the same year his own reputation began to suffer. His marriage in 1997 to the young actress Dagmar Veskrnova was not popular with the critically minded Czechs, and more operations and ill-health raised doubts about how much longer this once near-magical president should remain in his palace high above the golden city of Prague.
He left the presidency in 2003, to be followed by his old opponent Klaus. In political retirement he published a memoir of his time in office, To the Castle and Back, and wrote his first new plays for almost 20 years. The world bestowed many honours on him, including Germany's Quadriga award in 2009, though when two years later Vladimir Putin received the same prize Havel, ever the honourable dissident, promptly gave his back.
Vaclav Havel, writer and politician: born Prague 5 October 1936; stagehand, Na zabradli, Prague 1960-61, Assistant to Artistic Director 1961-63, Literary Manager 1963-68, Resident Playwright 1968; Co-Founder, Charter 77 1977; Co-Founder, Committee for Defence of Unjustly Prosecuted (VONS) 1978; Co-Founder, Civic Forum 1989; President, Czech and Slovak Federal Republic 1989-92; President, Czech Republic 1993-2003; married 1964 Olga Splichalova (died 1996), 1997 Dagmar Veskrnova; died Hradecek, Czech Republic 18 December 2011.
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Czechoslovakia
(chĕk'ōslōväk`ēə), Czech Československo (chĕs`kōslōvĕn'skō), former federal republic, 49,370 sq mi (127,869 sq km), in central Europe. On Jan. 1, 1993, the Czech Republic Czech Republic,
Czech Česká Republika, or Czechia
, Czech Česko, republic (2005 est. pop. 10,241,000), 29,677 sq mi (78,864 sq km), central Europe.
..... Click the link for more information. and the Slovak Republic (see Slovakia Slovakia
or the Slovak Republic,
Slovak Slovensko , republic (2005 est. pop. 5,431,000), 18,917 sq mi (48,995 sq km), central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic in the west, by Austria in the southwest, by Hungary in the south, by Ukraine in the east,
..... Click the link for more information. ) became independent states and Czechoslovakia ceased to exist. (For history prior to 1918 as well as geographic and economic information, see Bohemia Bohemia,
Czech Čechy, historic region (20,368 sq mi/52,753 sq km) and former kingdom, in W and central Czech Republic. Bohemia is bounded by Austria in the southeast, by Germany in the west and northwest, by Poland in the north and northeast, and by Moravia in the
..... Click the link for more information. ; Czech Republic Czech Republic,
Czech Česká Republika, or Czechia
, Czech Česko, republic (2005 est. pop. 10,241,000), 29,677 sq mi (78,864 sq km), central Europe.
..... Click the link for more information. ; Moravia Moravia
, Czech Morava, Ger. Mähren, region in the E Czech Republic. The region is bordered on the W by Bohemia, on the E by the Little and White Carpathian Mts., which divide it from Slovakia, and on the N by the Sudetes Mts.
..... Click the link for more information. ; Slovakia Slovakia
or the Slovak Republic,
Slovak Slovensko , republic (2005 est. pop. 5,431,000), 18,917 sq mi (48,995 sq km), central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic in the west, by Austria in the southwest, by Hungary in the south, by Ukraine in the east,
..... Click the link for more information. .)
History
The Emergence of Czechoslovakia
The creation of Czechoslovakia was the culmination of the long struggle of the Czechs against their Austrian rulers. It was largely accomplished by the nation's first and second presidents, T. G. Masaryk Masaryk, Thomas Garrigue
, 1850–1937, Czechoslovak political leader and philosopher, first president and chief founder of Czechoslovakia. He is revered by most Czechs and was internationally recognized as a great democratic leader.
..... Click the link for more information. and Eduard Beneš Beneš, Eduard
, 1884–1948, Czechoslovakian president (1935–38, 1946–48). As a student at Prague Univ. he adopted the political and social philosophy of T. G. Masaryk.
..... Click the link for more information. . The union of the Czech lands and Slovakia was officially proclaimed in Prague on Nov. 14, 1918; the Treaty of St. Germain (Sept., 1919) formally recognized the new republic. Ruthenia was added by the Treaty of Trianon (June, 1920).
Because Czechoslovakia inherited the greater part of the industries of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, it was economically the most favored of the Hapsburg successor states. Benefiting from a liberal, democratic constitution (1920) and led by able statesmen, the new republic appeared to have a bright future. Redistribution of some of the estates of the former nobility and the church generally improved the living conditions of the peasantry. In foreign policy Czechoslovakia relied on its friendship with France and on its Little Entente Little Entente
, loose alliance formed in 1920–21 by Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Yugoslavia. Its specific purposes were the containment of Hungarian revisionism (of the terms of the World War I peace treaty) and the prevention of a restoration of the Hapsburgs.
..... Click the link for more information. with Yugoslavia and Romania.
Yet the new state was far from being a stable unit. With its antagonistic and nationalistic ethnic elements, it reflected the inherent weakness of the Hapsburg empire. The Czechs and Slovaks had separate histories and greatly differing religious, cultural, and social traditions. The constitution of 1920, which set up a highly centralized unitary state, failed to take into account the important problem of national minorities. The Germans and Magyars of Czechoslovakia openly agitated against the territorial settlements. Although the constitution provided for autonomy for Ruthenia, in practice autonomy was constantly postponed. The Slovak People's party accused the Czech government of having denied Slovakia promised autonomous rights. Hitler's rise in Germany, the German annexation of Austria, the resulting revival of revisionism in Hungary and of agitation for autonomy in Slovakia, and the appeasement policy of the Western powers left Czechoslovakia without allies, exposed to hostile Germany and Hungary on three sides and to unsympathetic Poland on the fourth.
The nationality problem led to a European crisis when the German nationalist minority, led by Konrad Henlein and vehemently backed by Hitler, demanded the union of the predominantly German districts with Germany. Threatening war, Hitler extorted through the Munich Pact Munich Pact,
1938. In the summer of 1938, Chancellor Hitler of Germany began openly to support the demands of Germans living in the Sudetenland (see Sudetes) of Czechoslovakia for an improved status. In September, Hitler demanded self-determination for the Sudetenland.
..... Click the link for more information. (Sept., 1938) the cession of the Bohemian borderlands (Sudetenland). Poland and Hungary obtained territorial cessions shortly thereafter. Beneš resigned the presidency in October and was succeeded by Emil Hacha. In Nov., 1938, the truncated state, renamed Czecho-Slovakia, was reconstituted in three autonomous units—Bohemia and Moravia, Slovakia, and Ruthenia.
The War Years
In Mar., 1939, Hitler forced Hacha to surrender Czecho-Slovakia to German control and made Bohemia and Moravia into a German "protectorate." Slovakia gained nominal independence as a satellite state. Ruthenia was awarded to Hungary. After the outbreak of World War II, Beneš set up a provisional government in London, and Czech units fought with the Allied forces. Except for the brutalities of the German occupation, Czechoslovakia suffered relatively little from the war. In Apr., 1944, Soviet forces, accompanied by a Czech coalition government headed by Beneš, and American troops entered Czechoslovakia; the fall (May 12, 1945) of Prague marked the end of military operations in Europe. Soviet and American troops were withdrawn later in the year.
At the Potsdam Conference of 1945 the expulsion of about 3,000,000 Germans from Czechoslovakia and an exchange of minorities between Czechoslovakia and Hungary were approved. The country's pre-1938 territory was restored, except for Ruthenia, which was ceded to the USSR. In the elections of 1946 the Communists emerged as the strongest party (obtaining one third of the votes) and became the dominant party in the coalition headed by the Communist Klement Gottwald. Beneš was elected president. Soviet pressure prevented Czechoslovakia from accepting Marshall Plan aid (June, 1947).
The Communist Era
During the summer of 1947, the Communists began a campaign of political agitation and intrigue that gave them complete control of the government in Feb., 1948. In March, Jan Masaryk Masaryk, Jan
, 1886–1948, Czechoslovak diplomat, son of Thomas G. Masaryk. He was (1925–38) Czechoslovak minister to Great Britain, and in London he became (1940) foreign minister in the Czechoslovak government in exile headed by Eduard Beneš after the German
..... Click the link for more information. , the non-Communist foreign minister, died in suspicious circumstances. After the adoption of a new constitution (Beneš resigned rather than sign it), a new legislature was elected and enacted a program for nationalizing the economy. Czechoslovakia became a Soviet-style state.
Political and cultural liberty was curtailed, and purge trials were conducted from 1950 to 1952. Riots occurred in 1953, reflecting economic discontent. A very modest liberalization trend was begun in response but was reversed in Nov., 1957, when Antonin Novotný Novotný, Antonín
, 1904–75, Czechoslovakian Communist leader. A founding member (1921) of the Communist party, he participated (1948) in the Communist seizure of power and became first secretary of the party in 1953.
..... Click the link for more information. became president. In 1960 a new constitution was enacted. Another cautious movement toward liberalization was initiated in 1963. Restrictions on the press, education, and cultural activities were eased, and local authorities received increased economic autonomy. Profit considerations were introduced into the economy. Czechoslovakia became celebrated internationally for its experimental theater work and its many fine films. But political power remained the exclusive possession of a small circle in the Communist party.
That factor, the sluggishness of the economy (despite the reforms), and Slovak resentment over Novotný's Czech-dominated administration, produced the startling developments of 1968. Alexander Dubček Dubček, Alexander
, 1921–92, Czechoslovakian political leader. A member of the Slovakian national minority, he was active in the Communist underground in World War II and rose in the party hierarchy after the war, becoming head of the Slovakian Communist party and a
..... Click the link for more information. , a Slovak, replaced Novotný as party leader in January; Ludvik Svoboda became president in March. Under Dubček, in what is known as Prague Spring, democratization went further than in any other Communist state. Press censorship was reduced, and the restoration of a genuinely democratic political life seemed possible. Slovakia was granted political autonomy.
Seriously alarmed at what it construed to be a threat to Soviet security and to the supremacy within the USSR of the Soviet Communist party, the USSR with some of its Warsaw Pact allies invaded Czechoslovakia in Aug., 1968. Dubček and other leaders were taken to Moscow. Despite opposition by the populace, the USSR forced the repeal of most of the reforms. A revised constitution was promulgated. (Slovakian autonomy was retained.) In Apr., 1969, Dubček was replaced as party leader, and in June, 1970, he was expelled from the party.
In the early 1970s there were many efforts to stamp out dissent, including mass arrests, union purges, and religious persecution. The repressive policies and rigid Soviet-style economic policies continued throughout the 1970s despite inflation and a sluggish economy. In 1977, the appearance of a declaration of human rights called Charter 77, which was signed by 700 intellectuals and former party leaders, instigated further repressive measures.
The "Velvet Revolution"
In late 1989, massive antigovernment demonstrations in Prague were at first suppressed by the police, but as democratization swept through Eastern Europe, the Communist party leadership resigned in November. In December, a new, non-Communist cabinet took over, and the playwright and former dissident Václav Havel Havel, Václav
, 1936–2011, Czech dramatist and essayist, president of Czechoslovakia (1989–92) and the Czech Republic (1993–2003). The most original Czech dramatist to emerge in the 1960s, Havel soon antagonized the political power structure by focusing
..... Click the link for more information. was elected president. Under Communist rule, Czechoslovakia had a Soviet-style planned economy in which its highly developed industry as well as trade, banking, and agriculture were under state control. In 1990, the nation began the transition to a market economy with a broad program designed to encourage private enterprise and outside investment. The "Velvet Revolution" was successfully completed with the departure of the last Soviet troops in May, 1991, and a free parliamentary election in June, 1992.
The new government was faced with several difficulties, including a distressed and inefficient economic system in need of drastic reform, high unemployment, widespread social discontent, and environmental pollution. Under the 1968 constitution, Czechoslovakia was a federal republic. The two component parts were the Czech Republic, with its capital in Prague, and the Slovak Republic, with its capital at Bratislava. There was a bicameral federal legislature elected every five years. The federal president, who was elected by the legislature, appointed the premier and ministers. Each republic had a council and assembly. The federal government dealt with defense, foreign affairs, and certain economic matters. A strong secessionist movement in Slovakia, however, led to the formal declaration on Aug. 26, 1992, that the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic would separate into independent states on Jan. 1, 1993, thus dissolving the 74-year-old federation. In response to the imminent breakup, the federal government was dismantled and drafts of new Czech and Slovak constitutions were begun.
Bibliography
See historical studies by R. J. Kerner (1940) and S. H. Thomson (2d ed. 1953, repr. 1965); M. Rechcigl, Jr., ed., Czechoslovak Contribution to World Culture (1964) and Czechoslovakia Past and Present (2 vol., 1968); Z. A. B. Zeman, Prague Spring (1969); W. Shawcross, Dubcek (1970); G. Golan, The Czechoslovak Reform Movement (1971); I. Sviták, The Czechoslovak Experiment, 1968–1969 (1971); J. Kalvoda, The Genesis of Czechoslovakia (1986); N. Stone and E. Strouh ed., Czechoslovakia: Crossroads and Crises, 1918–1988 (1989); J. Batt, Economic Reform and Political Change in Eastern Europe (1988).
Czechoslovakia
(Československo), Czechoslovak Socialist Republic (CSSR; Československá Socialistická Republika).
The Czechoslovak Socialist Republic is a socialist state in Central Europe. Situated on the watershed of the Danube, Labe (Elbe), and Oder, the republic is bounded on the north by Poland, on the northwest by the German Democratic Republic, on the west by the Federal Republic of Germany, on the south by Austria and Hungary, and on the east by the USSR. Area, 127,900 sq km. Population, 15 million (1977). The capital is Prague. The Czechoslovak Socialist Republic (CSSR) includes the Czech Socialist Republic (CSR; capital, Prague) and the Slovak Socialist Republic (SSR; capital, Bratislava). Administratively, the country is divided into ten regions (kraje), with Prague and Bratislava having the status of regions (see Table 1). The regions are divided into districts (okresy), which in turn are subdivided into communes (obce).
Czechoslovakia is a socialist state and a federal republic composed of two equal sovereign socialist republics, the Czech and Slovak socialist republics. The present constitution was adopted in 1960 and amended by the 1968 Constitutional Law on the Czechoslovak Federation. All power in the country belongs to the working people.
The supreme state authority and sole legislative body of the CSSR is the bicameral Federal Assembly, composed of the House of the People, whose 200 deputies are elected by the entire country, and the House of Nations, whose 150 deputies are elected on a parity basis by the CSR and the SSR. The Federal Assembly is empowered to amend the constitution of the CSSR and enact laws. It ratifies the medium-range state plans for the development of the national economy and the state budget of the federation, resolves fundamental questions of foreign and domestic policy, elects the president of the CSSR (five-year term) and the members of the Supreme Court of the CSSR, and establishes federal agencies. Between sessions of the Federal Assembly its functions (except emergency powers) are exercised by the 40-member Presidium of the Federal Assembly, which is elected by both houses from among their members.
The head of state is the president, who is accountable to the Federal Assembly. He represents the CSSR in international relations, concludes and ratifies international treaties, appoints and recalls the members of the federal government (cabinet), and serves as the supreme commander in chief of the armed forces.
The federal government of the CSSR—the supreme executive body of state power—consists of a prime minister, deputy prime ministers, and ministers. A member of the Presidium of the Federal Assembly or of the Constitutional Court may not hold a cabinet post.
The 200-member Czech National Council and the 150-member Slovak National Council are the supreme representative institutions and sole legislative bodies of the constituent republics. Each National Council enacts the constitutional and other laws of the republic, ratifies the medium-range state plans for the development of the republic’s economy, and adopts the republic’s budget. The National Council elects from among its members the Presidium, which exercises the council’s functions (except emergency powers) in the interval between sessions of the council. The Presidium of the National Council appoints and recalls the members of the government (cabinet), the highest executive body of state power in each republic.
The local governing bodies in the regions, districts, cities, and communes—called national committees—direct economic, cultural, and social development in their respective areas. The national committees elect general executive bodies—councils—and establish commissions to initiate and expedite the work of the committees. All representative bodies of state power are elected for five-year terms by universal and equal suffrage and direct and secret ballot. All citizens who have attained the age of 18 years may vote. Deputies to any representative body are required to take an oath.
The judiciary includes the Supreme Court of the CSSR, the Supreme Courts of the CSR and SSR, and regional, district, and military courts. Supervision of the observance of laws rests with the Procurator’s Office, headed by the procurator general of the CSSR. Each of the constituent republics also has a procurator general.
Czechoslovakia stretches for more than 750 km from west to
Table 1. Administrative divisions of Czechoslovaki (1976)
Regions and cities with regional status
Area (sq km)
1,341,000
Košice
east and 150–200 km from north to south. It is a country of uplands and low mountains, its natural landscape dominated by forests and forest-steppes.
Topography. The western part of the country is occupied by the Bohemian Massif, whose interior is a vast basin lying at an elevation of 200–400 m. The interior basin is divided into a series of smaller basins separated by uplands and crystalline and volcanic massifs ranging from 700 m to 900 m in elevation. Along the edges of the basin rise medium-elevation, predominantly flat-crested ranges: the Bohemian Forest and the Šumava in the southwest, the Ore Mountains (Krušné Hory) in the northwest, and the Krkonosě in the northeast. The prevailing elevation of these encircling mountains varies from 800 m to 1,200 m; the highest peak is Mount Sněžka (1,602 m) in the Krkonoše. In the southeastern part of the Bohemian Massif lie the Bohemian-Moravian Uplands. The section of the uplands known as the Moravian Kras has numerous karst landforms, among them the spectacular Macocha Gorge.
The eastern part of the country is dominated by mountains of the Carpathian system. The highest peak in Czechoslovakia and in the Carpathians, Gerlachovský Štít (2,655 m), is in the Tatra Mountains, which have well-defined glacial landforms. After the Tatras, the greatest heights occur in the Vel’ká and Malá Fatra, the Low Tatra, and the Slovak Ore Mountains, all of them deeply dissected, predominantly middle-elevation mountains. The Slovak Kras is noted for its karst formations, such as the famous Domica Cave. In the southern Carpathians rise the volcanic massifs of the Kremnica and Štiavnica mountains. The Central Danu-bian Plain enters Czechoslovakia from the south in two prongs, forming the Danubian Lowland in the south and southwest and the Tisza Lowland in the southeast. The elevation of the lowlands rises from 100–200 m in the south to 200–400 m near the Carpathians.
Geological structure and minerals. The western part of Czechoslovakia, the Bohemian Massif, is the core of the ancient basement of Variscan folding in Central Europe. The eastern part of the country, coinciding with the Western Carpathians, belongs to the Alpide geosynclinal region. The basement of the Bohemian Massif is composed of Precambrian gneisses, migmatites, schists, and granulites and of Paleozoic slates, quartzites, and sandstones. The sedimentary cover is made up of Cretaceous and Cenozoic, mainly clastic, rocks. The basement of the Carpathians consists of Precambrian and Paleozoic metamorphic rocks intruded by Variscan granitoids. (Such intrusions also occur in the Bohemian Massif.) The folded Mesozoic and early Cenozoic complex of the Carpathians (limestone, sandstone, flysch) serves as the foundation of late Cenozoic moiasse basins filled mainly with sand-clay sediments and extrusive rocks.
The country’s principal mineral resource is coal—the hard coal of the Ostrava-Karviná Basin and the brown coal of the North Bohemian Basin. Petroleum and gas deposits occur in the northern part of the Viennese and Pannonian basins and in the Ciscarpathian Foredeep. In the Spišská-Hemerska Ore Region of Slovakia iron-ore deposits are worked at Rudňaný and Nižna-Slana and manganese ore deposits at Kišovce-Svabovce. There are numerous hydrothermal lead and zinc deposits in Bohemia (Příbram, Kutná Hora, Stříbro), North Moravia (Zlaté Hory, Horní Benešov, Horní Město), and the Spišská-Hemerska Ore Region (Banská Štiavnica). Hydrothermal copper deposits are found in Moravia (Staré Ransko) and Slovakia (Slovinky, Rudňaný, Rožňava). In the Ore Mountains deposits of tin and tungsten ore (Cinovec, Krupka) are associated with Variscan granitoids. The uranium deposits at Příbram and Mimoň and in the Bohemian-Moravian Uplands are associated with hydrothermal veins. The schists and granitoids of the Carpathians contain veins of antimony ore, mined at Pezinok Pernek, Magurka, Medzibrod, Čučma, and Zlata Idka. The Cenozoic volcanic rocks of the Slovak Ore Mountains contain mercury deposits. Other deposits include fluorite, graphite, baryte, pyrite, kaolin, magnesite, and construction materials.
Czechoslovakia is rich in therapeutic mineral springs, including thermal springs, many of them associated with the Precambrian and Paleozoic rocks of the Bohemian Massif and with tectonic dislocations in the Carpathians. The most famous are the alkaline springs of Karlovy Vary and Mariánské Lázně, the hydrocarbon springs of Teplice, the sodium sulfate springs of Františkovy Lázně, the hydrogen sulfide springs of Trenčianske Teplice, and the radioactive springs of Jáchymov and Teplice.
Climate. The country’s temperate climate becomes more continental from west to east and in the intramontane basins. The mean January temperature ranges from –1° to –4°C in the plains, dropping to –7°C in the mountains of the Bohemian Massif and to –10°C in the Carpathians. In winter there are frequent temperature inversions in the intramontane basins. The mean July temperature, 19°–21°C in the plains, can fall to as low as 8°C in the mountains of the Bohemian Massif, and 4°C in the Carpathians. The annual precipitation varies from 450 mm to 700 mm in the plains; in the mountains it increases rapidly with elevation, reaching 1,600 mm in the Bohemian Massif and 2,100 mm in the Carpathians at a height of about 2,000 m. The maximum precipitation falls in the summer, although droughts may occur in the plains at this time of the year owing to the strong evaporation. In the plains the snow cover, often unstable and broken by thaws, lasts 1½ to two months. Its duration increases to 2½ or three months in the mountains and to six months on the crests of the Carpathians.
Rivers and lakes. The country has a dense network of relatively short rivers. Among its largest rivers are the Danube, whose middle course flows through the country, the Váh and the Morava, both tributaries of the Danube, the upper reaches of the Oder and Labe (Elbe), and the Vltava, a tributary of the Elbe. The Tisza River, another tributary of the Danube, flows along the eastern border of Czechoslovakia for a short distance and receives the waters of the Hornád and Ondava. Most of the rivers have spring high water, resulting from the melting of snow in the mountains and foothills; heavy summer rains may cause flooding. The rivers are frozen for one or two months in the winter. The Danube and the Labe and the lower reaches of the Vltava are navigable, and hydroelectric power plants have been built on the Váh and Vltava. The country’s lakes, mainly of glacial or tectonic origin, are small. Its numerous ponds, covering a total area of 50,000 ha, chiefly in South Bohemia, are used for fish raising and water supply.
Soils. The most common soils are the brown and mountain-brown forest soils typical of deciduous and mixed forests. Mountain podzolic soils are found in the upper part of the mountain forest belt, and mountain meadow soils occur under alpine meadows. In unforested areas, soddy brown-earth soils have developed under secondary meadows, and soddy calcareous soils (rendzinas) have formed on calcareous rocks. The plains of Central Bohemia and South Moravia are covered with chernozemlike soils, generally leached and podzolized but sometimes calcareous, and the valleys of the Danube, Labe, Morava, and other major rivers have alluvial soils. The soils of the plains and gentle mountain slopes are for the most part plowed up.
Flora. Cultivated steppes with small planted groves of oak and pine predominate to an elevation of 300 m. Forest-steppes, which in earlier times made up most of the vegetative cover of the plains, have survived only on unproductive lands and in preserves. At elevations of up to 600–700 m plowlands alternate with forests of oak or oak and beech. Between 600–700 m and 1,100–1,200 m the landscape is dominated by beech and fir-and-beech forests, above which spruce and fir forests grow to elevations of up to 1,400–1,500 m. About one-third of the country is forested, with conifers covering 71 percent of the area. The most common coniferous species is spruce, accounting for 48 percent of the forested area. Most of the forests are in the Carpathians and in the mountains of the Bohemian Massif. Between 1,400–1,500 m and 1,600–1,700 m the forests give way to Krummholz and then to scrub and subalpine and alpine meadows.
Fauna. Among the more common mammals are the brown bear, wolf, lynx, fox, marten, ermine, deer, wild boar, roe deer, hare, squirrel, and hedgehog. Birds include capercaillies, partridges, storks, goatsuckers (Caprimulgus europaeus), hoopoes (Upupa epops), kingfishers, and eagles. The rivers and ponds abound in trout, carp, salmon, grayling, pickerel, perch, burbot, and lamprey.
Preserves. Some 170,000 hectares (1976), mostly forests, have been set aside as protected areas. In addition to the famous Tatra People’s Park and the Krkonoše and Pěniny national parks, there is a network of sanctuaries and natural landmarks, notably the Karlstein and Bohemian Paradise.
Natural regions. There are four distinct natural regions: the Bohemian Massif, the Western Carpathians, and the Danubian and Tisza lowlands. On the Bohemian Massif rolling plowed-up plains alternate with low and middle-elevation mountains covered with beech, oak, and mixed forests. The Western Carpathians consist of middle-elevation and high mountain ranges whose landscapes change with elevation: mixed and coniferous forests are succeeded by Krummholz, which gives way to subalpine and alpine meadows. The Danubian Lowland is an undulating plain, mostly plowed up, with tracts of oak forests. The Tisza Lowland encompasses a rolling plowed-up plain and low mountains clothed with oak and beech forests.
REFERENCES
Maergoiz, I. M. Chekhoslovatskaia Sotsialisticheskaia Respublika. Moscow, 1964.
Atlas Československé Socialistické Republiky. Prague, 1966.
Československá vlastivěda, vol. 1, part 1. Prague, 1968.
Slovensko: Příroda. Bratislava, 1972.
Kunský, J. Československo fyzicky zeměpisně. Prague, 1974.
N. N. R
(physical geography) and E. G. M
ARTYNOV
(geological structure and minerals)
The basic population of Czechoslovakia consists of two nations, the Czechs and the Slovaks, each having its own republic. In 1977 the population was estimated to include 9,612,000 Czechs, 4,526,000 Slovaks, 598,000 Hungarians, most of them living in southern Slovakia, 76,000 Germans, 78,000 Poles, and 60,000 Ukrainians and Russians. About two-thirds of the believers are Roman Catholics, and the remainder are Protestants (Bohemian Brethren, Evangelicals, or Calvinists), Uniates, or Greek Orthodox. The official calendar is the Gregorian.
The population has been steadily growing; the censuses of 1960 and 1970 showed that the population had increased from 13,698,000 to 14,350,000. The rate of natural increase, per 1,000 population, was 6.7 in 1960, 6.4 in 1965, 4.3 in 1970, and 8.0 in 1975. In view of the diminishing rate of natural increase in the 1960’s, the government adopted a vigorous demographic policy aimed at ensuring a higher birthrate. As for social composition, statistics from the end of 1976 indicate that workers made up 61 percent of the total population; office employees, 28 percent; peasants and artisans belonging to cooperatives, 10 percent; and independent peasants and artisans and members of the liberal professions, about 1 percent. In 1976 the labor force totaled 7,476,000 persons, of whom 80.6 percent (83.3 percent in 1960) were engaged in material production and 19.4 percent in the non-production sphere. A breakdown of the production sphere showed that industry accounted for 38.6 percent of the work force, construction for 9.6 percent, agriculture and forestry for 15.3 percent, transportation and communications for 6.7 percent, and other sectors for 10.4 percent. The nonproduction sphere included those employed in public health and social insurance (4.4 percent) and in the field of education, culture, or sports (6.3 percent).
The population density averages about 117 persons per sq km for the country as a whole and about 129 persons per sq km in the CSR. The most densely populated regions are the Ostrava-Kar-viná and Prague-Central Bohemia industrial conurbations, with about 650 and 500 persons per sq km, respectively.
A land with a very old urban culture, Czechoslovakia has many nationally distinctive cities that date from the early Middle Ages. Today, urban dwellers, classified as those living in cities or urban-type communities, account for 66.3 percent of the country’s population. Apart from the three major historical urban centers—Prague in Bohemia, Brno in Moravia, and Bratislava in Slovakia—only Ostrava, Plzeň, and Košice have more than 100,000 inhabitants. Most Czechoslovak cities have a population of less than 50,000.
The territory of Czechoslovakia has been inhabited since the Paleolithic. Archaeological excavations have uncovered the remains of Upper Paleolithic permanent dwellings built by mammoth hunters at Dolní Věstonice, Pavlov, and other sites. In the Neolithic farming spread among the tribes of the Linear Pottery culture. During the Bronze Age, best represented by the Únětice culture, the area was a focal point of Central European metalworking. The Iron Age Hallstatt culture flourished here in the first half of the first millennium
B.C
. Around the fourth century
B.C
. the area was settled by Celts, who founded numerous urban artisan and trade centers, oppida, of which the best known are Hrazani, Stradonice, Závist, and Staré Hradisko. At the beginning of the Common Era, the power of the Celts was broken by the Germanic Marcomanni and Quadi tribes, who advanced as far as the Váh River. In the first and second centuries
A.D
. the Germanic tribes fought against the Romans, who occupied part of Slovakia. The arrival of Slavic tribes in the middle of the first millennium coincided with the decline of the primitive communal system among the tribes.
Early feudal period (sixth to mid-11th century). In the second half of the first millennium plow farming developed among the Slavs, mainly in connection with expanding land settlement, an irregular three-field system was adopted (tenth century), and handicrafts were gradually becoming separated from agriculture. The most famous of the fortified settlements, or hrady, founded by the Slavs was Pražský Hrad, built at the turn of the ninth century. The development of the city as a handicraft and commercial center surrounded by trade and artisan settlements (Staré Město on the Morava River)—accompanied by the social stratification of Slavic society and the rise of an elite—signaled the transition to an early feudal class state. The earliest rudimentary states were tribal principalities encompassing a network of hrady. The territory of modern Czechoslovakia formed part of Samo’s state in the seventh century and was included in the Great Moravian State in the ninth and early tenth centuries.
The development of early feudalism in Great Moravia was facilitated by the spread of Christianity in the ninth century, introduced by the Slavic educators Cyril and Methodius, who devised the Slavic writing system. Feudal fragmentation (late ninth century) and the loss of its Bohemian (895) and Lusatian (897) lands weakened the Great Moravian State in its struggle against the expansion of the German feudal lords and enabled the nomadic Magyars to conquer some of its territory in the early tenth century. The Magyar conquest interrupted the amalgamation of the Bohemian-Moravian and Slovak tribes into one nationality, a process that had begun in the eighth century.
In Bohemia, the unification of tribal principalities ended in the early tenth century with the formation of a Bohemian state under the Přemyslid princes. Moravia was incorporated into Bohemia in 1029 (1019 according to some sources). In the first quarter of the 11th century Slovakia was absorbed into the Kingdom of Hungary, remaining under Hungarian rule until the formation of a unified Czechoslovak state in 1918. Over the centuries two nationalities would emerge on the territory of modern Czechoslovakia: the Czech people, who included the Moravians, although the latter preserved their ethnic distinctiveness, and the Slovaks.
Mature feudalism (mid-11th to the 15th century). Feudal fragmentation, affecting the Czech lands by the mid-llth century and Slovakia by the 13th century, was an important factor in the consolidation of the feudal seigniory and the establishment of fully developed conditional land tenure. The growth of productive forces from the 11th to the 14th century was accompanied in some regions, from the early 13th century, by the influx of large numbers of Germans into the cities and the countryside, first in the Czech lands and then in Slovakia as well. This period saw the evolution of the basic groups making up the feudal class: ecclesiastical feudal lords, secular feudal lords (pán), and lesser nobles (vladyka). Foreign trade linked the Czech lands and Slovakia with all of Central Europe and parts of Western and Eastern Europe. In the countryside the expansion of commodity production led to the introduction of monetary feudal rent. In Slovakia, which as part of the Kingdom of Hungary was subjected to the tyranny of Hungarian magnates and magyarization, the rate of economic development was slower than in the Czech lands. In the early 1240’s southwestern and southeastern Slovakia and Moravia were invaded by the Mongol Tatars.
Bohemia became a powerful feudal estate monarchy under Emperor Charles IV of the Luxembourg dynasty (Charles I of Bohemia), who ruled from 1346 to 1378. Nevertheless, the political consolidation of the Czech lands was not destined to be completed in the 14th and early 15th centuries, partly owing to German feudal expansion, albeit in such a covert form as the settlement of German colonists, disrupting the ethnic homogeneity of the country. In Slovakia the strengthening of royal authority took place in the 14th century under the Anjou dynasty.
Intensified feudal exploitation of the Bohemian and Moravian peasantry by the ecclesiastical and secular feudal lords, corruption within the Catholic Church, and growing German domination in both the countryside and the cities, where the patriciate was predominantly German, gave rise to an opposition movement in the Czech lands in the late 14th and early 15th centuries. The movement took the form of popular heresies and the teachings of such preachers as Jan Milíč of Kroměříž and Matthew of Janov. The religious reforms advocated by these preachers, and especially the ideas of Jan Hus and his followers, notably Jerome of Prague, paved the way for the development of the Hussite revolutionary movement, a powerful and broadly based social-revolutionary, national liberation, and anti-Catholic movement. From the very outset the Hussites were divided into the moderate Calixtines and the radical Taborites.
The German Emperor Sigismund I and Pope Martin V failed in their attempts to suppress the Hussites by launching crusades against them (1420, twice in 1422, 1427, and 1431). Led by such gifted generals as J. Žižka and Prokop the Great, the Hussites repulsed the invasions of the crusaders. The treachery of the Calixtines and the dissension among the Taborites weakened the revolutionary forces, however, and in 1434 the Taborites were routed at the battle of Lipany. Despite its defeat, the Hussite revolutionary movement, as the wellspring of the revolutionary and national traditions of the Czech people, was a crucial period in the history of the Czech lands. In Slovakia, the dissemination of Hussite ideas fanned the Slovak burghers’ struggle against the domination of the German patriciate, a struggle that had begun in the previous century. Taborite troops marched through Slovakia during their campaign against Hungary from 1428 to 1433. The large numbers of Taborites who escaped to Slovakia after the suppression of the Hussite movement formed the backbone of the anti-feudal Brethren movement, which lasted from 1445 to 1471. The Hussite revolutionary movement strengthened the linguistic and cultural ties between the Czechs and the Slovaks.
Late feudalism (16th to 18th centuries). A gradual shift to “second serfdom” took place in the Czech lands and Slovakia from the late 15th century. Seeking to expand their deliveries of agricultural products to markets, the feudal lords increased the peasants’ obligations and began to rely more heavily on labor services, especially after 1550. The growing feudal exploitation exacerbated the class struggle and precipitated peasant uprisings. After the suppression of the Dózsa Rebellion in 1514, in which the Slovak peasantry took part, the Hungarian feudal lords legalized the enserfment of the Hungarian and Slovak peasantry. A decade later there were reverberations of the German Peasant War of 1524–26 among the peasants and miners of Bohemia.
Another sign of feudal reaction was the political domination of the magnates, whose influence increased as royal power declined under the Jagiellonian kings Vladislav II and Louis II, who ruled Bohemia from 1471 to 1516 and from 1516 to 1526, respectively. Inasmuch as the king of Bohemia also occupied the Hungarian throne from 1490 to 1526, the Czech lands and Slovakia were temporarily unified under one monarch. The decline of royal authority weakened the Czech lands and Slovakia in their struggle against Ottoman aggression. King Louis perished at the battle of Mohács (1526), in which the Turks inflicted a crushing defeat on the small Hungarian-Czech Army.
In 1526 the Czech feudal lords elected a Hapsburg to the throne; the Austrian archduke Ferdinand, who ruled from 1526 to 1564. The Czech lands were to remain an integral part of the Hapsburg monarchy until 1918. As a result of the Austro-Turkish wars of 1532–33 and 1540–47, most of Slovakia also came under Hapsburg rule in 1547 as part of the Kingdom of Hungary. The Slovaks in the Hapsburg monarchy were thus subjected to double national oppression, by both Hungarian and German-Austrian feudal lords. Southern Slovakia fell under the control of Ottoman feudal lords. In the Czech lands and the part of Slovakia that was under the Hapsburgs, German-Austrian ascendancy in the bureaucracy, urban life, and commerce and increasingly heavy taxation provoked the opposition of some of the nobility and burghers and stimulated the spread of the Reformation. The first open revolt against the Hapsburgs in the Czech lands, the Czech uprising of 1547, was suppressed. The next major anti-Hapsburg insurrection, the Czech uprising of 1618–20, precipitated the Thirty Years’ War (1618–48).
After the defeat of the Czech troops by the Hapsburg forces and their allies in the battle of the White Mountain (Bílá Hora, 1620), the Czech lands lost their political autonomy and became hereditary possessions of the Hapsburgs. The privileges of the estate Diets were reduced to a minimum. In the ensuing period of feudal Catholic reaction and religious persecution, the land belonging to the Czech nobility and the cities was confiscated and turned over to foreigners, mainly Germans. Large numbers of Czechs emigrated. Meanwhile, the population of Slovakia, which was fully incorporated into the Hapsburg Empire under a peace treaty concluded at the Karlowitz Congress of 1698–99, also suffered great hardships. In Slovakia, the almost ceaseless warfare between Turkish and Hapsburg troops and the anti-Hapsburg revolts of the Hungarian nobility hindered the development of the area’s productive forces and accelerated the decline of urban life, handicrafts, and agriculture.
The second half of the 17th century saw the culmination of “second serfdom” in the Czech lands and Slovakia, a situation made all the more intolerable by the Counter-Reformation. The growing feudal exploitation provoked numerous antifeudal peasant uprisings in the 17th and 18th centuries, of which the largest were the kurucok uprisings in Slovakia in 1672 and 1697 and the Czech uprisings of 1680 and 1775. The Austrian government was obliged to regulate the peasants’ obligatory services through legislation, promulgating corvée patents in 1680, 1717, 1738, and 1775. Centralized manufacture arose in the Czech lands in the middle of the 18th century and somewhat later in Slovakia. Capitalist elements developed in the economy under conditions of absolutist Hapsburg rule and the germanization of the Czechs and the magyarization of the Slovaks.
Decline of feudal serfdom and development of a capitalist economy; the national revival (late 18th and first half of the 19th centuries). A rapid growth of productive forces, beginning in the Czech lands in the late 18th century and in Slovakia in the early 19th century, hastened the decline of the feudal system and created conditions more favorable to capitalist enterprise. Another contributing factor was the abolition of the personal dependence of the peasants, which took place in the Czech lands in 1781 and in Slovakia in 1785. The industrial revolution, reaching the Czech lands in the early 19th century and Slovakia in the 1840’s, gave impetus to the formation of new classes: an industrial bourgeoisie, predominantly German in the Czech lands and German and Hungarian in Slovakia, and a factory and agricultural proletariat.
The shift from feudalism to capitalism was accompanied by the emergence of the Czech and Slovak nations against the background of national oppression, an upsurge in the national movement, resistance to forcible germanization and magyarization, and efforts to develop the native language, literature, science, and art. In Czechoslovak historiography the period of the late 18th and first half of the 19th centuries is known as the National Renaissance, and the Czech and Slovak intellectuals who played a decisive role in fostering national consciousness and creating a national culture are called the awakeners. The idea of Slavic brotherhood expounded by J. Kollár played an important role in the Czech and Slovak national movement.
In the 1830’s and 1840’s the national movement began assuming a political character and attracting the popular masses. Learned and educational societies were founded, among them the Matice Česká (1831). The Czech national movement split into the radical democrats, whose spokesman was K. Sabina, and the national liberals, headed by F. L. Rieger and F. Palacký, whose national political program rested on the concept of Austro-Slavism. The ideology of the nascent Slovak bourgeoisie was essentially formulated by L. Štúr and J. Král, who headed the national movement in the 1830’s and 1840’s. Radical democratic and revolutionary sentiments became stronger in the Slovak national movement in the 1840’s.
Premonopoly capitalism (until the end of the 19th century). The intensity and complexity of the class and national antagonisms in the Czech lands and Slovakia made them an arena of revolutionary events in 1848–49, which were an integral part of the Revolution of 1848–49 in the Austrian Empire. The revolutionary democratic movement in the Czech lands culminated in the Prague uprising of 1848. The leaders of the Czech liberal bourgeoisie, which was frightened by the sweep of the democratic movement, leaned increasingly toward cooperation with the Hapsburgs. Concurrently, the radicals’ attempt to incite an anti-Hapsburg uprising in May 1849 failed. In Slovakia, the revolutionary movement was closely tied to the Revolution of 1848–49 in Hungary. On May 10, 1848, the programmatic Demands of the Slovak People were adopted in Liptovský Mikuláš. Rejecting these demands, the noble-dominated government of revolutionary Hungary gave the Hapsburgs an opportunity to use the Slovaks in the struggle against the revolutionary forces in Hungary.
After quelling the revolutionary movement in 1849, the Hapsburgs nullified most of the gains won during the revolution in the Czech lands and Slovakia. They did not, however, rescind the Patent of Sept. 7, 1848, liberating the Czech peasants from feudal dependence and abolishing the corvée in return for redemption payments, and by the Patent of Mar. 2, 1853, they confirmed the abolition of personal dependence and the corvée (for part of the peasantry) in Slovakia. These measures opened the way for a freer development of capitalist relations. By the end of the 1860’s the industrial revolution had transformed most of the industries in the Czech lands, now the most highly industrialized part of the Hapsburg monarchy. Small-scale production continued to prevail in Slovakia, which owing to historical circumstances lagged far behind the Czech lands economically.
The development of capitalist industry in the Czech lands and Slovakia was at this time almost exclusively financed by German-Austrian and Hungarian capital. Czech and Slovak capital investments were confined to industries processing agricultural raw materials and, in the Czech lands, also to enterprises manufacturing food-processing or farm machinery. The Czech Živnostenská Bank, founded in 1869, played a major role in the consolidation of Czech national capital. The trend toward concentration of production and the centralization of capital intensified in the Czech lands shortly after the economic crisis of 1873; in Slovakia this process did not begin until the 1890’s. The formation of the basic classes of capitalist society—a national bourgeoisie and a proletariat—was completed in the latter half of the 19th century.
The Czech bourgeois National Party, founded around 1860, called for the reorganization of the Hapsburg monarchy along federal lines and broad autonomy for the Czech lands. The Slovak national movement also gained momentum in the early 1860’s. The Martin Declaration, drawn up at a national congress convened in Turčianský Sv. Martin in 1861, demanded autonomy for Slovakia, and the Matica Slovenská, a cultural and educational society, was founded in 1863.
When the Hapsburg Empire was transformed into the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary by the Austro-Hungarian agreement of 1867, the Czech lands became part of Cisleithania, ruled by Austria, and Slovakia was included in Transleithania, governed by Hungary. The establishment of the dual monarchy wrecked the political plans of the Czech bourgeoisie, which had hoped to see the Austrian Empire transformed into a federal state. Dual rule meant that the dominant position of the Hungarian and German-Austrian nationalities would be strengthened at the expense of the Slavic peoples.
In the late 1860’s and early 1870’s the Czech national movement, headed by the Czech bourgeoisie, began attracting the masses and assumed a general democratic character. People’s rallies (tábory) were held demanding political independence, national equality, and universal franchise. In 1874 the Czech National Party split into the conservative Old Czechs and the left-wing Young Czechs. A division into conservatives and liberals also took place in the national movement of Slovakia, where magyarization was stepped up after 1868.
Socialist ideas spread through the Czech lands from the late 1860’s, largely through the efforts of J. B. Pecka, L. Zápotocký, and J. Hybeš. The development of class consciousness among the Czech and Slovak workers was influenced by the strike movement, notably the Svárov Strike of 1870 and the strikes of the early 1870’s in Banská Štiavnica. The Czechoslovak Social Democratic Labor Party was founded in 1878 as a member of the Social Democratic Party of Austria, becoming a separate party in 1893. The workers of the Czech lands and Slovakia participated in the May Day celebrations of 1890, and in 1893 they joined the working class of the other peoples of Austria-Hungary in agitating for universal franchise. Trade union organizations were founded in the Czech lands and Slovakia in the 1890’s.
Several Czech political parties emerged in the late 19th century to promote the interests of various groups of the national bourgeoisie; the most influential of them was the Czech Progressive Party, whose founder and ideologist was T. G. Masaryk. In the early 20th century the Slovak national movement also separated into several currents: conservative, liberal (V. Šrobár), clerical (A. Hlinka), and agrarian (M. Hodža). From the late 1880’s the leaders of the Czech and Slovak national movements showed an increasing desire to join forces in the struggle for the democratization of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy and for the solution of the national problem. In advocating the national liberation of their people, Slovak liberals urged close Czech-Slovak cooperation.
Monopoly capitalism (until 1918). The economic crisis of 1900–03 intensified the concentration and centralization of industrial production and capital in the Czech lands and Slovakia, a trend that had begun in the late 19th century: by 1913 the Czech lands accounted for 60 percent of the industrial output of the empire. The importance of Czech national investment capital increased: from 1900 to 1913 the proportion of the empire’s capital that was controlled by Czech banks rose from 7.9 percent to 13.3 percent. Czech capital was exported to the Balkans and to Russia. In both the Czech lands and Slovakia there were large farms organized on a capitalist basis. The exploitation of the working people, national oppression, and the denial of political rights caused a powerful upsurge in the labor and general democratic movement. Under the impact of the Revolution of 1905–07 in Russia a mass campaign for universal suffrage unfolded in the Czech lands and Slovakia. The government was obliged to carry out an electoral reform, instituted in the Czech lands in 1907 and in Slovakia in 1912. The Czech and Slovak labor movement was adversely affected by Austro-Marxism and lacked unity.
During World War I intensified exploitation and national oppression, political terror, and a rapidly deteriorating economic situation caused a spontaneous upwelling of indignation among the working people in the Czech lands and Slovakia. Antigovern-ment demonstrations assumed a mass character, and Czech and Slovak soldiers and officers deserted or surrendered in droves. (In late 1916 there were more than 250,000 Czech and Slovak prisoners in Russia alone.) The Austrian government had the support of most of the Czech political parties, which in the fall of 1916 united to form the Czech Federation, a coalition of Reichsrat deputies from nine Czech parties, including the Czechoslovak Social Democratic Labor Party. At the same time, the pro-Austrian National Committee was formed in Prague by representatives of seven political parties. The policy of the Hungarian government received the wholehearted support of the Slovak bourgeois parties, especially the clericalists.
Nevertheless, pro-Entente sentiments became stronger among Czech and Slovak political circles during the war, with some pro-Entente groups, notably the Young Czechs and National Socialists, leaning toward tsarist Russia and others, mainly the political groupings of the Czech liberal bourgeoisie and intelligentsia, gravitating toward Great Britain and France; Some political activists among the Slovak bourgeoisie, notably Šrobár and Hodža, also shared the views of the pro-Entente politicians. Meanwhile, the émigré leaders of the Czech (Masaryk, E. Beneš) and Slovak (M. Štefánik) bourgeoisie founded a political center in Paris called the Czechoslovak National Council, opened negotiations with the Entente powers aimed at winning recognition for an independent Czechoslovak state after the war, and began organizing Czechoslovak military units in Russia, France, and Italy to fight on the side of the Entente. The revolutionary, antiwar, and national liberation movement in the Czech lands and Slovakia escalated under the impact of the February Bourgeois Democratic Revolution of 1917 in Russia. The liberation movement in the Czech lands and Slovakia assumed mass proportions in the summer and fall of 1917.
Formation of the bourgeois Czechoslovak republic (1918). The Great October Socialist Revolution gave a powerful stimulus to the liberation struggle of the Czech and Slovak peoples. In late 1917 and early 1918 all of Austria-Hungary was engulfed by a wave of rallies, demonstrations, and strikes expressing solidarity with the proletarian revolution in Russia. In January 1918 a general strike broke out in the Hapsburg Empire, including the Czech lands and Slovakia. The working people called for peace on the basis of the Soviet proposals, national self-determination, the democratization of public life, and improved food supplies. In February sailors stationed on the Gulf of Kotor rebelled. Mass desertions at the front and numerous spontaneous soldiers’ revolts in the rear throughout the spring and summer of 1918 attested to the rapid disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian army.
In the face of a mounting revolutionary crisis, the National Committee in Prague was reorganized in July 1918. Headed by K. Kramář, the leader of the National Democrats, the committee now included representatives of all the Czech political parties, who announced their intention of working for the establishment of a sovereign Czechoslovak state. The escalation of the liberation movement in the country and the failure of the Entente powers to negotiate a separate peace with the Hapsburgs impelled these powers and the USA to recognize the Czechoslovak National Council in Paris as the basis of a future government. The diplomatic position of the bourgeois émigrés was strengthened by the outbreak, on May 25, 1918, of an anti-Soviet mutiny in the Czechoslovak army corps that had been formed in Russia during the war.
In September 1918 the Socialist Council was set up in Prague to coordinate the actions of the Czechoslovak Social Democratic Labor Party and the Czech Socialist Party. On the council’s initiative a general strike was held on October 14; in a number of cities demonstrators called for the creation of an independent Czechoslovak republic. Confronted with the military defeat and imminent collapse of Austria-Hungary, the National Committee proclaimed the establishment of an independent Czechoslovak state on Oct. 28, 1918. Two days later the Slovak National Council, meeting in Turčiansky Sv. Martin, adopted a declaration demanding the creation of a unified state of Czechs and Slovaks.
From November 1918 to March 1939. On Nov. 14, 1918, the Provisional National Assembly confirmed the Hapsburg dynasty’s loss of all rights to the Czech lands and proclaimed Czechoslovakia a republic. Masaryk was elected president, and Kramáf headed the first coalition government. The borders of Czechoslovakia were established by the Versailles (1919), St. Germain (1919), and Trianon (1920) treaties between the victorious powers and Germany, Austria, and Hungary. The Transcarpathian Ukraine was included in Czechoslovakia despite the resolution on unification with the Soviet Ukraine that was adopted by the People’s Congress in Khust in January 1919. The Těšín district, claimed by both Czechoslovakia and Poland, was divided between them by a decision of the Conference of Ambassadors of the great powers in the summer of 1920.
Czechoslovakia emerged as a multinational state, with Germans, Hungarians, Ukrainians, Poles, and other nationalities constituting about one-third of its population. It encompassed 22 percent of the territory, 26 percent of the population, and more than 70 percent of the industry of former Austria-Hungary. Its heavy reliance on foreign markets and raw materials was to make its economy unstable.
The first postwar years saw the rapid growth and strengthening of Czech finance capital. The large Czech banks that profited from the war—the Živnostenská, Prague Credit, and Agrarian banks—became the nuclei of powerful concerns that controlled dozens of joint-stock companies in industry, agriculture, trade, and money circulation. Relying on their representatives in the state apparatus and on the support of the Entente powers, the Czech monopolies gradually squeezed out Austrian, German, and Hungarian capital and strengthened their position in the economy of Slovakia and the Transcarpathian Ukraine, turning them into an agricultural raw-material appendage of the industrially developed Czech lands and a source of cheap labor. At the same time, large amounts of foreign capital, mainly French, British, and American, began flowing into the Czechoslovak economy. By the late 1920’s foreign capital accounted for 20 percent of all the capital invested in the Czechoslovak national economy.
As many as 50 different parties and associations functioned in Czechoslovakia in the interwar years. The interests of big Czech industrial and banking capital were most openly championed by the Czechoslovak National Democratic Party. The largest bourgeois party in the country was the Agrarian Party, founded in 1899 and renamed the Republican Party of the Farming and Small Peasant Population in 1922. Initially representing the Czech rural bourgeoisie, which was able to influence a considerable part of the peasantry, the Agrarian Party became the chief party of Czechoslovak finance capital. The Czechoslovak Socialist Party, founded in 1897 as the Czech National Socialist Party, drew its support from the urban petite bourgeoisie, part of the intelligentsia, and some nationalistic workers. After merging with most of the Slovak Social Democrats in December 1918, the Czechoslovak Social Democratic Labor Party became the country’s most broadly based political party.
The constitution adopted by the Provisional National Assembly in February 1920 gave legal form to the country’s bourgeois-democratic republican system. Behind the rapid succession of coalition governments (20 cabinets were formed prior to March 1939), the affairs of state were directed by a group of leaders of the bourgeois and reformist parties, called the “five” until 1925 and the “eight” thereafter. From 1922 most of the Czechoslovak governments were headed by Agrarians.
In the first years of the bourgeois republic the ruling circles were obliged to carry out several social and political reforms. The nobility lost its political privileges, legislation was enacted providing for an eight-hour workday, state unemployment compensation was introduced, and medical insurance was made available to more people. In April 1919 a law was passed establishing the principles of agrarian reform, and in the first half of 1920 laws were enacted that determined the procedure for the expropriation, with compensation, and redistribution of landed property, belonging for the most part to German and Hungarian nobles. These limited reforms could not satisfy the working people. From early 1919 the country was gripped by a spreading mass movement protesting against high prices and speculation and demanding the nationalization of industry and a thorough democratic agrarian reform.
In April 1919 Czechoslovak troops took part in the Entente-organized armed intervention against the Hungarian Soviet Republic, established earlier that year. The Hungarian Red Army stopped the interventionists, passed to the offensive, and, supported by local working people, entered eastern Slovakia. On June 16, 1919, the Slovak Soviet Republic was proclaimed in Presov. The republic lasted only until early July, when troops of the Czechoslovak bourgeois government occupied Slovakia.
The municipal elections of June 1919 and the parliamentary elections of April 1920 clearly demonstrated the radicalization of the working people and the general discontent with the policy of the ruling circles. The Social Democrats and Socialists received almost half of all the votes cast, and the right-wing Social Democrat V. Tusar was chosen to head the new coalition government. A left opposition crystallized within the Czechoslovak Social Democratic Labor Party (CSDLP) in the second half of 1919; it insisted that the party eschew coalitions with the bourgeoisie and pursue an independent policy serving the working class. In December 1919 the revolutionary wing of the CSDLP organized itself as the Marxist Left, headed by B. Šmeral, J. Hybeš, and A. Zápotocký. Elections of delegates to the next regular party congress, held in the summer of 1920, gave an absolute majority to the Marxist Left. The Thirteenth Party Congress, duly convened in September, endorsed the formation of the CSDLP (Left). The party’s right-wing leaders refused to accept the decisions of the congress. On December 9 the police seized the building occupied by the Executive Committee of the Marxist Left and sealed off the printing plant of the newspaper Rudé právo, thereby sparking a political strike (see
DECEMBER POLITICAL STRIKE OF 1920
). The December events hastened the formation of a Communist Party. A congress of the CSDLP (Left) held in Prague on May 14–16, 1921, voted to assume the name “Communist” and to join the Comintern. The Unification Congress (Oct. 30-Nov. 4, 1921) completed the formation of the united Communist Party of Czechoslovakia.
In their foreign policy in the 1920’s the Czechoslovak ruling circles aimed at consolidating the country’s position within the Versailles system and looked to France as the chief guarantor of this system. The Little Entente, a military and political alliance between Czechoslovakia, Rumania, and Yugoslavia, was formed under the aegis of France in 1920–21. A Franco-Czechoslovak military and political treaty was concluded in 1924. After the collapse of the anti-Soviet armed intervention in 1918–20 and the failure of the capitalist countries to impose their will on Soviet Russia at the Genoa Conference of 1922, Czechoslovakia signed the Provisional Treaty with the RSFSR (Prague, June 5, 1922) and another treaty with the Ukrainian SSR (June 6). These treaties provided for mutual de facto recognition and for the establishment of trade and economic relations. Continuing, however, to support the anti-Soviet policy of the Western powers, Czechoslovakia participated in the Locarno Conference in 1925 and signed the Locarno Treaties, which greatly complicated its foreign policy without guaranteeing the security of its borders.
With the exception of a few brief recessions, such as the industrial slowdown of 1926, industrial and agricultural production increased steadily between 1924 and 1929, when the general indexes exceeded prewar levels. With the partial stabilization of capitalism, opportunist elements became more aggressive in the labor movement. In February 1929 the Fifth Congress of the Communist Party removed from the leadership the right-opportunist group that had formed around V. Bolen and B. Jilek and elected a new Central Committee headed by K. Gottwald.
The first symptoms of a world economic crisis were felt in Czechoslovakia as early as 1929. By the time the crisis reached its height in the spring of 1933, industrial output had dropped by more than one-third from the 1929 level. According to official statistics, unemployment reached 920,000 in late February 1933. The Communist Party headed the working people’s struggle against the attempts of the bourgeoisie to resolve the crisis at their expense. The Communists led strikes and mass protests of the unemployed. The 1932 Most Strike in the North Bohemian Coal Basin, a political event of European significance, forced the employers and the government to satisfy some of the miners’ demands. The economic depression intensified the conflicts among and within the various groups of Czechoslovak finance capital and between the bourgeoisie of the country’s different nationalities.
The fascist victory in Germany complicated Czechoslovakia’s international and domestic political situation. Czech fascist organizations that had arisen in the mid-1920’s stepped up their activity. Fascist separatist elements gained the upper hand in the Slovak People’s Party, which had been founded in 1918. The Sudeten German Party, founded in October 1933 by K. Henlein, became Hitler’s tool. The threat of aggression by fascist Germany, the growing international prestige of the USSR, and the pressure of the popular masses obliged the Czechoslovak government to extend de jure recognition to the USSR in June 1934, and after the signing of the Franco-Soviet mutual assistance treaty, to conclude a similar treaty with the USSR in May 1935. Guided by the decisions of the Seventh Congress of the Comintern, the Communist Party proposed the formation of a united popular front to combat the mounting reaction and threat to national independence. The profascist forces were defeated in the parliamentary elections of May 1935, although Henlein’s followers managed to poll two-thirds of the German votes. Neither did the extreme reactionaries succeed in electing their candidate in the presidential elections of December 1935, won by E. Beneš.
Nevertheless, the sabotage of the reformists and Agrarians prevented the formation of a united antifascist front. The ruling circles of Czechoslovakia followed the French and British policy of appeasing the aggressor. At a congress held in Karlovy Vary in April 1938, Henlein’s supporters demanded autonomy for the Sudetenland. The next month German and Polish troops began massing along Czechoslovakia’s borders. The Czechoslovak government announced a partial mobilization, but under the pressure from Lord Runciman’s “unofficial” British mission, which arrived in Prague in July, it yielded to almost all the Karlovy Vary demands. Despite the concessions, Henlein’s followers, acting on direct orders from Berlin, demanded the immediate unification of the Sudetenland with Germany. On September 12 they staged an armed putsch.
On September 21 the government of the Agrarian Hodză accepted, with the consent of President Beneš, the Anglo-French ultimatum to cede the border regions of Czechoslovakia to Germany. The next day the Communist Party initiated a general political strike. When the Hodža government resigned in favor of a new cabinet formed by General J. Syrový, Beneš assured Great Britain and France that the change of government did not mean a refusal to accept their demands. The ruling circles of Czechoslovakia rejected the military assistance that the Soviet government was ready to give under the Soviet-Czechoslovak treaty of 1935 even if France should refuse to aid Czechoslovakia. On September 29 the governments of Great Britain and France concluded the Munich Pact with Germany and Italy on the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia (see
MUNICH PACT OF 1938
). In early October 1938 fascist Germany occupied the Sudentenland. On October 2 bourgeois-landlord Poland seized the Téáín district, and on November 2, in accordance with the Vienna Arbitration, Horthy’s Hungary appropriated the southern regions of Slovakia and of the Transcarpathian Ukraine. As a result, Czechoslovakia lost one-third of its territory and population, more than 40 percent of its industry, and a considerable part of its raw-material resources.
Czechoslovakia found itself completely dependent on fascist Germany, both politically and economically. The Communist Party was outlawed, first in Slovakia, where an autonomous government was formed by J. Tiso, the leader of the separatists, and later in the Czech lands. On March 14, 1939, the Slovak separatists, acting in concert with Berlin, proclaimed the formation of an “independent Slovak state.” The next day German troops occupied the Czech lands, which on Hitler’s orders were transformed into the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. The Transcarpathian Ukraine was seized by Horthy’s Hungary. The Soviet government alone refused to recognize the destruction of Czechoslovakia, branding Germany’s actions as a lawless act of aggression.
Fascist German rule; the struggle of the peoples of Czechoslovakia against Nazi oppression (from March 1939 to May 1945). A brutal occupation regime was established in the Protectorate. The economy was subordinated to German monopolies and placed at the service of the Nazis’ militarist plans. After signing treaties with Germany in 1939–40 establishing a military and political alliance and pledging economic cooperation, the Slovak puppet government drew Slovakia into the war on the side of the fascist axis. The reactionary circles among the Czech bourgeoisie embarked on open collaboration with the occupation forces. Some of the bourgeois political leaders, headed by Beneš, emigrated to the West. In 1939 they formed in Paris the Czechoslovak National Committee, which became the basis of a provisional government formed in London the following year. The Communist Party headed the resistance to the aggressors and their confederates. The activity of the underground Communist organizations (the Communist Party of Slovakia was constituted as a separate entity in the spring of 1939) was directed by the Moscow-based united party center, headed by Gottwald. At first the resistance to the occupation forces generally took the form of strikes, demonstrations, and acts of sabotage.
After the USSR entered the war with fascist Germany, it was the first power in the anti-Hitler coalition to recognize the Czechoslovak government in London. On July 18, 1941, the USSR and the provisional government signed an agreement on military cooperation that provided for the restoration of Czechoslovakia within the pre-Munich borders. Meanwhile, in the USSR a Czechoslovak military unit was being formed under the command of L. Svoboda that would subsequently grow into the First Czechoslovak Army Corps. The first partisan detachments were organized in Czechoslovakia in the summer of 1942. A Soviet-Czechoslovak treaty on friendship, mutual assistance, and postwar cooperation was signed in Moscow on Dec. 12, 1943.
The Moscow treaty and the Soviet Army’s advance toward the borders of Czechoslovakia gave impetus to the national liberation movement. A national uprising broke out in Slovakia on Aug. 29, 1944 (see
SLOVAK NATIONAL UPRISING OF 1944
). In the liberated areas power passed to the Slovak National Council, which had been founded in 1943 on the initiative of the Communists and which included three members of the Central Committee of the Slovak Communist Party—K. Schmidke, G. Husák, and L. Novomeský. To aid the rebels, the Soviet command changed its original plans and launched an offensive near the passes across the Carpathians, capturing Dukla Pass on October 6 after heavy fighting. Nevertheless, the center of the uprising, the town of Banská Bystrica, fell on October 27 under the onslaught of superior Nazi forces. The rebels retreated into the mountains, where they continued the struggle.
The Slovak uprising marked the beginning of the national democratic revolution in Czechoslovakia. Meeting in Moscow in March 1945, representatives of the London exiles, the Slovak National Council, and the leadership of the Czechoslovak Communist Party agreed to form the National Front of Czechs and Slovaks and worked out its program. In early April a National Front government was formed in Košice and its program was announced to the country (see
KOŠICE PROGRAM
). Supported by partisans, armed insurrections against the occupation forces broke out in several Czech cities in May. Prague rebelled on May 5 (see
PEOPLE’S UPRISING OF 1945
). Soviet troops came to the aid of the insurgents, and, entering Prague on May 9, completed the liberation of Czechoslovakia.
Establishment of a people’s democratic system; the national democratic revolution develops into a socialist revolution (from May 1945 to February 1948). After the liberation of Czechoslovakia from the fascist German aggressors, the independent state of Czechs and Slovaks was resurrected on a new, democratic basis. The national democratic revolution that unfolded in the country led to the establishment of a people’s democratic system, based on the National Front, which derived its strength from the alliance of workers and peasants. The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and the Communist Party of Slovakia held leading positions in the National Front. Although all the parties that joined the National Front pledged to fulfill the joint government program and to build a people’s democratic republic, the National Socialists, the Czechoslovak People’s Party, and the Slovak Democratic Party tried from the very beginning to slow down the revolutionary process and gradually to restore the regime that had existed in the pre-Munich bourgeois republic. The Communists alone consistently struggled for revolutionary changes in political and economic life.
Relying on the working class and the working peasantry and overcoming the resistance of the bourgeoisie, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia launched a campaign to turn the national democratic revolution into a socialist revolution. The national committees (local governing bodies), working jointly with factory councils, began taking over the management of enterprises belonging to the occupation forces or to persons who had cooperated with them and set about purging the state machinery of traitors and collaborators. The presidential decree of June 21, 1945, opened the first phase in the implementation of the agrarian reform. The land and other property belonging to German and some Hungarian landlords or to traitors was confiscated.
On Oct. 24, 1945, decrees were issued nationalizing key industries and all banks and private insurance companies. By the end of 1946 the state had taken over about 3,000 major industrial enterprises, including all mines, almost all the metallurgical works and power plants, and three-fourths of the chemical and metal-working enterprises. The nationalization of key industries and the banks heralded the formation of a socialist sector in the national economy. The Eighth Congress of the CPC (March 1946) summed up the social changes and set forth the tasks of further strengthening the people’s democratic system. The congress demonstrated that the Communist Party had become the strongest political party in the country.
In the May 1946 elections to the Constituent National Assembly and to the national committees, the Communist Party polled more votes than any other political party. For the first time in Czechoslovak history the government was headed by a Communist, the party chairman K. Gottwald. The program adopted by the new government provided for further democratic changes, the drafting of a new constitution, and the drawing up of a plan for the restoration and development of the national economy in 1947–48. In accordance with the program, the government initiated the second phase of the agrarian reform: arable land in excess of 150 hectares (ha) or total landed property exceeding 250 ha was expropriated. By the middle of 1947, some 2,946,000 ha of agricultural land and forests had been confiscated, most of it in the border regions. A large part of the agricultural land was given to farmhands, small peasants, and peasants with large families.
At the end of 1947 economic difficulties, aggravated by a drought, and the bourgeoisie’s resistance to revolutionary changes exacerbated the class struggle in the country. The bourgeois parties opposed the measures proposed by the Communist Party for improving the food situation in the country, measures that included raising the wholesale prices of farm products and levying an emergency tax on millionaires.
In February 1948 the reactionary bourgeoisie, which was losing one position after another, tried, with the support of Western imperialist circles, to stage a counterrevolutionary coup and to restore the capitalist system in the country. The ministers representing the bourgeois parties resigned in the hope of provoking a government crisis and forming a new government without Communists. The Communist Party appealed to the popular masses to defend the people’s democratic system and its revolutionary gains (see
FEBRUARY EVENTS OF 1948
). On Feb. 24, 1948, a one-hour general strike was held to protest the machinations of the reactionary forces. By this time power in the country was in fact already wielded by the working class. The antipopular plot of the Czechoslovak bourgeoisie and international imperialism was foiled. The next day, President E. Beneš was obliged to accept the resignation of the reactionary ministers and to replace them with people proposed by Gottwald. The crisis was resolved by peaceful means. The February victory of the working class concentrated all power in the hands of the working class. The national democratic revolution had indeed developed into a socialist revolution. With the victory of the socialist revolution, the people’s democratic system assumed the functions of a dictatorship of the proletariat.
Building socialism. The establishment of a dictatorship of the proletariat and the activity of the new Gottwald government made it possible to continue implementing revolutionary reforms and to begin building socialism. In March 1948 the National Assembly enacted a new land reform law that limited private land-holdings to 50 ha of farmland. More than 4 million ha of farmland and forests had been redistributed since 1945; of this area more than 2 million ha of farmland were transferred to small peasants, and about 800,000 ha of land went to state farms, laying the basis for a socialist sector in agriculture.
The second stage of the nationalization of industry was completed in April 1948, when the state took over all enterprises employing more than 50 workers and, in some industries, all the enterprises. Large commercial firms and stores were also nationalized, and a state monopoly on foreign trade was established. These reforms produced radical changes in the socioeconomic structure of society and eliminated the main exploiting classes—the big industrial, banking, trade, and rural bourgeoisie. The alliance of the working class and the peasantry was strengthened.
The new constitution adopted on May 9, 1948, proclaimed Czechoslovakia a people’s democratic republic of Czechs and Slovaks and made socialism the goal of the country’s development. In the May 30, 1948, elections to the National Assembly the National Front candidates polled 89.3 percent of the votes.
After the resignation of Beneš in June 1948, Gottwald was elected president of the republic, and A. Zápotocký was chosen to head the new government (cabinet). The non-Communist National Front parties—the Czechoslovak Socialist Party, the Czechoslovak People’s Party, the Slovak Reconstruction Party, and the Slovak Freedom Party—purged their ranks of reactionary elements and accepted the Communist Party’s policy of building socialism. The guiding role of the Communist Party was considerably bolstered. In June 1948 the Social Democratic Party merged with the Communist Party on a Marxist-Leninist basis. At the party’s Ninth Congress, held in May 1949, the building of socialism was adopted as the party’s general line. The primary objective of the first five-year plan (1949–53) was to lay the foundation for a socialist economy. The plan emphasized the development of heavy industry, especially machine building, called for the gradual formation of agricultural cooperatives, and aimed at raising the living standard of the working people. Special attention was given to overcoming the economic backwardness of Slovakia through industrialization. The country’s cities and villages embarked on a massive program of building socialism.
After Gottwald’s death in March 1953, Zápotocký was elected president. A. Novotný, first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party from September 1953, succeeded to the presidency after Zápotocký’s death in November 1957. The office was held by L. Svoboda from March 1968 to May 1975.
The Tenth Congress of the Communist Party (1954) affirmed that the first five-year plan had laid a firm foundation for a socialist society. The socialist sector, which included the unified agricultural cooperatives, now dominated the country’s economy, accounting for 92 percent of the national product. The gross industrial output increased by 93 percent during the five-year plan, reaching a level more than double the 1937 output. Machine building became the leading industry, its output increasing by a factor of 3.3 over the five years. Industrial growth was especially rapid in Slovakia. At the same time, there were disproportions in the development of individual branches of the national economy, and agriculture lagged behind the growing demands of industry and the population.
The second five-year economic development plan (1956–60), adopted in 1956, aimed to complete the building of the material production base of socialism, promote a more even development of the national economy, revive the lagging fuel, energy, and mining industries, and ensure the preponderance of the socialist sector in agriculture. The party’s Eleventh Congress (June 1958), noting the successes in building the foundation of socialism, set the concrete tasks of the second five-year plan: the more rapid development of production, the improvement of socialist democracy, and the strengthening of the moral and political unity of the people on the basis of Marxist-Leninist principles.
During the second five-year plan the industrial output increased by 66 percent, rising to four times the prewar level (1937). The national income increased by a factor of 2.5 between 1948 and 1960. The socialist sector now owned 87.4 percent of the farmland, and the organization of farmers into cooperatives was virtually completed. Nevertheless, in terms of the growth of production, agriculture lagged behind industry. The successes of socialist construction quickly raised the living standard of the people. A national conference of the Communist Party, held on July 5–7, 1960, confirmed the victory of socialist production relations in the country. Several days later, on July 11, the National Assembly adopted a new constitution under which the country was renamed the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic (CSSR). The constitution proclaimed the CSSR a socialist state based on a firm alliance, headed by the working class, of the peasantry, the working class, and the intelligentsia.
Economic development slowed during the third five-year plan (1961–65), chiefly owing to an exhaustion of the means of production expansion, but also because of shortcomings in the management of the national economy and a weakening of centralized control. The Twelfth Congress of the Communist Party (December 1962) stated that the objectives of further economic development were to improve planning, correct the imbalance between the development levels of industry and agriculture, and establish an equilibrium between output and consumption.
In the years of socialist construction the working people of Czechoslovakia, led by the Communist Party, achieved notable successes in economic, scientific, and cultural development and in raising the living standard of the population. Nevertheless, the road to socialism was strewn with obstacles and difficulties, and some mistakes were made. The level of development of society and the degree of its moral and political unity were overestimated; Marxist-Leninist principles were inconsistently applied in the life of the party and society; and a subjectivist approach was taken to the solution of several important problems. Not enough attention was given to the ideological work of the party. The struggle against bourgeois ideology and petit bourgeois views was relaxed, permitting the spread of revisionist trends in the party. At the same time, the pressure of bourgeois propaganda intensified, and foreign imperialist forces stepped up their subversive activity. The party’s Thirteenth Congress (May–June 1966) proposed ways to overcome the difficulties. However, neither party nor government leaders took the necessary steps to implement the decisions of the congress and to eliminate shortcomings and errors, a lapse that led to a crisis in the party and in society.
The January 1968 Plenum of the party’s Central Committee set three basic tasks: eliminating from the activity of the party or its leadership anything that hindered the further development of the socialist society, strengthening the alliance between Czechs and Slovaks through a consistent implementation of the Marxist-Leninist nationality policy, and solving pressing economic problems. But right-wing opportunists gained the upper hand in the party leadership elected at the plenum; A. Dubček was elected first secretary of the Central Committee. The new leadership was incapable of carrying out the tasks set by the Thirteenth Congress and the January Plenum, and its actions contributed to a large-scale offensive by right-opportunist and antisocialist forces against the party’s policy and the socialist system. Under cover of demagogic slogans calling for the “democratization” of society and the creation of a “new model” of socialism, the right-opportunist and antisocialist forces launched virulent attacks on socialism, seeking to abolish the leading role of the working class and its vanguard, the Communist Party, to dismantle the agencies of socialist power, and to break Czechoslovakia’s alliance with the USSR and the other socialist countries. Supported by Western imperialist circles, the newly formed political coalition of right-opportunist and antisocialist forces began making extensive preparations for a counterrevolutionary coup aimed at restoring the bourgeois system.
By August 1968 a critical counterrevolutionary situation had developed in Czechoslovakia, and the country was on the brink of civil war. Under these circumstances, thousands of Communists and nonparty citizens, many members of the Central Committees of the Czechoslovak and Slovak Communist Parties, members of the cabinet, and deputies to the National Assembly, realizing that the imminent counterrevolution could no longer be averted with internal forces, asked the governments of the socialist countries and the leading bodies of the fraternal parties to extend international aid to the Czechoslovak people in the defense of socialism. Such assistance was rendered in August 1968 by the allied socialist countries: the USSR, the People’s Republic of Bulgaria, the Hungarian People’s Republic, the German Democratic Republic, and the Polish People’s Republic. With international support, the Marxist-Leninist forces within the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia assailed the antisocialist elements, opportunists, and revisionists and mobilized the working class and all the working people for the defense of the socialist achievements.
A turnaround in both the party and the country occurred after the April 1969 Plenum of the party’s Central Committee, which elected a new party leadership headed by G. Husák. The May 1969 Plenum of the Central Committee adopted a program of consolidation designed to deal with the consequences of the crisis. Work began on rallying the party around the principles of Marxism-Leninism and on purging it of opportunists and careerists through an exchange of party membership cards, completed in 1970. Measures were taken to strengthen government and administrative bodies, to reinforce state planning and economic management, to stabilize the economy, and to regain the trust of and reestablish fraternal ties with the CPSU and the communist parties of the other socialist countries. It was thus possible to normalize the situation in the country and strengthen the party’s authority, enabling the working people of Czechoslovakia to continue their constructive labor.
On May 6, 1970, the CSSR and the Soviet Union signed a new treaty of friendship, cooperation, and mutual aid that still further expanded and deepened the fraternal relations between the two countries. The December 1970 Plenum of the party’s Central Committee adopted the document Lessons Drawn From the Crisis Development in the Party and Society After the Thirteenth Congress of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, giving an in-depth Marxist-Leninist analysis of the recent events and showing how the threat of a counterrevolutionary coup had arisen and how it had been eliminated. In particular, the document noted that the international aid of the fraternal socialist countries had been timely, necessary, and the only correct solution.
In assessing this complex period in the history of the party and the country, the Fourteenth Congress (May 1971) affirmed that the task of restoring the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia as a Marxist-Leninist party had been carried out and that the party was now able to resume its historical role as the leading force in society. The congress also stated that the socialist principles of economic, scientific, and cultural development had been reestablished. The Fourteenth Congress has been called the congress of victory over the enemies of socialism in Czechoslovakia and the congress of the triumph of socialism and proletarian internationalism. But the congress also pointed out that opportunism and revisionism continued to present the main danger and called for an uncomprising struggle against them. The congress ratified the directives for the fifth five-year economic plan (1971–75), which gave priority to raising the efficiency of the national economy through a maximum utilization of intensive growth factors and to meeting the growing needs of the people. The decisions of the congress opened the way for the further comprehensive building of a socialist society in Czechoslovakia.
In the national and local elections held in November 1971 the voter turnout was 99.45 percent. National Front candidates to the House of the People polled 99.81 percent, and those to the House of Nations received 99.77 percent of the votes cast. Hu-sák, general secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and chairman of the Central Committee of the National Front, was elected president of the CSSR in May 1975. The Fifteenth Congress of the Communist Party (April 1976) was an important event in the life of Czechoslovakia. Summing up the results of socialist construction, the congress noted that from the standpoint of economic and social development the preceding five years had been one of the most successful periods in the history of socialist construction in Czechoslovakia. The congress set a task of programmatic significance—the building of a fully developed socialist society in Czechoslovakia—and established the main economic and social objectives for the next five years. It emphasized the need to develop the state and improve the political system, to invigorate party work, and to strengthen the leading role of the party. The congress demonstrated the fidelity of the Czechoslovak Communists and working people to the ideas of proletarian internationalism.
Czechoslovakia has concluded treaties of friendship and mutual assistance with most of the socialist countries, including Poland (1947, 1967), Bulgaria (1948, 1968), Rumania (1948, 1968), Hungary (1949, 1968), the Mongolian People’s Republic (1957, 1973), the People’s Republic of China (1957), and the German Democratic Republic (1967, 1977). It has been a member of the Warsaw Treaty Organization since 1955. A founding member of COMECON (Council for Mutual Economic Assistance), Czechoslovakia is carrying out the organization’s joint program of socialist economic integration. The Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia’s principal trading partner, is also rendering technical assistance in the construction of several industrial enterprises, nuclear power plants, and the Prague subway. Czechoslovakia in turn is helping to build many industrial enterprises in the USSR. The coordination of national economic plans is an important factor in the economic cooperation between the two countries, which are also rapidly expanding their scientific and technical cooperation and cultural ties.
Czechoslovakia’s strength as a socialist state has enhanced its prestige in the international arena. A founding member of the UN, Czechoslovakia has cosponsored many proposals of the socialist countries aimed at relaxing international tension and strengthening peace. Having contributed to the preparation and successful conclusion of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (1975), Czechoslovakia is working with the other socialist countries to implement the conference’s decisions.
Czechoslovakia’s relations with the capitalist countries rest on the principles of peaceful coexistence and mutually advantageous cooperation. In 1973 it concluded a treaty establishing diplomatic relations with the Federal Republic of Germany. The treaty reaffirmed the inviolability of the border between the two countries, which pledged to respect each other’s territorial integrity and to refrain from making territorial claims on each other. The parties declared the Munich Pact of 1938 to be null and void. The signing of the treaty contributed to an improvement of the political climate in Europe.
The CSSR maintains political, trade, and cultural relations with many Asian, African, and Latin American countries and renders them economic, scientific, and technical aid. A number of enterprises in India, Syria, Iraq, and other countries have been completed or are being built with its technical assistance. As of December 1979, Czechoslovakia maintained diplomatic relations with 124 countries and traded with almost as many nations. It is a member of more than 54 major international organizations.
REFERENCES
(1918–45), and S. I. K
OLESNIKOV
(since 1945)
Political parties. The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (CPC; Komunistická Strana Československa), founded in 1921, had 1,525,000 members and candidate members as of Jan. 1, 1980. The Communist Party of Slovakia (CPS; Komunistická Strana Slovenská) is the regional organization of the CPC in Slovakia. The Czechoslovak Socialist Party (CSP; Československá Strana Socialistická) was founded in 1948 by some members of the Czech National Socialist Party, which had existed since 1897 and which had been called the Czechoslovak Socialist Party from 1918 to 1926. The CSP draws its main support from several strata of the population that formerly belonged to the urban middle and petite bourgeoisie and the intelligentsia, but it also attracts a small segment of the workers and peasants. It operates only in the Czech lands. The Czechoslovak People’s Party (CPP: Československá Strana Lidová) was founded in February 1948 after the reorganization of a bourgeois party of the same name that had existed since 1918. It brings together part’of the peasantry, several former petit bourgeois strata, some artisans and members of the intelligentsia, and a negligible number of workers. Most of the members of the CPP, which operates only in the Czech lands, are practicing Christians.
The Slovak Reconstruction Party (Strana Slovenskej Obrody) was founded in February 1948 by the more progressive elements in the Democratic Party, which broke up during the February events of 1948. It unites a small part of the urban and rural working people of Slovakia. The Slovak Freedom Party (Slovenská Strana Slobody), founded in 1946 by secessionists from the Democratic Party, is supported by an insignificant part of the former Slovak petite bourgeoisie and by a small number of office employees and members of the intelligentsia, chiefly Roman Catholics.
All the non-Communist parties recognize the CPC’s leading role in society and support the program of building socialism.
National Front. Founded in 1945 on the initiative of the CPC, the National Front (Národní Fronta) is the political expression of the CPC-led class alliance of the urban and rural working people. It embraces all the country’s political parties and the main social organizations.
Trade unions and other social organizations. The country’s occupational and social organizations function in accordance with the country’s federal structure, that is, Czech and Slovak organizations are administered on a federal basis. The Revolutionary Trade Union Movement, founded in April 1946, had about 7 million members in 1980. It is a member of the World Federation of Trade Unions.
The Socialist Union of Youth, founded in 1970 and with 2.3 million members in 1980, carries on the revolutionary traditions of the Czechoslovak Komsomol, founded in 1921, and the Czechoslovak Union of Youth, established in 1949. The Czechoslovak-Soviet Friendship Alliance, founded in 1948, had about 2.5 million members in 1980. The Czechoslovak Women’s Union, formed in 1974 from women’s organizations founded in 1967, had a membership of 800,000 in 1980.
S. I. K
OLESNIKOV
General characteristics. The CSSR is an advanced industrial country with an intensive agriculture and a high living standard and culture. It accounts for more than 1.5 percent of the world’s industrial output and for about 5 percent of the industrial output of the COMECON countries. In terms of volume of industrial output the CSSR holds 11th or 12th place in the world. In 1976 industry provided 68 percent of the national income, construction 12.9 percent, agriculture and forestry 7.2 percent, transportation and communications 2.7 percent, and commerce, food services, and other sectors 9.2 percent. About one-third of the national income is derived from foreign trade. In 1976 the socialist sector accounted for 99.6 percent of the national income, for 99 percent of the production fixed assets, for 100 percent of the gross industrial output, and for 96.8 percent of the gross agricultural output.
The Czechoslovak economy has passed through several stages of socialist construction and radical social and economic change (see above: Historical survey). These stages are reflected in a series of economic development plans, the two-year plan of 1947–48 and the five-year plans of 1949–53, 1956–60, 1961–65, 1966–70, and 1971–75. In accordance with the decisions of the Communist Party congresses, economic policy was aimed at modernizing industry and creating a large-scale socialist agriculture. Precedence was given to the development of heavy industry. The industrial output of Czechoslovakia, a highly industrialized country even before the war, grew almost tenfold between 1949 and 1976, with the output of machinery increasing 23 times and of chemical products 27 times. These quantitative changes were accompanied by qualitative changes in the structure of industry. By 1976 capital goods accounted for two-thirds and consumer goods for one-third of the total value of the industrial output. The number of workers employed in machine building and metalworking doubled between 1937 and 1975. Meanwhile, agriculture shifted from small-scale production to large-scale modern production carried out by cooperatives. Productivity increased by more than 50 percent per unit of farmland, and farm labor productivity rose by a factor of 4.4. The economy as a whole developed rapidly: between 1949 and 1976 the gross social product increased sixfold and the national income more than fivefold.
In the years of people’s rule the regional inequalities in living standard inherited from capitalism have been eliminated, and full employment has been achieved. The differences between working conditions in industry and agriculture are being erased gradually. Economically backward regions no longer exist; the formerly agricultural regions have been industrialized; and the historical disparity between the western and eastern parts of the country has been essentially eliminated. Formerly an agricultural area, Slovakia has become an industrial and agricultural land, its share in the country’s industrial output rising to 26 percent, compared to 7 percent in 1937. The five-year national economic plan for 1971–75 prescribed measures aimed at integrating the development of the country as a whole with the proportional development of the economies of the republics.
Czechoslovakia’s economy has entered the period of building a fully developed socialist society. The sixth five-year plan (1976–80) calls for raising production efficiency and accelerating scientific and technological progress as the basis for the dynamic development of the whole national economy. An important factor in the overall rise in economic efficiency is Czechoslovakia’s participation in the international socialist division of labor. In line with the Comprehensive Economic Integration Program of the COMECON countries, specialization and cooperation in both production and scientific and technical research are developing rapidly. Within COMECON the CSSR specializes in various branches of machine building, including the manufacture of machine tools, equipment for nuclear power plants, and textile machinery.
Industry. Postwar industrial development has been marked by a rapid growth rate (averaging 6.7 percent a year between 1966 and 1976) and changes in the branch and regional structure of industry (see Table 2). The tempo of growth has been greatest in the chemical and machine-building industries. Other expanding industries have included electronics, electrical and vacuum engineering, precision mechanics, and computer technology. Radical changes have taken place in light industry and in the food industry, which in the past were dispersed and fragmented, with only 3 percent of the enterprises employing more than 20 people. Like the newer branches of industry, they are now highly concentrated and specialized. About 50 percent of the country’s industrial labor force is employed in enterprises with more than 1,000 workers, compared to 18 percent before World War II. Large economic associations, called economic production units, were established in the 1970’s; there are about 100 of them in industry and construction. (See Table 3 for the output of the principal industrial goods.)
Industrial production, notably machine building, is now relatively evenly distributed throughout the country, largely owing to the construction of large industrial facilities in eastern Czechoslovakia, as well as in some parts of Bohemia and Moravia. Of the roughly 2,000 industrial enterprises and separate installations that were built in the CSSR between 1945 and 1970, 181 employ more than 1,000 workers. The CSSR holds a leading place among the COMECON countries and a prominent place in the world in the per capita output of such important industrial products as pig iron (635 kg; figures for 1976 unless otherwise indicated), steel (985 kg), rolled metal (697 kg), metalcutting machine tools (21.3 units per 10,000 population), passenger cars and trucks (145.1 units per 10,000 population), paper (all types, 55.7 kg), cotton fabrics (35.2 m), wool fabrics (5.7 m), footwear (7.9 pairs), and sugar (56.9 kg in 1975).
MINING AND POWER ENGINEERING
. The CSSR has limited fuel, energy, and mineral resources. Its substantial coal reserves account for more than 90 percent of its fuel and energy resources and are the main source of electric power. Imported oil and natural gas play a major role in the production of energy; in 1976 imports, chiefly from the USSR, amounted to 17.1 million tons of crude oil, 4.5 billion cu m of gas, and 4.6 billion kilowatt-hours of electric power. In 1975 the structure of the fuel and energy balance was as follows: solid fuel, 66 percent; oil, 24.7 percent; fuel gas, 5.5 percent; nuclear energy, 8.0 percent; and water and other types of energy, 3.8 percent.
More than 85 percent of the hard coal is mined in the Ostrava-Karviná Basin and about 8 percent in the Kladno region near Prague. Most of the hard coal is used for coking; of the 11 million tons of coke produced in 1976, 2.1 million tons were exported. There has been a rapid growth in the output of brown coal, mined chiefly in the western part of the country—in the North Bohemian Brown Coal Basin (72 percent) and in the Sokolov Basin (23 percent). Almost 90 percent of the coal is mined by open-cut methods. Of high quality, brown coal is used mainly to fuel thermal electric power plants and to produce gas (8 billion cu m in 1976). The production of oil and natural gas is insignificant: 131,000 tons and 982 million cu m in 1976.
Most of the country’s electric power is produced by thermal electric power plants using chiefly brown coal but also hard coal. The installed capacity of the electric power plants was 14.6 giga-watts in 1976, of which 1.8 gigawatts were generated by hydroelectric power plants. About 40 percent of the electricity is produced in the North Bohemian Brown Coal Basin and about 15 percent in the Ostrava-Karviná Hard Coal Basin. The largest power plants, whose capacity ranges from 800 to 1,300 megawatts, are located at Tušimice, Počerady, Prunéřov, Mělník, Detmarovice, and Vojany. The first unit, with a capacity of 500 megawatts, is being installed at the Mělník-3 Thermal Electric Power Plant. Hydroelectric power plants have been built on the Vltava and Váh rivers. The largest, the Orlík Hydroelectric Power Plant on the Vltava, has a capacity of 420 megawatts. The
Table 2. Branch structure of industry
21.2
22.6
water resources of the Danube are also being harnessed. The country’s first nuclear power plant, with a capacity of 150 megawatts, has been put into operation at Jaslovské Bohunice; a second nuclear power plant is being built nearby. The Dukovaní Nuclear Power Plant is under construction in Moravia (1978). The country’s unified power grid is connected with the Mir System.
The CSSR produces nuclear raw materials, magnesite, antimony, kaolin, iron ore (1.9 million tons in 1976), and small quantities of copper and lead and zinc ores.
MANUFACTURING
. The well-developed ferrous metallurgy industry uses local coal and chiefly imported iron ore (85 percent), most of it supplied by the USSR. In the years of people’s rule old plants in Ostrava, Třinec, and Kladno have been modernized, and two large metallurgical works have been built, the K. Gottwald Combine in Ostrava and the Eastern Slovakia Combine in Kosice. Most of the ferrous metallurgy works are concentrated in the Ostrava-Karviná region, which produces more than 60 percent of the pig iron and about 60 percent of the steel. A large proportion of the high-grade steel comes from plants in Kladno and Plzeñ, as well as from Central Slovakia. Ferroalloys are produced in North Slovakia. Part of the ferrous metallurgy output is exported; in 1976 exports included 2.7 million tons of rolled metal and 500,000 tons of pipe.
The nonferrous metallurgy industry lacks sufficient local raw-material resources. In 1975 the CSSR produced 18,400 tons of copper, 22,000 tons of lead, and 43,300 tons of aluminum. The aluminum plant built at Žiar and Hronom in the early 1950’s uses mainly Hungarian bauxite. A cobalt and nickel plant has been built in Sered’. Much of the need for nonferrous metals is met by imports.
Machine building and metalworking, the leading branch of industry, are oriented toward small-lot and medium-lot production with a wide assortment of goods. The years of people’s rule have seen substantial changes in the branch structure of machine building. The output of equipment for the power, rolled-metal, chemical, and textile industries, of vehicles, and of metalcutting machine tools has increased considerably, and many modern branches have emerged, such as the manufacture of equipment for nuclear power plants and for the electronics industry. The manufacture of vehicles holds an important place in the structure of machine building, accounting for about one-third of the value of the industry’s output. Plants manufacturing diesel and electric locomotives, railroad cars, streetcars, motor vehicles, and motorcycles are concentrated at Prague, Plzeň, Martin, and Miadá Boleslav. A shipbuilding industry has been established in Komárno and a tractor industry in Brno. Machinery for the power industry accounts for about one-fifth of the output of machine building. Equipment for thermal electric and hydroelectric power plants and electrical goods are produced in Prague, Brno, Plzeň, Bratislava, and Pardubice. Machine-tool enterprises are found in Prague, Plzeň, Brno, Kuřim, and Gottwaldov; the CSSR is the second-largest producer of metalcutting machine tools among the COMECON countries, after the USSR.
About half of the machine-building output comes from the Prague, Brno, and Plzeň industrial conurbations. The country’s main center of machine building is Prague, noted for the production of transport, heavy, and electrical machinery. The city’s largest machine-building enterprise, the ČKD-Prague, produces heavy and transport machinery. The automotive industry is well established. The country’s three main plants—the Tatra Plant in Kopřivnice, the Škoda Plant in Miadá Boleslav, and the plant in Prague (now the Gottwald Plant)—began producing passenger cars and trucks as early as the turn of the century. Another major engineering center, Brno, is the site of several large plants specializing in the manufacture of heavy power engineering equipment, metalcutting machine tools, and tractors. One of the country’s largest machine-building enterprises, the V. I. Lenin Works (formerly Škoda) in Plzeň, has several production divisions turning out electrical, power engineering, metallurgical, and transport equipment.
The rapidly expanding chemical industry is becoming one of the country’s main branches of industry. Old plants producing sulfuric acid, soda ash, and other inorganic chemical products are being modernized, and industrial organic synthesis is developing rapidly on the basis of Soviet oil and natural gas. The organic-synthesis industry produces plastics and synthetic resins (581,000 tons in 1976), chemical fibers, and synthetic rubber. Large amounts of nitrogen and phosphate fertilizer are also produced. Chemical enterprises along the Middle and Lower Labe account for about half of the industry’s output. Záluží near Most is the site of one of the country’s largest chemical combines, the Czechoslovak-Soviet Friendship Combine, which uses oil as the starting material. The country’s largest oil refinery, Slovnaft in Bratislava, has an annual capacity of about 9 million tons and produces dozens of different chemical products. Cooperation with the German Democratic Republic (GDR) is developing under the “olefin program”; an ethylene pipeline links Zálužï with Bohlen in the GDR.
The output of construction materials is increasing. To supplement the output of the old cement enterprises in Central Bohemia and North Moravia, new plants have been built in Central and South Moravia, East Bohemia, and Central and East Slovakia. Part of the rapidly expanding output of magnesite refractory materials and ceramic products is earmarked for export.
Table 4. Sown area and yield of chief crops
5,635,000
4,214,000
The glass industry, one of the oldest traditional branches, uses local raw materials. Bohemian glass, crystal, and glass jewelry continue to be highly esteemed, and the output of industrial glass is growing. Most of the glass factories are located in North and West Bohemia, where the main centers are Jablonec and Karlovy Vary. Another popular product is ceramic ware, notably porcelain, made from high-quality local kaolin. Most of the porcelain and other ceramic products are manufactured in West Bohemia, chiefly at Karlovy Vary and Horní Bříza, where kaolin is extracted and processed.
The wood-products industry uses mainly domestic raw materials. Enterprises of the lumber and pulp and paper industry are generally found in the forested mountain regions of North and South Bohemia and Central and East Slovakia. The furniture industry is highly developed, and paper, furniture, pencils, and other products are exported to many countries.
The highly diversified textile industry, the leading branch of light industry, has been completely modernized in the years of socialist construction, when large enterprises equipped with up-to-date machinery were built. Although the number of workers employed in the textile industry has declined considerably, the volume of output is steadily increasing. The cotton industry is dispersed throughout North Bohemia, and the woollen industry tends to be confined to large cities, such as Brno and Liberec. The output of rayon fabrics, made chiefly from domestic chemical fibers, is growing. The linen industry, situated in northeastern Bohemia and using both domestic and imported flax, is noted for the high quality of its products. The flourishing clothing industry exports part of its output. The leather and footwear industry also produces both for the national market and for export. Its shoes and leather accessories are well known abroad. Czechoslovakia ranks first in the world in the per capita output of footwear. More than half of the footwear is produced by the Svit Factory (formerly Bata) in Gottwaldov.
Table 5. Livestock and poultry1
39,200,000
44,100,000
The food and condiment industry uses mainly local raw materials and essentially satisfies the country’s needs. Sugar refining and brewing have long been important branches. Czechoslovakia is one of the world’s major producers of beet sugar, exporting from 25 to 30 percent of its output. Most of the sugar refineries are located in the farming areas along the Labe River, in the Moravian valleys, and on the Danubian Plain. The world famous Bohemian beer is brewed at Plzeň, Prague, and České Budějovice.
Agriculture. In 1975 the socialist sector controlled more than 94 percent of the farmland. In 1976 the country’s 213 state farms averaged 4,600 hectares (ha) of plowland, and its more than 2,000 agricultural production cooperatives of all types averaged 1,600 ha of plowland. State agricultural enterprises manage 2.1 million ha of farmland and agricultural production cooperatives, 4.3 million ha. Various types of agricultural-industrial complexes have been set up with a view to mechanizing agriculture. Although the agricultural labor force has declined considerably, socialist changes, capital investments (a tenfold increase in the supply of means of production), and a rise in labor productivity have resulted in a substantial growth in the gross agricultural output, which in 1976 exceeded the prewar level by 36 percent. Most of the growth has taken place in animal husbandry, whose output increased by 66 percent, while the crop farming output rose by 9 percent. In 1976 the gross agricultural output was 4.3 times greater per worker and 1.5 times greater per ha of farmland than the prewar output.
Czechoslovak agriculture is highly intensive. The country ranks fifth or sixth in Europe in the per capita value of agricultural output, and it holds seventh or eighth place in the value of output per ha of agricultural land. Czechoslovakia also ranks high in the number of tractors per unit of farmland (one tractor [converted to 15 horsepower] per 10 ha of cultivated land) and in the application of fertilizers (242 kg in net weight per ha of plow-land in 1976). The country produces almost enough bread grain and animal products to satisfy domestic consumption, and measures are being taken to make the country more self-sufficient in other types of foodstuffs. In general, the country’s agriculture satisfies about 85 percent of the domestic demand for foodstuffs. Czechoslovakia imports feed grain, vegetables, fruit, and some agricultural raw materials, chiefly cotton and wool, and it exports sugar, hops, malt, and beer.
The postwar years have seen structural changes in agriculture; the share of animal husbandry and crop farming in the gross agricultural output has shifted from 45.9 percent and 54.1 percent, respectively, in 1936 to 57.1 percent and 42.9 percent in 1976. Of the 7 million ha of farmland in 1976, plowlands occupied 4.9 million ha, perennial plantings 360,000 ha (including vineyards 43,000 ha), and natural meadows and pastures 1.7 million ha. Forests covered 35 percent of the country, or 4.5 million ha.
CROP FARMING
. The structure of the sown area has changed in favor of expanded plantings of fodder and industrial crops. In 1976 grain and pulses covered 57.6 percent of the sown area (compared to 63.2 percent, the annual average for the 1934–38 period); industrial crops, 6.9 percent (4.2 percent); potatoes and vegetables, 6.1 percent (13.6 percent); and fodder crops, 29.1 percent (19 percent). A growth in grain yield (the current yield of almost 40 quintals per ha far exceeds the European average) has raised harvests considerably above the prewar level. Table 4 shows the sown area and harvest of the principal crops.
Wheat is grown mainly along the Labe, in the Danubian Plain, in the valleys of Moravia, and in the Tisza Lowland. Barley is also grown in these regions, especially industrial strains used for making malt. Corn is grown mainly in southern Slovakia. The most important industrial crop is sugar beets, grown for centuries along the Labe and in the valleys of Moravia and now raised in increasingly large quantities on the Danubian Plain. Large areas are planted to oil-bearing crops, chiefly rape, and to fiber crops, predominantly flax. Potatoes are grown in the hilly regions, principally in the Bohemian-Moravian Uplands. The grape harvest amounted to 209,000 tons in 1976. An important perennial crop is hops, for which the country is famous. Orchards are found throughout the country.
ANIMAL HUSBANDRY
. Livestock breeding, primarily hog and poultry raising, is being mechanized. The main branches of animal husbandry—meat and dairy cattle raising, hog raising, and industrial poultry raising—are marked by a high density of livestock per unit of farmland (see Table 5) and by high productivity (see Table 6).
FORESTRY
. Forests are one of the country’s major natural resources. The timber output averages 15 million cu m a year, with the western regions supplying mainly soft wood and the eastern regions hard wood. Other economic activities include hunting (wild boars, pheasants) and pond fish breeding.
Transportation. The operating length of the country’s railroads, the chief means of transportation, is 13,200 km, or 10.3 km per 100 sq km of territory. About one-fifth of the track is electrified. In 1976 railroads transported 276 million tons of freight and 462 million passengers. The electrified trunk line linking Prague, Česká Třebová, Olomouc, Žilina, Košice, and Cierna connects the CSSR with the USSR. As a member of COMECON Czechoslovakia participates in the international economic organization known as the Common Pool of Freight Cars. The country has 73,500 km of hard-surfaced roads, or 60 km per 100 sq km of territory. Road transport is important for passenger traffic; in 1961 motor vehicles transported 1,976,000,000 passengers and 317 million tons of freight. Bus routes connect virtually all the inhabited areas. The Prague-Brno-Bratislava Highway is under construction (1978).
Table 6. Output of principal livestock and poultry products (thousand tons)
3.733
4.492
River transport plays a significant role in foreign trade, with the Danube being used mainly for imports and the Labe for exports. In 1976 some 5.9 million tons of freight were hauled on the country’s 458 km of inland waterways. The main ports are Bratislava and Komárno on the Danube and Děčín on the Labe. The country’s small merchant marine, based at the Polish port of Szczecin, carried 1.4 million tons of cargo in 1976. There are about 1,500 km of trunk pipelines, including the Druzhba (Friendship) oil pipeline, which extends from the Soviet border to Bratislava and then goes on to Most, the Bratstvo (Brotherhood) gas pipeline, and an international transit gas pipeline from the Soviet frontier to the Prague area, where it branches out toward the German Democratic Republic and the Federal Republic of Germany. Czechoslovak Airlines (CSA) provides air services to all the country’s major cities, carrying 1,799,000 passengers in 1976, and makes flights to many countries of Europe, Asia, Africa, and North and South America. There are international airports in Prague (Ruzyné) and Bratislava.
Foreign trade. In per capita foreign trade turnover Czechoslovakia is surpassed only by the German Democratic Republic among the socialist countries. It exports about one-fifth of its industrial output, including about one-third of its machinery output, two-fifths of its output of glass and ceramic ware, one-third of the leather goods and footwear produced, and about one-fourth of its textile output. Table 7 shows the commodity structure of exports and imports.
The foreign trade turnover increased by a factor of 10.5 between 1948 and 1976. More than 80 percent of the imported raw materials and fuel come from the socialist countries, mainly the USSR. The share of the socialist countries in Czechoslovakia’s foreign trade turnover rose from 54 percent in 1950 to 72 percent in 1976. The COMECON countries accounted for 67.8 percent and the USSR alone for about one-third of the foreign trade turnover in 1976. The CSSR also maintains extensive trade relations with the advanced capitalist countries and with the developing countries.
The monetary unit is the koruna. By the exchange rate of the State Bank of the USSR, 100 korunas equaled 12 rubles 50 kopeks in January 1978.
Economic regions. When territorial planning was instituted in the mid-1950’s, the country was scientifically divided into economic regions. The administrative reorganization of the early 1960’s, by which the country was divided into ten administrative regions, was coordinated with economic regionalization. Under the present system of economic regionalization, the CSSR forms a single national economic complex that includes two republic economic complexes, those of the Czech and Slovak socialist republics, which are divided into ten administrative regions and two cities with the status of economic regions (see Table 8).
Standard of living. The comprehensive and rapid development of the national economy in the years of people’s rule has ensured a rise in the living standard through increased personal income and social consumption and through a broader satisfaction of cultural needs. The national income doubled between 1960 and 1975, when 70.7 percent of the national income was allocated for the consumption fund. As the general consumption fund increased, so did the share of personal consumption. From 1961 to 1976 wages and other earned income increased by a factor of 2.1, and the earned income of the urban and rural population—of working people in industry and agriculture—was equalized. The average monthly wage of workers and office employees in the state and cooperative sectors of the national economy was 2,304 korunas in 1975, compared to 1,365 korunas in 1960 and 1,937 korunas in 1970. Broken down by branch of the economy, the average monthly wage in industry was 2,340 korunas in 1975 (up from 1,442 in 1960 and 1,967 in 1970); in construction, 2,589 korunas (1,521 and, 2,195); in agriculture, 2,238 korunas (1,113 and 1,806); in transportation and communications, 2,632 korunas (1,461 and 2,239); and in science and scientific services, 2,604 korunas (1,545 and 2,246).
Payments to working people from the social consumption fund—that is, society’s expenditures on the social needs of citizens and on free services—increased by a factor of 2.9 from 1961 to 1976. In this period the share of such payments in the income of the population rose from 35 percent to 47.5 percent. State appropriations for public health, education, culture, old-age and health insurance, and family allowances are outstripping the growth in earned income. A program of assistance to large families and maternity support was instituted in the early 1970’s. A system of free medical care has been established. Large-scale
Table 7. Commodity structure of exports and imports (in percent)
6
7
The amount of sickness allowance depends on the length of employment and varies from 60 to 90 percent of the average wage. Women are granted paid leaves of 26 weeks during pregnancy and after childbirth; the leave is extended to 35 weeks for single mothers or in case of the birth of twins. Allowances for the birth of a child and family allowances for children are also paid out of social security funds.
Pension legislation divides all jobs and all workers into three categories, depending on the hazards and difficulty of the work. The social security system provides old-age and disability pensions, pensions for the loss of a breadwinner, meritorious service pensions, and special pensions. The retirement age is 60 years for men (55 years for workers in the first category and 58 for those in the second category), and from 53 to 57 years for women, depending on the number of children the woman has brought up. The size of the pension depends on earnings and term of service. Pensions for disability resulting from general illness are allocated to those who have worked a certain period of time.
A five-day 42.5-hour workweek is standard; for people engaged in hazardous work and for those under 16 years of age the workweek is reduced to 36 hours. Under the law, all workers receive an annual paid vacation. Persons engaged in subsurface, difficult, or hazardous work are granted an additional leave.
REFERENCES
. D. P
OGORELOV
Veterinary services. A number of animal diseases have been eradicated in the postwar period: sheep pox in 1950, glanders in 1954, dourine in 1953, equine infectious anemia in 1965, contagious agalactia in 1946, brucellosis in 1965, and bovine tuberculosis in 1968. In 1976 there were four outbreaks of Newcastle disease, 433 outbreaks of rabies, two outbreaks of hog cholera, and three outbreaks of anthrax. Other diseases recorded that year included swine erysipelas, fowl cholera, myxomatosis, swine influenza, Marek’s disease, fowl tuberculosis, infectious porcine encephalomyelitis, blackleg, bovine rhinotracheitis, coccidiosis, infectious atrophic rhinitis of swine, fowlpox, fowl leukemia, pullorosis, fascioliasis, echinococcosis, cysticercosis, and mastitis.
Since 1969 veterinary services have been directed by the veterinary administrations under the ministries of agriculture and food of the constituent republics. Based in Prague and Bratislava, the veterinary administrations are responsible for organizing the veterinary care of livestock. The office of chief veterinarian under the Federal Agriculture and Food Committee, which is advised by a federal veterinary council, coordinates antiepizootic measures, protects the country from the importation of infectious animal diseases, supervises the movement of animals within the country, and maintains contacts with foreign veterinary services and with international veterinary organizations. There were 2,500 veterinarians in Czechoslovakia in 1976. Antiepizootic services are provided without charge, and standard fees for veterinary treatment are set by the government.
Veterinarians are trained by the veterinary faculties of the agricultural universities in Brno and Koäice, which also enroll students from Africa, Asia, and Latin America. In addition, there are three institutes for the advanced training of veterinarians. Veterinary research is conducted at the Central State Veterinary Institute, based in Prague and Bratislava, the Scientific Research Institute in Brno (Medlanki), the Central State Diagnostic Institute in Prague, the State Institute for the Control of Biological and Veterinary Preparations in Brno, the State Veterinary Institute of Wild Animals in Jihlava, the Virology Institute of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences in Bratislava, and regional research laboratories. Veterinary biologicals are produced at the Biovet enterprises in Terezin, Ivanovice na Hane, and Nitra.
S. I. K
ARTUSHIN
Written sources attest to the existence of monastery schools in Bohemia and Moravia in the tenth century and in Slovakia in the early 12th century. The first urban schools were established in the 12th and 13th centuries. Charles University, founded in Prague in 1348, greatly influenced the development of Czech national culture and education. In the 15th and 16th centuries Latin was the language of instruction; only the brotherhood schools, founded in the 16th century by the Bohemian Brethren, gave precedence to the native tongue. The writings of J. A. Komenský (Comenius) were associated with the educational work of the Brethren in the 17th century.
Under Hapsburg rule, when the school system in the Czech lands was organized and developed as an integral part of the Austrian system, German was forcibly imposed on the populace. Compulsory education for children from six to 12 years of age was introduced under the school reform of 1774, which established several types of schools: “trivial” schools, offering one or two years of primary instruction; three-year “main” schools, which prepared the pupils for further studies; and two-to four-year “normal” schools, whose curriculum augmented the program of the main school. In the late 18th and first half of the 19th centuries the school network expanded considerably throughout Austria-Hungary. The development of industry obliged the ruling classes to broaden the scope of education. A law enacted in 1869 provided for compulsory eight-year schooling for children six to 14 years of age. The church gradually lost its hold over education.
The establishment of the bourgeois Czechoslovak republic in 1918 brought few changes to the school system, which retained its class character. In the 1930–31 school year only 11 percent of the secondary-school students were of working-class background, although workers constituted at that time almost 60 percent of the population. During the fascist German occupation the number of secondary schools declined sharply, and all higher educational institutions were closed on Nov. 17, 1939. Progressive instructors and students were subjected to repression. After the liberation of Czechoslovakia in 1945 and the beginning of socialist construction, a unified state school system was set up, and the goals and tasks of instruction changed fundamentally. A law enacted in 1948 nationalized all educational institutions and separated the school from the church.
The present education system provides for nurseries for children up to the age of three and kindergartens for children three to five years of age. In the 1976–77 school year the country’s 9,554 kindergartens were attended by 522,000 children. Instruction is compulsory for children between six and 16 years of age. The eight-year basic school, enrolling children from six to 14 years of age, consists of a primary level (grades 1 to 4) and an incomplete secondary level (grades 5 to 8). In the 1976–77 school year there were 8,550 basic schools with an enrollment of more than 1,882,000. Upon completing the basic school, the student may enroll in (1) a four-year complete secondary school, called a Gymnasium, (2) a two-to four-year vocational school training skilled workers for various branches of the national economy, or (3) a secondary vocational school offering three or four years of instruction. In the 1976–77 school year there were 339 Gymnasiums with 137,100 students, and about 400,000 students attended secondary vocational schools of all types.
The system of higher education includes universities, institutes, and higher schools with a course of instruction lasting four to six years. In the 1976–77 academic year there were 36 higher educational institutions with 168,300 students. The largest of these institutions are the universities of Prague (founded 1348), Bratislava (1919), Brno (1919), Olomouc (1576), and Koäice (1959); the technical universities in Prague (1707), Bratislava (1938), and Brno (1899); the higher schools of chemical technology in Prague (1952) and Pardubice (1950); the schools of economics in Prague (1953) and Bratislava (1940); the agricultural colleges in Prague (1906), Brno (1919), and Nitra (1946); the Academy of Arts and the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague; the Polytechnical Institute and the L. Janáéek Academy of Music and Dramatic Art in Brno; and the Higher School of Fine Arts in Bratislava.
Many of the country’s largest libraries are in Prague: the State Library of the Czech Socialist Republic (founded 1958; 4.6 million volumes in 1976), the Main Library of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences (1952; more than 700,000 volumes), the National Museum Library (1818; 2.4 million volumes), the Public Library (1891; 2,048,000 volumes), the State Technical Library (1707; 724,000 volumes), and the State Pedagogical Library (1919; 363,000 volumes). Outside the capital, major libraries include the University Library in Bratislava (1919; 1,563,700 volumes), the Matice Slovenská in Martin (1863; 1,850,000 volumes), the University Library in Brno (1815; 1,689,000 volumes), the State Technical Library (1899; 1.1 million volumes) in Brno, and the State Scientific Library in Košice (1657; 846,500 volumes).
The most important Prague museums are the National Museum, the National Gallery, the Museum of the Capital City of Prague, the V. I. Lenin Museum, the Klement Gottwald Museum, the State Jewish Museum, the ethnographic, agricultural, and anthropological museums, the J. A. Komenský Pedagogical Museum, and the B. Smetana and A. Dvořák museums. Among other fine museums are the Slovak National Museum, the Slovak National Gallery, and the Municipal Museum in Bratislava, and the Moravian Museum, the Moravian Gallery, and the Municipal Museum in Brno. There are also several regional museums of local lore.
G. A. K
Natural and technical sciences,
TO THE LATE 18TH CENTURY
. In the Middle Ages urban handicrafts, chiefly cloth-making and metalworking, construction, metallurgy, and mining flourished in the area now known as Czechoslovakia. In the 13th and 14th centuries important mineral deposits were discovered, notably silver ore at Kutná Hora and Banská Štiavnica and copper ore at Banská Bystrica. From the 14th century the focal point of scientific development in the Czech lands was Charles University, whose instructors included the mathematician and medical man Křišt’an of Prachatice, and the astronomer and botanist Jan Šindel. The German astronomer and mathematician Regiomontanus worked for a time at the first Slovak university, which was founded in Bratislava in 1467 and existed until 1591. The first Czech printing press was founded in Plzeň around 1468, and another printing press was established in Prague in 1480. One of the first books to be printed in the Czech lands was the medical work Vetularius by Albík of Uničov. The Byelorussian printer F. Skorina worked in Prague from 1517 to 1519.
Several major works devoted to practical achievements appeared in the 16th and 17th centuries. G. Agrícola, who lived in Jachymov, wrote On Mining and Metallurgy, which for two centuries served as a textbook and reference work. The works of Matthesius and L. Ercker contained information on geology, mineralogy, and assay analysis. V. Křička, the builder of the “singing fountain” on Hradčany Hill in Prague, wrote a Czechlanguage handbook on foundry work (first published in 1947). The eminent physician J. Kamenický wrote on liver diseases, and Jordan of Klausenburk studied therapeutic mineral springs, including those at Karlovy Vary.
Renaissance ideas influenced the work of Tadeáš Hájek, a physician, botanist, and astronomer who expounded the heliocentric system; A. Zalužanský, the author of the first Czech work on botany (1592); and J. Jessenius, a naturalist and the physician of Rudolph II. A scientific center of European renown, attracting such famous scientists as Tycho Brahe and J. Kepler, emerged at Rudolph’s court in Prague in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. The Czech Cosmography, published in 1554, contained geographical information about many countries. A university was founded in Olomouc in 1576.
The loss of political independence and the stifling of the national culture had a detrimental effect on the further development of science in the Czech lands. Charles University was reorganized and merged with a Jesuit college in 1654. The reopened educational institutions at Trnava (1635) and Košice (1657) regarded as their primary goal the restoration of Catholicism. The best known of the few scientists who worked alone were Marci von Kronland, whose studies in optics included an explanation of the rainbow, and J. Dobřenský, who initiated the clinical teaching of medicine in Bohemia. In the 1620’s and 1630’s blasting with gunpowder came into use in mining.
An engineering school was established by the estates in Prague in 1707, and in 1751 an astronomical and meteorological observatory was built in the city through the efforts of J. Stepling. The world’s first higher mining school was founded in Banská Štiavnica, Slovakia, in 1763–64 and reorganized as a mining academy in 1770. Its faculty included J. K. Hell, who had invented a hydraulic engine in the 1730’s and 1740’s. Other prominent 18th-century men of science were the physician and naturalist J. K. Boháč, who investigated the possibility of using electricity in therapy, the inventor P. Divisch, who built the first grounded lightning rod in Europe (1754), and J. Tesánek, the author of several works on number theory.
LATE
TH AND FIRST HALF OF THE
19
TH CENTURIES
. The last decades of the 18th century and the first half of the 19th century, the period known as the National Renaissance, saw the founding of several new learned and higher educational institutions. The Bohemian Society of Sciences was founded in Prague in 1784; it was renamed the Royal Bohemian Society of Sciences in 1790. A royal-estate technical school was founded in Prague in 1806, later becoming a polytechnical institute, and a higher school of forestry was established in Zvolen in 1807. The Museum of the Kingdom of Bohemia (founded in 1818, now the National Museum) and the Matice Česká played an important role in strengthening Bohemia’s scientific forces and in organizing research. The Slovak Learned Society was founded in Trnava in 1793.
The late 18th and the first half of the 19th centuries were marked by a number of outstanding scientific achievements. F. A. Reuss embarked on one of the first mineralogical and balneological studies of the mountain regions of Bohemia. His work was continued by his son A. E. Reuss. J. Krejčí, who studied the Ore Mountains, is regarded as the founder of Czech geology. K. Šternberk made a major contribution to the classification of fossil plants, and F. M. Opiz laid the foundation for the study of the flora of Bohemia. A prominent place in the development of modern Czech science belongs to J. S. Presl, who with his brother K. B. Presl published the Flora of Bohemia (1819), the first such work, and a fundamental work on mineralogy (1837). Systematically developing Czech scientific terminology, Presl was one of the founders of Czech scientific writing. In 1821, Presl and J. Jungmann undertook the publication of the first Czech encyclopedia. G. Reuss produced the first botanical description of Šlovakia, and L. Smarda published the three-volume compendium Geographic Distribution of Animals (1853).
Several Czech physiologists and physicians came to prominence in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. G. Procháska was one of the founders of the reflex theory, which subsequently became the basis of neurophysiology. The internationally acclaimed work of J. E. Purkinje (Purkyně) had a great impact on the development of cytology, anatomy, and embryology and led to the formulation of the cell theory. B. Bolzano introduced several important concepts of mathematical analysis.
There were also advances in technology and in the technical sciences. In the late 18th century I. Born proposed a method of recovering gold and silver by amalgamation. F. J. Gerstner, who offered original solutions to several practical problems of mechanics, improved mine hoisting machines. J. Ressel designed and successfully tested (1826) a screw propeller for ships. In the 1820’s a horse-drawn railroad was built from České Budějovice to Linz. The first railroad, connecting Prague with Olomouc, went into opertion in 1845.
FROM THE MID
-19
TH CENTURY TO
1918. In the years between the Revolution of 1848 and the emergence of the Czechoslovak state the political climate was not conducive to scientific endeavor. Among the scientists who emigrated abroad were the biologists and physicians K. von Rokitansky, J. Škoda, F. von Hebra, and F. Chvostek and the mechanical engineer A. Stodola. The disparity between scientific development in the Czech lands and in Slovakia became increasingly apparent. Few educational or learned institutions were established in Slovakia: an agricultural school was opened in Liptovský Hrádok in 1871, an industrial school was organized in Krukotin in 1875, and a society of physicians and naturalists was founded in Bratislava in 1856. The Matice Slovenská, founded in 1863, was closed in 1875. Despite the difficulties, D. Štúr continued his research in zoology and paleontology, and A. Kmet’ and J. Holuby pursued their work in botany.
In the Czech lands learned societies were formed in several branches of science: medicine (1862), mathematics (1862), chemistry (1871), geology (1884), and geography (1894). A committee for the study of the natural resources of the Czech lands was established at the National Museum in 1864. When the Prague Polytechnical Institute was divided into a Czech and a German institute in 1863, the Czech institute became the first higher educational institution to use Czech as the language of instruction. In 1882 the University of Prague was likewise divided into two universities. The newly formed Czech educational institutions engendered several schools of 20th-century Czechoslovak scientific thought. By the turn of the 20th century Czech-language scientific works existed in virtually all fields. The Czech Academy of Sciences and Arts was founded in 1890.
Important work in geology was done by J. Barrande (corresponding member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences from 1877), who settled in Bohemia in 1831. Barrande’s 24-volume monograph is considered a classic of 19th-century paleontology. F. B. Pošepný did pioneering work on the theory of ore deposits. C. Purkyně and J. V. Daneš laid the foundation for Czech geomorphology, and K. Kořistka compiled geographical maps of most of Bohemia. Prominent biologists included the botanist L. Čelakovský, an exponent of Darwinism, and the zoologists A. Frič and F. Vejdovský, who wrote on animal anatomy. G. Mendel, the founder of genetics, conducted his experiments in a monastery in Brno, publishing in 1866 in the proceedings of the local natural science society the Experiments in Plant Hybridization, a classic work that won world recognition in the 20th century. Advances in chemistry included B. Brauner’s studies on rare-earth elements, V. Šafařík’s research in inorganic chemistry, and J. Stoklasa’s work on the biochemistry of plants and agricultural chemistry. Important work in medicine was done by the microbiologist J. Hlava, the surgeon K. Maydl, and the gynecologist and urologist K. Pavlik. J. Jansky won international acclaim for his description of blood groups in 1907.
The leading mathematicians of this period were Eduard Weyr, who wrote on the projective theory of curves, his brother Emil Weyr, and F. J. Studnička, who worked on the theory of determinants. M. Lerch was noted for his works on number theory and the theory of special functions.
The metallurgy industry benefited from F. Wald’s work in physical chemistry. Various problems of extracting minerals were solved by the engineers E. Hořovský and J. Hrabák, the latter recognized as the founder of Czechoslovak mining mechanics. F. Křižík built the first electric power plant in Bohemia in 1888 and an electrified railroad in 1903. A Czech school of construction engineering emerged under J. Šolin, and the well-known Czech school of sugar refining was established by K. Preis and K. Andrlík. Other technical achievements included J. Husnik’s development of phototype in 1868 and F. Hruska’s invention of a honey extractor in 1865.
FROM
1918
TO
1945. After independence, the Czechoslovak government established research institutes in Prague in geology (1919, under C. Purkyně), hydrology (1919), and meteorology (1920). Several research institutes and laboratories were set up at Charles University. The university that was founded in Brno in 1919 acquired a natural science faculty the following year. The Czechoslovak Scientific Research Council, founded in 1919, was essentially a representative body. In Slovakia, the J. A. Komenský University was founded in 1919 in Bratislava (a natural science faculty was added in 1938), and the Matice Slovenská was revived. The P. J. Šafařík Learned Society was founded in 1926 to promote scientific work. State appropriations for research, generally small, were reduced to a bare minimum during the economic crisis of 1929–33.
The interwar period saw major achievements in chemistry. J. Heyrovský (elected to the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in 1966) developed the polarographic method in 1922. E. Votoček’s investigations in analytical chemistry and the chemistry of sugar and J. Dubský’s work on complex compounds were widely acclaimed. The mathematician E. Čech did pioneering work in projective differential geometry. F. J. Studnička, the mathematician, was a tireless popularizer of science. F. Záviška’s works dealt with problems of crystallography and hydrodynamics, and V. Dolejšek did research on X rays.
The contributions of Czechoslovak biologists were also significant. B. Němec was one of the founders of experimental cytology. In the tradition of the national school of physiology, E. Babák studied the adaptation of organisms under extreme conditions. V. Ružička won recognition for his work in genetics. The surgeon J. Diviš and the cardiologist V. Libenský did outstanding work in medicine. V. Dedina directed the publication of a multivolume regional geography of Czechoslovakia (1929–31). F. Ulrich and R. Nováček conducted research in mineralogy and geochemistry.
The occupation of the country by fascist troops severely undermined Czechoslovak science. Scientific institutions and universities were closed. The clerical-fascist regime in Slovakia established, for demagogic purposes, the Slovak Academy of Sciences and Arts in 1943. Záviška, Dolejšek, Ulrich, Nováček, and many other scientists perished during the occupation.
SINCE
1945. After the liberation of Czechoslovakia by the Soviet Army, and especially after the victory of the working people in 1948, science was confronted with fundamentally new tasks related to the development of the material and technical basis for socialism and the socialist transformation of society. The higher educational institutions that had been closed were reopened, and new ones were founded; a network of research institutions was established to serve various branches of the national economy. The founding of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences in 1952 was followed by the creation of the Slovak Academy of Sciences the next year. The network of scientific institutions steadily expanded, and the coordination of scientific work became more precise. Research, planning, and design organizations were founded not only in Prague and Bratislava but also in many other cities, including the industrial centers of Brno, Ostrava, Gottwaldov, and Košice. The higher educational institutions increased their commitment to research.
Outstanding achievements in mathematics have included E. Čech’s and V. Jarník’s work on the theory of functions and V. Kořínek’s research on group theory. Czechoslovak mathematicians have turned to branches that hitherto received little attention: differential equations, functional analysis, probability theory and mathematical statistics, mathematical logic, and some fields of cybernetics. They are also working on problems of applied mathematics.
A conference of Czechoslovak physicists held in 1951 defined for the first time the basic directions of physics research in the country. The study of X rays continues. Significant work is being done on the physics of semiconductors and ferrites, the magnetic properties of metals, crystallography, low-temperature physics, and superconductivity. Research on the physics of elementary particles and the atomic nucleus has begun with the help of Soviet specialists. In 1957 the first Czechoslovak nuclear reactor was put into operation at Řež. Research on plasma physics, using a Tokamak unit, has been initiated in cooperation with the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Several kinds of electronic microscopes and other unique instruments have been developed, including instruments for the study of the structure and energy states of surfaces. Astronomical research, much of it conducted at the Ondfejov Astronomical Institute, has focused on interplanetary matter (V. Guth) and on the physics of the sun, stars, and stellar systems.
In chemistry, J. Heyrovský received the Nobel Prize in 1959 for his work on the theory and technology of polarography. Two of Heyrovský’s students have also won recognition: R. Brdička for his work on chemical kinetics and D. Ilkovič for his work on thermodynamics. R. Lukeš and his associates have made a major contribution to the chemistry of natural and heterocyclic compounds. Geologists are studying minerals and ores (F. Slavík). Problems of tectonics (V. Zoubek, elected to the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in 1976) and engineering geology are being resolved in conjunction with large building projects. A geological map of the CSSR (1:200,000 scale) has been published, and geo-morphological maps have been compiled. A national atlas has been published. F. Vitásek has written one of the most comprehensive textbooks of physical geography (4th ed., 1956–65). Research is under way on landscape science (J. Demek) and on the protection of the environment.
Czechoslovak biologists have done significant work in plant physiology, geobotany, paleobotany, microbiology (D. Blaškovič, elected to the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in 1966), virology, molecular biology (F. Herčík), and biophysics (J. Šterzl). In the medical sciences promising research is being done in histology (F. Studnička), medical biochemistry, endocrinology, human physiology and pathophysiology (V. Laufberger), and medical microbiology. Progress in neurology has been achieved by J. Hrbek (elected to the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR in 1969), and several branches of surgery have been advanced by K. Šiška (elected to the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in 1971 and to the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR in 1969) and by F. Burian. Expanding research in pharmacology has led to the discovery of a number of cytostatic and psychopharmacological drugs. Other medical research fields include oncology (V. Thurzo) and pediatrics (J. Houštěk). In the agricultural sciences research has focused on the physiology and genetics of farm animals, general and special zootechny, agronomy, soil science, forestry, land reclamation, and the mechanization of agricultural production.
The technical sciences are flourishing, particularly fields that apply to machine building: applied mechanics (J. Kožešník, elected to the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in 1971), the theory of elasticity and plasticity and the theory of welding (J. Čabelka), and the theory of hydraulic machines (J. Hýbl). O. Maštovský’s research and designs have improved the parameters of power-engineering machinery. P. Ryš is doing important work in materials technology and S. Bechyně in construction mechanics. Problems of water management are being studied by T. Eždik. As a result of special engineering studies of rocks and the methods of breaking them, new mineral deposits are being worked and the output of minerals has increased. There has been notable progress in power engineering (J. Řeznicek), electronics and radio engineering (J. Stránský), the technology of strong currents (B. Heller), and the technology of semiconductor materials (Z. Trousil). A computer industry is being established. The products of several industries are noted for their high technical level, namely motor vehicles, including the heavy Tatra trucks, the electric locomotives of the ČKD Plant, river boats, means of communication, and equipment for the leather footwear and textile industries.
Czechoslovak scientists and engineers are working with specialists from the USSR and other socialist countries at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research and on projects of the Interkosmos Program. V. Remek, the first Czechoslovak astronaut, took part in the flight of the Soviet orbital research complex Salyut 6-Soyuz in March 1978. During the flight the international crew conducted several joint studies and experiments prepared by specialists in the USSR and the CSSR. The scientific and technical cooperation within COMECON encompasses several branches of machine building, metallurgy, power engineering, medicine, and public health. Czechoslovak scientists have taken part in many international programs, among them the international Years of the Quiet Sun, the International Hydrological Decade, the International Biological Program, and the International Project on the Upper Mantle of the Earth. Cooperation with many international scientific organizations is expanding.
Social sciences,
PHILOSOPHY
. Medieval Czech philosophy was dominated by Thomist scholasticism, whose influence began to wane in the early 15th century with the rise of the antifeudal revolutionary Hussite movement. The forerunners of Hussitism were Matthew of Janov, Vojtěch Raňkův, and Thomas of Stítný. Jan Hus, the ideologist of the Czech Reformation, preached a humane interpretation of “god’s law” as the norm of social relations and social justice. The revolutionary wing of the Hussite movement, the Taborites, who repudiated feudalism, held the authority of reason to be the highest principle. The Taborites’ views contained elements of pantheism. P. Chelčický, one of the ideologists of the Taborites, rejected the feudal division of society into estates and proposed a Utopian program of social reform, to be achieved by passive resistance.
The next phase in Czech philosophy was marked by a blending of Reformation ideas with humanism, which was beginning to speculate about the development of the natural world and society. The humanist tradition in Czech philosophy culminated in the work of J. A. Komenský (Comenius), who held that education and upbringing must be based on enlightened reason and be imbued with the spirit of universal harmony.
In Slovakia, 15th-century philosophy developed under the influence of Renaissance and Reformation doctrines. Founded in the latter half of the 17th century by J. Bayer and I. Caban, the Prešov school was influenced by F. Bacon’s ideas and P. Gas-sendi’s atomism. From the mid-18th century Slovak philosophical thought flourished at the University of Trnava and in learned societies. Such Slovak thinkers as J. Laurentzy, J. Feješ, and M. Steigel attacked religious prejudice, affirmed the independence of thought, and propagated deism, empiricism, and Kantianism.
With the development of capitalist relations in the late 18th and first half of the 19th centuries, Czech Enlightenment learning, based on the rational-critical method, found ardent champions in J. Dobrovský and G. Prochaska. The ideologists of the Czech and Slovak National Renaissance—J. Jungmann, F. Palacký, and J. Kollár—espoused the dialectical concepts of J. G. Herder, F. Schelling, and G. Hegel. The Czech mathematician and philosopher B. Bolzano proposed a methodological analysis of the logical foundations of science. Under the influence of Hegelianism the bourgeois-democratic thinkers L. Štúr, J. M. Hurban, F. Klácel, and A. Smetana developed a philosophy of nationalism, history, and art and expounded ideas of freedom and social utopia. The radical democrats E. Arnold, K. Sabina, and J. V. Frič called for progressive social and political changes.
In the latter half of the 19th century the ideas of the German philosopher J. F. Herbart attracted many adherents to the Czech lands and Slovakia. Another major trend, positivism, had a considerable influence on T. G. Masaryk, an ideologist of bourgeois reformism and an opponent of Marxism.
Marxist ideas, filtering into the Czech labor movement in the 1870’s and spreading to Slovakia in the 1880’s, were disseminated by the “pioneers” of socialism J. B. Pecka and L. Zápotocký. The activity of B. Šmeral was of great importance for the growth of the labor movement and the spread of Marxist-Leninist ideology. In the period of the bourgeois republic Czech and Slovak Marxists, led by K. Gottwald, worked on problems of Marxist-Leninist philosophy. The foundation for a Marxist tradition in philosophy and sociology was laid by Z. Nejedlý and L. Štoll in the Czech lands and by L. Szántó and A. Sirácky in Slovakia.
Contemporary Marxist-Leninist philosophers and sociologists, notably I. Hrušovský, R. Richta, V. Ruml, L. Svoboda, V. Filkorn, and V. Cirbes, are studying the development of a socialist society, the scientific and technological revolution, and philosophical and logical problems of modern science. They are combating bourgeois ideology and revisionism, openly manifested in 1968–69 in the attacks of some philosophers and sociologists on the basic principles of the Marxist-Leninist world view.
Czechoslovak philosophers and sociologists are working closely with scholars in the USSR and other socialist countries, participating in joint conferences, research, and publications. Philosophical and sociological research is conducted by the philosophy departments of the Czechoslovak and Slovak academies of sciences, at the Higher School of Political Studies attached to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, at institutes of Marxism-Leninism, and by the philosophy faculties of the universities in Prague, Bratislava, and Brno. The leading philosophical and sociological journals are Filosofický časopis (since 1953), Sociologický časopis (since 1965), Nova mysl (since 1947), Slovenský filozofický časopis (founded 1946; since 1966, Filozofia), and Sociológice (since 1969), the last two journals being published in Slovakia.
HISTORY
. In the Czech and Slovak lands early feudal historical literature originated in the late ninth and early tenth centuries, when hagiographies, in Old Church Slavonic and Latin, were written about the Slavic educators Cyril and Methodius, the Přemyslid rulers Ludmila and Václav (Wenceslas), and the Prague bishops Vojtěch (Adalbert) and Procopius. The finest example of Czech annal writing of the early Middle Ages is the Czech Chronicle, written in Latin in the early 12th century by Cosmas of Prague, dean of the St. Vitus Cathedral. The Bratislava Annals of the late 12th century are also written in Latin. The first historical work to be written in Czech was the rhymed Dalimil Chronicle of the early 14th century. The Chronicle of Abbot Petr Žitavský, written in Latin and covering events down to 1338, dates from the same period.
The highly polemical historical writing of the Hussite period (first half of the 15th century) incorporated such new professional techniques and forms as document citations, diary entries, and dialogues and reflected the more diverse social background of the authors. The chronicles of Vavřinec z Březově, Petr z Mladoňovic, and Mikuláš z Pelhřimova, as well as other historical works, mirrored the bitter social, political, and ideological conflict of that time. After the defeat of the Hussite movement, Reformation and humanist ideas were expounded by such 16th-century writers as Sixt z Ottersdorfa and Jan Blahoslav, whose principal adversary was Václav Hájek z Libočan, the spokesman of the Czech Catholic nobility. The most important 16th-century Slovak historian was M. Rakovský, who wrote mainly in verse. After the onset of Catholic reaction in the 1620’s, the traditions of progressive historiography were carried on by P. Stránský, P. Skála, and B. Balbín. The 18th century writers M. Bel and F. A. Kollár paved the way for the Slovak historiography of the National Renaissance.
The development of capitalist relations in the late 18th and first half of the 19th centuries promoted a rapid expansion of historical studies. The historians of the early period of the National Renaissance, notably G. Dobner, J. Dobrovský, and F. M. Pelel, initiated the scholarly critique of sources and produced the first historical works aimed at instilling national consciousness. J. Papánek and J. Fándly expressed Enlightenment views in their works on Slovak history. P. J. Šafařík’s Slavic Antiquities (1837) and Ethnography of the Slavs (1843) were the first scholarly investigations of the early history of the Slavic peoples. The greatest historian of the first half of the 19th century was F. Palacký. Representing the bourgeois national-liberal wing of the “romantic” trend in Czech historiography, Palacký and his numerous followers were especially interested in the Hussite movement, which they considered a heroic chapter of their national history. Their works, however, did not reveal the social preconditions of the Czech people’s struggle against national and religious oppression. Unlike them, K. Sabina, E. Arnold, and other radical democrats perceived the social roots of the Hussite movement and understood the revolutionary nature of the peasant war led by J. Žižka. The historical-philosophical and political writings of L. Štúr had a profound effect on 19th-century Slovak historiography.
The defeat of the Revolution of 1848–49 reinforced the conservative and pro-Hapsburg tendencies in Czech bourgeois historiography, whose leading exponent was V. Tomek. By the 1860’s, however, liberal positivism had become the dominant school in historiography. Led by A. Gindely, J. Koloušek, K. J. Erben, and J. Emler, the historians of this school wrote basic works on national history and collected and published a large number of official documents and legal records. In Slovakia, the foremost representative of romantic historiography, which held sway down to the end of the 19th century, was F. V. Sasinek.
The “pure positivist” school of Czech historiography, founded by J. Goll, expanded the subject matter of research to include international relations and social and economic history, broadened the chronological scope to encompass the pre- and post-Hussite periods, enriched the study of sources, and began applying the comparative historical method. The primary weakness of the positivist historians, notably V. Novotný, J. Šusta, G. Friedrich, Z. Winter, K. Krofta, B. Mendl, and V. Chaloupecký, was their tendency to concentrate on individual problems of history. The Goll school, which in the late 19th and early 20th centuries dominated first Czech and then Czechoslovak historiography, underwent considerable evolutionary changes. Some of Goll’s students increasingly confined themselves to simply describing historical events and ascertaining facts, reducing comparative history to the “theory of influences.” The tumultuous events of the first decades of the 20th century caused a deep ideological and political rift between Goll’s students and followers. While J. Pekař took an ultraconservative approach to the major periods of medieval and modern Czech history, Z. Nejedlý, another of Goll’s students, criticized the positivists for restricting the tasks of historical research, for refusing to make philosophical generalizations, and for attempting to make history a “pure science.”
Other major scholarly contributions at the turn of the century included the early works of the archaeologist and historian L. Niederle, the first works on the modern political history of the Czech lands (A. Srb), the first studies devoted to political, social, national, and cultural problems of Austro-Hungarian history (Z. Tobolka), and the first works on the history of the Czech labor movement (L. Zápotocký, C. Horáček, and B. Šmeral).
After the establishment of the bourgeois Czechoslovak republic, although Czech and Slovak medieval history continued to engross bourgeois scholars, they showed a much greater interest in modern and contemporary national history, particularly in the restoration of the national state. Important work in post-medieval history was done by Tobolka, K. Kazbunda, J. Opočenský, K. A. Medvecký, and J. Botto. There appeared numerous works on “legion” history, dealing with the Czechoslovak political organizations and military units in the Entente countries during World War I. The most influential scholars working on this subject—F. Šteidler, J. Papoušek, J. Kudela, and J. Werstadt—upheld the concept of “national liberation” expounded in the works of Masaryk and other political leaders of the governing bourgeois Hrada group. The social-reformist historians, notably F. Soukoup and I. Dérer, also did not transcend Masaryk’s concept, although they devoted much attention to the history of the labor movement. A right-wing, conservative alternative to the official concept of national liberation was propounded by K. Kramář and his followers F. Zuman and A. Kalina. The sole exponent of left-wing legion literature was J. Kratochvíl.
Nejedlý’s scholarly and publicistic work promoted the development of progressive views on national history and acquainted the Czechoslovak public with the scientific and cultural achievements of the Soviet Union. The Marxist trend in Czechoslovak historiography was represented mainly by the writings of Communist Party leaders, notably Šmeral, K. Kreibich, J. Šverma, and K. Konrad. In the second half of the 1930’s young historians sympathetic to Marxism, among them V. Husa, O. Řiha, and V. Čejchan, rallied around the journal History and Modern Times.
In the first years after the liberation of Czechoslovakia from the fascist occupation, although bourgeois historians remained influential in education and scholarship, they were already opposed by a group of Marxist historians who were advocating radical changes in the methodology, subject matter, and methods of historical research. Nejedtý formulated the basic principles of a Marxist view of Czechoslovak history.
The prerequisites for intensive Marxist research were created in Czechoslovakia after 1948, when historians began working on problems and periods of national history that had been either totally ignored or distorted in bourgeois historiography, and new sources were made available to scholars. Central problems relating to the ethnogenesis of the Slavs and to the history of the primitive communal system, in the Czech lands and Slovakia have been studied by Nejedlý, J. Bern, J. Filip, J. Eisner, J. Poulík, and B. Chropovský. The origins of feudalism and capitalism and the modern national liberation and labor movements have been investigated by Husa, Gosiorovský, Řiha, D. Rapant, F. Roubík, B. Varsik, Z. Fiala, J. Janáček, R. Urbánek, J. Purš, J. Křížek, J. Kočí, and P. Ratkoš. Many diverse problems pertaining to contemporary Czechoslovak and world history, to international relations, and to the history of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia have been studied by J. Veselý, Gosiorovský, L. Holotík, Z. Snitil, V. Plevza, J. Hrozienčík, V. Král, I. Krempa, M. Kropilák, and Č. Amort. Monographic research has permitted the publication of such collaborative syntheses as the Atlas of Czechoslovak History, the Survey of Czechoslovak History, and the History of Slovakia, as well as surveys of the history of the Communist Party and the foreign policy of Czechoslovakia and surveys of the history of Czech-Russian and Czechoslovak-Soviet relations.
Some of the historical works and “historical journalism” produced in 1968–69 betrayed right-opportunist and antisocialist tendencies that essentially represented attempts at a bourgeois-nationalist revision of the Marxist-Leninist theory of the objective laws of historical development and at a reevaluation of the key periods in the history of Czechoslovakia and the workers’ and communist movement. The overcoming of these harmful tendencies in the early 1970’s was the crucial prerequisite for the further development of Czechoslovak historiography.
Czechoslovak historians are working with international scholarly organizations and with historians in the USSR and other socialist states. Such cooperation includes the formation of bilateral historical commissions, the joint publication of multivolume collections of documents, and collaboration on basic historical research.
The main centers of historical research, which also train scholars and teachers, are the universities in Prague, Bratislava, Brno, Olomouc, and Košice-Prešov, the Institute of Czechoslovak and World History of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences (CSAS) in Prague, the History Institute of the Slovak Academy of Sciences (SAS) in Bratislava, the Czechoslovak-Soviet Institute of the CSAS in Prague, the Institute of European Socialist Countries of the SAS in Bratislava, and the Silesian Institute of the CSAS in Opava. Other major centers of historical research are the Institute of Ethnography and Folklore of the CSAS in Prague, the Ethnography Institute of the SAS in Bratislava, the Archaeology Institute of the CSAS in Prague, the Archaeology Institute of the CSAS in Brno, the Archaeology Institute of the SAS in Nitra, the Oriental Institute of the CSAS in Prague, the Institute of Military History in Prague, the Institute of Marxism-Leninism under the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in Prague, and the Institute of Marxism-Leninism under the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Slovakia in Bratislava.
The main history periodicals are Sbornik historicky (since 1953), Slovanské historické studie (since 1955), Slovanské stúdie (since 1957), Slovensky národopis (since 1953), Numismatickysbornik (since 1953), Histórica (since 1959), Archaeologické rozhledy (since 1949), Archiv orientalni (since 1929), Byzantinoslavica (since 1929), Ceskoslovensky casopis historicky (since 1953), Cesky’ lid (since 1892), Památky archaeologické (since 1909), Slezksy sbornik (since 1936), Slovansky pfehled (since 1899), Historické studie (since 1955), Casopis Národnéhomuzea (since 1827), Casopis Matice moravské (since 1869), Historicky casopis (since 1953), Historie a vojenstvi (since 1952), and Studia historia slovaca (since 1963).
A. K
LEVANSKII
ECONOMICS
. In the Czech lands and Slovakia the study of economics developed later than in the West European countries. An urgent need for economic study arose only in the 19th century, when the disintegration of feudal relations and the development of capitalism, more rapid in the Czech lands than in Slovakia, were accompanied by a national revival. The foundations of Czech bourgeois economic theory were laid by F. L. Rieger, who in the mid-19th century wrote the first significant works on political economy in Czech, translated several works by French economists, and undertook to work out a Czech economics terminology. Bourgeois political economy developed rapidly in the Czech lands in the second half of the 19th century. Its main objectives were to justify theoretically the necessity of developing capitalism and eradicating feudal vestiges and to find ways of vanquishing both the German bourgeoisie, Czech capital’s main competitor on the domestic and foreign markets, and the growing labor movement. This social function was fulfilled by F. A. Brauner, J. Kaizl, A. Bráf, and J. Gruber. The German historical school and the Austrian school of vulgar political economy had a great influence on the development of bourgeois political economy in the Czech lands.
Marxist economic theory was somewhat slow to gain a following in the Czech lands and Slovakia. The first Marxist works in Czech and an incomplete Czech translation of Marx’ Das Kapital were published only shortly before World War I. It was not until 1937 that a popular exposition of Marxist political economy was published, A. Kamenicky’s Fundamentals of Marxist Economics. This circumstance facilitated the dissemination of reformist and opportunist ideas in the Czechoslovak labor movement. Revisionist interpretations of Marxism, such as that of F. Modráček, gained currency.
After 1918 bourgeois political economy was supported by the ruling circles, who required an economic theory that would defend the interests of the national bourgeoisie. Such a defense was provided by V. Mildschuh, A. Rašín, C. Čechrák, A. Basch, C. Horáček, and J. Loevenstein in the Czech lands and by I. Karvas and R. Briska in Slovakia. K. Englis, a prominent bourgeois political economist of the interwar period, proposed a teleological method of economic analysis based on the psychology of the economic “subject,” seeking thereby to prove the viability of the capitalist economic system. Most bourgeois Czechoslovak economists were indebted to this theory down to World War II. J. Macek, who was strongly influenced by Keynesianism, had a considerable impact on the formation of the reformist views of the right-wing Czechoslovak Social Democrats.
The events of 1948 opened up broad opportunities for basic and applied economic research. In the 1950’s Czechoslovak economists focused on the socialist nationalization of industry, the formation of agricultural cooperatives, the industrialization of backward areas, the achievement of a high growth rate of socialist reproduction, and the creation of a system of planning. Right-wing revisionist views proliferated in Czechoslovak economics in the 1960’s and were even put into practice by the end of the decade. The revisionists, whose leading exponent was O. Sik, tried to justify the need for “market socialism” in Czechoslovakia. In the early 1970’s this point of view was subjected to a comprehensive in-depth Marxist critique.
Czechoslovak economists are studying the political economy of capitalism, the political economy of socialism, the history of economic theories, and problems relating to national economic planning, the management of the socialist economy, and the efficiency of the national economy. Other research fields include the economics of agriculture, distribution, pricing policy, finance, the application of mathematical methods to economics, the international division of labor, the economics of foreign trade, and socialist economic integration. Significant work in these fields has been done by F. Oliva, V. Kvěš, L. Rendoš, J. Bouška, L. Ler, J. Nikl, J. Kabrhel, J. Rezníček, and J. Break. Cooperation in economic research is steadily expanding among the economists of the COMECON countries.
The main economics centers are the School of Economics in Prague, the School of Economics in Bratislava, the Institute of Economics of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Economics of the Slovak Academy of Sciences, the Scientific Research Institute for the Planning and Management of the National Economy, the Czechoslovak Scientific Research Institute of Labor, and the Scientific Research Institute of the Standard of Living.
The principal economics journals are Politická ekonomie (since 1953), Ekonomicky casopis (since 1953), Plánované hospodáfství (since 1948), Statistika (since 1962), Finance a úver (since 1951), Modemi h’zeni (since 1966), and Zahranični obchod (since 1946). The weekly Hospodářské noviny has been published since 1958.
J. B
ATVIEVSKAIA
JURISPRUDENCE
. Urban, ecclesiastical, and other types of law, as well as jurisprudence, were highly developed by the turn of the 14th century, especially in the Czech lands. This period saw the appearance of the first official and private codifications of customary law, the former exemplified by Vaclav IPs mining code and the Maiestas Carolina and the latter by the Rozmberk Book (13th–14th centuries), written in Czech, the law book of Ondřej of Duba (1400), also in Czech, and the law book of the scribe Jan of Brno (14th century), written in Latin. In the late 14th and early 15th centuries lively discussions of current political and legal problems were held within and outside the law faculty of the University of Prague, which had become a center for the training of experts in canon law. The best-known work on legal matters was written by Cornelius Viktorin z Všehrd at the turn of the 16th century. The law book written by Pavel Kristián of Koldfn in 1579 became the basis for standardizing urban law throughout the Czech lands in the next century. Slovakia, ruled by Hungarian feudal lords, also produced some important legal works, generally written in German, Latin, or Czech. Especially noteworthy are the first and second Bratislava law books (15th and 16th centuries), the Articuli communitatis of Košice (1604), and the law book of Žilina (15th century).
Despite the Hapsburgs’ policy of germanizing political life and forcibly imposing German law, the traditional Czech law and legal system hung on throughout the 17th and 18th centuries. Eighteenth-century works calling for a national revival championed Enlightenment ideas and natural law (J. V. Monse). Earlier, J. A. Komenský (Comenius) had expounded progressive ideas concerning the state and law.
In the late 18th and early 19th centuries Czech legal scholars, notably M. A. Voigt and J. Veith, devoted much attention to the history of the Czech state and law. The heightened interest in Czech legal history that was kindled by the Revolution of 1848 led to the publication of major works by K. Sladkovsky, A. Štrobach, and F. L. Rieger and to the creation of a Czech legal terminology. Nevertheless, an official jurisprudence developed only in the 1860’s in connection with the emergence of Czech bourgeois legal science. The foremost legal scholars of the latter half of the century were A. Randa, E. Ott (civil law), J. Pražák (public law), A. Zucker, F. Storch (criminalistics), B. Rieger, and J. Čelakovsky (history of the state and law). A Slovak legal terminology was formulated in the late 19th century by M. Mudroft, and a Slovak bourgeois legal science emerged in the early 20th century under the guidance of E. Stodola and A. Rath.
Positivism and normativism were the dominant schools in official jurisprudence in the early 20th century. Fascist theories gained a certain influence in the 1930’s.
The establishment of people’s rule in Czechoslovakia was followed by the creation of a Marxist-Leninist legal science, but not without a struggle against bourgeois, right-opportunist, and anti-socialist views of the state and law, which became especially influential in 1968–69. Czechoslovak jurists have done outstanding work on the theory of the state and law, the constitutional development of the country, socialist popular representative institutions, international law, socialist comparative law, the methodology of legal science, and the criticism of bourgeois ideology. Important works have been published on legal history by V. Vanéček and L. Hubenák, on constitutional law by K. Laco, S. Zdobinský, and S. Matoušek, on administrative law by V. Delong, Z. Lukeš, and Z. Červený, on civil law and procedure by S. Luby, K. Čapek, and Z. Češka, on labor law by J. Bičovský, M. Kalenská, J. Kovařik, and J. Filo, on criminal law by L. Subert, J. Pješčak, and V. Solnař, and on agricultural cooperative law by J. Suchánek, V. Fábry, and J. Vysokaj.
Legal research is conducted by the Institute of State and Law of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, the Law Institute of the Slovak Academy of Sciences, the Institute of State Administration under the Presidium of the Federal Government, and the Criminology Institute under the Procurator General’s Office of the CSSR. There are law faculties at the universities in Prague, Bratislava, Brno, and Košice.
The leading law journals are Právník (since 1861), Právny obzor (since 1917), Socialistické soudnictvi (since 1961), Sprdvnipravo (since 1968), Socialistická zákonnost (since 1953), Národný výbory (since 1952), Mezinárodní vztahy (since 1966), and Biulleten’ chekhoslovatskogo prava (since 1951). Also published are the yearbooks Právnéhistorické studie (since 1955) and Právnické studie (since 1953).
S. S. N
OVIKOVA
LINGUISTICS
. The first Czech grammars, written in Latin, appeared in the 16th century; the best known were those of B. Optát, P. Hzel, V. Filomat (1533), J. Blahoslav (1571), and M. Benešovský (1577). In the following two centuries Czech grammars were produced by B. Nudožerský, J. Drachovský (1600), V. J. Rosa (1672), P. Doležal (1746), and V. Pol (1756). The scientific study of Czech, as well as of other Slavic languages and non-Slavic languages, began in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, when J. Dobrovsky produced the first scholarly grammar of Czech, and J. Jungmann published a five-volume Czech-German dictionary. Slovak was studied by A. Bernolák and L. Štúr, who is credited with founding the Slovak literary language. In the late 19th century the neogrammarian J. Gebauer wrote the Historical Grammar of the Czech Language (1894–1929) and the Dictionary of Old Czech (unfinished). Gebauer’s ideas were further developed by V. Ertl and E. Smetánka. The linguist J. Zubatý studied the Indo-European languages, including the Baltic languages. After the establishment of the Czechoslovak republic in 1918, great strides were made in Slavic, Germanic, and Oriental philology. Using structural and functional research methods, the members of the Prague Linguistic Circle studied phonology, language culture, and the theory of literary languages and functional styles.
Highly favorable conditions for the development of linguistics have been created in the CSSR. Research in lexicology and lexicography has led to the publication of the Dictionary of the Czech Language (vols. 1–8, 1935–57), the Dictionary of Literary Czech (vols. 1–4, 1958–71), the Dictionary of the Slovak Language (vols. 1–6, 1959–68), the Great Russian-Czech Dictionary (1952–64), and the Great Russian-Slovak Dictionary (1960–70). Important work has been done on word formation (Word Formation in the Czech Language, vols. 1–2, 1962–67), morphology (The Morphology of the Slovak Language, 1966), and syntax. Transformational and generative grammar received much attention in the 1960’s. Russian philology is flourishing; a notable achievement is the Reference Grammar of the Rusian Language (vols. 1–2, 1960–61). Other research fields include the theory of literary languages and their functional ramifications (B. Havránek, A. Jedlicka, V. Barnet, J. Ružička, E. Pauliny), stylistics (K. Hausenblas, J. Mistrik), dialectology (B. Havránek), phonology (J. Vachek, E. Pauliny, A. Lamprecht),’ the history of language (M. Komárek, J. Stanislav, R. Krajčovič, K. Horálek, A. Novak), and general and comparative linguistics (K. Horálek). The English language has been studied on a high theoretical level by V. Mathesius, I. Poldauf, and J. Firbas. B. Hrozny made a vital contribution to Oriental philology.
The main linguistics centers are the Czech Language Institute (Prague), the L. Stúr Linguistics Institute (Bratislava), the special centers and institutes run by the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, and the philosophy and pedagogy faculties of universities. The principal linguistics journals are Slovo a slovesnost (since 1935), Naše řeč (since 1917), Jazykovedný časopis (since 1946), Ceskoslovenskd rusistika (since 1956), Philologica Pragensia (since 1946), Slavica Slovaca (since 1966), Archi’vorientální (since 1969), and Časopis pro moderni filologii (since 1911).
A. G. S
HIROKOVA
Scientific institutions. A coordinated state science program has been instituted in accordance with a 1949 law providing for the organization of research. Scientific, experimental, and design work is conducted by the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences and the Slovak Academy of Sciences, by scientific and scientific-technological organizations subordinate to ministries and other central bodies, by scientific-technological institutions run by economic production organizations, by research and experimental sectors of enterprises, and by research divisions of higher educational institutions.
The central agencies responsible for administering, planning, and coordinating research are the State Committee for Science and Technology (the coordinating agency of the federal government), the federal Ministry of Technological and Investment Development, and the republic ministries of construction and technology. General policy is set by state programs for the development of science and technology. Research is conducted in cooperation with the COMECON countries.
In 1976 the country’s research, design, and planning institutions employed 165,350 people, of whom 47,700 held advanced degrees. Some 24,000 people, including 10,400 with advanced degrees, were engaged in basic research (1974); 105,670 people, in industrial research (1976); 11,000 people, in agriculture and forestry research; 8,320 people, in public health research; 6,900 people, in construction research; and 2,520 people, in transportation and communications research. Expenditures on science amounted to more than 14.1 billion korunas in 1976.
REFERENCES
and
SLOVAKIA
: Literature.) The upswing in the country’s labor movement that took place under the impact of the Great October Socialist Revolution of 1917 in Russia inaugurated a new phase in Czech and Slovak literature marked by a flowering of revolutionary poetry, the exposé novel, the socialist realist novel, and antifascist literature.
Against the background of intensified class struggle, a revolutionary trend emerged in Czech and Slovak literature in the 1920’s and 1930’s, fostered by the Marxist writers and critics S. K. Neumann (1875–1947), J. Wolker (1900–24), J. Hora (1891–1945), Z. Nejedlý (1878–1962), B. Václavek (1897–1943), J. Fucik (1903–43), E. Urx (1903–42), V. Clementis (1902–52), and D. Okáli (born 1903). The press organs of the revolutionary trend were the magazines Červen (1918–21), Kmen (1917–22), and Proletkult (1922–24), all published by Neumann, and Var (1921–30), published by Nejedlý, as well as the culture section of the newspaper Rudé právo, founded in 1920. Proletarian literature was championed by Devětsil, an association of young Czech writers and artists founded in 1920, and Dav, an association of Slovak writers and critics formed in 1924.
Proletarian poetry reached a high level in the 1920’s in the collections Hour of Birth (1922) by Wolker, Red Songs (1923) by Neumann, A City in Tears (1921) by J. Sejfert (born 1901), and Sunday (1927) by L. Novomesky (1904–76); the narrative poem The Amazing Magician (1922) by V. Nezval (1900–58); and the lyric poems of Hora, K. Biebl (1898–1951), and J. Poničan (1902–78). Revolutionary prose was best represented by the novels The Good Soldier Švejk (1921–23) by J. Hašek (1883–1923), Anna the Proletarian (1928) by I. Olbracht (1882–1952), The Best of Worlds (1923) by M. Majerová (1882–1967), and The Baker Jan Marhoul (1924) by V. Vančura (1891–1942). Also important were the works of P. Jilemnický (1901–49).
Critical realism flourished in the social novels of the Czech writers A. M. Tilschová (1873–1957), B. Klička (1897–1943), and K. Nový (born 1890). In the highly original novels and plays of K. Čapek (1890–1938) a scathing critique of many aspects of bourgeois society was blended with social utopianism and satire on philistinism. The leading Slovak realists were P. Hviezdoslav (1849–1921), M. Kukučín (1860–1928), B. Timrava (1867–1951), and J. Jesenský (1874–1945). The poets J. Smrek (born 1898) and E. B. Lukáč (born 1900) and the prose writer M. Urban (born 1904) called for an aesthetic and thematic renewal of literature.
Avant-garde trends such as Czech “poetism,” expounded by K. Teige (1900–51), and idealist aesthetic theories became popular in the mid-1920’s. Despite the pronouncements of the avant-garde writers, however, their finest achievement remained faithful to the tradition of revolutionary humanism, as exemplified by the works of Nezval, Vančura, and Biebl. A tragic view of the world, associated with the memory of the victims of World War I, and a protest against the capitalist world pervaded the poetry of V. Závada (born 1905), published in the collection Requiem (1927), and the verse of F. Halas (1901–19), collected in the volume Sepia (1927).
From the early 1930’s the ideological and aesthetic polarization in literature was reinforced by the economic crisis, the mounting social conflict, and the fascist threat. The progressive intelligentsia formed a united front to combat clerical-nationalist and pro-fascist tendencies. The most promising of the young proletarian poets who joined the literary scene were J. Noha (1908–66), J. Taufer (born 1911), F. Nechvátal (born 1905), and F. Krái’ (1903–55). The socioanalytical genre was cultivated by J. Kratochvfl (1885–1945), G. Včelička (1901–66), Urban, J. Cíger Hronský (1896–1960), M. Rázus (1888–1937), and G. Vámoš (1901–56); sociorevolutionary proletarian works were produced by Jilemnický, Krái’, and Poničan; and realist satire flourished in the works of Čapek, Jesenský, and the playwright I. Stodola (1888–1977). A sense of the discrepancy between humanist ¡deals and reality engendered a neoromantic trend in Slovak prose, best exemplified in the lyrical prose of D. Chrobák (1907–51), M. Figuli (born 1909), L. Ondrejov (1901–62), and F.Svantner (1912–50).
In the late 1920’s and early 1930’s the avant-garde theory of the autonomy of art was criticized by leftist writers. In their polemics with a group of Czech surrealists founded by Nezval in 1934 and disbanded by him in 1938, the Marxist critics Václavek, Fučík, K. Konrad (1908–41), L. Štoll (born 1902), Neumann, Novomeský, and Poničan developed the aesthetics of socialist realism, drawing on the discussions of the First Congress of Soviet Writers. The Alliance, which included both Czech and Slovak revolutionary writers, was founded in 1935 upon Václavek’s initiative.
In the 1930’s fine collections of civic and antifascist lyric poetry were published by Neumann, Závada (The Road on Foot, 1937), Halas (Torso of Hope, 1938), Hora, Lukáč (Moloch, 1938), and Novomeský (A Saint Beyond the Outskirts, 1939). Outstanding socialist realist novels included The Untilled Field (1932) by Jilemnický, The Siren (1935) by Majerová, People at the Crossroads (1937) by M. Pujmanová (1893–1958), The Shoe Machine (1933) by T. Svatopluk (1900–72), Three Rivers (1936) by Vančura, and The Thorny Path (1934) by Krái’. Directed against fascism, Capek’s satirical philosophical novel War With the Newts (1936) and his plays The White Plague (1937) and Mother (1938) won international acclaim. On the initiative of Marxist critics and communist writers, a united cultural front was formed to combat fascism. At a writer’s congress held in 1936, Slovak writers spoke out in defense of the republic and democracy.
The Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia (1939–45) had a devastating impact on Czechoslovak literature. A number of writers, among them Vančura, Fučík, Konrad, Václavek, Kratochvfl, and Urx, perished in fascist prisons and camps. But cruel persecution did not throw the country’s progressive literary forces into disarray. The theme of antifascist resistance dominated the poetry of Halas, Neumann, Závada, and Nezval, Vančura’s literary chronicle Scenes From the History of the Czech People (vols. 1–3, 1939–40), and such underground Czech works as Fučík’s Notes From the Gallows, published in 1945. The banned poems of Jesensky, Novomesky, Smrek, and Krai’ circulated in Slovakia. The Slovak people’s resistance to the profascist regime was expressed through symbol and allegory in Poničan’s Strange Janko (1941), a heroic romantic poem about the Revolution of 1848, in Figuli’s lyrical novella The Lead Bird (1940), and in Chrobák’s lyrical novella The Dragon Returns (1943). A fervent antimilitarism marked many works by the Slovak surrealists R. Fabry (born 1915), V. Reisel (born 1919), P. Bunčák (born 1915), and J. Lenko (born 1914), as well as the poems of P. Horov (1914–1975). The wartime lyric poetry of Lukáč ahd V. Beniak (1894–1973) was imbued with a profound sense of tragedy.
After 1945 the struggle against fascism, the victory over the enemy, and gratitude to the Soviet liberators became the central theme in the poetry of F. Hrubin (1910–71), Nezval, V. Holan (born 1905), Halas, Jesensky, Král’, A. Plávka (born 1907), Ponican, and M. Lajciak (born 1926); the short stories of J. Drda (1915–70), notably his collection The Silent Barricade (1946); Jil-emnicky’s novel The Chronicle (1947); and the prose of J. Marek (born 1914), J. Bodenek (born 1911), and J. Horák (1907–74). Nevertheless, some groups of bourgeois writers and literary critics continued to cling to their views. Communist writers assailed the resuscitated conceptions of “pure art” and tried to rally the progressive cultural figures around the Communist Party, a line of action that received wide support at the First Congress of Slovak Science and Art Workers, held in 1945, and at the 1946 congress of Czech writers.
The final rout of the bourgeoisie in February 1948 ushered in a new phase in the struggle for a socialist literature that clearly demonstrated the cohesion of the progressive Czech and Slovak literary forces. The Congress of National Culture, held in April 1948, resolved to promote the socialist orientation of literature. The First Congress of Czechoslovak Writers, convened in March 1949, formed the Czechoslovak Writers’ Union, which adopted socialist realism as its program. The theory of socialist realism was elaborated by Nejedtý, Štoll, Taufer, J. Hájek (born 1919), and M. Chorváth (born 1910).
With the ascendancy of socialist realism in the 1950’s, Czechoslovak writers showed a predilection for vast epic panoramas portraying crucial moments in the country’s history. A Marxist interpretation of the historical destiny of the Czechs and Slovaks and their path to socialism was given in the last two volumes of Puj-manová’s trilogy, Playing With Fire (1948) and Life Against Death (1952), in the chronicle novels New Soldiers Will Arise (1948), The Turbulent Year 1905 (1949), and The Red Glow Over Kladno (1951) by A. Zápotocký (1884–1957), and in the novel Red Wine (1948) by F. Hečko (1905–60). The building of a new life was depicted in the novels The Offensive (1951) and The Battle (1954) by V. Řezáč (1901–56), Without a Chief (1953) by Svatopluk, The Peasant (vols. 1–2, 1955–58) by B. Říha (born 1907), Yesterday and Tomorrow (1949) by V. Mináč (born 1922), The Wooden Village (1951) by Hečko, and The Wasps’ Nest (1953) by K. Lazarová (born 1914). Nezval’s new works, notably the narrative poem Song of Peace (1950), gained world renown. Some of the best poetry of these years was written by Závada, Hrubin, J. Kainar (1917–71), J. Kostra (1910–75), Horov, V. Mihálik (born 1926), and S. Zary (born 1918).
An imperfect mastery of the theme of socialist construction sometimes resulted in a superficial and hackneyed treatment of industrial themes in prose, sloganeering in poetry, and oversimplification in criticism. From the mid-1950’s the normative anti-artistic trends were combated by writers who sought to show the full complexity and the contradictory nature of the modern historical process and contemporary developments. Especially successful in this respect were the novels Citizen Brych (1955) by J. Otčenášek (born 1924), If You Leave Me (1957) by Z. Pluhaf (born 1913), and Box for the Living (1956) by N. Fryd (1913–76) and the short-story collection Hours and Minutes (1956) by A. Bednár (born 1914). Outstanding achievements of socialist realism in Slovak literature included the trilogy A Generation (parts 1–3, 1958–61) by Mináč, the novel The Dead Don’t Sing (1961) by R. Jašik (1919–60), the lyric and narrative poems of Novomeský, and the poetry of Kainar and M. Válek (born 1927).
Nihilist tendencies grew stronger in the mid-1960’s, not infrequently turning into a rejection of socialism, and some writers succumbed to the influence of Western modernism, principally the “new novel,” the theater of the absurd, and “concrete” poetry. The literary magazines published articles propounding reactionary-modernist, neo-avant-garde, and structuralist theories. During the political crisis of 1968 the Czechoslovak Writers’ Union, whose leadership had adopted revisionist views, virtually ceased to exist as a creative organization. “An outright capitulation to bourgeois ideology . . . could be observed in the field of culture and art” (Uroki krizisnogo razvitiia, Moscow, 1971, p. 41). After the April 1969 Plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, a campaign was launched to overcome the consequences of the crisis in ideology, culture, and literature. The Slovak Writers’ Union, founded in 1969, and the Czech Writers’ Union, established three years later, lent their full support to the party’s political and cultural line and set as their primary task the unification of the country’s literary forces on the basis of socialist realism.
In the early 1970’s continuity was restored with the best traditions of the preceding period. Socialist poetry has been further developed by Závada, Plávka, J. Rybák (born 1904), Taufer, I. Skála (born 1922), Mihálik, M. Florian (born 1931), M. Rúfus (born 1928), J. Mihalkovič (born 1935), and V. Hons (born 1938). Fine historical novels have been written by Říha, M. V. Kratochvfl (born 1904), J. Toman (1899–1977), V. Neff (born 1909), and H. Zelinová (born 1914). The memoir and historical essay genres are best represented by Plávka’s In Love With Life (1971) and Mináč’s Fanning the Native Hearths (1970) and J. M. Hurban’s Quarrels (1974). The antifascist theme is explored in a number of fine novellas and novels: Wildings (1973) by J. Křenek (born 1933), One Piece of Silver (1974) by Pluhař, Love the Time That Will Come (1974) by J. Papp (born 1929), The Cedar Grove (1974) by V. Švenková (born 1937), Hearths (1976) by E. Dzvoník (born 1933), and Craftsmen (1976) by V. Šikula (born 1936).
Contemporary ethical and social issues are raised in the novel My Boy and I (1974) by J. Kolárová (born 1919) and in the novels St. Michael (1971), The White Stallion (1975), and The Stork’s Nest (1976) by J. Kozák (born 1921). The novel Little Shepherd From the Valley (1977) by L. Fuks (born 1923) describes, in a lyrical vein, the new life in the Czechoslovak countryside after 1945. The novel The Eleventh Commandment (1975) by J. Jonáš (born 1919) deals with the socialist transformation of the Slovak village. The production theme lies at the heart of the novellas Hardships of the Plains (1975) and Salty Snow (1976) by M. Rafaj (born 1934) and the novel The Breakdown (1976) by J. Švejda (born 1950). A fresh ideological and aesthetic approach to the treatment of socialist reality distinguishes the prose of P. Jaros (born 1940), I. Habaj (born 1943), L. Ballek (born 1941), V. Klevis (born 1933), J. Navrátil (born 1939), J. Kostrhun (born 1942), and L. Stépán (born 1943). A noteworthy contribution to modern dramaturgy has been made by I. Bukovčan (1921–75), J. Solovič (born 1934), and O. Zahradnik (born 1932).
The Czechoslovak Writers’ Union was revived in December 1977.
Literary scholarship. A number of conflicting trends coexisted in literary criticism in the interwar period. While A. Novak (1880–1939) elucidated the history of Czech literature from the standpoint of official bourgeois ideology, A. Pražák (1880–1956) applied the positivist methodology and J. Mukafovsky (1891–1975) and M. Bakos (1914–72) developed the idea of literary structuralism. The general democratic trend was represented by F. X. Šalda (1867–1937), Š. Krčméry (1892–1955), and F. Votruba (1880–1953). Z. Nejedlý played a major role in the development of the Marxist school. A significant contribution to the Marxist methodology of literary scholarship and to the scholarly study of the history of Czechoslovak literature was made by the Marxist critics of the 1920’s and 1930’s, notably B. Václavek, the author of Twentieth-century Czech Literature (1935).
A general shift toward a Marxist reorientation of literary scholarship began after 1948. Novak’s theories were criticized, and Mukafovsky and Bakoš gave a critique of the idealist principles of structuralism. Among the newly founded centers of literary scholarship were the Czech and World Literature Institute of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences in Prague and the Literature Institute of the Slovak Academy of Sciences in Bratislava. Literary scholars began working on an academic history of Czech and Slovak literature and on Czechoslovak-Soviet literary relations. Structuralist and other idealist theories were resurrected in the 1960’s. In overcoming the consequences of the crisis, the positions of Marxist aesthetics and methodology were strengthened.
Of the older generation of Marxist critics, Štoll, Taufer, V. Pekárek (born 1907), and A. Matuška (1910–75) continued to publish prolifically in the 1970’s. The leading younger Marxist critics were S. Šabouk (born 1933), V. Dostál (1930–75), H. Hrzalová (born 1929), Š. Vlašín (born 1924), and V. Rzounek (born 1921) in the Czech lands and K. Rosenbaum (born 1920), I. Kusy (born 1921), S. Šmatlák (born 1925), M. Tomčík (born 1922), and J. Števček (born 1929) in Slovakia. A valuable contribution to the elucidation of the history of Czechoslovak literature was made by A. Mráz (1904–64), J. Hrabák (born 1912), and M. Pišut (born 1908).
The main literary journals are Česká literatura (since 1953), Slovenská literatura (since 1954), Literámi mésičník (since 1972), Romboid (since 1965), and Slovenská pohl’ady (since 1884).
REFERENCES
. V. B
OGDANOV
The architecture, fine art, and decorative applied art of Czechoslovakia have developed out of the artistic traditions of the Czech lands and Slovakia, which maintained close cultural ties from early times (see
CZECH SOCIALIST REPUBLIC
and
SLOVAKIA
: Architecture and art). The establishment of an independent Czechoslovak state in 1918 stimulated a cultural revival in the two historical regions and contributed to their further rapprochement. In the 1920’s and 1930’s Czechoslovak art was strongly influenced by the Great October Socialist Revolution of 1917, by the short-lived Hungarian and Slovak soviet republics (1919), and by the growth of the communist and labor movements. Under the bourgeois regime the development of artistic culture was marked by contradiction. Democratic and socially critical tendencies and quests for an indigenous style coexisted with borrowings from European avant-garde currents. A progressive national trend arose and matured in the struggle against modernist tendencies.
In the architecture of the 1920’s and 1930’s neoclassicism, popular for a short time, gave way to a national school of functional-ism, best represented by the buildings of J. Gočár, K. Honzik, and J. Havlíček in the Czech lands and E. Belluš in Slovakia. Along with industrial enterprises, the first housing projects were built using standard designs and industrial construction methods. A rational layout of residential ensembles was attempted at Zlin (now Gottwaldov) and in parts of Bratislava and Košice. However, housing construction was limited in the interwar period, and slums proliferated on the outskirts of cities.
The art of the 1920’s and 1930’s was characterized by a strengthening of realist and democratic tendencies. Artists of different schools portrayed the life of the people and contemporary reality employing cubist, expressionist, and fauvist techniques. In the Czech lands such an approach was typical of the painting and graphic art of V. Beneš, J. Čapek, V. Rabas, and R. Kremlicka and the sculpture of O. Gutfreund. In Slovakia it was represented by the painting and graphic art of M. Benka, M. A. Bazovský, J. Aleksy, and M. Galanda. Some artists were influenced by folk art techniques, as may be seen from the graphic art of J. Capek and J. Lada in the Czech lands and the paintings of L. Fulla in Slovakia. The national realist traditions of the late 19th and early 20th centuries retained their vigor in the landscapes of V. Rabas, V. Sedláček, and V. Novák, the engravings of M. Švabinský, the illustrations of V. Brunner and F. Kysela, and the portraits and statues of K. Kotrba, K. Pokorný, and J. Lauda, all of them Czech artists.
A critical view of society united the painters K. Holan and P. Kotik and the graphic artists V. Silovsky and J. Rambousek, who formed yet another school in the 1920’s. The Devětsil association of revolutionary artists, founded in 1920, dedicated itself to the creation of a proletarian art. The artistic aspirations of its members, however, were somewhat inconsistent. The life of the working class was depicted in the 1920’s by the Czech graphic artists V. Masšek and F. Bidlo, by the Slovak graphic artist K. Sokol, and by the Slovak painter K. Bauer.
Confronted with the fascist threat, artists of various schools formed a united antifascist front. Some of the best political graphic art was produced by the Czech artists Bidlo and J. Capek. In the late 1930’s and early 1940’s a dramatic intensity and at times a heroic quality infused the antiwar compositions and pictures showing the resistance and sufferings of the people of Czechoslovakia under fascist occupation. These themes received eloquent treatment in the works of V. Sychra and V. Tittelbach in the Czech lands and of V. Hložník, J. Želibský, J. Nemčík, and C. Majernik in Slovakia. A number of artists had recourse to allegory and disguised imagery. The homeland theme took on political overtones in the landscapes and peasant scenes of the Czech artists V. Rabas, V. Rada, and B. Dvorský.
The liberation of Czechoslovakia from fascist occupation in 1945 and the establishment of a people’s democratic system opened the way for the unfettered development of the finest traditions of the democratic national culture. Large modern industrial enterprises such as the metallurgical combine in Koslce were built, as well as dams and hydroelectric power plants on the Labe, Vltava, and Orava rivers. New industrial cities, among them Miada Boleslav, Ostrava-Poruba, and Havířov, were founded. Comfortable residential quarters were built employing industrial techniques on the outskirts of Prague, Bratislava, Gottwaldov, Olomouc, Nitra, Košice, and other cities. Examples of well-designed public buildings and transportation facilities include the Institute of Macromolecular Chemistry and the Federal Assembly Building in Prague, the agricultural institute and student dormitories in Nitra, and the Bridge of the Slovak National Uprising in Bratislava.
The prewar realist traditions remained strong in art in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s. The works of many artists held a new, socialist message. Industrial landscapes and compositions depicting labor and the national liberation struggle were created by the Czech painters and graphic artists E. Filia, J. Brož, and V. Sedláček and by the Slovak artists V. Hložník, O. Dubay, R. Dúbravec, J. Želibský, and B. Hoffstádter. Among Czech artists, M. Švabinský revived portrait graphic art; J. Lauda, K. Lidický, and K. Hladík produced outstanding sculpture; and J. Slavíček, B. Dvorský, and F. Jiroudek excelled in landscape painting. In Slovakia, the painters J. Aleksy, M. Bazovský, and L. Fulla and the graphic artists V. Chmel and M. Čechová evoked poetic generalized scenes from the life of the people.
Monumental decorative art reached a high level in the Czech lands in V. Sychra’s mosaics, A. Zábranský’s sgraffito, and V. Tittelbach’s frescoes. There were impressive achievements in decorative applied art, notably glass-making, weaving, pottery, and medallion-making. Splendid memorial complexes commemorating the World War II victory and honoring those who died fighting against fascism were created by V. Makovský, K. Lidický, and K. Pokorný in the Czech lands and by J. Kulich, T. Bártfay, and J. Kostka in Slovakia. Fine book illustrations were produced by C. Bouda, Zábranský, A. Pele, K. Svolinský, and A. Strnadel in the Czech lands and by V. Hložník and L. Fulla in Slovakia.
From the late 1950’s a number of artists showed a growing interest in symbolic and poetic imagery and formal experimentation. The actions of antisocialist elements in the late 1960’s had a pernicious effect on the development of Czechoslovak art. Such Western modernist trends as expressionism, neocubism, surrealism, abstractionism, and op art attracted a large following. Since the early 1970’s strong efforts have been made to restore the democratic traditions of Czechoslovak art. Monuments commemorating national historical events and the liberation and revolutionary struggle have been executed by J. Kulich, T. Bártfay, and J. Kuzma in Slovakia and by M. Hana, V. Dobrovolný, J. Malejovský, and J. Simota in the Czech lands. The history of the revolution has been recorded in the canvases of the Czech artists Zábranský, K. Soucek, and R. Kolář.
REFERENCES
and
SLOVAKIA
: Music). After the establishment of an independent Czechoslovak state in 1918, strong efforts were made to preserve and develop the realist traditions of the national classics, but the bourgeois leadership’s orientation toward West European culture facilitated the penetration of modernist trends into Czechoslovak music. The Society for Modern Music and the Pfitomnost Society were founded in 1920. A. Hába, a leading Czech avant-garde composer of the 1920’s and 1930’s, invented the quarter-tone and the sixth-tone systems of music.
Concurrently, the foremost composers of the older generation, notably L. Janáček, J. B. Foerster, V. Novák, and J. Suk, who were also the leading teachers, continued to develop the realist national traditions. In his scholarly publications and public activity the eminent man of letters Z. Nejedlý championed the artistic principles of the Czech classics and called for closer cultural ties with the USSR. He was a cofounder of several societies dedicated to promoting a cultural rapprochement between Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union. A number of progressive musicians rallied around Nejedlý, among them O. Ostrčil, V. Helfert, O. Jeremíáš, and E. Axman. As the conductor and artistic director of the opera company of the National Theater in Prague from 1923 to 1931, Ostrčil staged operas by B. Smetana, Z. Fibich, A. Dvořák, Foerster, Novák, and Janáček.
Instrumental works from the national repertoire were frequently performed by the orchestra of the Czech Philharmonic Society (founded in 1894 and directed by V. Talich from 1919 to 1931 and from 1934 to 1941), the Czech Quartet (founed 1891), the Ševčik Quartet (1900), the Prague Quartet (1920), the Ondříček Quartet (1928), the Prague Wind Quintet (1928), and the Czech Nonet (1924).
The 19th-century composers who founded professional Slovak music, namely J. L. Bella, V. Figuš-Bystrý, M. Schneider-Trnavský, and M. Moyzes, were strongly influenced by the national folk music. Their musical legacy was further developed in the 20th century by Novák and his students E. Suchoñ, J. Cikker, and A. Moyzes. Among the finest Slovak compositions of the 1930’s were Cikker’s orchestral works and Suction’s Symphony No. 2, his orchestral suite Down the Yah, his program overtures, and his cantata Psalm of the Sub-Carpathian Land. The most important of the Slovak musical performing groups and organizations that were founded in the interwar period were the Zora Chorus (1919), the Radio Instrumental Ensemble (1928), the opera company of the Slovak National Theater (1920), and the Music School, founded in 1919 and reorganized as an academy of music and drama in 1928 and as a conservatory in 1941.
Many works from the 1930’s were devoted to the revolutionary struggle of the working class, among them V. Nejediý’s Second and Third symphonies, J. Stanislav’s Song About Granada, and E. Schulhoff s cantata The Communist Manifesto. The music section of the League of Czechoslovak Friends of the Theater maintained ties with workers’ organizations and with the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. The composer and conductor E. F. Burian, who founded the D-34 Theater in 1933, affirmed that art should serve the working class. Ostrcil’s opera Honza’s Kingdom (1934) developed the antifascist theme.
Patriotic works were composed during the fascist occupation in World War II. Among the most famous were O. Chlubna’s Jlří of Kunštát and Poděbrady, E. Schulhoff s Symphony of Freedom (1941), J. Stanislav’s Red Army Symphony, J. Hanuš’s opera The Flames, K. Horký’s opera Jan Hus, O. Jeremiáš’s cantata Song of the Native Land, Novak’s cantata Si. Wenceslas Triptych, and B. Martinü’s play for orchestra Memorial to Lidice (1943) and his Symphony No. 3 (1944). Many composers masked their musical ideas, using cryptograms, allegories, and citations from widely known national patriotic works, such as the Hussite songs. Performers included in their programs revolutionary and humanistic classic works. The Slovak musicians J. Cikker, J. Kresánek, and T. Andrašovan fought in the resistance movement. Among the many progressive musicians who died during the occupation were R. Karel, J. Teklý, E. Schulhoff, G. Klein, and P. Haas.
After the victory over fascism in 1945 and the establishment of a people’s democratic system in Czechoslovakia, composers’ associations, first Czech and then Slovak, were founded, and a new opera theater, called the May 5 Great Opera, was opened (it merged with the National Theater in 1948). In 1946 the Academy of Arts was founded, higher music schools were opened in Bratislava and Brno, and the international festival Prague Spring was inaugurated. The music of the second half of the 1940’s reflects the general revival throughout the country. A feeling of optimism pervades V. Novák’s May Symphony, J. Seidel’s cantata 1945 and his cantata triptych The Heritage of Julius Fučík, A. Očenáš’s symphonic trilogy Resurrection, and J. Cikker’s symphonic poems About Life and Morning.
The victory over bourgeois reaction in 1948 and the onset of socialist construction stimulated a flowering of democratic music. The Czechoslovak Composers’ Union was organized in 1949 through a merger of the associations of Czech and Slovak composers. The works of the 1950’s were inspired by the building of a new life and glorified free labor and peace on earth, themes that were most fully developed in cantatas and mass songs. Outstanding vocal compositions included V. Dobiás’s cantata Build Up the Motherland and You Will Strengthen Peace\ and his mass song Join our Brigade, J. Stanislav’s songs, and J. Seidel’s oratorio-cantata People, Be Vigilant’, and songs. Z. Nejediý’s speeches and articles, notably his “On True Realism and Pseudorealism” (1948) and “Learn to Speak Through Music,” were of great ideological importance because they helped to overcome the contradictions between artistic truth and a narrowly conceived populism that had manifested themselves in the works of some Czech and Slovak composers.
In the late 1940’s and in the 1950’s musical theaters in Czechoslovakia and other countries performed works by Czech and Slovak composers: P. Borkovec’s opera Paleček (1947), J. Doubrava’s ballet Don Quixote (1955), E. Suchoñ’s operas The Whirlpool (or The Whirlwind, 1949) and Svatopluk (1959), and J. Cikker’s Jánošík (1953), Beg Bajazid (1956), and Mr. Scrooge (after Dickens, 1958). Instrumental music was written by J. Řídký, who produced seven symphonies and numerous chamber works, I. Krejčí’, and Dobiáš. European music was enriched by the compositions of B. Martina, who worked in many genres and styles. Although he lived abroad for a long time, Martinu never lost touch with his homeland and made a major contribution to Czechoslovak music. In all, he composed about 400 works, including the operas Juliette (1937), The Marriage (based on Gogol’s play, written for television, 1952), Mirandolina (1954), Greek Passion (1958), and Ariadne (1958); the ballets Revolt (1925), The Judgment of Paris (1935), and The Strangler (1948); and six symphonies.
Among outstanding Czech works produced since the late 1950’s are J. Pauer’s opera Zuzana Vojířová (1959), S. Havelka’s Symphony No. 1, V. Sommer’s Vocal Symphony, V. Kalabis’ Symphony of Peace, and J. Válek’s Renaissance Symphony and Revolutionary Symphony. Important works have also been written by L. Železný, O. Flosman, J. Boháč, I. Irko, V. Felix, and J. Matěj. Fine Slovak works of this period include Cikker’s operas Resurrection (1961), A Play About Love and Death (1968), and Coriolanus (1973), T. Frešo’s opera Martin and the Sun(1972), Cikker’s Symphony 1945 (1975), and various works by Suchon, A. Očenáš, and D. Kardoš.
Since the 1950’s operatic art has been fostered by the opening of several opera theaters in Bohemia, Moravia (1954), and Slovakia. The country’s musical life has been enriched by the founding of symphony and chamber orchestras, choral groups, string quartets, including the Smetana and Janáček quartets, the Suk Trio, the ensemble of the Czechoslovak People’s Army, such song and dance ensembles as the Czechoslovak Song and Dance Ensemble and the Slovak SLUK and Lúčnica ensembles, and various amateur groups.
Czechoslovakia has produced many distinguished performing musicians, among them the conductors V. Neumann, V. Smetáček, J. Krombholc, and L. Slovák, the pianists I. Moravec and J. Pálenííek, the harpsichordist Z. Rúziíková, the organists J. Reinberger and J. Ropek, the violinists A. Plocek and J. Suk, the cellists I. Večtomov, M. Sádlo, and J. Chuchro, the female singers M. Tauberová, V. Soukupová, and G. Benjačková, and the male singers B. Blachut, I. Židek, V. Bednář, and E. Haken.
The leading music journals are the Czech-language Hudba a skola (1928–33, 1940, and since 1960), Hudební rozhledy (since 1948), and Hudební věda (since 1964) and the Slovak-language Hudobnovedné študie (since 1955), Slovenská hudba (1957–71), and Hudobný život (since 1966).
REFERENCES
N. A. S
IMAKOVA
After the formation of the bourgeois Czechoslovak republic in 1918, the first ballet companies were established in Bratislava, Brno, Ostrava, and Olomouc, supplementing the company already existing in Prague, and private ballet schools were opened. The ballet repertoire began to include works by Czech composers, such as B. Martinů’s Istar (1924, National Theater in Prague) and Who Is the Most Powerful in the World? (1925, Brno ballet company) and V. Novak’s Nikotina (1930) and Signorina Gioventu (1930; both performed at the National Theater in Prague). The leading Czech dancers and choreographers of the interwar period were J. Jenčík and I. V. Psota.
Soon after the liberation of the country from the fascist German aggressors in 1945, ballet theaters were opened in Plzeň, Opava, Košice, České Budějovice, Kladno, and Ustí nad Labem. In 1946 choreography departments were formed at the conservatories in Prague, Bratislava, and Brno, and three years later a subdepartment of choreography theory and history was established at the Academy of Arts in Prague. The company attached to the National Theater in Prague was directed by S. Machov (1946–51) and the company of the Janáček Opera and Ballet Theater in Brno by Psota (1947–51).
Czechoslovak ballet is characterized by realism, precise dramatic rendering of the scenario, and highly expressive performing technique. The stylistic versatility and sophisticated stage design of postwar ballet were splendidly revealed in the productions of Z. Vostřák’s A Philosophical Story (after A. Jirásek, 1949, stage designer V. Fridrichova) and his Viktorka (based on B. Němcová’s Grandmother, 1950, stage designers Z. Rossmann and K. Kropáček), both choreographed by Machov and J. Reimoser. Among the National Theater’s finest productions were the Slavonic Dances, based on the music of A. Dvorak (1956), A. I. Khachaturian’s Spartacus (1957), A. D. Melikov’s Legend of Love (1963), and S. S. Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet (1976). The theater’s leading dancers are O. Skálová, M. Kůra (appointed director of the National Theater’s company in the mid-1970’s), M. Drottnerová, M. Pešíková, and V. Harapes. The foremost choreographers are A. Landa, J. Blažek, J. Němeček (the company’s director from 1957 to 1970), and E. Gabzdyl.
The Slovak National Theater in Bratislava, another excellent company, has given memorable performances of R. M. Gliére’s The Red Poppy (1954), J. Kenessey’s The Kerchief (1955), I. F. Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring (1964), and the Heroic Trilogy (1975), based on the music of various composers. The company’s soloists include G. Starostová, G. Herényiová, V. Kolárová, and J. P. Plavnik, and its principal choreographers are J. Zajko and B. Slovak, who has directed the company since 1973.
The repertoire of the Janáček Opera and Ballet Theater in Brno has included Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet (1938), Dvořák’s Slavonic Dances (1951), Z. Křížek’s Ballad of a Sailor (1961), and J. Hanuš’ Othello (1974). The company’s leading dancers are V. Vágnerová, K. Gracerová, and J. Bařinková; Némeíek has served as its director since 1974. The New Ballet of Prague, which gave performances from 1964 to 1970 under the direction of the choreographer L. Ogoun and P. Smok, introduced new dance forms and means of expression. The company toured the USSR from 1965 to 1969 and in 1970.
REFERENCE
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What in terms of area, is the smallest county in the Irish Republic? | Ireland Geographical Facts, Figures and Physical Extremities
This page gives some of the physical extremities of Ireland
Most northerly point*
The most northerly point is Inishtrahull Island, situated in the Atlantic Ocean 7 km north of Inishowen Peninsula, county Donegal. It lies at latitude 55.43�N. Of mainland Ireland, the most northerly point is a headland 2 km northeast of Malin Head, Inishowen Peninsula, county Donegal. It lies at latitude 55.38�N.
Most easterly point
The most easterly point is Big Bow Meel Island, which is a rock situated 900 metres off the Ards Peninsula, county Down, at longitude 5.42�W. Of mainland Ireland, the most easterly point is Burr Point, Ards Peninsula, county Down at longitude 5.43�W. It is situated 2 km southeast of the village of Ballyhalbert.
Most southerly point
The most southerly point is Fastnet Rock, which lies in the Atlantic Ocean 11.3 km south of mainland county Cork. It lies at latitude 51.37�N. Of mainland Ireland, the most southerly point is Brow Head, county Cork, which lies 3.8 km east of the marginly more northerly Mizen Head. It lies at latitude 51.43�N.
Most westerly point*
The most westerly point is Tearaght Island, which lies in the Atlantic Ocean 12.5 km west of Dingle Peninsula, county Kerry. It lies at longitude 10.70�W. Of mainland Ireland, the most westerly point is Garraun Point, Dingle Peninsula, county Kerry which is 2.5 km northwest of Slea Head. It lies at longitude 10.51�W.
Geographical Centres
The geographical centre of Ireland is to be found in eastern county Roscommon, at a point 3km (2 miles) south of Athlone town.
The centre of Ulster is in county Tyrone, at a point 20km (14 miles) east of Omagh town, near the village of Pomeroy.
The centre of Munster is in the north of county Cork, at a point 9km (6 miles) south-west of the village of Rath Luirc.
The centre of Leinster is in western county Kildare, at a point 5km (3 miles) south-west of Kildare town.
The centre of Connaught is in county Mayo, 6km (4 miles) south-east of the pilgrim village of Knock.
The centre of Northern Ireland is in eastern county Tyrone, at a point 6km (4 miles) south-east of the town of Cookstown.
The centre of the Republic of Ireland is in south-eastern county Galway, at a point 3km (2 miles) south-west of the village of Eyrecourt.
Highest altitude
The summit of Mt Carrantuohill, county Kerry, rises to 1,041 metres (3414 feet) above sea level. The second highest point is the summit of Mt Beenkeragh, county Kerry, which rises to 1,010 metres (3314 feet) above sea level. The highest point in Northern Ireland is the summit of Slieve Donard, county Down, which rises to 852 metres (2796 feet) above sea level, and is the 8th highest peak in Ireland.
Tallest sea cliffs
The sea cliffs at Croaghaun, Achill Island off western Ireland fall 668 metres (2,192 feet) into the Atlantic Ocean. Slieve League in county Donegal has a drop of 601 metres (1,972 feet) into the same ocean. Both cliffs are almost twice the height of the Eiffel Tower in Paris. However, as there is no vantage point to see the cliffs at Achill Island the Donegal cliffs are more famous.
(thanks to Michele of irelandyes.com for this information)
Most populated county
The most heavily populated county is county Dublin, with 1,056,666 inhabitants at the last estimate. The next most heavily populated county is Antrim, with 566,400 inhabitants.
Most densely populated county
The most densely populated county is county Dublin, with 1147.3 inhabitants per square kilometre at the last estimate. The next most densely populated is county Antrim, with 199.2 inhabitants per square kilometre.
Least populated county
The county with the fewest inhabitants is county Leitrim with just 25,032 inhabitants at the last estimate. The next lowest is county Longford with 30,128 inhabitants.
Most sparsely populated county
The most sparsely populated county in Ireland is Leitrim, with a mere 15.8 inhabitants per square kilometre at the last estimate. The next most sparsely populated is county Mayo, which has 19.9 inhabitants per square kilometre.
Largest settlements
The largest city in Ireland is Dublin, which at 859,976 inhabitants, is home to almost 1 in 5 Irish people, and more than 1 in 4 in the Irish Republic. The next 9 largest settlements are Belfast (counties Down and Antrim, 475,968), Cork (county Cork, 174,400), Limerick (county Limerick, 75,436) Derry (county Londonderry, 72,334), Newtownabbey (county Antrim, 56,811), D�n Laoghaire (county Dublin, 55,540), Bangor (county Down, 52,437), Galway (county Galway, 50,853) and Lisburn (county Antrim, 42,110). More towns .
Largest county
In terms of area, the largest county in Ireland is county Cork at 7,457 km�. The next largest is county Galway, at 6,148 km�. The largest county in Northern Ireland is county Tyrone, at 3,155 km�.
Smallest county
The smallest county in Ireland is county Louth, which is just 820 km� in area - 9 times smaller than county Cork. The next smallest is county Carlow, which is 896 km�. The smallest county in Northern Ireland is county Armagh, at 1,254 km�.
Longest river
The longest river in Ireland is the river Shannon whose source is Shannon Pot, county Cavan, and which enters the sea between counties Clare and Limerick after a journey of 386 km (240 miles). It is, in fact, the longest river in the British Isles. The longest river within Northern Ireland is the river Bann, whose source is in the Mourne Mountains, county Down and which enters the sea in county Londonderry after 122 km (76 miles).
Largest lake
Lough Neagh, Northern Ireland, which is 396 km� (153 miles�) in area. It forms part of counties Tyrone, Londonderry, Antrim, Down and Armagh. It is, in fact, the largest lake in the British Isles.
Closest to Britain
The closest point that Ireland comes to Britain is Torr Head, county Antrim, which is just 23 km (14 miles) from the Mull of Kintyre, Scotland. On most days, fields in Scotland can be seen clearly across the North Channel.
Largest island
Besides Ireland itself (82,463 km�) the largest offshore island in Irish waters is Achill island, county Mayo, with an area of 148 km� (57 miles�).
Tallest waterfall
Ireland's tallest waterfall is Powerscourt Falls, county Wicklow, where the water drops 106 metres (350 feet). It is the third tallest waterfall in the British Isles.
Sunniest town
The town in Ireland which enjoys the most sunshine is Rosslare, county Wexford which has over 1600 hours of sunshine per year (4 hrs, 20 mins per day).
Cloudiest town
The town in Ireland which receives the least sunshine is Omagh, county Tyrone which has less than 1200 hours of sunshine per year (3 hrs, 20 mins per day).
Wettest place
The wettest place in Ireland is the area of the Maumturk and Partry mountains of counties Mayo and Galway, which receive annually over 2400 mm of rain.
Driest place
The driest place in Ireland is Dublin city which receives less than 800 mm of rain per year.
*Excludes Rockall Island, which is situated in the north Atlantic 440 km northwest of county Donegal. Although it is merely an uninhabited outcrop of rock a few tens of metres across, it is important in that whoever owns it can claim the fishing and oil rights around it. It is currently in dispute between Iceland, the Republic of Ireland, the United Kingdom and Denmark. Rockall Island is at latitude 57.61�N, longitude 13.70�W.
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"Of which bird did Wordsworth write ""While I am lying on the grass, thy two-fold shout I hear""?" | Irish land divisions - and how these impact on genealogy records
Irish land divisions
Home → Land and property records → Irish Land Divisions
Irish land divisions go beyond the familiar names of the 32 counties which make up the island. There are a number of additional land divisions which are worth understanding because genealogical records are not all organised in the same way. Gaining an acquaintance with how Irish land divisions work will therefore save you wasted searches and duplication of effort.
The nation
The modern-day island of Ireland is split into two entities: the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. The Republic covers a little more than 80% of the island. It includes all of the provinces of Connaught, Leinster and Munster, plus three counties of Ulster – Cavan, Donegal and Monaghan.
Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom and consists of the remaining six counties of Ireland's province of Ulster – Antrim, Armagh, Derry (also called Londonderry), Down, Fermanagh and Tyrone.
The province
The four provinces of Ireland relate, approximately, to the regions ruled by pre-Norman kings or clans. They are the oldest of all Irish land divisions. Connaught in the West (O'Conor); Leinster in the East (MacMurrough); Munster in the South (O'Brien); and Ulster in the North (O'Neill). They do not have any administrative purpose or official status anymore. In fact, they are rarely mentioned except in sporting fixtures.
The province of Connaught is made up of Galway, Leitrim, Mayo, Roscommon and Sligo. Its flag shows an eagle and a sword.
The province of Leinster contains 12 counties: Carlow, Dublin, Kildare, Kilkenny, Laois, Longford, Louth, Meath, Offaly, Westmeath, Wexford and Wicklow. Its flag is a harp set on a green background.
The province of Munster contains Clare, Cork, Kerry, Limerick, Tipperary and Waterford. Its flag shows three gold crowns on a blue background. It is sometimes confused for Dublin's flag.
The province of Ulster is made up of Antrim, Armagh, Cavan, Derry/Londonderry, Donegal, Down, Fermanagh, Monaghan and Tyrone. Its flag highlights a red hand on a shield set on a background of gold/orange with a red cross.
The county
The 32 counties are probably the most consistent Irish land divisions and most people identify themselves with their native county.
All the counties of Ireland have a county town (which is often named after the county, just to confuse everyone!) which may have grown over the years to achieve city status ie Cork City, Galway City etc. A more recently added complication has been the division of Dublin into four county councils and of Tipperary into two.
Each county is made up of a number of civil parishes. About 25 of them have more than 100 parishes. Country Leitrim has just 17, the smallest number.
Learn more about each of the counties of Ireland .
The barony
Although its origin remains somewhat obscure, the barony used to be one of the most important Irish land divisions when surveys and early censuses were carried out. Many baronies span parts of multiple civil parishes and counties in Ireland and their areas changed over time. They have been obsolete since 1898, but not for genealogists! Many old land and property valuations were organised according to barony so it is worth being able to identify the barony in which an ancestor's townland was located.
The parish
There are two types of parish ecclesiastical and civil and they should not be confused, no matter how confusing this gets!
There are about 2500 civil parishes in Ireland. Each contains an average of 24 townlands and they are usually responsible for the compilation and maintenance of Irish land and property taxes and records.
The ecclesiastical position is rather more complicated because there are both Church of Ireland parishes and Roman Catholic parishes, and they have different congregations and boundaries. Typically Catholic parishes spread over a larger region than Church of Ireland parishes. The differences are best explained by a little history.
Back in the early 1800s, the Church of Ireland was still the Established Church of the island, and civil parishes followed pretty much the same geographical area, and used the same name, as the Church of Ireland parishes. Over the last couple of centuries, there has been some shifting of boundaries and some renaming of parishes, but for most genealogical purposes, there has been little or no change. One peculiarity is that some individual Church of Ireland parishes actually incorporate several civil parishes. This was because Church of Ireland congregations were quite small in some regions and a church in each civil parish could not be justified.
The ruins of Kilkerranmore parish church, co Cork
Roman Catholic parishes are the more complicated. When the Reformation reached Ireland in the mid-1600s, the RC church had to respond to the confiscation of its assets and removal of most of its clergy. It did this by creating much larger parishes, and these sometimes contained quite spread-out pockets of civilisation.
While this no doubt created some difficulties initially, the RC authorities found that since they were no longer restrained by any official map or Irish land bounderies, they had greater flexibility to create new parishes centred on shifting or growing areas of population.
This was particularly the case after full Catholic emancipation was granted in 1829. After this time, many new Catholic parishes were created.
Unfortunately, the long term result for Irish genealogy research is not so favourable. Not only do some Catholic parishes share the name, but not necessarily the land, of a civil parish, they cover a larger population simply because the majority of the Irish was Catholic. Plus, the registers for a particular area may have been split between two parishes when a new parish was created.
By contrast, the records of the Church of Ireland cover wider areas, smaller congregations and are relatively easy to search.
If your ancestors emigrated from Ireland, bear in mind that they may have listed their civil parish as a place of origin on civil documents in their adopted country. They are just as likely to have recorded the Church of Ireland parish or Roman Catholic parish when completing ecclesiastical documents ie noting their place of baptism or marriage, rather than their place of origin.
The diocese
An old ecclesiastical map of Ireland
The diocese is an administrative ecclesiastical unit and of little relevance to genealogy except that some types of records use it for filing purposes.
When these Irish land divisions was first introduced in the 12th century, there were 22 dioceses, each one belonging to one of four ecclesiastical provinces: Armagh, Cashel, Dublin and Tuam. At the head of each province was an archbishop.
Over time, the Church of Ireland and the RC church have gone their own way over dioceses. The former now has 12 dioceses in two just two provinces, Armagh and Dublin, although they cover the whole island.
The Catholic church retains its four provinces: Armagh, Dublin, Cashel & Emly, and Tuam.
It also still has 26 dioceses: Achonry; Ardagh & Clonmacnoise; Armagh; Cashel & Emly; Clogher; Clonfert; Cloyne; Cork & Ross; Derry; Down & Connor; Dromore; Dublin; Elphin; Ferns; Galway, Kilmacduagh & Kilfenora; Kerry; Kildare & Leighlin; Killala; Killaloe; Kilmore; Limerick; Meath; Ossory; Raphoe; Tuam, Waterford & Lismore.
Cities and Towns
The least complicated of Irish land divisions! These are urban neighbourhoods and should not be confused with townlands. A city or town may be made up of several townlands or be only one part of a townland.
Fortunately, most genealogical documents for addresses in cities and towns will bear a street name and sometimes a house number or name.
The townland
The townland is the most fundamental of all Irish land divisions and is the essential ingredient for successful genealogical research in Ireland. It is the smallest official division and one of the most ancient. It was originally based on 'ballyboes', areas of land deemed sufficient to sustain a cow.
Over time, townlands of varying sizes were established and by the 1830s there were some townlands of less than one acre and others of several thousand acres. Land was rented out using the name of townlands and they were used as a basis of census returns from 1821.
In the 1830s, the Ordnance Survey was carried out and the names (and their spellings) of all townlands standardised and recorded. In 1861, an Index (full name: General Alphabetical Index to the Townlands and Towns, Parishes & Baronies of Ireland) was published by Alexander Thom & Co. of Dublin, based on data from the 1851 census. Dublin-based genealogist Shane Wilson has created a free online Townlands Database from this Index.
A later Index was published in 1904, based on data used for the 1901 census. A free online database based on this Index is freely available on IrishAncestors.ie , the website of the Irish Genealogical Research Society.
Although these Indexes are incredibly useful, problems frequently arise because some townlands and locations also have unofficial place names. Imagine the frustration of locating the name of the townland where your ancestors lived only to find the place doesn't seem to exist; it has happened. Often. These place names are usually the old Irish names, binned when the Ordnance Survey was recorded. A number of new websites are now available to help overcome these difficulties. They include Logainm.ie , which covers the Republic of Ireland, and PlaceNamesNI , which covers Northern Ireland. Both are free.
In rural areas, the townland is still used as the postal address for letters, packages and other deliveries, and there is a lot of resistence to the introduction of postcodes. Because townlands cover quite small areas, road maps of Ireland do not show them, but they appear in Ordnance Survey maps.
The Poor Law Union
In 1838, a Bill established a system of poor relief to the destitute of Ireland. It created a series of workhouses to which society's most unfortunate could retreat when they could no longer provide themselves with basic necessities. Rather than follow the civil parish system or other traditional Irish land divisions, Poor Law Unions were created and centred on market towns, where the workhouses were also built.
In total, 137 unions were created. They were of varying geographical size with the largest in the west (where the population was sparser) and the smallest in the east of Ulster (where the population was dense).
Poor Law Unions were subsequently subdivided into district electoral divisions (DEDs) for the taking of censuses. They are also important Irish land divisions for studying valuation records.
The boundaries of PLUs were also used when Superintendent Registrar's Districts were created.
The Superintendent Registrar's District
These districts are Irish land divisions created purely for administrative purposes, in particular the civil registration of births, marriages and deaths. They date from 1845. From a genealogists perspective, they are the same as Poor Law Unions.
District Electoral District
District Electoral Districts (DEDs) are subdivisions of Poor Law Unions and consist of a number of townlands. Some land records ie the cancelled land books, are arranged by DED so it always worth making a note of the relevant DED alongside any townland name you record; you may need it later in your research
Census returns are also arranged by DED numbers. Because the 1901 and 1911 returns are now indexed and freely available , it has become rather easy to identify these particular Irish land records. Simply search for one of your ancestors using the townland name; the DED will be shown in the results.
Offline, the only way to locate the relevant DED is to study the Alphabetical Index of Townlands, available at the National Archives in Dublin and many major libraries around the world. Maps of these Irish land divisions can be bought from osi.ie.
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Who is credited with inventing the Sewing Machine in 1846? | Sewing Machine History - Invention of the Sewing Machine
Invention :
sewing machine
Function: noun / sew�ing ma�chine Definition: A apparatus using a needle and thread to join or repair material. Primarily used in the making of clothing. Patent: 4,750 (US) issued
September 10, 1846
Inventor:
Elias Howe
Criteria; First practical. Entrepreneur. Birth: July 10, 1819 in Spencer, Massachusetts Death: October 3, 1867 in Brooklyn, New York Nationality: American Milestones:
1755 Charles T. Wiesenthal, designed and patented a double pointed needle
1826 On March 10, Henry Lye received a patent for a device for sewing leather
1830 Barthelemy Thimonnier used a wheel-driven connecting rod that drove the needle up and down
1834 Walter Hunt designed a double-thread shuttle machine
1846 Elias Howe invented and patented the first Automatic Sewing Machine for practical operation.
1849 Benjamin Wilson introduced an automatic feeding system.
1851 Isaac Merritt Singer Invented introduced the first sewing machine scaled for home use.
1854 Isaac Singer patent (US No.10975) issued May 30, for the home sewing machine
1854 Allen Wilson had developed an improved reciprocating shuttle
1855 Wilson went into business with Nathaniel Wheeler to produce a rotary hook instead of a shuttle
1856 Patent Combine formed, consisting of Singer, Howe, Wheeler & Wilson, and Grover & Baker.
1889 The first practical electric sewing machine introduced by the Singer Sewing Machine Co.
1900 Singer claims 80% worldwide market share in sewing machines
CAPs: Elias Howe, Isaac Merritt Singer, Charles T. Wiesenthal, Henry Lye, Barthelemy Thimonnier, Walter Hunt, Alan Wilson, Nathaniel Wheeler. SIPs: sewing machine, clothing, thread, needle, invention, history, inventor of, history of, who invented, invention of, fascinating facts. The Story
In the early 1800s, most people didn't have the money, not to mention a choice of stores in which to buy clothes for themselves and their families. At that time, everything was made by hand. Families sewed their pants, shirts, and dresses using a needle and thread. But Elias Howe changed all that, he came up with another way to make clothes. He patented the first practical sewing machine in 1846.
In 1846, the idea of a sewing machine was nothing new. The first patents for such a machine had been granted in England in 1755, in Austria in 1819, the U.S. in 1826 and France in 1830..Early sewing machines were designed for industrial applications.
In 1755, the American inventor Charles T. Wiesenthal, designed and patented a double pointed needle to eliminate the need for turning the needle around with each stitch. Henry Lye, of Philadelphia, obtained a patent March 10,1826, for an invention for sewing leather; but no record or model has been found, to indicate the principle of the contrivance.
In 1830, Barthelemy Thimonnier of Saint-Etienne, France, used the double-pointed needle as the basis for the first sewing machine put to practical use. He attached the needle to a wheel-driven connecting rod that drove the needle up and down. In 1834, American Walter Hunt designed a double-thread shuttle machine. In 1849, Hunt also patented, but failed to profit from, the safety pin.
Elias Howe was born in Spencer, Massachusetts, on the July 10, 1819. Upon completion of schooling he started a job as a machinist, a position that was chosen for him. Howe first heard the term sewing machine while working in Boston for Ari Davis, who made and repaired precision instruments. People had been trying to invent such a device for half a century in America and abroad, without any great success. His brain labored and his hands toiled to develop and perfect his invention; and there it was that, early in the month of April 1845, after five years of unremitting toil and ceaseless devotion to the task, the first Automatic Sewing Machine was constructed and finished for practical operation. His papers were filed as a caveat in the patent office, September 22nd, 1845, and his application for a patent was completed May 17th, 1846. It was granted September 10th, 1846.
In 1851, Isaac Merritt Singer, a machinist from Boston, Massachusetts, introduced the first sewing machine scaled for home use. Singer's patent (US 10, 975) was issued May 30, 1854. Although Singer�s early machines were based on Howe�s concept, he later patented the rigid arm for holding the needle and a vertical bar to hold the cloth down against the upward stroke of the needle.
Meanwhile Mr. Allen Wilson had developed a reciprocating shuttle, which was an improvement over Singer�s and Howe�s. However, John Bradshaw had patented a similar device and was threatening to sue. Wilson decided to change tack and try a new method. He went into partnership with Nathaniel Wheeler to produce a machine with a rotary hook instead of a shuttle. This was far quieter and smoother than the other methods .
Through the 1850s more and more companies were being formed and were trying to sue each other. Howe brought suit against Singer for patent infringement and won, forcing Singer and other companys to pay him royalties. In 1856 the Sewing Machine Combination was formed, consisting of Singer, Howe, Wheeler and Wilson, and Grover and Baker. These four companies pooled their patents, meaning that all the other manufacturers had to obtain a license and pay $15 per machine. This lasted until 1877 when the last patent expired.
Singer went on to developed the continuous stitch machine and he founded the Singer Sewing Machine Company, which became one of the world�s largest manufacturers of personal sewing machines. The first electric sewing machine, a Singer, for the home was introduced in 1889.
Before he died in 1867 Howe was collecting royalties of more than four thousand dollars a week and he had realized about $2,000,000 in total royalties. The sewing machine industry based on his original invention made possible the mass production of clothing on a much larger scale than had ever been possible with hand-stitching. By 1905, Americans all over the country were beginning to sew with electrically powered machines. Today sewing machines in manufacturing plants use computer technology to create customized clothing with little human intervention.
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What kind of bread takes its name, because of its appearance from the Italian for slipper? | Sept. 10, 1846: Sewing Machine Starts New Thread | WIRED
Sept. 10, 1846: Sewing Machine Starts New Thread
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Author: Randy Alfred. Randy Alfred
Date of Publication: 09.10.09.
Time of Publication: 12:00 am.
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Sept. 10, 1846: Sewing Machine Starts New Thread
1846: Elias Howe patents the first practical sewing machine and threads his way into the fabric of history.
French tailor Barthelemy Thimonnier patented a device in 1830 that mechanized the typical hand-sewing motions to create a simple chain stitch. He planned to mass-produce uniforms for the French army . His competition had different ideas.
About 200 tailors rioted on the morning of Jan. 20, 1831, ransacking Thimonnier’s factory, destroying 80 sewing machines and throwing the pieces out the windows. The inventor fled for his life. Thimonnier conceived of a machine that could sew a backstitch (which would be more durable), but resolutely spent the next two decades trying to perfect various permutations of his original machine and its unreliable chain stitch.
American Walter Hunt came up with a back-stitching sewing machine in the early 1830s, but was afraid it would result in the massive unemployment of seamstresses. So he declined to patent it.
(Hunt lives on instead as the barely known inventor of the safety pin , as well as a precursor of the repeating rifle, a gong for fire engines, a forest saw, a stove to burn hard coal, a knife sharpener, a streetcar bell, synthetic stone, road-sweeping machinery, bicycle improvements, ice plows and, oh yes, paper collars for shirts.)
Howe worked for Ari Davis, a Boston precision machinist who told him that whoever invented a practical sewing machine would get rich. Howe spent eight years of his spare time working on such a device. He was often ill, and his wife had to take on sewing jobs — oh, the irony! — to help the family make ends meet.
Howe thought that the complex motions of human arms, hands and fingers were far too complex to emulate with a machine. Rather than copy that, he would use established machine techniques.
He moved the eye of the needle to the point and devised a shuttle to move a second thread through the loop created by the needle. This created a tight lock stitch that was stronger than Thimonnier’s chain stitch.
At 250 stitches per minute , Howe’s machine was able to out-sew five humans at a demonstration in 1845. Selling them was a problem, however, largely because of the $300 price tag — more than $8,000 in today’s money.
He patented the device in 1846, but his American workshop burned down, and he got swindled out of the British royalties. He returned to Boston penniless. As an inventor, Howe seemed a lousy businessman.
But sewing machines were all the rage, thanks to Isaac Singer’s better marketing and improved design: a needle that went up and down instead of sideways, and power from a foot treadle instead of a hand crank. (Household electricity wasn’t in the picture yet.)
Howe mortgaged his father’s farm to raise the funds to sue Singer and others for patent infringement. It took years, but Howe prevailed in 1854, winning a judgment of $15,000 ($400,000 today).
Howe, Singer and other manufacturers pooled their patents two years later. Howe got a $5 royalty for every machine sold in the United States and a dollar for each one sold elsewhere. That added up to $2 million, or $50 million in today’s skins.
Howe’s 21-year patent and 48-year life both expired in 1867.
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Who is credited with inventing the Cotton Gin in 1793? | Cotton Gin and Eli Whitney - Inventions - HISTORY.com
Cotton Gin and Eli Whitney
Cotton Gin and Eli Whitney
Author
Cotton Gin and Eli Whitney
URL
A+E Networks
Introduction
In 1794, U.S.-born inventor Eli Whitney (1765-1825) patented the cotton gin, a machine that revolutionized the production of cotton by greatly speeding up the process of removing seeds from cotton fiber. By the mid-19th century, cotton had become America’s leading export. Despite its success, the gin made little money for Whitney due to patent-infringement issues. Also, his invention offered Southern planters a justification to maintain and expand slavery even as a growing number of Americans supported its abolition. Based in part on his reputation for creating the cotton gin, Whitney later secured a major contract to build muskets for the U.S. government. Through this project, he promoted the idea of interchangeable parts–standardized, identical parts that made for faster assembly and easier repair of various devices. For his work, he is credited as a pioneer of American manufacturing.
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Whitney Learns About Cotton
Eli Whitney was born on December 8, 1765, in Westborough, Massachusetts . Growing up, Whitney, whose father was a farmer, proved to be a talented mechanic and inventor. Among the objects he designed and built as a youth were a nail forge and a violin. In 1792, after graduating from Yale College (now Yale University), Whitney headed to the South. He originally planned to work as a private tutor but instead accepted an invitation to stay with Catherine Greene (1755–1814), the widow of an American Revolutionary War (1775-83) general, on her plantation, known as Mulberry Grove, near Savannah, Georgia . While there, Whitney learned about cotton production–in particular, the difficulty cotton farmers faced making a living.
Did You Know?
Some historians believe Catherine Greene devised the cotton gin and Eli Whitney merely built it and applied for the patent, since at that time women were not allowed to file for patents. Others believe the idea was Whitney's but Greene played an important role as both designer and financier.
In many ways, cotton was an ideal crop; it was easily grown, and unlike food crops its fibers could be stored for long periods of time. But cotton plants contained seeds that were difficult to separate from the soft fibers. A type of cotton known as long staple was easy to clean, but grew well only along coastal areas. The vast majority of cotton farmers were forced to grow the more labor-intensive short-staple cotton, which had to be cleaned painstakingly by hand, one plant at a time. The average cotton picker could remove the seeds from only about one pound of short-staple cotton per day.
A More Efficient Way
Greene and her plantation manager, Phineas Miller (1764-1803), explained the problem with short-staple cotton to Whitney, and soon thereafter he built a machine that could effectively and efficiently remove the seeds from cotton plants. The invention, called the cotton gin (“gin” was derived from “engine”), worked something like a strainer or sieve: Cotton was run through a wooden drum embedded with a series of hooks that caught the fibers and dragged them through a mesh. The mesh was too fine to let the seeds through but the hooks pulled the cotton fibers through with ease. Smaller gins could be cranked by hand; larger ones could be powered by a horse and, later, by a steam engine. Whitney’s hand-cranked machine could remove the seeds from 50 pounds of cotton in a single day.
Whitney received a patent for his invention in 1794; he and Miller then formed a cotton gin manufacturing company. The two entrepreneurs planned to build cotton gins and install them on plantations throughout the South, taking as payment a portion of all the cotton produced by each plantation. While farmers were delighted with the idea of a machine that could boost cotton production so dramatically, they had no intention of sharing a significant percentage of their profits with Whitney and Miller. Instead, the design for the cotton gin was pirated and plantation owners constructed their own machines–many of them an improvement over Whitney’s original model.
The patent laws of the time had loopholes that made it difficult for Whitney to protect his rights asan inventor. Even though the laws were changed a few years later, Whitney’s patent expired before he ever realized much profit. Still, the cotton gin had transformed the American economy. For the South, it meant that cotton could be produced plentifully and cheaply for domestic use and for export, and by the mid-19th century, cotton was America’s leading export. For the North, especially New England, cotton’s rise meant a steady supply of raw materials for its textile mills.
One inadvertent result of the cotton gin’s success, however, was that it helped strengthen slavery in the South. Although the cotton gin made cotton processing less labor-intensive, it helped planters earn greater profits, prompting them to grow larger crops, which in turn required more people. Because slavery was the cheapest form of labor, cotton farmers simply acquired more slaves.
Whitney Moves On
Patent-law issues prevented Whitney from ever significantly profiting from the cotton gin; however, in 1798, he secured a contract from the U.S. government to produce 10,000 muskets in two years, an amount that had never been manufactured in such a short period. Whitney promoted the idea of interchangeable parts–standardized, identical parts that would make for faster assembly as well as easier repair of various objects and machines. At the time, guns were typically built individually by skilled craftsmen, so that each finished device was unique. Although it ultimately took Whitney some 10 years, instead of two, to fulfill his contract, he was credited with playing a pioneering role in the development of the American system of mass-production.
In 1817, Whitney, then in his early 50s, married Henrietta Edwards, with whom he would have four children. He died on January 8, 1825, at age 59.
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| Eli Whitney |
Which flower has types called 'Decorative', 'Ball' and 'Pompom'? | Cotton Gin
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1793- Cotton Gin Introduced
Eli Whitney, a young New Englander, invented a cotton "gin," which automatically cleaned cotton. This transformed the Southern economy, making cotton "king" and greatly increasing the need for slaves.
After the Revolutionary War the South was looking for a new crop to replace Indigo whose trade it had lost during the war to India.
One possibility was cotton, but traditional cotton known as long staple or Egyptian cotton could only be grown on the Atlantic Islands of the US needing a very long growing season and sandy soil. The alternative was short season cotton, but that cotton has stickily seeds that were very difficult to separate. On to the scene came Eli Whitney.
Whitney was born in Westboro, Massachusetts in 1765. He was the son of a small farmer who had a small manufacturing business on the side. As a boy he produced nails for sail. He went to school in Yale and after graduating became a tutor in South Carolina. There he heard about how difficult it was to clean the seeds out of cotton, and he thought of a machine to do it. He studded a roller with nails a half an inch apart. The roller could then be turned and the nails would pass through a grid, which pulled the cotton lint through the grid leaving the seed behind. The lint would then be pulled off the nails while the seeds would fall off separately. A single laborer could now clean what it took 25 labors to do before, thus making upland cotton economically feasible for the first time. Whitney received a patent for his invention, but since it was so simple many copied it. Whitney tried to enforce the patent. But it was very difficult. In the end most of the income that Whiney received from his invention was received not from producing the gin at a Connecticut factory that he set up, but instead from state governments. South Carolina paid him $50,000 for patent infringement in the state. $30,000 was given by North Carolina from a special tax placed on cotton to compensate him, and Tennessee threw in $10,000.
The effect of the development of the cotton gin was unprecedented. In 1793 the United States produced about five million pounds of cotton; almost all of it the Sea Island type, that represented less then 1% of the world’s production of cotton. By 1860 the US was producing 2 billion pounds of cotton; over 75% of the world production.
The effect of the growth on cotton on slavery was overwhelming. Before the introduction of the gin the need for slaves was modest and slaves were not considered that valuable. Before the gin a slave * could be bought for $300. By the time of the Civil War the cost was $3,000. Cotton farming was a labor-intensive endeavor *despite the gin, but slavery made it all possible.
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What is the name of Albania's unit of currency? | Albanian monetary unit - definition of Albanian monetary unit by The Free Dictionary
Albanian monetary unit - definition of Albanian monetary unit by The Free Dictionary
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Albanian+monetary+unit
monetary unit - a unit of money
lek - the basic unit of money in Albania
qindarka , qintar - 100 qindarka equal 1 lek in Albania
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Independent radio station 'Galaxy FM 102' broadcasts from which town/city? | Calculator for Albanian Leke (ALL) Currency Exchange Rate Conversion
Albanian Lek (ALL) Currency Exchange Rate Conversion Calculator
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The Albanian Lek is the currency in Albania (AL, ALB). The symbol for ALL can be written L. The Albanian Lek is divided into 100 qindarka (qintars). The exchange rate for the Albanian Lek was last updated on December 28, 2016 from Bloomberg. The ALL conversion factor has 4 significant digits.
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The presence of which vitamin in the body is necessary for blood to clot? | Vitamin K: MedlinePlus Supplements
The following doses have been studied in scientific research:
BY MOUTH:
For bleeding disorders such as hypoprothrombinemia: 2.5-25 mg of vitamin K1 (phytonadione).
For counteracting bleeding that can occur when too much of the anticoagulant warfarin is given: 1-5 mg of vitamin K is typically used; however, the exact dose needed is determined by a lab test called the INR.
There isn't enough scientific information to determine recommended dietary allowances (RDAs) for vitamin K, so daily adequate intake (AI) recommendations have been formed instead: The AIs are: infants 0-6 months, 2 mcg; infants 6-12 months, 2.5 mcg; children 1-3 years, 30 mcg; children 4-8 years, 55 mcg; children 9-13 years, 60 mcg; adolescents 14-18 years (including those who are pregnant or breast-feeding), 75 mcg; men over 19 years, 120 mcg; women over 19 years (including those who are pregnant and breast-feeding), 90 mcg.
Other names
4-Amino-2-Methyl-1-Naphthol, Fat-Soluble Vitamin, Menadiol Acetate, Menadiol Sodium Phosphate, Menadione, Ménadione, Menadione Sodium Bisulfite, Menaquinone, Ménaquinone, Menatetrenone, Menatétrenone, Phytonadione, Methylphytyl Naphthoquinone, Phylloquinone, Phytomenadione, Vitamina K, Vitamine K, Vitamine Liposoluble, Vitamine Soluble dans les Graisses.
Methodology
To learn more about how this article was written, please see the Natural Medicines Comprehensive Database methodology .
References
Dennis VC, Ripley TL, Planas LG, and Beach P. Dietary vitamin K in oral anticoagulation patients: clinician practices and knowledge in outpatient settings. J Pharm Technol 2008;24:69-76.
Pathak A, Hamm CR, Eyal FG, Walter K, Rijhsinghani A, and Bohlman M. Maternal vitamin K administration for prevention of intraventricular hemorrhage in preterm infants. Pediatric Research 1990;27:219A.
Eisai Co.Ltd. Eisai announces the intermediate analysis of anti-osteoporosis treatment post-marketing research to investigate the benefits of menatetrenone as part of the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare's Pharmacoepidemiological Drug Review Program. 2005;
Shiraki M. Vitamin K2 effects on the risk of fractures and on lumbar bone mineral density in osteoporosis - a randomized prospective open-label 3-year study. Osteoporos Int 2002;13:S160.
Greer, F. R., Marshall, S. P., Severson, R. R., Smith, D. A., Shearer, M. J., Pace, D. G., and Joubert, P. H. A new mixed micellar preparation for oral vitamin K prophylaxis: randomised controlled comparison with an intramuscular formulation in breast fed infants. Arch.Dis.Child 1998;79:300-305. View abstract .
Wentzien, T. H., O'Reilly, R. A., and Kearns, P. J. Prospective evaluation of anticoagulant reversal with oral vitamin K1 while continuing warfarin therapy unchanged. Chest 1998;114:1546-1550. View abstract .
Duong, T. M., Plowman, B. K., Morreale, A. P., and Janetzky, K. Retrospective and prospective analyses of the treatment of overanticoagulated patients. Pharmacotherapy 1998;18:1264-1270. View abstract .
Sato, Y., Honda, Y., Kuno, H., and Oizumi, K. Menatetrenone ameliorates osteopenia in disuse-affected limbs of vitamin D- and K-deficient stroke patients. Bone 1998;23:291-296. View abstract .
Crowther, M. A., Donovan, D., Harrison, L., McGinnis, J., and Ginsberg, J. Low-dose oral vitamin K reliably reverses over-anticoagulation due to warfarin. Thromb.Haemost. 1998;79:1116-1118. View abstract .
Camilo, M. E., Jatoi, A., O'Brien, M., Davidson, K., Sokoll, L., Sadowski, J. A., and Mason, J. B. Bioavailability of phylloquinone from an intravenous lipid emulsion. Am.J.Clin.Nutr. 1998;67:716-721. View abstract .
Lousberg, T. R., Witt, D. M., Beall, D. G., Carter, B. L., and Malone, D. C. Evaluation of excessive anticoagulation in a group model health maintenance organization. Arch.Intern.Med. 3-9-1998;158:528-534. View abstract .
Fetrow, C. W., Overlock, T., and Leff, L. Antagonism of warfarin-induced hypoprothrombinemia with use of low-dose subcutaneous vitamin K1. J.Clin.Pharmacol. 1997;37:751-757. View abstract .
Weibert, R. T., Le, D. T., Kayser, S. R., and Rapaport, S. I. Correction of excessive anticoagulation with low-dose oral vitamin K1. Ann.Intern.Med. 6-15-1997;126:959-962. View abstract .
Beker, L. T., Ahrens, R. A., Fink, R. J., O'Brien, M. E., Davidson, K. W., Sokoll, L. J., and Sadowski, J. A. Effect of vitamin K1 supplementation on vitamin K status in cystic fibrosis patients. J.Pediatr.Gastroenterol.Nutr. 1997;24:512-517. View abstract .
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Makris, M., Greaves, M., Phillips, W. S., Kitchen, S., Rosendaal, F. R., and Preston, E. F. Emergency oral anticoagulant reversal: the relative efficacy of infusions of fresh frozen plasma and clotting factor concentrate on correction of the coagulopathy. Thromb.Haemost. 1997;77:477-480. View abstract .
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Pengo, V., Banzato, A., Garelli, E., Zasso, A., and Biasiolo, A. Reversal of excessive effect of regular anticoagulation: low oral dose of phytonadione (vitamin K1) compared with warfarin discontinuation. Blood Coagul.Fibrinolysis 1993;4:739-741. View abstract .
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Pomerance, J. J., Teal, J. G., Gogolok, J. F., Brown, S., and Stewart, M. E. Maternally administered antenatal vitamin K1: effect on neonatal prothrombin activity, partial thromboplastin time, and intraventricular hemorrhage. Obstet.Gynecol. 1987;70:235-241. View abstract .
O'Connor, M. E. and Addiego, J. E., Jr. Use of oral vitamin K1 to prevent hemorrhagic disease of the newborn infant. J.Pediatr. 1986;108:616-619. View abstract .
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Kazzi, N. J., Ilagan, N. B., Liang, K. C., Kazzi, G. M., Poland, R. L., Grietsell, L. A., Fujii, Y., and Brans, Y. W. Maternal administration of vitamin K does not improve the coagulation profile of preterm infants. Pediatrics 1989;84:1045-1050. View abstract .
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Napolitano, M., Mariani, G., and Lapecorella, M. Hereditary combined deficiency of the vitamin K-dependent clotting factors. Orphanet.J.Rare.Dis. 2010;5:21. View abstract .
Holzer, G., Grasse, A. V., Zehetmayer, S., Bencur, P., Bieglmayer, C., and Mannhalter, C. Vitamin K epoxide reductase (VKORC1) gene mutations in osteoporosis: A pilot study. Transl.Res. 2010;156:37-44. View abstract .
Dougherty, K. A., Schall, J. I., and Stallings, V. A. Suboptimal vitamin K status despite supplementation in children and young adults with cystic fibrosis. Am.J.Clin.Nutr. 2010;92:660-667. View abstract .
Martini, L. A., Catania, A. S., and Ferreira, S. R. Role of vitamins and minerals in prevention and management of type 2 diabetes mellitus. Nutr.Rev. 2010;68:341-354. View abstract .
Peter, I., Crosier, M. D., Yoshida, M., Booth, S. L., Cupples, L. A., Dawson-Hughes, B., Karasik, D., Kiel, D. P., Ordovas, J. M., and Trikalinos, T. A. Associations of APOE gene polymorphisms with bone mineral density and fracture risk: a meta-analysis. Osteoporos.Int. 2011;22:1199-1209. View abstract .
Novotny, J. A., Kurilich, A. C., Britz, S. J., Baer, D. J., and Clevidence, B. A. Vitamin K absorption and kinetics in human subjects after consumption of 13C-labelled phylloquinone from kale. Br.J.Nutr. 2010;104:858-862. View abstract .
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Nimptsch, K., Rohrmann, S., Kaaks, R., and Linseisen, J. Dietary vitamin K intake in relation to cancer incidence and mortality: results from the Heidelberg cohort of the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC-Heidelberg). Am.J.Clin.Nutr. 2010;91:1348-1358. View abstract .
Yamauchi, M., Yamaguchi, T., Nawata, K., Takaoka, S., and Sugimoto, T. Relationships between undercarboxylated osteocalcin and vitamin K intakes, bone turnover, and bone mineral density in healthy women. Clin.Nutr. 2010;29:761-765. View abstract .
Shea, M. K., Booth, S. L., Gundberg, C. M., Peterson, J. W., Waddell, C., Dawson-Hughes, B., and Saltzman, E. Adulthood obesity is positively associated with adipose tissue concentrations of vitamin K and inversely associated with circulating indicators of vitamin K status in men and women. J.Nutr. 2010;140:1029-1034. View abstract .
McNinch, A. Vitamin K deficiency bleeding: early history and recent trends in the United Kingdom. Early Hum.Dev. 2010;86 Suppl 1:63-65. View abstract .
Ohsaki, Y., Shirakawa, H., Miura, A., Giriwono, P. E., Sato, S., Ohashi, A., Iribe, M., Goto, T., and Komai, M. Vitamin K suppresses the lipopolysaccharide-induced expression of inflammatory cytokines in cultured macrophage-like cells via the inhibition of the activation of nuclear factor kappaB through the repression of IKKalpha/beta phosphorylation. J.Nutr.Biochem. 2010;21:1120-1126. View abstract .
Crowther, C. A., Crosby, D. D., and Henderson-Smart, D. J. Vitamin K prior to preterm birth for preventing neonatal periventricular haemorrhage. Cochrane.Database.Syst.Rev. 2010;:CD000229. View abstract .
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Stevenson, M., Lloyd-Jones, M., and Papaioannou, D. Vitamin K to prevent fractures in older women: systematic review and economic evaluation. Health Technol.Assess. 2009;13:iii-134. View abstract .
Jones, K. S., Bluck, L. J., Wang, L. Y., Stephen, A. M., Prynne, C. J., and Coward, W. A. The effect of different meals on the absorption of stable isotope-labelled phylloquinone. Br.J.Nutr. 2009;102:1195-1202. View abstract .
Yoshiji, H., Noguchi, R., Toyohara, M., Ikenaka, Y., Kitade, M., Kaji, K., Yamazaki, M., Yamao, J., Mitoro, A., Sawai, M., Yoshida, M., Fujimoto, M., Tsujimoto, T., Kawaratani, H., Uemura, M., and Fukui, H. Combination of vitamin K2 and angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor ameliorates cumulative recurrence of hepatocellular carcinoma. J.Hepatol. 2009;51:315-321. View abstract .
Iwamoto, J., Matsumoto, H., and Takeda, T. Efficacy of menatetrenone (vitamin K2) against non-vertebral and hip fractures in patients with neurological diseases: meta-analysis of three randomized, controlled trials. Clin.Drug Investig. 2009;29:471-479. View abstract .
Crosier, M. D., Peter, I., Booth, S. L., Bennett, G., Dawson-Hughes, B., and Ordovas, J. M. Association of sequence variations in vitamin K epoxide reductase and gamma-glutamyl carboxylase genes with biochemical measures of vitamin K status. J.Nutr.Sci.Vitaminol.(Tokyo) 2009;55:112-119. View abstract .
Iwamoto, J., Sato, Y., Takeda, T., and Matsumoto, H. High-dose vitamin K supplementation reduces fracture incidence in postmenopausal women: a review of the literature. Nutr.Res. 2009;29:221-228. View abstract .
Shea, M. K., O'Donnell, C. J., Hoffmann, U., Dallal, G. E., Dawson-Hughes, B., Ordovas, J. M., Price, P. A., Williamson, M. K., and Booth, S. L. Vitamin K supplementation and progression of coronary artery calcium in older men and women. Am.J.Clin.Nutr. 2009;89:1799-1807. View abstract .
Suh, J. W., Baek, S. H., Park, J. S., Kang, H. J., Chae, I. H., Choi, D. J., Park, H. J., Kim, P. J., Seung, K. B., and Kim, H. S. Vitamin K epoxide reductase complex subunit 1 gene polymorphism is associated with atherothrombotic complication after drug-eluting stent implantation: 2-Center prospective cohort study. Am.Heart J. 2009;157:908-912. View abstract .
Koitaya, N., Ezaki, J., Nishimuta, M., Yamauchi, J., Hashizume, E., Morishita, K., Miyachi, M., Sasaki, S., and Ishimi, Y. Effect of low dose vitamin K2 (MK-4) supplementation on bio-indices in postmenopausal Japanese women. J.Nutr.Sci.Vitaminol.(Tokyo) 2009;55:15-21. View abstract .
Summaries for patients. Is vitamin K helpful for people who have taken too much warfarin? Ann.Intern.Med. 3-3-2009;150:I25. View abstract .
Kim, H. S., Park, J. W., Jang, J. S., Kim, H. J., Shin, W. G., Kim, K. H., Lee, J. H., Kim, H. Y., and Jang, M. K. Prognostic values of alpha-fetoprotein and protein induced by vitamin K absence or antagonist-II in hepatitis B virus-related hepatocellular carcinoma: a prospective study. J.Clin.Gastroenterol. 2009;43:482-488. View abstract .
Inoue, T., Fujita, T., Kishimoto, H., Makino, T., Nakamura, T., Nakamura, T., Sato, T., and Yamazaki, K. Randomized controlled study on the prevention of osteoporotic fractures (OF study): a phase IV clinical study of 15-mg menatetrenone capsules. J.Bone Miner.Metab 2009;27:66-75. View abstract .
Nimptsch, K., Nieters, A., Hailer, S., Wolfram, G., and Linseisen, J. The association between dietary vitamin K intake and serum undercarboxylated osteocalcin is modulated by vitamin K epoxide reductase genotype. Br.J.Nutr. 2009;101:1812-1820. View abstract .
Greer, F. R., Marshall, S., Cherry, J., and Suttie, J. W. Vitamin K status of lactating mothers, human milk, and breast-feeding infants. Pediatrics 1991;88:751-756. View abstract .
Cheung, A. M., Tile, L., Lee, Y., Tomlinson, G., Hawker, G., Scher, J., Hu, H., Vieth, R., Thompson, L., Jamal, S., and Josse, R. Vitamin K supplementation in postmenopausal women with osteopenia (ECKO trial): a randomized controlled trial. PLoS.Med. 10-14-2008;5:e196. View abstract .
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Kristensen, M., Kudsk, J., and Bugel, S. Six weeks phylloquinone supplementation produces undesirable effects on blood lipids with no changes in inflammatory and fibrinolytic markers in postmenopausal women. Eur.J.Nutr. 2008;47:375-379. View abstract .
Hathaway, W. E., Isarangkura, P. B., Mahasandana, C., Jacobson, L., Pintadit, P., Pung-Amritt, P., and Green, G. M. Comparison of oral and parenteral vitamin K prophylaxis for prevention of late hemorrhagic disease of the newborn. J.Pediatr. 1991;119:461-464. View abstract .
Iwamoto, J., Takeda, T., and Sato, Y. Role of vitamin K2 in the treatment of postmenopausal osteoporosis. Curr.Drug Saf 2006;1:87-97. View abstract .
Marti-Carvajal, A. J., Cortes-Jofre, M., and Marti-Pena, A. J. Vitamin K for upper gastrointestinal bleeding in patients with liver diseases. Cochrane.Database.Syst.Rev. 2008;:CD004792. View abstract .
Yoshida, M., Booth, S. L., Meigs, J. B., Saltzman, E., and Jacques, P. F. Phylloquinone intake, insulin sensitivity, and glycemic status in men and women. Am.J.Clin.Nutr. 2008;88:210-215. View abstract .
Drury, D., Grey, V. L., Ferland, G., Gundberg, C., and Lands, L. C. Efficacy of high dose phylloquinone in correcting vitamin K deficiency in cystic fibrosis. J.Cyst.Fibros. 2008;7:457-459. View abstract .
Macdonald, H. M., McGuigan, F. E., Lanham-New, S. A., Fraser, W. D., Ralston, S. H., and Reid, D. M. Vitamin K1 intake is associated with higher bone mineral density and reduced bone resorption in early postmenopausal Scottish women: no evidence of gene-nutrient interaction with apolipoprotein E polymorphisms. Am.J.Clin.Nutr. 2008;87:1513-1520. View abstract .
Cranenburg, E. C., Vermeer, C., Koos, R., Boumans, M. L., Hackeng, T. M., Bouwman, F. G., Kwaijtaal, M., Brandenburg, V. M., Ketteler, M., and Schurgers, L. J. The circulating inactive form of matrix Gla Protein (ucMGP) as a biomarker for cardiovascular calcification. J.Vasc.Res. 2008;45:427-436. View abstract .
Nimptsch, K., Rohrmann, S., and Linseisen, J. Dietary intake of vitamin K and risk of prostate cancer in the Heidelberg cohort of the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC-Heidelberg). Am.J.Clin.Nutr. 2008;87:985-992. View abstract .
Bugel, S. Vitamin K and bone health in adult humans. Vitam.Horm. 2008;78:393-416. View abstract .
Merli, G. J. and Fink, J. Vitamin K and thrombosis. Vitam.Horm. 2008;78:265-279. View abstract .
Hotta, N., Ayada, M., Sato, K., Ishikawa, T., Okumura, A., Matsumoto, E., Ohashi, T., and Kakumu, S. Effect of vitamin K2 on the recurrence in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma. Hepatogastroenterology 2007;54:2073-2077. View abstract .
Erkkila, A. T. and Booth, S. L. Vitamin K intake and atherosclerosis. Curr.Opin.Lipidol. 2008;19:39-42. View abstract .
Urquhart, D. S., Fitzpatrick, M., Cope, J., and Jaffe, A. Vitamin K prescribing patterns and bone health surveillance in UK children with cystic fibrosis. J.Hum.Nutr.Diet. 2007;20:605-610. View abstract .
Hosoi, T. [Treatment of primary osteoporosis with vitamin K2]. Clin.Calcium 2007;17:1727-1730. View abstract .
Hara, K. and Akiyama, Y. [Vitamin K and bone quality]. Clin.Calcium 2007;17:1678-1684. View abstract .
Jones, K. S., Bluck, L. J., Wang, L. Y., and Coward, W. A. A stable isotope method for the simultaneous measurement of vitamin K1 (phylloquinone) kinetics and absorption. Eur.J.Clin.Nutr. 2008;62:1273-1281. View abstract .
McNinch, A., Busfield, A., and Tripp, J. Vitamin K deficiency bleeding in Great Britain and Ireland: British Paediatric Surveillance Unit Surveys, 1993 94 and 2001-02. Arch.Dis.Child 2007;92:759-766. View abstract .
Bugel, S., Sorensen, A. D., Hels, O., Kristensen, M., Vermeer, C., Jakobsen, J., Flynn, A., Molgaard, C., and Cashman, K. D. Effect of phylloquinone supplementation on biochemical markers of vitamin K status and bone turnover in postmenopausal women. Br.J.Nutr. 2007;97:373-380. View abstract .
Knapen, M. H., Schurgers, L. J., and Vermeer, C. Vitamin K2 supplementation improves hip bone geometry and bone strength indices in postmenopausal women. Osteoporos.Int. 2007;18:963-972. View abstract .
Thane, C. W., Bolton-Smith, C., and Coward, W. A. Comparative dietary intake and sources of phylloquinone (vitamin K1) among British adults in 1986-7 and 2000-1. Br.J.Nutr. 2006;96:1105-1115. View abstract .
Maas, A. H., van der Schouw, Y. T., Beijerinck, D., Deurenberg, J. J., Mali, W. P., Grobbee, D. E., and van der Graaf, Y. Vitamin K intake and calcifications in breast arteries. Maturitas 3-20-2007;56:273-279. View abstract .
Dentali, F., Ageno, W., and Crowther, M. Treatment of coumarin-associated coagulopathy: a systematic review and proposed treatment algorithms. J.Thromb.Haemost. 2006;4:1853-1863. View abstract .
Liu, J., Wang, Q., Zhao, J. H., Chen, Y. H., and Qin, G. L. The combined antenatal corticosteroids and vitamin K therapy for preventing periventricular-intraventricular hemorrhage in premature newborns less than 35 weeks gestation. J.Trop.Pediatr. 2006;52:355-359. View abstract .
Collins, A., Cashman, K. D., and Kiely, M. Phylloquinone (vitamin K1) intakes and serum undercarboxylated osteocalcin levels in Irish postmenopausal women. Br.J.Nutr. 2006;95:982-988. View abstract .
Liu, J., Wang, Q., Gao, F., He, J. W., and Zhao, J. H. Maternal antenatal administration of vitamin K1 results in increasing the activities of vitamin K-dependent coagulation factors in umbilical blood and in decreasing the incidence rate of periventricular-intraventricular hemorrhage in premature infants. J.Perinat.Med. 2006;34:173-176. View abstract .
Dezee, K. J., Shimeall, W. T., Douglas, K. M., Shumway, N. M., and O'malley, P. G. Treatment of excessive anticoagulation with phytonadione (vitamin K): a meta-analysis. Arch.Intern.Med. 2-27-2006;166:391-397. View abstract .
Tsugawa, N., Shiraki, M., Suhara, Y., Kamao, M., Tanaka, K., and Okano, T. Vitamin K status of healthy Japanese women: age-related vitamin K requirement for gamma-carboxylation of osteocalcin. Am.J.Clin.Nutr. 2006;83:380-386. View abstract .
Thijssen, H. H., Vervoort, L. M., Schurgers, L. J., and Shearer, M. J. Menadione is a metabolite of oral vitamin K. Br.J.Nutr. 2006;95:260-266. View abstract .
Yan, L., Zhou, B., Nigdikar, S., Wang, X., Bennett, J., and Prentice, A. Effect of apolipoprotein E genotype on vitamin K status in healthy older adults from China and the UK. Br.J.Nutr. 2005;94:956-961. View abstract .
Goldstein, J. N., Thomas, S. H., Frontiero, V., Joseph, A., Engel, C., Snider, R., Smith, E. E., Greenberg, S. M., and Rosand, J. Timing of fresh frozen plasma administration and rapid correction of coagulopathy in warfarin-related intracerebral hemorrhage. Stroke 2006;37:151-155. View abstract .
Shetty, H. G., Backhouse, G., Bentley, D. P., and Routledge, P. A. Effective reversal of warfarin-induced excessive anticoagulation with low dose vitamin K1. Thromb.Haemost. 1-23-1992;67:13-15. View abstract .
Ageno, W., Garcia, D., Silingardi, M., Galli, M., and Crowther, M. A randomized trial comparing 1 mg of oral vitamin K with no treatment in the management of warfarin-associated coagulopathy in patients with mechanical heart valves. J.Am.Coll.Cardiol. 8-16-2005;46:732-733. View abstract .
Adams, J. and Pepping, J. Vitamin K in the treatment and prevention of osteoporosis and arterial calcification. Am.J.Health Syst.Pharm. 8-1-2005;62:1574-1581. View abstract .
Schurgers, L. J., Teunissen, K. J., Knapen, M. H., Kwaijtaal, M., van, Diest R., Appels, A., Reutelingsperger, C. P., Cleutjens, J. P., and Vermeer, C. Novel conformation-specific antibodies against matrix gamma-carboxyglutamic acid (Gla) protein: undercarboxylated matrix Gla protein as marker for vascular calcification. Arterioscler.Thromb.Vasc.Biol. 2005;25:1629-1633. View abstract .
Prynne, C. J., Thane, C. W., Prentice, A., and Wadsworth, M. E. Intake and sources of phylloquinone (vitamin K) in 4-year-old British children: comparison between 1950 and the 1990s. Public Health Nutr. 2005;8:171-180. View abstract .
Conway, S. P., Wolfe, S. P., Brownlee, K. G., White, H., Oldroyd, B., Truscott, J. G., Harvey, J. M., and Shearer, M. J. Vitamin K status among children with cystic fibrosis and its relationship to bone mineral density and bone turnover. Pediatrics 2005;115:1325-1331. View abstract .
Villines, T. C., Hatzigeorgiou, C., Feuerstein, I. M., O'malley, P. G., and Taylor, A. J. Vitamin K1 intake and coronary calcification. Coron.Artery Dis. 2005;16:199-203. View abstract .
Yasaka, M., Sakata, T., Naritomi, H., and Minematsu, K. Optimal dose of prothrombin complex concentrate for acute reversal of oral anticoagulation. Thromb.Res. 2005;115:455-459. View abstract .
Sato, Y., Honda, Y., Hayashida, N., Iwamoto, J., Kanoko, T., and Satoh, K. Vitamin K deficiency and osteopenia in elderly women with Alzheimer's disease. Arch.Phys.Med.Rehabil. 2005;86:576-581. View abstract .
Sato, Y., Kanoko, T., Satoh, K., and Iwamoto, J. Menatetrenone and vitamin D2 with calcium supplements prevent nonvertebral fracture in elderly women with Alzheimer's disease. Bone 2005;36:61-68. View abstract .
Sasaki, N., Kusano, E., Takahashi, H., Ando, Y., Yano, K., Tsuda, E., and Asano, Y. Vitamin K2 inhibits glucocorticoid-induced bone loss partly by preventing the reduction of osteoprotegerin (OPG). J.Bone Miner.Metab 2005;23:41-47. View abstract .
Kalkwarf, H. J., Khoury, J. C., Bean, J., and Elliot, J. G. Vitamin K, bone turnover, and bone mass in girls. Am.J.Clin.Nutr. 2004;80:1075-1080. View abstract .
Braam, L., McKeown, N., Jacques, P., Lichtenstein, A., Vermeer, C., Wilson, P., and Booth, S. Dietary phylloquinone intake as a potential marker for a heart-healthy dietary pattern in the Framingham Offspring cohort. J.Am.Diet.Assoc. 2004;104:1410-1414. View abstract .
Habu, D., Shiomi, S., Tamori, A., Takeda, T., Tanaka, T., Kubo, S., and Nishiguchi, S. Role of vitamin K2 in the development of hepatocellular carcinoma in women with viral cirrhosis of the liver. JAMA 7-21-2004;292:358-361. View abstract .
Dentali, F. and Ageno, W. Management of coumarin-associated coagulopathy in the non-bleeding patient: a systematic review. Haematologica 2004;89:857-862. View abstract .
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Iwamoto I, Kosha S, Noguchi S, et al. A longitudinal study of the effect of vitamin K2 on bone mineral density in postmenopausal women a comparative study with vitamin D3 and estrogen-progestin therapy. Maturitas 1999;31:161-4. View abstract .
Vermeer C, Schurgers LJ. A comprehensive review of vitamin K and vitamin K antagonists. Hematol Oncol Clin North Am 2000;14:339-53. View abstract .
Vermeer C, Gijsbers BL, Craciun AM, et al. Effects of vitamin K on bone mass and bone metabolism. J Nutr 1996;126:1187S-91S. View abstract .
Olson RE. Osteoporosis and vitamin K intake. Am J Clin Nutr 2000;71:1031-2. View abstract .
Shiraki M, Shiraki Y, Aoki C, Miura M. Vitamin K2 (menatetrenone) effectively prevents fractures and sustains lumbar bone mineral density in osteoporosis. J Bone Miner Res 2000;15:515-21. View abstract .
Jie KG, Bots ML, Vermeer C, et al. Vitamin K status and bone mass in women with and without aortic atherosclerosis: a population-based study. Calcif Tissue Int 1996;59:352-6. View abstract .
Caraballo PJ, Heit JA, Atkinson EJ, et al. Long-term use of oral anticoagulants and the risk of fracture. Arch Intern Med 1999;159:1750-6. View abstract .
Matsunaga S, Ito H, Sakou T. The effect of vitamin K and D supplementation on ovariectomy-induced bone loss. Calcif Tissue Int 1999;65:285-9. View abstract .
Ellenhorn MJ, et al. Ellenhorn's Medical Toxicology: Diagnoses and Treatment of Human Poisoning. 2nd ed. Baltimore, MD: Williams & Wilkins, 1997.
McEvoy GK, ed. AHFS Drug Information. Bethesda, MD: American Society of Health-System Pharmacists, 1998.
Last reviewed - 02/16/2015
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| Vitamin K |
What was the name of the queen of Richard III? | Vitamin K Deficiency: Benefits, Side Effects, & Sources of Vitamin K | Natural Remedies.org
Vitamins
Vitamin K
The ‘K’ in Vitamin K is derived from the German term, koagulation. It is a fat-soluble enzyme that plays an important role in blood coagulation, or clotting. There are five forms of Vitamin K. Vitamin K1 and K2 are the natural forms of Vitamin K. There are also three synthetic forms of Vitamin K, which are Vitamin K3, K4, and K5.
As mentioned above, Vitamin K1 must be present in the body in order for blood to coagulate, or clot. And obviously, if blood is unable to clot, a small cut or injury can cause a person to bleed out. So it is clear that Vitamin K1 is an extremely important enzyme for the body to carry.
Vitamin K2, also known as phylloquinone or phytomenadione, is normally produced by the large intestine. Unless the intestines are extremely damaged, a deficiency of Vitamin K1 in the human body is extremely rare. Occasionally, damaged intestines are unable to absorb Vitamin K2, although it is present in the body. However, under the use of certain broad spectrum antibiotics, the presence of Vitamin K2 can be massively decreased due to the effects of the natural flora contained in the antibiotic in the body.
The three synthetic forms of Vitamin K, vitamins K3, K4 and K5, are used in many things, including the production of pet food.
Functions of Vitamin K
Vitamin K is an essential amino acid that plays an important role in blood clotting. It is involved in the formulation of certain proteins, which are found in the liver, that are known as coagulation factors. These coagulation factors, when circulating in our blood, help to form clots and reduce the risk of hemorrhaging. Therefore, it is clear that a deficiency of Vitamin K in the body causes bleeding disorders, such as hemorrhaging.
Hemorrhaging is defined as uncontrolled bleeding. The purpose of blood coagulation is to form a scab on a wound to prevent the veins from continuing to bleed, causing severe blood loss and even death. Without Vitamin K, the smallest cut can cause death. A deficiency of Vitamin K may also cause other hemorrhaging without injury, such as nose bleeds, blood in the urine, unusually heavy menstrual bleeding, among other serious health problems. Furthermore, a Vitamin K deficiency in infants can cause severe hemorrhaging in the skull, often resulting in death.
While a Vitamin K defecate is incredibly uncommon in healthy adults, because the small intestines contain bacteria that synthesize, or create, the vitamin. However, there are certain medicinal antagonists to Vitamin K, which prevent the intestines from synthesizing it as normal. Some of these medicinal antagonists include broad spectrum antibiotics.
Vitamin K In Food
While Vitamin K is synthesized by certain bacterium that are present in the stomach and intestines, it is still necessary for Vitamin K to be obtained through food intake. It is probable that about half of our necessary Vitamin K must be obtained through food.
Infants require 10-20 micrograms of Vitamin K daily, which is present in both breast milk and infant formula. Children and adolescents require 15-100 micrograms of Vitamin K daily, which is synthesized in the body but also available through an intake of certain foods. Healthy adults require 70-140 micrograms of Vitamin K daily. Another way of expressing Vitamin K requirements is to say that 2 micrograms per kilogram of body weight is necessary daily. However, because half of this is produced by the intestines, a healthy person must intake 1 microgram of Vitamin K per kilogram of body weight. This can be achieved through the intake of certain foods.
Vitamin K is present in certain foods. It is most prevalent in foods such as cauliflower, soy beans, cottonseed, canola oil, olives, spinach, brussel sprouts, broccoli, potatoes, meat such as beef liver, green leafy vegetables such as collard greens or lettuce, and green tea. If you are told that you have a Vitamin K deficiency and are looking for a natural method to increase your supply, you can consume these foods, which contain high amounts of the vitamin. Vitamin K is also present in smaller amounts in many other foods, including but not limited to apples, asparagus, green beans, mincemeat, carrots, cow’s milk, oranges, peas, potatoes, strawberries, wheat bran, and wheat germ. Vitamin K is most prevalent in spinach, at 240 micrograms per 100 grams of food weight.
However, Vitamin K is also available in supplement form. Newborns are often Vitamin K deficit, which as was stated above, is highly dangerous due to a heightened possibility of cranial hemorrhaging, or hemorrhaging within the skull. Vitamin K is available in a supplement, which comes either in pill form or the form of a shot. Taking a supplement shot is most common for infants. The lack of Vitamin K in an infant is very common, because infants do not have the bacteria that are necessary to produce Vitamin K in the intestines upon birth. The decrease of Vitamin K in an infant is even more common when the mother takes anti-seizure medication often prescribed for epilepsy.
Symptoms Linked to Deficiency of Vitamin K
Many of the symptoms of certain common chronic disorders, especially certain connective tissue disorders, are exactly identical to the symptoms of Vitamin K deficiency. This could be a coincidence, but it is thought that Vitamin K deficiency is linked to the presence of these disorders.
Symptoms of Vitamin K deficiency include heavy menstrual bleeding, gastrointestinal bleeding, hematuria (the presence of blood in the urine), nosebleeds, eye hemorrhages, anemia, gum bleeding, prolonged clotting times, hematomas, hemorrhaging, ovarian hemorrhaging, easy bruising, pupura, osteopenia, osteoporosis, fractures, hypercalciuria, liver cancer, and calcification of soft tissue, especially of heart valves.
If a woman is pregnant and has a Vitamin K deficiency, she may take Vitamin K supplements. However, some birth defects that are linked directly Vitamin K deficiencies are underdevelopment of the nose, mouth, and mid-face, shortened fingers, cupped ears, and flat nasal bridges.
Futhermore, an epileptic woman, or a woman who is prone to seizures, who is also pregnant, will most likely be taking anticonvulsant drugs in order to prevent the seizures. These drugs block Vitamin K absorption. Because of their tendency to block Vitamin K absorption, anticonvulsants have been linked to the following birth defects, which include epicanthal folds, flat nasal bridge, short noses, a variety of craniofacial abnormalities, neural tube defects, mental retardation, learning disabilities, long, thin overlapping fingers, various cardiac abnormalities, and growth deficiencies.
This is a small list of birth defects that are contributed to a use of anticonvulsants. These birth defects are caused because many of these medications cause a failure of Vitamin K absorption. Because of this, it is thought that these birth defects are directly related to a lack of Vitamin K in the body, and could be avoided by giving the mother a Vitamin K supplement while she is pregnant.
Interactions
While not much is known about Vitamin K, it is thought that it plays an important role in bone development by interacting with Vitamin D. While this has not been researched extensively, it leads to the belief that Vitamin K supplements may lead to a decreased risk of developing age-related osteoporosis. Osteoporosis is a condition which causes decay of the bones, causing bone loss and porous-ness of the skeleton. This is a dangerous condition because it leads to easily breaking and fracturing bones, particularly as a person ages. While it is thought that Vitamin K can slow down or even reverse the effects of osteoporosis, this has not been researched enough to determine whether or not the effects of Vitamin K supplementation are truly effective.
Vitamin K also interacts with other vitamins in a way that may be harmful to a patient. For example, large doses of Vitamin A and Vitamin E have been proven to affect the efficiency of Vitamin K in the body. While Vitamin A has been shown to prevent proper absorption of Vitamin K, Vitamin E has been shown to inhibit the production of Vitamin K in the intestines. Some medicines may also inhibit the production and absorption of Vitamin K in the body, particularly in pregnant women.
The use of these medications while pregnant can cause the fetus to be unable to produce or absorb Vitamin K properly en utero, which can cause a Vitamin K deficiency upon birth of the infant. A lack of Vitamin K in an infant is also contributed to the inability of an infant to absorb fat, and, is also present in people who cannot absorb fat normally. Those with liver disease may also require supplemental Vitamin K because the proteins in the liver are inactive and unable to produce Vitamin K as is usual with a healthy adult.
The Importance of Vitamin K
Vitamin K is commonly referred to as the “forgotten vitamin”. It is not often paid attention to, and little is known about it, scientifically. What we do know, however, is that Vitamin K is vitally important to have. Vitamin K is the enzyme that causes blood clotting, so without it being present in our bodies, it is easy for us to become injured and die from injuries that would not normally be life threatening. This is because without clotting, you will hemorrhage.
Clearly, it is important for you to retain high levels of Vitamin K in order to be healthy. About half of the necessary Vitamin K can be obtained through the foods that we eat, while the rest is synthesized by the bacteria in our intestines.
Sources
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What was the name of the queen of King John 1199- 1216? | King John | Britroyals
Britroyals
Born: December 24, 1166 at Beaumont Palace : Oxford
Parents: Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine
Relation to Elizabeth II: 21st great-grandfather
House of: Angevin
Ascended to the throne: April 6, 1199 aged 32 years
Crowned: May 27, 1199 at Westminster Abbey
Married: 1) Isabella of Gloucester, (annulled 1199), (2) Isabella, Daughter of Count of Angouleme
Children: Two sons including Henry III, three daughters and several illegitimate children
Died: October 18, 1216 at Newark Castle, aged 49 years, 9 months, and 24 days
Buried at: Worcester
Reigned for: 17 years, 6 months, and 13 days
Succeeded by: his son Henry III
John was nicknamed Lackland, probably because, as the youngest of Henry II's five sons, it was difficult to find a portion of his father's French possessions for him to inherit. He was acting king from 1189 during his brother Richard the Lion-Heart's absence on the Third Crusade. The legend of Robin Hood dates from this time in which John is portrayed as Bad King John. He was involved in intrigues against his absent brother, but became king in 1199 when Richard was killed in battle in France.
Most of his reign was dominated by war with France. Following the peace treaty of Le Goulet there was a brief peace, but fighting resumed again in 1202. John had lost Normandy and almost all the other English possessions in France to Philip II of France by 1204. He spent the next decade trying to regain these without success and was finally defeated by Philip Augustus at the Battle of Bouvines in 1214. He was also in conflict with the Church. In 1205 he disputed the pope's choice of Stephen Langton as archbishop of Canterbury, and Pope Innocent III placed England under an interdict, suspending all religious services, including baptisms, marriages, and burials. John retaliated by seizing church revenues, and in 1209 was excommunicated. Eventually, John submitted, accepting the papal nominee, and agreed to hold the kingdom as a fief of the papacy; an annual monetary tribute was paid to the popes for the next 150 years by successive English monarchs.
His repressive policies and ruthless taxation to fund the warin France brought him into conflict with his barons which became known as the Barons War. In 1215 rebel baron leaders marched on London where they were welcomed by an increasing band of defectors from John�s royalist supporters. Their demands were drawn up in a document which became the known as the Magna Carta. John sort peace and met them at Runnymede where on 15th June 1215 he agreed to their demands and sealed the Magna Carta. It was a remarkable document which set limits on the powers of the king, laid out the feudal obligations of the barons, confirmed the liberties of the Church, and granted rights to all freemen of the realm and their heirs for ever. It was the first written constitution.
Read and view the Magna Carta .
His concessions did not buy peace for long and the Barons War continued. The barons sought French aid and Prince Louis of France landed in England supported by attacks from the North by Alexander II of Scotland. John fled and according to legend lost most of his baggage and the crown jewels when crossing the tidal estuaries of the Wash. He became ill with dysentery and died at Newark Castle in October 1216.
Quotes:
No free man shall be taken or imprisioned .. except by lawful judgement of his peers ..' - Magna Carta, Clause 39, 1215
Timeline for King John
| Isabel |
The Treaty of Utrecht ended which war? | John "Lackland" Plantagenet, King of England (1166 - 1216) - Genealogy
John "Lackland" Plantagenet, King of England
Also Known As:
"Johan sanz Terre", "Lackland", "Softsword", "Jean sans Terre", "Sword of Lat", "Soft-sword"
Birthdate:
in Newark Castle, Newark, Nottinghamshire, England
Place of Burial:
Plot: The Quire, Worcester Cathedral, Worcester, Worcestershire, England
Immediate Family:
King of England, KING OF ENGLAND
Managed by:
Dec 31 1166 - Beaumont Palace, Oxford, Oxfordshire, England
Death:
Oct 25 1216 - Newark Castle, Newark, Nottinghamshire, England
Spouses:
Hawise Plantagenet (born de Tracy), Suzanne de Warenne
Daughter:
Dec 31 1166 - Kings Manor House, Oxford, England
Death:
Oct 26 1216 - Newark Castle, Newark-on-Trent, Nottinghamshire, England
Parents:
Henry II Curtmantle King of England Plantagenet d'Anjou, Eleanor De Poitier Duchess Aquitaine Plantagenet d'Anjou (born Consort England)
Wife:
Dec 31 1166 - Kings Manor House, Oxford, Oxfordshire, England
Death:
Henry II Plantagenet King Of England, Eleanor Plantagenet (born Of Poitou)
Wife:
Dec 31 1166 - Kings Manor Hous Oxford Oxfodshire England
Death:
Oct 26 1216 - Newark Nottinghamshire England
Wife:
Isabella Of Plantagenet (born Angouleme)
Son:
Queen of England Isabella de Taillefer d'Angouleme, Isabella Plantagenet (born de Taillefer)
Children:
Dec 31 1166 - Beaumont, Oxfordshire, England
Death:
Oct 26 1216 - England, Norfolk
Wife:
? Plantagenet
Children:
...t, Robert Plantagenet, Joane of England Plantagenet Queen of Scotland, Isabella Plantagenet, Eleanor Plantagenet, Earl Guillaume of Pembroke
Dec 24 1166 - Beaumont Palace, Oxford, England
Death:
Oct 19 1216 - Newark, Nottinghamshire, England Buried: Worcester Cathedral
Parents:
Isabella FitzRobert, Lady Agatha Clementina, Ferrers Pinel, Clementia Pinel
Children:
...hn, Isabella Hohenstaufen, Eleanor Montfort, Richard of England, Henry of England, Joan of Scotland, William Plantagenet, Johanna Colepepper
Dec 31 1166 - Oxford, Oxford, England
Death:
Dec 31 1166 - Kings Manorhouse, Oxford, Oxfordshire, England
Death:
Oct 26 1216 - Newark, Nottinghamshire, England
Wife:
Dec 31 1166 - Beaumont Palace, Oxford, England
Death:
Oct 26 1216 - Newark Castle, Notts, England
Son:
About John Lackland, King of England
alternate birth location details
Kings Manor House, Oxford, Oxfordshire, England
several sources also give his birth year as 1167
other possible death date ; 19 October 1216
================================================
a short summary from tudorplace website (since it does give the most "wide" summary I could find);
JOHN I "Lackland" PLANTAGENET (King of England)
Born: 24 Dec 1166, Beaumont Palace, Oxford, England
Acceded: 27 May 1199, Westminster Abbey, London, England
Died: 18/9 Oct 1216, Newark Castle, Newark, Nottinghamshire
Buried: Worcester Cathedral
Notes: Signed the Magna Carta at Runnymede, 1215. Reigned 1199-1216. His reign saw renewal of war with Phillip II Augustus of France to whom he has lost several continental possesions including Normandy by 1205. He came into conflict with his Barons and was forced to Sign the Magna Carta. His later repudiation of the charter led to the first barons war 1215-17 during which John died. Burke says he was born in 1160. King of Ireland 1177, Count of Mortain 1189, Earl of Gloucester. It is known that Agatha Ferrers was a mistress of John, but it is only supposition that she is the mother of Joan.
Father: HENRY II PLANTAGENET (King of England)
Mother: Eleanor of Aquitaine
Married 1: Isabella FITZRICHARD (C. Gloucester) 29 Aug 1189, Marlborough Castle, Wiltshire Divorce 1199
Married 2: Isabella of Angoulême (b. 1189 - d. 31 May 1246) (dau. of Aymer Taillefer, Count of Angoulême, and Alice De Courtenay) 24 Jun/Aug 1200, Bordeaux
Children:
1. HENRY III PLANTAGENET (King of England)
2. Richard PLANTAGENET (1º E. Cornwall)
3. Joan PLANTAGENET (Queen of Scotland)
4. Isabella PLANTAGENET (Empress of Germany)
5. Eleanor PLANTAGENET (C. Pembroke / C. Leicester)
Associated with: Agatha De FERRERS
Children:
Associated with: Clemence DAUNTSEY (wife of Henry Pinel)
Associated with: Suzanne PLANTAGENET
7. Richard FITZJOHN (B. Chilham)
Associated with: Hawise De TRACY
Children:
9. Osbert GIFFORD (d. AFT 1216)
10. Geoffrey FITZROY
11. John FITZROY of Courcy (Knight or Clerk of Lincoln) (d. 1242)
12. Eudo FITZROY (d. ABT 1242)
13. Ivo FITZROY
15. Richard FITZROY (Constable Wallingford Castle)
16. Matilda PLANTAGENET (Abbess of Barking)
17. Blanche (Isabella) PLANTAGENET
================================================
Wikipedia Links:
====================================================================
Citations / Sources:
[S4] C.F.J. Hankinson, editor, DeBretts Peerage, Baronetage, Knightage and Companionage, 147th year (London, U.K.: Odhams Press, 1949), page 20 . Hereinafter cited as DeBretts Peerage, 1949.
[S7] #44 Histoire de la maison royale de France anciens barons du royaume: et des grands officiers de la couronne (1726, reprint 1967-1968), Saint-Marie, Anselme de, (3rd edition. 9 volumes. 1726. Reprint Paris: Editions du Palais Royal, 1967-1968), FHL book 944 D5a; FHL microfilms 532,231-532,239., vol. 1 p. 474, vol. 6 p. 77.
[S8] Les Capétiens, 987-1328 (2000), Van Kerrebrouck, Patrick, (Villeneuve-d'Ascq [France]: P. Van Kerrebrouck, 2000), FHL book 929.244 C171v., p. 453.
[S11] Alison Weir, Britain's Royal Families: The Complete Genealogy (London, U.K.: The Bodley Head, 1999), pages 65-66, 71. Hereinafter cited as Britain's Royal Families.
[S13] #379 [7th edition, 1992] Ancestral Roots of Certain American Colonists, Who Came to America Before 1700: the Lineage of Alfred the Great, Charlemagne, Malcolm of Scotland, Robert the Strong, and Some of Their Descendants (7th edition, 1992), Weis, Frederick Lewis, (7th edition. Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, c1992), FHL book 974 D2w 1992., p. 3 line 1:26.
[S17] Plantagenet Ancestry, 2011 ed., Richardson, Douglas, (Kimball G. Everingham, editor, 2nd edition, 2011.), vol. 1 p. 23, 25.
[S18] Matthew H.C.G., editor, Dictionary of National Biography on CD-ROM (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 1995). Hereinafter cited as Dictionary of National Biography.
[S22] #374 The Lineage and Ancestry of H. R. H. Prince Charles, Prince of Wales (1977), Paget, Gerald, (2 volumes. Baltimore: Geneal. Pub., 1977), FHL book Q 942 D22pg., vol. 1 p. 15, 17.
[S23] #849 Burke's Guide to the Royal Family (1973), (London: Burke's Peerage, c1973), FHl book 942 D22bgr., p. 195.
[S32] #150 [1879-1967] A Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Peerage and Baronetage, Together with Memoirs of the Privy Councillors and Knights (1879-1967), Burke, Sir John Bernard, (London: Harrison, 1879-1967), FHL book 942 D22bup., 1949 ed. preface p. ccliii.
[S37] #93 [Book version] The Dictionary of National Biography: from the Earliest Times to 1900 (1885-1900, reprint 1993), Stephen, Leslie, (22 volumes. 1885-1900. Reprint, Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1993), FHL book 920.042 D561n., vol. 29 p. 402-416.
[S39] Medieval, royalty, nobility family group sheets (filmed 1996), Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Family History Department. Medieval Family History Unit, (Manuscript. Salt Lake City, Utah : Filmed by the Genealogical Society of Utah, 1996), FHL film 1553977-1553985..
[S40] Handbook of British Chronology (1986), Fryde, E. B., editor, (Royal Historical Society guides and handbooks, no. 2. London: Offices of the Royal Historical Society, 1986), FHL book 942 C4rg no. 2., p. 37.
[S54] #21 The complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain, and the United Kingdom, extant, extinct, or dormant, Cokayne, George Edward, (Gloucester [England] : Alan Sutton Pub. Ltd., 1987), 942 D22cok., vol. 3 p. 29, 430.
[S69] #2251 The Royal Bastards of Medieval England (1984), Given-Wilson, Chris and Alice Curteis, (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984), FHL book 942 D5g., p. 127.
[S70] The Henry Project, Baldwin, Stewart, ( http://sbaldw.home.mindspring.com/hproject/henry.htm ), http://sbaldw.home.mindspring.com/hproject/prov .
[S71] Domesday Descendants, Keats-Rohan, K.S.B., (The Boydell Press, Woodbridge, 2002), 942 D3kk., p. 231.
[S81] #125 The Royal Daughters of England and Their Representatives (1910-1911), Lane, Henry Murray, (2 voulmes. London: Constable and Co., 1910-1911), FHL microfilm 88,003., p. 58, 158.
[S84] Plantagenet Ancestry: A Study in Colonial and Medieval Families, Richardson, Douglas, (Genealogical Publishing Company, Inc., 1001 N. Calvert St., Baltimore, Md. 21202, copyright 2004), p. xxviii.
[S96] Henry II (1973), Warren, Wilfred Lewis, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973), JWML book DA206 W37 1973., p. 137.
[S266] #379 [7th edition, 1992] Ancestral Roots of Certain American Colonists, Who Came to America Before 1700 (7th edition, 1992), Weis, Frederick Lewis, (7th edition. Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, c1992), FHL book 974 D2w 1992., p. 106 line 117:27, p. 134 line 153:28.
[S338] Plantagenet Ancestry: A Study in Colonial and Medieval Families (2004), Richardson, Douglas, edited by Kamball G. Everingham, (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, 2004), FHL book 942 D5rd., p. xxviii.
[S347] Plantagenet Ancestry of Seventeenth-century Colonists: the Descent from the Later Plantagenet Kings of England, Henry III, Edward I, Edward II, and Edward III, of Emigrants from England and Wales to the North American Colonies Before 1701 (2nd ed., 1999), Faris, David, (2nd edition. Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 1999), FHL book 973 D2fp., p. 279 PLANTAGENET:16.
John Lackland, King of England's Timeline
1166
| i don't know |
'White Lipped Banded', 'Heath' and 'White Ramshorn' are varieties of what? | Types of snails?
Types of snails?
what are some TYPES of snails there are??
(if you know a devout website all something like snails please name it) appreciation =]
Answers: Amber snail
Brown garden snail (Helix aspersa)
Edible snail
Great pond snail (Lymnea stagnalis)
Ramshorn snail
the one that crawls as slow as an old individual driving
escargots
There are billions of snail out there that haven't be discovered yet.
I can singular tell you a couple of them:
Apple Snail
Golden Apple Snail
and I focus some Ram'shorn Snail
i kept apple snails. they great. found this site for you. hope you enjoy it, thye get some lovely snails there.
I hold a snail section at the blog timetabled below. It certainly isn't comprehensive, but it can consent to you know what to search for contained by deciding what type of snails you have/want.
giant pond snail
DO NOT GET THE RAMSHORN SNAIL!
they are pest! I recemend the apple snail
| Snail |
The Persian word for bread is now used for any flat bread baked in a tandoor oven? | A systematic review of animal predation creating pierced shells: implications for the archaeological record of the Old World
"Furthermore, animal predation on mollusc populations is a widespread phenomenon (Quensen & Woodruff, 1997; Rosin et al., 2011). Such behaviours have been observed for many hole-boring predators, such as naticids, muricids, octopuses, crabs and birds (Grey, Lelievre & Boulding, 2005; Grey, 2005; Rosin et al., 2011; Li, Young & Zhan, 2011). Moreover, predators can be specific in where they attack molluscs because shell strength and location of internal organs can be important in prey selection (Hagadorn & Boyajian, 1997; Dodge & Scheel, 1999; Rosin et al., 2013). "
[Show abstract] [Hide abstract] ABSTRACT: Background: The shells of molluscs survive well in many sedimentary contexts and yield information about the diet of prehistoric humans. They also yield evidence of symbolic behaviours through their use as beads for body adornments. Researchers often analyse the location of perforations in shells to make judgements about their use as symbolic objects (e.g., beads), the assumption being that holes attributable to deliberate human behaviour are more likely to exhibit low variability in their anatomical locations, while holes attributable to natural processes yield more random perforations. However, there are non-anthropogenic factors that can cause perforations in shells and these may not be random. The aim of the study is compare the variation in holes in shells from archaeological sites from the Old World with the variation of holes in shells pierced by mollusc predators. Material and methods: Three hundred and sixteen scientific papers were retrieved from online databases by using keywords, (e.g., ‘shell beads’; ‘pierced shells’; ‘drilling predators’); 79 of these publications enabled us to conduct a systematic review to qualitatively assess the location of the holes in the shells described in the published articles. In turn, 54 publications were used to assess the location of the holes in the shells made by non-human predators. Results: Almost all archaeological sites described shells with holes in a variety of anatomical locations. High variation of hole-placement was found within the same species from the same site, as well as among sites. These results contrast with research on predatory molluscs, which tend to be more specific in where they attacked their prey. Gastropod and bivalve predators choose similar hole locations to humans. Discussion: Based on figures in the analysed articles, variation in hole-location on pierced shells from archaeological sites was similar to variation in the placement of holes created by non-human animals. Importantly, we found that some predators choose similar hole locations to humans. We discuss these findings and identify factors researchers might want to consider when interpreting shells recovered from archaeological contexts.
Full-text · Article · Jan 2017
On some land snails (Mollusca: Gastropoda) of Los Molles, central Chile
"Neither live nor complete shell specimens were found during this survey, although the great number of empty shells and fragments may indicate established communities of this species in the area under study. The damage to the shells, mostly in the first whorls, may also hint of predation by birds (Rosin, Olborska, Surmacki, & Tryjanowski, 2011 "
[Show abstract] [Hide abstract] ABSTRACT: Among the terrestrial invertebrates, the molluscan species of central and northern Chile have been scarcely studied and here, for the first time, a record of the diversity of land snail species of Los Molles (32°14' S, 71°31' W), in the Valparaíso region, central Chile is reported. Four species were found: Chiliborus rosaceus (King & Broderip, 1831); Lilloiconcha lopezi Araya & Aliaga, 2015; Plectostylus chilensis (Lesson, 1830), and Plectostylus reflexus (Pfeiffer, 1842); all of them are ground dwelling snails, endemic, occurring in small geographical ranges or in fragmented populations along northern and central Chile; L. lopezi is an endemic species to Los Molles. The geographic distribution records of P. chilensis and P. reflexus are also extended and illustrations of the species and distribution records are presented. The areas around Los Molles harbor a comparatively high diversity of plants and invertebrates, and they should be considered in future conservation efforts.
Full-text · Article · Oct 2016
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What in Greek mythology, was designed and built by Epeius? | Epeius | Greek mythology | Britannica.com
Greek mythology
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in Trojan horse
huge hollow wooden horse constructed by the Greeks to gain entrance into Troy during the Trojan War. The horse was built by Epeius, a master carpenter and pugilist. The Greeks, pretending to desert the war, sailed to the nearby island of Tenedos, leaving behind Sinon, who persuaded the Trojans that the horse was an offering to Athena (goddess of war) that would make Troy impregnable. Despite...
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Who Built the Trojan Horse?
Who Built the Trojan Horse?
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Trojan War FAQs > Trojan War Creator
I received the following question from email:
I was under the distinct impression that an artist named Epsuis was the mastermind behind the horse. It was his idea and he drew the horse. He and Odysseus then went on to build the Trojan Horse. Please reply, Libby
Answer: The name of the Greek in question is Epeus (or Epeius or Epeos), a skilled boxer (Iliad XXIII), who is credited with building the Trojan horse with the help of Athena, as is told in the Odyssey IV.265ff and Odyssey VIII.492ff.
Pliny the Elder (according to "The Trojan Horse: Timeo Danaos et Dona ferentis," by Julian Ward Jones, Jr. The Classical Journal, Vol. 65, No. 6. March 1970, pp. 241-247.) says the horse was invented by Epeus, which corresponds with what Libby wrote. However, in Vergil 's Aeneid Book II, Laocoon warns the Trojans against the treachery of Odysseus which he sees behind the horse-gift of the Greeks. Incidentally, it's here that Laocoon says: timeo Danaos et dona ferentis ' Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.
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In the Epitome of Apollodorus V.14 , credit is given Odysseus for conceiving the idea and Epeus for building:
By the advice of Ulysses, Epeus fashions the Wooden Horse, in which the leaders ensconce themselves.
There are other opinions on who devised the idea of the horse (with Athena's help) and what the horse really was, but whether Odysseus had the inspiration for the horse and/or figured out how to get the Trojans to take it into the city, Odysseus, tamer of the Trojans, is credited with using the horse to trick the horse-loving Trojans.
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Who am I, 1901-1994: I was an American scientist who won Nobel Prizes for Chemistry and late Peace? | Dr Linus Pauling | Who Is Linus Pauling | DK Find Out
Linus Pauling
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Linus Pauling (1901–1994) was an American scientist and peace activist who developed important theories about how molecules connect to each other. He studied the forces holding atoms together, and calculated the exact size and shape of complex organic molecules. For this work he was awarded the 1954 Nobel Prize for Chemistry. In the late 1940s, Pauling was outspoken on the dangers of nuclear weapons and he was awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize for Peace for his efforts to stop the testing of nuclear bombs.
Pauling is the only person to have won two Nobel Prizes by himself.
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Linus Pauling Biography
When Linus Pauling died on Aug. 19, 1994, the world lost one of its greatest scientists and humanitarians and a much respected and beloved defender of civil liberties and health issues.
Because of his dynamic personality and his many accomplishments in widely diverse fields, it is hard to define Linus Pauling adequately. A remarkable man who insistently addressed certain crucial human problems while pursuing an amazing array of scientific interests, Dr. Pauling was almost as well known to the American public as he was to the world's scientific community. He is the only person ever to receive two unshared Nobel Prizes — for Chemistry (1954) and for Peace (1962).
In addition to the general recognition as one of the two greatest scientists of the 20th century, he was usually acknowledged by his colleagues as the most influential chemist since Lavoisier, the 18th-century founder of the modern science of chemistry. His introductory textbook General Chemistry , revised three times since its first printing in 1947 and translated into 13 languages, has been used by generations of undergraduates. After Pauling entered the field of chemistry as a professional in the mid-1920s, his work, grounded in physics, has affected the work of every chemist. He is also often considered the founding father of molecular biology, which has transformed the biological sciences and medicine and provided the base for biotechnology.
A multifaceted genius with a zest for communication, Linus Pauling for years was probably the most visible, vocal, and accessible American scientist. A black beret worn over a shock of curly white hair became his trademark, along with a pair of lively blue eyes that conveyed his intense interest in challenging topics. He was a master at explaining difficult, even abstruse, medical and scientific information in terms understandable to intelligent lay persons. He wrote numerous articles and books for the general public — on science, peace, and health. Popular books in which Linus Pauling detailed his nutritional recommendations are Vitamin C and the Common Cold , Cancer and Vitamin C (with Ewan Cameron, M.D.), and How to Live Longer and Feel Better. He was perennially sought as a speaker for conferences, political rallies, commencements, and media programs.
At the same time, Linus Pauling produced a multitude of scholarly scientific papers on an astounding variety of subjects in numerous research fields. Of the over 1,000 articles and books he published as sole or joint author, about two-thirds are on scientific subjects. His landmark book The Nature of the Chemical Bond is frequently cited as the most influential scientific book of the 20th century.
Linus Pauling was never reluctant to inspire or enter into controversy by expressing unorthodox scientific ideas, taking a strong moral position, or rousing the public to some worthy cause. He often provoked the scientific, medical, and political communities with his imaginative scientific hypotheses and strong social activism. He took professional and personal risks that most of his colleagues avoided. Steadfast and stubborn, yet rarely losing his cheerful equilibrium, he continued on his chosen and sometimes solitary path as a visionary of science and a prophet of humanity.
To give one example of his committed yet free-spirited nature: In 1962, during the Kennedy administration, the Paulings were invited to a special party at the White House honoring Nobel laureates. Dr. Pauling spent the day outside the gates carrying a placard that protested atmospheric nuclear testing. Then that evening, he and his wife sat down to an elegant dinner with the Kennedys. And when some lively music was played, the couple felt inspired to get up and dance — to the delight of onlookers.
Important discoveries
Over the seven decades of his scientific career, Pauling's research interests were amazingly wide-ranging and eclectic. He made important discoveries in many different fields of chemistry — physical, structural, analytical, inorganic, and organic chemistry, as well as biochemistry. He used theoretical physics, notably quantum theory and quantum mechanics, in his investigations of atomic and molecular structure and chemical bonding. He ventured into metallurgy and mineralogy through the study of atomic structures and bonding of metals and minerals and, with his colleagues, published the structures of hundreds of inorganic substances, including topaz and mica. In both theoretical and applied medicine he made important discoveries in genetic diseases, hematology, immunology, brain function and psychiatry, molecular evolution, nutritional therapy, diagnostic technology, statistical epidemiology, and biomedicine.
Much of Pauling's lifework combined the dedication and knowledge of the scientist with a deep commitment to humanitarianism that espoused his own operating ethical principle of the "minimization of suffering."
The early years
Linus Carl Pauling was born in Portland, Oregon, on February 28, 1901. He received his early education in Oregon, finishing in 1922 with a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from Oregon Agricultural College in Corvallis — now Oregon State University. Already he was drawn to the challenge of how and why particular atoms form bonds with each other to create molecules with unique structures.
For postgraduate study Pauling went to the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), which provided a stipend for research and teaching. In 1925 he received a Ph.D. in chemistry and mathematical physics. Awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, in 1926-27 he studied in Europe with physicists who were exploring the implications of quantum mechanics for atomic structure. In this revolutionary new field Pauling found a physical and mathematical framework for his own future theories regarding molecular structure and its correlation with chemical properties and function.
“Pauling's Rules”
After Linus Pauling joined the Caltech faculty in the autumn of 1927, he continued his intensive research on the formation of chemical bonds between atoms in molecules and crystals. To chart bond angles and distances characteristic of particular atoms in relation to other atoms, he used x-ray diffraction (learned earlier as a graduate student) — supplemented after 1930 by electron diffraction, an even newer technique that he brought to the U.S. from Europe. Quantum mechanics enabled Pauling to explain the bonding phenomenon theoretically in a far more satisfactory way than before. He began to formulate generalizations regarding the atomic arrangements in crystals with ionic bonding, in which negatively charged electrons, orbiting around the positively charged nucleus, are transferred from one atom to another. “Pauling's Rules” proved of great value in deciphering and interpreting ionic structures, particularly the complex ones of many silicate minerals.
Electronegativity, hybridization, and resonance
Pauling discovered that in many cases the type of bonding — whether ionic or covalent (formed by a sharing of electrons between bonded atoms) — could be determined from a substance's magnetic properties. He also established an electronegativity scale of the elements for use in bonds of an intermediate character (having both ionic and covalent bonding); the smaller the difference in electronegativity between two atoms, the more the bond between them approaches a purely covalent bond. To explain covalent bonding, Pauling introduced two major new concepts, based on quantum mechanics: bond-orbital hybridization and bond resonance.
Hybridization reorganizes an atom's electron cloud so that some electrons assume positions favorable for bonding. Since the carbon atom can form four bonds, tetrahedrally arranged — a central structural feature of organic chemistry — Pauling's explanation of it and of many related features of covalent bonding attracted attention from chemists around the world. Resonance is a rapid jumping of electrons back and forth between two or more possible positions in a bond network. Resonance makes a major contribution to the structural geometry and stability of many substances, such as benzene or graphite, for which a static, non-resonating bond system would be inadequate. Pauling later extended his bond resonance concept to a theory of bonding in metals and intermetalic compounds.
Pauling's innovative concepts, published beginning in the late 1920s, together with numerous examples of their application to particular chemical compounds or compound groups gave chemists fundamental principles to apply to the growing body of chemical knowledge. They could also accurately predict new compounds and chemical reactions on a theoretical basis that was far more satisfactory than the straight empiricism of pre-Pauling chemistry.
The definitive book
In 1939 Pauling brought together his work on these subjects in his definitive book The Nature of the Chemical Bond and the Structure of Molecules and Crystals, which became a classic and was translated into many languages. Its third edition appeared in 1960 and has remained in print to this day. The original handwritten manuscript was given by a former student of Pauling's to the Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine and is now part of the Ava Helen and Linus Pauling Papers in the Valley Library at Oregon State University.
Pauling's interest in molecular structure continued throughout his long career, and the theoretical calculations involved meant utter happiness to him. He used what he called the "stochastic method," which drew upon his own encyclopedic knowledge and formidable memory and allowed him to postulate a likely molecular structure, based on reasoning and theoretical calculation. Detailed laboratory verifications would often be carried out by associates — as with most of his research projects. Many of his discoveries and inventions were then expanded upon and utilized profitably in industry by others. And though in later years he was primarily involved in biomedical research, his curiosity often impelled him to identify the intricate structures of many clay minerals, transition metals, intermetallic compounds, and other substances. In 1992 he was awarded one of his last patents for a novel technique of fabricating superconductive materials.
Teaching freshman chemistry
In the early 1930s Pauling took over the teaching of freshman chemistry at Caltech. His modern theoretical approach to chemistry, charismatic lecturing style, and energetic showmanship (the laboratory demonstrations occasionally become pyrotechnical displays) made him a very popular professor. He also told students about his current research, giving them insight into the professional chemist's work. In 1947 he put his new approach to chemical education into General Chemistry, a textbook that greatly influenced the teaching of chemistry worldwide by redirecting it from its traditional, purely empirical basis into the new "chemical bond approach."
Physiology and health
Pauling's involvement with human physiology and health, which dominated the last three decades of his research career, had long precedents. During the mid-1930s a significant part of his research, generously funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, moved into biochemistry — a field he had previously avoided — as he became increasingly interested in the highly complex molecules within living organisms. Applying techniques used in earlier diffraction studies to biological compounds, he now sought to understand the structure of proteins.
In 1934 he investigated the magnetic properties of hemoglobin, the oxygen-carrying molecule in red blood cells. He then studied the roles of antigens and antibodies in the immune response, one aspect of the important phenomenon of specificity in biochemical interactions.
In 1940 he made the novel proposal that this specificity is achieved through molecular complementariness, which he regarded as the secret of life. The concept — involving a "hand-in-glove" fit of one molecule against or into another molecule that has a shape complementary to the first — was tested in his laboratory over the next 10 years by means of numerous serological experiments, yielding results published in no less than 34 scientific papers. In 1946 Pauling postulated that the gene might consist of two mutually complementary strands — a concept anticipating Watson and Crick's discovery of DNA structure seven years later.
Molecular disease
Pauling originated the concept of molecular disease. In 1945, while hearing a physician describe sickle cell anemia, he instantly surmised that it might be caused by a defect in the red blood cell's hemoglobin. After three years of painstaking research, he and his associate Dr. Harvey Itano identified this prevalent disease as molecular in origin — caused by a genetically transmitted abnormality in the hemoglobin molecule. In susceptible patients, hemoglobin molecules in venous blood, lacking oxygen, become self-complementary; distorted and sticking together, they form long rods that interfere with blood circulation.
Pauling's description of this first molecular disease (as he called it) initiated a search for many more such disorders. The new idea quickly became immensely important in medicine and is now the main focus of human genome research. Thus the medical specialties of hematology, serology, immunology, applied genetics, and pathology owe much to Pauling's contributions, which were made long before his intense interest in the promise of nutritional therapy became widely known.
World War II
When World War II began, Dr. Pauling offered the U.S. government the use of his laboratory and of his services as a research consultant. He devised some impressive explosives (one called "linusite"!) and missile propellants for the Navy. He invented a meter that monitored oxygen levels in submarines and airplanes; the device later provided invaluable in ensuring safe levels of that life-sustaining gas for premature infants in incubators and for surgery patients under anesthesia.
With an associate, Dr. Pauling originated a synthetic form of blood plasma for use in emergency transfusions in battlefield clinics. He also took part in a wartime presidential commission formed to recommend future directions of government-funded scientific and medical research programs. Two major outcomes were the postwar expansion of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), allowing for extramural research funding, and the creation of the National Science Foundation. Acknowledging Pauling's patriotic wartime activities, President Harry Truman in 1948 presented the Presidential Medal for Merit to him "for outstanding services to the United States from October 1940 to June 1946."
Speaking out
With the war ended, Pauling again focused on his protein-structure studies at Caltech. But he had new distractions, brought on by the dawning Atomic Age. Along with other eminent scientists (such as Einstein) who felt a moral imperative to voice concerns about where the post-Hiroshima human society was heading, he began to speak out against further development, testing, abuse of nuclear arms, as well as against new state-imposed "loyalty oaths."
During the infamous McCarthy era in the early 1950s, he was treated almost as a traitor. Despite his past patriotism, for several years he was denied a passport to travel abroad to scientific conferences. The State Department's reason: "Not in the best interests of the United States." Only in 1954, when Pauling received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, was an unrestricted passport reinstated.
The alpha helix
While a visiting lecturer at Oxford University in 1948, Pauling had a sudden insight regarding the fundamental structure of proteins, an insight that had eluded him for more than a decade. Working with a sheet of paper that he folded over at sites where he knew from theoretical considerations that the chain could bend, he found that the polypeptide chain, formed from sequences of amino acids, would coil into a particular helical structure, which he named the alpha helix. He based this theoretical configuration on chemical-bonding considerations plus x-ray diffraction evidence from certain fibrous proteins. This proposal, as well as a companion concept of a related "pleated sheet" structure, proved correct. Subsequent x-ray diffraction studies have found that the alpha helix is a major component of both globular and fibrous proteins and extensively controls their structure and function.
A few years later, in 1953, Watson and Crick proposed that the structure for DNA, the genetic substance of living things, is a two-stranded double helix, with one strand of the helix complementary to the other. Pauling's proposals of helical structure and molecular complementariness underlay their theory. (Possibly Pauling, who also pursued DNA's structure, would have discovered the double helix himself had he attended a 1952 London conference and seen, as did Watson and Crick, crucial new DNA x-ray diffraction data, but this trip was prevented by the denial of a passport.) Confirmation and knowledge of the DNA structure immediately launched the new field of molecular genetics, which has revolutionized virtually all of biology.
Nobel Prize in Chemistry
In 1954 Linus Pauling was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences cited his seminal work on the nature of the chemical bond and the structure of molecules and crystals and also acknowledged his application of the resulting concepts to the elucidation of the structure proteins, specifically the alpha helix.
Nobel Peace Prize
Pauling put his elevated new position as a Nobel laureate to good effect in his growing social activism. In the late 1950s and early 1960s he evolved into a fully heroic figure to hundreds of thousands of Americans who admired the chemist's courageous protest against atmospheric nuclear testing. He maintained, using scientific data and statistics to make his points, that radioactive fallout would increase the incidence of cancer and genetic disorders, including birth defects. As international tension and competition between the U.S. and the Soviet Union accelerated, he also riveted public attention on the buildup and proliferation of nuclear weaponry — preparations for thermonuclear warfare that he believed would destroy most of the planet's living creatures. He addressed both issues in his popular book No More War! (1958). He maintained that patient, reasoned negotiation and diplomacy, using the objectivity and procedures of the scientific method, would settle disputes in a more lasting, rational, and far more humane way than war. He asked scientists to become peacemakers.
In this most intense phase of the Cold War, Linus Pauling's name was often in the news — as when he circulated a petition against atmospheric nuclear testing and the excessive buildup of nuclear arsenals. The petition was presented in early 1958 to the United Nations after being signed by some 9,000 — eventually more that 11,000-scientists worldwide. The U.S. government's opposing position was defended — sometimes vituperatively — by most of the press and by various scientists, such as physicist Edward Teller, many of whom were federal employees.
Pauling's six-year unrelenting antitesting campaign was finally vindicated when a treaty was signed by the then-three nuclear powers — the U.S., Great Britain, and the U.S.S.R.
On October 10, 1963, the day on which the limited test ban went into effect, it was announced that Linus Pauling would be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 1962. A key member of the selection committee in Norway commented later that the treaty would probably not have been effected without Dr. Pauling's galvanizing impetus. Its timely inception has spared innumerable people from suffering from cancer and genetic damage. Linus Pauling was greatly admired and is still much appreciated for his courageous public stand by many people who lived through those years. Today, of course, preventing nuclear warfare and fallout from above-ground weapons testing, as well as curbing the proliferation of nuclear arms, is the position accepted by most people worldwide.
Peace activist
Pauling believed that the creation of nuclear weapons meant that war must be abolished and the reign of world law instituted. Seeking the means to achieve durable, equitable peace in the nuclear age through rational dialogue, he originated and participated with other renowned scientists in a series of international Pugwash Conferences, which included Soviet representatives. For almost a decade, in the role of an elder statesman for peace, he protested adamantly against U.S. military action in Vietnam and elsewhere in Southeast Asia. He also criticized the U.S. for interfering in Latin American nations, as in Cuba and Nicaragua, and or waging war with Iraq in the Persian Gulf instead of using economic sanctions and negotiation. Decrying the strife within the former Yugoslavia, in 1991 he wrote "An Appeal for Peace in Croatia" and signed other international petitions that cited gross human-rights violations.
Pauling often urged scientists to get involved in politics and society: "It is sometimes said that science has nothing to do with morality. This is wrong. Science is the search for truth, the effort to understand the world; it involves the rejection of bias, of dogma, of revelation, but not the rejection of morality... One way in which scientists work is by observing the world, making note of phenomena, and analyzing them."
In 1964 Linus Pauling left his tenured professorship at Caltech because of pressure from administrators and conservative trustees who disapproved of his prominent, persistent antinuclear and international peace-promoting activities. Pauling had been at the Institute for 42 years — first as a graduate student, then as a faculty member. (In 1937 he was appointed Chairman of its Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering and Director of the Gates and Crellin Laboratories — positions that he had abdicated in 1958 under administrative pressure.)
Pursuing humanitarian issues
Leaving Pasadena for Santa Barbara, Pauling became a founding fellow of the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, which enabled him to pursue humanitarian issues, particularly the use of scientific thinking in solving problems in modern society. Later he held professorships in chemistry at the University of California, San Diego (1967-69), and at Stanford University (1969-73).
In the mid-1950s Pauling extended his earlier interest in human physiology into studying the mental and somatic health of groups and individuals. Health statistics, which he had begun to use with his nuclear-hazard studies and antinuclear proselytizing, now became an epidemiological tool. For instance, he demonstrated statistically that smoking was a major threat to health, decreasing the average life span by eight years, well before the medical establishment began issuing strong warnings. He also studied other factors involved in longevity.
Orthomolecular medicine
Pauling had spoken about the importance of vitamins in the late 1930s. In the mid-1960s he became intrigued with the biochemistry of nutrition. Its roots were in the research he had done at Caltech on the mechanism of action of anesthetic agents in the brain and in exploring the possibility that mental retardation and mental illness (especially schizophrenia) were caused by various biochemical and genetic disorders. This work in brain-fluid chemistry — studying the molecular environment of the mind — later led to collaborative clinical research with Dr. Abram Hoffer on the therapeutic efficacy of vitamins in cancer. In founding the new field of orthomolecular psychiatry ("Orthomolecular Psychiatry" Science 160:265-271, 1968), Pauling proposed that mental abnormalities might be successfully treated by correcting imbalances or deficiencies among naturally occurring biochemical constituents of the brain, notably vitamins and other micronutrients, as an alternative to the administration of potent synthetic psychoactive drugs.
Pauling later broadened this concept into orthomolecular medicine. The concept and term (meaning "right molecules in the right concentration") characterized an approach to the prevention and treatment of disease and attainment of optimum health that was based on the physiological and enzymatic actions of specific nutrients, such as vitamins, minerals, and amino acids present in the body.
Vitamin C
Fascinated with the multifaceted role of vitamin C (ascorbic acid) in maintaining health, he began combing the scientific and medical literature for experimental and clinical evidence as to its importance. From published studies, from physiological and evolutionary reasoning, and from his and his wife's own experiences, he became convinced of the value of vitamin C in large doses as a prophylactic or palliative for the common cold. In 1970 he wrote the book Vitamin C and the Common Cold, which became a bestseller and brought wide public attention while creating a huge and continuously increasing demand for this micronutrient.
Later he became convinced of ascorbate's value in combating the flu, cancer, cardiovascular disease, infections, and degenerative problems in the aging process. He added other micronutrients, such as vitamin E and the B vitamins, to his list of helpful supplements and published two other popular books and a number of papers, both scientific and popular, on nutritional therapy. As happened during his earlier efforts in awakening the public to the dangers of nuclear weapons, Pauling's pronouncements on the subject of nutritional medicine were often assailed by physicians and physicians' organizations that ignored his long and insightful involvement with the biochemistry of human health and much of the published studies. They often dismissed his ideas as quackery.
The LPI
After retiring to the status of Professor Emeritus at Stanford in 1973, Pauling co-founded the nonprofit biomedical research organization that now bears his name. The Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine was established primarily to conduct research and education in orthomolecular medicine, following his belief that nutrition could prevent, ameliorate or cure many diseases, slow the aging process, and alleviate suffering.
At LPI Pauling and his staff worked on developing diagnostic tests and tools for analyzing a multitude of compounds found in bodily fluids. In his view, biochemical individuality — involving unique dietary needs specific to individuals — determines how optimum health can be achieved through the judicious use of natural substances. He maintained that biochemical individuality, molecular disease, or environmental stress may increase the need for certain micronutrients, such as vitamin C, considerably above the RDA. He also warned against overuse of such substances as sugar and chemical sweeteners. Unlike many advocates in the field of nutritional medicine, he considered orthomolecular medicine a crucial adjunct to standard medical practice and therefore did not rule out conventional treatments, such as surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation, when considered appropriate.
As a prominent, knowledgeable, and articulate spokesman for the use of nutrients as means to achieve health, prolong life, and provide inexpensive, readily available, and nontoxic alternatives to drugs, Pauling gained a large number of ardent admirers among the public. There were also doubters and detractors. To the attacks from physicians and other authorities in medicine who through the years dismissed or ridiculed his assertions, Pauling responded with cogent research data and logical reasoning. As happened earlier with his outspoken antinuclear and peace activism, and even to some extent with his original work on the nature of the chemical bond, assaults from critics did not stop Pauling from maintaining his position, and he was often regarded as a besieged hero. He utilized the media's ongoing interest in him to good effect in promoting his "regimen for better health," with vitamin C as its keystone. Doubtless the public today knows Dr. Linus Pauling more for his advocacy of vitamin C and orthomolecular medicine than for his work on the chemical bond or for world peace.
The final years
In the last few years of his life, Pauling cut down on his previously frequent worldwide lecturing and associated travel. He largely divided his time between his coastal ranch, where he did theoretical work and wrote for publication, and his apartment at Stanford close to the Linus Pauling Institute, where he served as Director of Research after resigning from the chairmanship of the Board of Trustees in 1992.
Pauling continued to publish articles about health as well as reminiscences of his career in science and his peace work. He wrote many scientific papers on orthomolecular medicine and on structural chemistry. The latter included detailing his unorthodox close-packed polysheron theory of the structure of atomic nuclei and nuclear fission from a structural chemist's point of view, and an explanation (based on the twinning phenomenon in crystals) of the baffling "quasicrystal" diffraction patterns from certain alloys, which seem to show a five-fold symmetry contrary to the laws of classical crystallography. He pursued these subjects nearly to the time of this death.
In retrospect, the breadth of Pauling's interests and research was enormous and his published work prodigious — more than 1,065 publications, from scientific and popular books and articles to book forewords and reviews to letters to editors and printed speeches.
Numerous honors
To Linus Pauling came many honors. In 1933, at the remarkably young age of 32, he was elected to the prestigious National Academy of Sciences, and in 1936 to the equally prestigious American Philosophical Society. In 1948 he became a foreign member of The Royal Society of London, the premier honorary scientific society of Great Britain. Many other scientific societies and associations throughout the world made him a member or honorary member. In chemistry, in addition to the Nobel Prize (1954), Pauling was given numerous awards, including the Davy, Pasteur, Willard Gibbs, T.W. Richards, G.N. Lewis, Priestley, Avogadro, and Lomonosov medals. He was the first recipient of the National Academy of Sciences Award in Chemical Sciences, in 1979. The National Library of Medicine gave him its Sesquicentennial Commemorative Award in 1986; he was given other notable medical awards, such as the Addis, Phillips, Virchow, Lattimer, and the French Academy of Medicine medals. He received the Martin Luther King, Jr. Medical Achievement Award for his pioneering work in determining the cause of sickle cell anemia — the molecular disease prevalent among African-Americans.
President Ford awarded him the National Medal of Science in 1975, and in 1989 the National Science Board presented him with the Vannevar Bush Award in recognition of his outstanding contributions to science, technology, and society. He also received prominent medals and awards in mineralogy, international law, philosophy, and the social sciences. Among the humanitarian awards Pauling won, the most notable, of course, was the Nobel Peace Prize for 1962; he was also given the Gandhi and Lenin peace prizes and the Albert Schweitzer Peace medal. Pauling was named Humanist of the Year in 1961. Pauling also received the Gold Medal of the National Institute of Social Sciences. In addition, Pauling was awarded honorary degrees by some 50 universities and colleges throughout the world. Several universities have created their own Linus Pauling Lectureship or Medal, to honor other scientists or humanitarians in his name.
Nine biographies and three anthologies of his writings and speeches have been published thus far, and a two-volume collection of many of his most important scientific publications was published in 2002.
Personal life
Linus Pauling always emphasized the importance of having a full and happy personal life. In 1923 he married Ava Helen Miller, who had been a student in a chemistry course he taught while still an undergraduate at Oregon Agricultural College. Dr. Pauling frequently credited his wife with influencing the development of his social consciousness. She was greatly involved in peace activities, both with her husband and on her own. Pauling said that his Nobel Peace Prize should really have gone to her, or at least been shared between them. In his talks and informal writings he often spoke both tenderly and humorously of their complementary partnership. She died in 1981. In tribute to her dedication to world peace, the Ava Helen and Linus Pauling Lectureship in World Peace has been established by the Paulings' alma mater, Oregon State University in Corvallis, where the Paulings' papers, medals, and other memorabilia are housed in Special Collections at the Valley Library. Additionally, the Linus Pauling Institute established the endowed Ava Helen Pauling Chair in 2001 to honor Ava Helen Pauling's memory.
The Paulings had four children. Linus Pauling, Jr., M.D., a psychiatrist, lives in Honolulu. Peter Pauling, Ph.D., a crystallographer and retired lecturer in chemistry, resided in Wales until his death in 2003. Linda Pauling Kamb lives in the home originally built by her parents in the foothills above Pasadena. Her husband, a former Caltech professor of geology and vice president and provost, died in 2011. Crellin Pauling, Ph.D., was a professor of biology at San Francisco State University until his death in 1997. There are 15 grandchildren and 19 great-grandchildren.
Following Pauling's death at the age of 93 at his ranch near Big Sur on the California coast, a memorial service was held at Stanford Memorial Church in Palo Alto on Aug. 29
LPI moves to OSU
The assets of the Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine were used to establish the Linus Pauling Institute as a research institute at OSU in 1996 to investigate the function and role of micronutrients, phytochemicals and microconstituents of food in maintaining human health and preventing and treating disease; and to advance the knowledge in areas which were of interest to Linus Pauling through research and education. LPI continues to function as a working tribute to a great scientist, Linus Pauling.
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"Which bird did Wordsworth describe as ""Ethereal minstrel, pilgrim of the sky""?" | What is the meaning of phrase "ethereal minstrel" in "To a Skylark" by Wordsworth? | eNotes
What is the meaning of phrase "ethereal minstrel" in "To a Skylark" by Wordsworth?
literaturenerd | High School Teacher | (Level 2) Educator Emeritus
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July 23, 2011 at 12:03 AM
Perhaps the easiest way to define the phrase is to dissect the phrase, define the words individually, and then place them back together within the context of the poem.
First, ethereal refers to something so perfect (delicate and light) that it seems too perfect to exist in the world.
A minstrel is a medieval singer who would recite poetry for entertainment.
Placed together, Wordsworth is detailing a man whose person or voice seems too perfect to exist in the world.
When placing the minstrel into the context of the poem, one can conclude that the subject of the poem, a skylark, is admired to a point above all others. Wordsworth exalts the bird in the poem. He does this by describing it as something not of this world, something whose vision is limitless, something which can withstand the flooding of the earth.
Always remember to take the title of any work into consideration when trying to interpret any part of a poem. The use of the phrase "ethereal minstrel" to describe the skylark places the bird on a pedestal showing Wordsworth's honor and mystification of it.
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July 23, 2011 at 12:01 AM
The meaning ethereal can mean heavenly or celestial: gone to his ethereal home.
The word minstrel can mean a medieval poet and musician who sang or recited while accompanying himself on a stringed instrument, either as a member of a noble household or as an itinerant troubadour.
With that being defined, Wordsworth was writing about a skylark--a bird. He is referring to the bird or skylark as an ethereal minstrel. The skylark creates heavenly music. It has a story to tell. The skylark rejoices in spring. It creates melodies that are heavenly, divine:
Ethereal minstrel! pilgrim of the sky!
Dost thou despise the earth where cares abound?
Or, while the wings aspire, are heart and eye
Both with thy nest upon the dewy ground?
Thy nest which thou canst drop into at will,
Those quivering wings composed, that music still!
The skylark is the ethereal minstrel. The music it makes is heavenly and poetic. When the skylark drops into its nest which is on the "dewy ground" it hushes its song and the "music stills."
| Noah and Nelly in... SkylArk |
Which country's currency is called the Bolivar? | Skylark Poems | Memory Typer
Skylark Poems
To a Skylark by William Wordsworth
To a Skylark by William Wordsworth
The Skylark by James Hogg
The Skylark by Frederick Tennyson
To a Skylark by Percy Bysshe Shelley
Song by Hartley Coleridge
Overflow by John Banister Tabb
1
Up with me! up with me into the clouds!
For thy song, Lark, is strong;
Up with me, up with me into the clouds!
Singing, singing,
With clouds and sky about thee ringing,
Lift me, guide me till I find
That spot which seems so to thy mind!
I have walked through wildernesses dreary
And to-day my heart is weary;
Had I now the wings of a Fairy,
Up to thee would I fly.
There is madness about thee, and joy divine
In that song of thine;
Lift me, guide me high and high
To thy banqueting-Place in the sky.
Joyous as morning
Thou art laughing and scorning;
Thou hast a nest for thy love and thy rest.
And, though little troubled with sloth,
Drunken Lark! thou would'st be loth
To be such a traveler as I.
Happy, happy Liver,
With a soul as strong as a mountain river
Pouring out praise to the Almighty Giver,
Joy and jollity be with us both!
Alas! my journey, rugged and uneven,
Through prickly moors or dusty ways must wind;
But hearing thee, or others of thy kind,
As full of gladness and as free of heaven,
I, with my fate contented, will plod on,
And hope for higher raptures, when life's day is done.
2
Ethereal minstrel! pilgrim of the sky!
Dost thou despise the earth where cares abound?
Or, while the wings aspire, are heart and eye
Both with thy nest upon the dewy ground?
Thy nest which thou canst drop into at will,
Those quivering wings composed, that music still!
To the last point of vision, and beyond,
Mount, daring warbler!—that love-prompted strain
—'Twixt thee and thine a never-failing bond—
Thrills not the less the bosom of the plain:
Yet might'st thou seem, proud privilege! to sing
All independent of the leafy spring.
Leave to the nightingale her shady wood;
A privacy of glorious light is thine,
Whence thou dost pour upon the world a flood
Of harmony, with instinct more divine:
Type of the wise, who soar, but never roam—
True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home!
3
Sweet be thy matin o'er moorland and lea!
Emblem of happiness,
O to abide in the desert with thee!
Wild is thy lay and loud,
Far in the downy cloud,
Love gives it energy, love gave it birth.
Where, on thy dewy wing,
Where art thou journeying?
Thy lay is in heaven, thy love is on earth.
O'er fell and fountain sheen,
O'er moor and mountain green,
O'er the red streamer that heralds the day,
Over the cloudlet dim,
Musical cherub, soar, singing, away!
Then, when the gloaming comes,
Low in the heather blooms
Sweet will thy welcome and bed of love be!
Emblem of happiness,
O to abide in the desert with thee!
4
How the blithe Lark runs up the golden stair
That leans through cloudy gates from Heaven to Earth,
And all alone in the empyreal air
Fills it with jubilant sweet songs of mirth;
How far he seems, how far
With the light upon his wings,
Is it a bird, or star
That shines, and sings?
What matter if the days be dark and frore,
That sunbeam tells of other days to be,
And singing in the light that floods him o'er
In joy he overtakes Futurity;
Under cloud-arches vast
He peeps, and sees behind
Great Summer coming fast
And now he dives into a rainbow's rivers,
In streams of gold and purple he is drowned,
Shrilly the arrows of his song he shivers,
As though the stormy drops were turned to sound;
And now he issues through,
He scales a cloudy tower,
Faintly, like falling dew,
Let every wind be hushed, that I may hear
The wondrous things he tells the World below,
Things that we dream of he is watching near,
Hopes that we never dreamed he would bestow;
Alas! the storm hath rolled
Back the gold gates again,
Or surely he had told
All Heaven to men!
So the victorious Poet sings alone,
And fills with light his solitary home,
And through that glory sees new worlds foreshown,
And hears high songs, and triumphs yet to come;
He waves the air of Time
With thrills of golden chords,
And makes the world to climb
On linked words.
What if his hair be gray, his eyes be dim,
If wealth forsake him, and if friends be cold,
Wonder unbars her thousand gates to him,
Truth never fails, nor Beauty waxes old;
More than he tells his eyes
Behold, his spirit hears,
Of grief, and joy, and sighs
'Twixt joy and tears.
Blest is the man who with the sound of song
Can charm away the heartache, and forget
The frost of Penury, and the stings of Wrong,
And drown the fatal whisper of Regret!
Darker are the abodes
Of Kings, though his be poor,
While Fancies, like the Gods,
Pass through his door.
Singing thou scalest Heaven upon thy wings,
Thou liftest a glad heart into the skies;
He maketh his own sunrise, while he sings,
And turns the dusty Earth to Paradise;
I see thee sail along Far up the sunny streams,
Unseen, I hear his song,
I see his dreams.
Hail to thee, blithe spirit!
Bird thou never wert,
That from heaven, or near it,
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.
Higher still and higher,
From the earth thou springest
Like a cloud of fire;
The blue deep thou wingest,
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.
In the golden lightning
O'er which clouds are bright'ning,
Thou dost float and run;
Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.
The pale purple even
Like a star of heaven
In the broad daylight
Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight.
Keen as are the arrows
Of that silver sphere,
In the white dawn clear,
Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there.
All the earth and air
With thy voice is loud,
As, when night is bare,
From one lonely cloud
The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflowed.
What thou art we know not;
What is most like thee?
From rainbow clouds there flow not
Drops so bright to see
As from thy presence showers a rain of melody.
Like a poet hidden
In the light of thought,
Singing hymns unbidden
Till the world is wrought
To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not:
Like a high-born maiden
Thou lovest; but ne'er knew love's sad satiety.
Waking or asleep,
Thou of death must deem
Things more true and deep
Than we mortals dream,
Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?
We look before and after,
And pine for what is not:
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.
Yet if we could scorn
Hate, and pride, and fear;
If we were things born
Not to shed a tear,
I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.
Better than all measures
'Tis sweet to hear the merry lark,
That bids a blithe good-morrow;
But sweeter to hark, in the twinkling dark,
To the soothing song of sorrow.
Oh nightingale! What doth she ail?
And is she sad or jolly?
For ne'er on earth was sound of mirth
So like to melancholy.
The merry lark, he soars on high,
No worldly thought o'ertakes him;
He sings aloud to the clear blue sky,
And the daylight that awakes him.
As sweet a lay, as loud, as gay,
The nightingale is trilling;
With feeling bliss, no less than his,
Her little heart is thrilling.
Yet ever and anon, a sigh
Peers through her lavish mirth;
For the lark's bold song is of the sky,
And hers is of the earth.
By night and day, she tunes her lay,
To drive away all sorrow;
For bliss, alas! to-night must pass,
And woe may come to-morrow.
7
| i don't know |
What is the name of the cross-eyed Lion in 'Daktari'? | Clarence, The Cross-Eyed Lion (Preview Clip) - YouTube
Clarence, The Cross-Eyed Lion (Preview Clip)
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Uploaded on Nov 11, 2011
The king of the jungle needs glasses! Set at an African animal center, the all-family adventure that inspired the TV series Daktari features a valiant veterinarian (Marshall Thompson), heartless gorilla trappers, narrow escapes, lots of laughs and some of the most endearing animals who ever aced their screen tests. Among the merry menagerie: Doris the chimpanzee, Mary Lou the python, and of course Clarence, a genuinely cross-eyed lion who was as lamb-like off screen as on (a grumpier stunt lion filled in for attack scenes). "The best thing about the movie is the amazing work with this lion among all those human actors. Come to think of it, the actors are pretty amazing too" (Toni Mastroianna, Cleveland Press).
Category
| Clarence |
What is the town called in which 'Clark Kent' grew up? | Clarence, The Cross-Eyed Lion - Microsoft Store
Clarence, The Cross-Eyed Lion
1965 • Action/Adventure • 1 h 31 min • English •
G
(2)
$9.99
The king of the jungle needs glasses! Set at an African animal center, the family adventure that inspired the TV series Daktari.
Buy SD $9.99
Additional info
Synopsis
The king of the jungle needs glasses! Set at an African animal center, the all-family adventure that inspired the TV series Daktari features a valiant veterinarian (Marshall Thompson), heartless gorilla trappers, narrow escapes, lots of laughs and some of the most endearing animals who ever aced their screen tests. Among the merry menagerie: Doris the chimpanzee, Mary Lou the python, and of course Clarence, a genuinely cross-eyed lion who was as lamb-like off screen as on (a grumpier stunt lion filled in for attack scenes). “The best thing about the movie is the amazing work with this lion among all those human actors. Come to think of it, the actors are pretty amazing too” (Toni Mastroianna, Cleveland Press).
Actors
| i don't know |
What was 'Don Diego De La Vega's' secret identity? | Zorro (Character) - Comic Vine
The Zorro wiki last edited by RazielWraith on 11/28/16 09:20AM View full history
Origin
Due to Zorro being a character in the public domain his history often changes but his origin regardless as follows: Don Diego became Zorro to "avenge the helpless, to punish cruel politicians and to aid the oppressed".
Creation
Zorro was created by Johnston McCulley, and originally debuted in print in the 1919 novella, The Curse of Capistrano. His public domain status is disputed.
Character Evolution
Zorro is said to be a long legendary crusader who is only to appear in great times of hardship and oppression, this theme is passed down throughout the ages and would seem to be a recurring theme.
The mark of Zorro has remained the same and unchanged; a capital Z with no less than the best classic swordsmanship. His sword is traditionally a stainless steel double-edged fencing sword and not a massive medieval long sword. The caped vigilante rarely fights with a shield and has always rode a black horse.
Zorro, like any other comic character, has experienced various changes to his outfit, which also vary depending on the comic writer. But he consistently has a black mask covering his eyes only, a black hat or bandanna covering his head and has black air and brown eyes (quite common for a Spaniard living in the colonial era of California). He wears black clothing; black fencing gloves and a loose black top consisting of lace instead of buttons, but this sometimes changes to a simple black top (buttons with or without).
He has kept his black trousers, black boots and black horse (supposedly untamable by any one but himself). His fights have often ended in deaths of his enemies as they are usually of commanding statuses and therefore there would be no other way to rid the people of corruption other than this way. He tries to be stealthy as his name would suggest ( Zorro is Spanish for fox) much like Batman , but in times of great hardship and difficulty sometimes he must result in direct combat.
The films help give a strong visual idea of Zorro, in which the comics do not describe. Zorro in the films is a servant in which a priest at a Catholic church would alert him of any trouble and let him hide the confession rooms when he was being chased. His black horse, Tornado, would be kept in his cave along with any other gear, which remained hidden away from the known world.
The main frame of Zorro has stayed the same over the years with a few minor changes to clothing, love life and equipment. But the evolution of Zorro has mainly changed in storyline and not Zorro himself.
Other Media
Films
The Mask of Zorro (1998) - Don Diego trains Alejandro Murrietta to become his successor and the New Zorro.
The Legend of Zorro (2005) - Zorro must win back his wife and rescue his kid from a gang.
Tevelvsion
There was also a Zorro television series and Guy Williams of Lost in Space fame played Zorro in the series which lasted for two seasons on the ABC network.
Skills and Abilities
Tactician - Often uses his cunning rather than brute strength to outwit his foes
Skilled Horseman
Rapier - Uses rapier to leave his distinctive mark, a Z with three quick cuts
Bullwhip
| Zorro |
Which Nintendo arcade game first introduced the character of 'Mario'? | New World Zorro - Diego de la Vega
Diego de la Vega
Diego de la Vega is a wealthy man who opposes tyranny and oppression. He may not be poor, but he understands the plight of the poor. Since he cannot openly oppose the government, he works in disguise as Zorro.
Diego believes that justice is above the law and does not hestitate to break the law when breaking the law will serve the cause of justice. Since
he must break the law as Zorro, it is imperative that no one can ever guess his secret. Diego must live two completely separate lives: one as Zorro and one as Diego.
Diego makes certain that his personality bears no resemblance to Zorro. He is soft-spoken, has impeccable manners, never takes any risks, and would never break the law. He is clumsy with a sword and never shows an interest in women. He loves to read, write poetry, play the piano, and conduct scientific experiments. Diego rarely breaks out of his usual pattern of avoiding trouble. Interestingly enough, those few instances usually involve Victoria Escalante.
From the episode "He Who Lives by the Sword" . . .
"Now get me a decent meal or you will get a taste of this!" Thackery points to his boot.
"Get it yourself!" snaps Victoria.
"Nobody, not even a pretty se�orita, talks to me like that," Thackery grabs Victoria.
"Take your hands off her!" commands Diego with a seldom heard force in his voice.
"I do believe you are looking for a fight, se�or."
"Anytime, anywhere," responds Diego.
"Shall we say ten minutes from now, in the plaza?"
Diego is secretly in love with Victoria, but no one is aware of this fact. He is envious of Zorro's relationship with Victoria which seems strange
when one considers that he is in fact Zorro. However, Victoria does not know that Diego is Zorro, so from Diego's point of view, she is actually in love with another man.
Diego's greatest fear is that Victoria will not want him when she realizes that he is Zorro. He worries that, in Victoria's eyes, he will not compare to Zorro. After all, Zorro is outspoken, aggressive, brave, and mysterious. He is afraid that that Victoria will see him as none of those things. Compounding the problem is the fact that she has always regarded him as a brother and has never shown any romantic interest in him.
From the episode "Love Potion Number Nine" . . .
"Oh, there you are, Diego. The rumors are true. Victoria and De Soto, they are madly in love with each other. They just sit there in the tavern gazing at each other. Actually, it's quite nauseating. Well, you've been like a brother to her. Think of some way to help her. She's looking like a fool."
From the episode "An Affair to Remember". . .
Victoria is knocked unconscious while Zorro and Victoria are being pursued by bandits. Zorro is forced to take Victoria to his secret cave to protect her.
"Who are you, Zorro? Don't I have the right to know the man behind the mask?"
"The man behind this mask is . . . the man behind this mask is afraid of only one thing in this world. That you love a hero with whom he can not possibly compete. That if this mask were removed, you would still be in love with Zorro and not with a man of flesh and blood . . ."
Diego's fear that Victoria will not want him only intensifies due to her unsatisfactory answers whenever Diego mentions Zorro or whenever Zorro mentions Diego.
From the episode "The New Broom" . . .
"Perhaps Zorro will finally keep his promise to you."
"I know he will."
"And will you still love him once he's no longer the dashing hero in a mask but just an ordinary fellow...like me?"
"Diego, Zorro could never be ordinary, even without his mask."
From the episode "The Unhappy Medium" . . .
"Once again, I have you to thank for my life, se�orita."
"Don Diego has more to be grateful for. He would have been no match for Ricardo."
"I take it you have no regard for Don Diego."
"He's not unattractive, but..."
| i don't know |
What is the London counterpart of the Grevin Museum in Paris? | Musée Grevin - Wax Museum of Paris – Opening hours, price and map
Flights from other cities
Musée Grevin
Opened in 1882, the Musée Grévin is the wax museum of Paris. Visitors will be able to see representations of famous individuals that have had an impact on the course of human history and popular French and international celebrities.
Monica Bellucci in the Musée Grévin
Theatre of the Musée Grévin
Exhibitions
The museum is housed in a very peculiar building, which is divided into different rooms including a viewpoint and a theatre.
The Musée Grévin features over 500 life-like wax characters representing the world’s best known celebrities (especially from France). These include personalities like athletes, politicians, singers and actors.
The visit begins in the Hall of Mirrors, a room built for the Exposition Universelle in 1900, which is like an enormous kaleidoscope. Further along, the decorations of the museum transport its visitors to a beautiful sanctuary, a Hindu temple or a lush jungle.
Walking from one room to another, visitors will be able to relive some of the most important events of the twentieth century, tour the country’s history since the Middle Ages or visit the museum’s theatre, full of important personalities.
Too pricey
The Grévin Museum is quite large and contains plenty of wax figures placed in differently decorated halls. Although it is entertaining, we believe it to be a bit too expensive and, in our opinion, isn’t as impressive as the Madame Tussauds in London .
Location
| Madame Tussauds |
Which popular confection was first launched as 'Rowntree's Chocolate Crisp' in 1935 | Tickets for Grévin Wax Museum
Tickets for Grévin Wax Museum
Wax poetic with Paris of the past
Daily from 10:00 - 18:30. Saturday, Sunday, Bank Holidays and school holidays from 10:00 - 19:00.
Audio guide
English, French, German, Korean, Chinese, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Russian and Portuguese
Wheelchair accessible
Experience a uniquely Parisian attraction
Take the majestic marble staircase reach the famous Hall of mirrors
Watch magic shows in a matchbox theater
Description
Hundreds of wax figures in unexpected tableaux, magic shows in the museum's matchbox theater and baroque architecture, this is right out of a whimsical French film.
Before Madame Tussauds moved to London to create her famous museum, she inspired journalist Arthur Meyer to create something similar in the French capital. With the help of noted caricaturist Alfred Grévin, this museum came to life (almost literally).
With more than 450 lifelike wax sculptors arranged into dynamic (and sometimes morbid) tableaux, and its listed 1900s decor (marble staircase, cupola, and baroque-style Hall of Columns), this is a throwback to the Paris of your imagination.
Since its opening in 1882 this Parisian attraction has been drawing homegrown crowds - it's estimated that more than 70% of the visitors are French. The scenes are by turns historically informative, and incredibly whimsical. Tableaux from the glory days of French history, including the coronation of Charles VII (with Joan of Arc in attendance), Sun King Louis XIV living it up at a party at Versailles, and Napoleon Bonaparte, in his post-Waterloo days.
On top of the many figures and surprising tableaux, the recently renovated Hall of Mirrors is noteworthy for its optical illusions and dazzling light and sound effects.
REAL MORBID: The tableaux of Charlotte Corday's arrest for assassinating radical Revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat uses the actual knife used in the killing, and the actual bathtub Marat was stabbed in.
NEVER CLOSED: Since opening in 1882, the museum has had only one unscheduled closure - on the day the Nazis invaded Paris.
Location
| i don't know |
In the film 'The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe', who is the voice of 'Aslan'? | The Chronicles of Narnia: the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
The Chronicles of Narnia:
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
Starring Georgie Henley, Skandar Keynes, Anna Popplewell, William Mosely, Tilda Swinton, and Liam Neeson (as the voice of Aslan)
Directed by Andrew Adamson (2005)
3 frims out of 5 possible!
I've got to say that I wasn't terribly impressed by
Narnia
. That's not to say that Disney's
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
is a bad movie—far from it—but it isn't a great one, either. In all fairness,
Narnia
was a most risky endeavor to bring to the screen for a number of reasons: its adult fans have a nearly religious devotion to it, and its stature has grown in their imaginations through the years, turning it into a mythic story it never dreamt of being. Deviate from the book, and the wrath of those fans will rain down upon you. Don't deviate enough, and you'll end up with a tale that's as unassuming as the book they think they remember. It's a Catch-22.
Director Andrew Adamson (his name translates as “Man, Son of Adam”—got to admit that's cool, huh?) managed to slide between those two dangerous possibilities, and instead created a film that wants to have it both ways—a heroic adventure on one hand, and a charming fairy tale on the other. It's more successful on the fairy-tale side.
The scenes of the children in England are quite believable, and the two youngest kids, Georgie Henley (Lucy), and Skandar Keynes (Edmund) are simply brilliant in their roles. However, the screenplay never quite draws us in. We never feel they're in danger, whether bombs
are falling around them in London, or if an evil witch is pursuing them. I would've liked more time seeing their characters developed. James McAvoy, who gave us one of the best perfomances ever as Leto in
Children of Dune,
has a pitch-perfect performance as the faun Mr. Tumnus, and his scenes with Lucy are probably the best in the entire movie. William Moseley (Peter) and Anna Popplewell (Lucy) are under-used, and at 18 and 17 respectively, they may soon become too old for the following movies. The White Witch (Tilda Swinton, fresh off her role in
Thumbsucker
) is deliciously evil when we meet her, yet we there's some disappointment in entering her unimposing castle.
Springtime for Aslan and Narnia
Things further slide when spring comes to Narnia. Yes, you'll believe that beavers and wolves can talk, and Aslan is beautiful and majestic. But his camp is a collision of gaudy red-and-gold tents and costumes, without a hint of dust to be found. The land ends up looking like a garish painting, not a place where a lion might leave his tracks upon the soil. Although it is a children's fairy tale, Lewis told Narnia with humor, passion, and depth, which are all in short supply here. The kids barely react to their fantastic surroundings in Narnia, so we don't either. Furthermore, in spite of their call to ascend the Narnian thrones, there is no believable transformation going on. A couple of brief scenes are supposed to show the children training to become warriors, but the shots of kids awkwardly swinging around heavy swords are just embarrassing. Without human adults in Narnia, who's going to teach these kids martial arts? The beavers?
Lewis described the battle against the White Witch in a couple of short paragraphs. Here, it's like a diet version of a scene in
The Lord of the Rings
; for the children it has to be restrained and it is, but for adults, it's awkward and long, all which raises the question of why it needs a massive battle scene at all. And it's a zoological mess. Polar bears, leopards, minotaurs, and phoenixes fight in the same scene. It's as though everything a kid might like is thrown into the mix, just to be sure. Pour in the menagerie and turn on the blender.
I'll say little about the spiritual symbolism of Narnia, since entire volumes and dissertations have been written about it. Yes, the symbolism of the book is still there, Aslan still dies, resurrects, and forgives. However, I winced at the scene in which Peter gives the battle cry For “Narnia and Aslan”. Enough of that. Enough of war “for Jesus,” “for Allah,” “for [insert divine name here]”. Sure, the battle is “not of this world;” it's about the spiritual war, the struggle within our souls to become like Christ, united with God . But now and throughout the ages, we have projected our neighbor as the enemy, instead of our own lack of love. Peter's battle cry doesn't help clarify things for those who confuse them.
I like Lewis as much as the next guy, yet I think it's sad that so many Christians can't see the spiritual reflections in any stories but these, when so many stories, intentionally or not, are packed with symbols of spiritual sacrifice, resurrection, and redemption, and often of a much subtler and higher order than this; e.g.
Spider-Man 2
, to name just a few. (If you haven't already, I encourage you to check out Hollywood Jesus . My friend David Bruce taught me how to look at contemporary film with a spiritual eye, and chances are excellent he can do the same for you.)
From what I've read, although they were close friends and Lewis admired Tolkien's Middle Earth, Tolkien disliked Lewis' creation, finding it a jumble of beasts and magics with no rhyme or reason other than allegory. There's little sense in it. Why does Narnia need not one, but four monarchs to govern it, when there's no governing to do? And both Cair Paravel and the Witch's castle are so empty they seem little more than places to display thrones. In the books, these aren't problems at all, but simply exercises to use our imaginations even more as the charm unfolds. Yet after $150,000,000 has been spent on the film, I find myself wishing for more depth and plausibility.
Adamson could have done better, but largely the problems are with the source material. The best
Narnia
adaptaion might have been to leave it very much the children's fairy tale, full of charm and rich, grandfatherly voice-overs from the narrator, but in the age of
| Liam Neeson |
The 'Seaburn Casuals' are/were a gang of football hooligans who supported which North East club? | Aslan - NarniaWeb
Aslan
6 Portrayals
Bio Info
Titles: The Great Lion, the Son of the Emperor-Beyond-the-Sea (or Over-the-Sea), the King Above All High Kings, the great Bridge Builder, "Myself" (He is said to have nine names, but not all of them are given in the Chronicles)
Age: Eternal, as Aslan has knowledge of the Deeper Magic from before the Dawn of Time
Species: Talking Lion, though He can appear in any form that He wishes (such as an albatross, a lamb, and a cat in Narnia)
Home: Aslan's Country, beyond the sea, the eastern end of the world
Physical Description: Aslan looks like a regular lion, but His size varies at will
First Appearance: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Ch. 12 (1950), first referenced in Ch. 7
Appearances
~ The Magician's Nephew ~ (1955)
Digory , Polly , Frank , Uncle Andrew , and Queen Jadis have the honor of witnessing Aslan's creation of Narnia. They come to an empty world, but it does not remain empty for long. The Lion appears and sings Narnia into being. Horrified by the song, Jadis throws the bar of a lamppost from London at the Lion's head, but it has no effect. Aslan then gives the gift of speech to some of the creatures He has created. He bequeaths to them the land of Narnia and instructs them to treat the Dumb Beasts gently. And yet all is not perfect in this new creation. Uncle Andrew is terrified of the animals and especially the Lion, as he cannot understand their speech and hears only the sounds that animals make in our world. Aslan finally puts Uncle Andrew to sleep, as it is "the only gift he is still able to receive." Aslan tells Digory that he must undo the wrong he had done (bringing evil, Jadis , into Narnia). He gives Digory instructions about where he could find an apple to provide the seed for the Tree of Protection, and then turns Strawberry into the winged horse Fledge for Digory to ride. When Digory returns, he plants an apple near the river and it quickly grows into the Tree of Protection. As long this Tree flourishes, Aslan tells the Narnians, the Witch will not be able to come within a hundred miles of it. When Digory humbly asks to take an apple home to cure his sick mother, Aslan grants his request. After the Tree is Planted, Aslan crowns Frank and his wife Helen the first king and queen of Narnia.
~ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe ~ (1950)
When the Pevensies hear the name of Aslan for the first time, they experience feelings of awe, joy, excitement, and (in Edmund 's case) horror. An old Narnian prophecy says that "Wrong will be right when Aslan comes in sight / At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more / When he bares his teeth, winter meets its death / And when he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again." After one hundred years of the White Witch 's winter, Aslan's coming heralds spring as the snow begins to melt. The Pevensies and the Beavers first meet Him at the Stone Table, where Aslan knights Peter after he kills the Wolf Maugrim . After Edmund is rescued, the White Witch requests an audience with Aslan and tries to claim Edmund by citing the Deep Magic (which states that all traitors belong to her). Aslan negotiates with her privately and offers his own life in return for Edmund 's. The Witch accepts this offer and renounces her claim on Edmund 's blood. Late that night, Aslan sets out for the Stone Table once again, and Susan and Lucy accompany Him. There, Aslan is bound on the Table and killed by the Witch . After she and her army have gone, the girls weep over the dead Lion's body. But as the sun rises, the Table cracks and Aslan returns to life. He explains that there is a Deeper Magic that says "when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor's stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backwards." The girls ride on Aslan's back as He runs to the White Witch 's house. There, Aslan breathes on the statues and restores them to life. Then He leads them to Beruna, where the Narnians are battling the Witch 's army. With a roar that shakes all Narnia, Aslan leaps upon the Witch and kills her. After the battle, He makes Edmund a knight for his heroism. Days later, in Cair Paravel, Aslan crowns the Pevensies kings and queens of Narnia. In the middle of the celebration, He slips away, and is not seen again for a number of years.
~ The Horse and His Boy ~ (1954)
During the Golden Age of Narnia when the four Pevensies are reigning in Cair Paravel, the baby Prince Cor ( Shasta ) of Archenland is kidnapped by a former advisor of his father, King Lune . When King Lune 's ships catch up to them, Shasta is set in a boat with a knight to escape, and Aslan Himself pushes the boat so that it comes to the country of Calormen where a fisherman sits to receive it. This simple act sets in motion events that will eventually save Archenland. As Shasta and the Talking Horse Bree make their escape from Calormen to Narnia, they encounter what they believe to be multiple lions (but which are actually just one). In this way Aslan causes them to meet Aravis , a Calormene princess, and her companion, the Talking Horse Hwin . After Shasta gets through the city of Tashbaan and has to spend the night at the Tombs of the Ancient Kings, the Lion roars to keep the jackals away. He also takes the form of a cat and comforts Shasta that night. Later in the journey, as the company struggles to reach Anvard to warn them of Rabadash 's attack, Aslan chases them once again and gives the horses the new strength of fear so that Shasta can reach King Lune in time. Shasta feels that he is the most unfortunate person in the entire world, but the Lion appears to him and explains the purposes behind the events in his life. Aslan also appears to Bree , Aravis , and Hwin who are staying with the Hermit . Aslan tells Hwin that great joy would be hers since she came willingly to Him. He corrects Bree 's belief that He is not a real Lion, and explains to Aravis why He gave her the scars on her back. Aslan appears at Prince Rabadash 's trial and, after giving him many chances to repent, changes him into a donkey.
~ Prince Caspian ~ (1951)
Hundreds of years after the defeat of the White Witch , many Old Narnians wonder if Aslan and the Pevensies ever existed. Narnia is now ruled by the Telmarines, a race descended from pirates from Earth who found one of the entrances to Narnia. As the Pevensies and the Dwarf Trumpkin travel through the Black Woods trying to reach Aslan's How, Lucy sees Aslan leading them in a different direction. But Lucy is the only one who can see Him, and only Edmund believes her. That night, Lucy meets Aslan and He tells her that she must follow Him, even alone if necessary. The others cannot see Aslan, but they reluctantly agree to follow Lucy . Aslan becomes visible to them one by one as He leads them to the Stone Table where Caspian and the Old Narnians wait. Before the boys go in to the How, Aslan tosses Trumpkin up in the air several times (catching him carefully each time) to convince the Dwarf of His reality. After this experience, Trumpkin never reverts to his cynicism about Aslan or any of the old stories again. Aslan roars (causing quite a stir in the Telmarine camp), and calls Bacchus and Silenus to begin the Romp. The next morning, Aslan tells Lucy and Susan to ride on His back as they had so long ago. Aslan begins the renewing of Narnia by ordering Bacchus to destroy the Bridge of Beruna and free the River-God (cutting off the Telmarines' escape). Aslan and His followers sweep through Narnia, liberating all in their path, until they come to the place where Caspian's old nurse lay dying. Aslan cures her and she joins their forces. After the second Battle of Beruna, the Mice bring their wounded leader, Reepicheep , to Aslan. After seeing what "great hearts" the Mice have, Aslan grants Reepicheep a new tail. Then Aslan commands Peter to bestow the Knighthood of the Order of the Lion upon Caspian . The next day, Aslan gives the remaining Telmarines a choice to either stay in Narnia or go back to Earth if they do not wish to stay. He also tells Peter and Susan that they are now too old to come back to Narnia.
~ The Voyage of the Dawn Treader ~ (1952)
Aslan does not appear in this story until Eustace is transformed into a dragon on Dragon Island and needs the Lion to restore him. Aslan leads Eustace in his dragon-form to a pool and tells him to undress (remove his dragon skin). Eustace is unable to do this, so Aslan digs His claws deep into Eustace 's scales, rips them off, and throws him into the water. When Eustace surfaces, he is again in his human form. It was not until he talks to Edmund that Eustace realizes it was Aslan that he had seen. When the Dawn Treader reaches Deathwater Island, the group sights Aslan as they are quarrelling over the water that could change objects into gold. The Lion suddenly appears, even bigger than they remember Him, and the quarrel is forgotten. When they come to the island of the Duffers, Lucy recites a spell to make things visible, and suddenly Aslan appears behind her. He introduces her to Coriakin the Magician and then disappears once again to visit Trumpkin the Dwarf at Cair Paravel. When Lucy cries out to Aslan for help in the Dark Island, He comes to them in the form of an albatross and leads them out of the darkness. When the Dawn Treader reaches the world's end, King Caspian wants to go with Reepicheep to Aslan's Country, but Aslan appears to him in his cabin and tells him he must return to Narnia. The Pevensies, Eustace , and Reepicheep must go on. Edmund , Lucy , and Eustace row to shore where they see a Lamb. It changes into the Lion, Aslan. He tells Edmund and Lucy that they will not be returning to Narnia, but that there was a way into His country from all worlds.
~ The Silver Chair ~ (1953)
Eustace Scrubb and Jill Pole have just been calling to Aslan to allow them to enter Narnia when they are discovered by the bullies of Experiment House, their boarding school. While they are trying to escape, they open a door that is usually locked and are amazed to see another world stretching before them. They plunge into that world, where Eustace accidentally falls from a high cliff. The Lion suddenly appears and blows him to Narnia. Aslan then tells Jill that they would not have been calling to Him if He had not been calling to them, and He has brought them into Narnia to find the lost Prince Rilian . He gives Jill four Signs to guide them and blows her to Narnia as He did Eustace . By the time Jill , Eustace , and the Marshwiggle Puddleglum reach Harfang (home of the Gentle Giants), Jill has forgotten the Signs. Aslan appears to her in a dream and tells her to repeat them. When she cannot, He carries her to the window to see the words "UNDER ME" carved on the hillside, showing them that they must look for the prince underneath the ruined city. After Rilian is found and his father, King Caspian X , dies, Aslan tells Eustace and Jill that He would send them home. But first He takes them to His own country where they see Caspian lying dead. After a drop of blood from the Lion's paw falls over him, Caspian awakens, looking like his younger self. Aslan then opens the door into Experiment House, and the sight of Him terrifies the bullies and teachers there. When the police come and see nothing but the Headmistress panicking and talking about a lion, there is an inquiry into the whole business. The Headmistress is removed, ten people are expelled, and Experiment House becomes a decent school.
~ The Last Battle ~ (1956)
In the last days of Narnia, Shift the Ape starts a rumor that Aslan is in Narnia. Using a lion-skin and Puzzle the Donkey, he manages to persuade most of the Narnians that this is true, and that Tash (the Calormene god) and Aslan are actually the same person — "Tashlan." When King Tirian meets Tash face-to-face inside the stable, Tash is commanded to leave "in the name of Aslan." Aslan later appears to the friends of Narnia and shows them that the Dwarfs "would not be taken in." Then, so loudly that it could have shaken the stars, Aslan shouts that it is TIME. He calls all the creatures of that world to the doorway. When some of them look upon Aslan, fear comes into their faces, and they cease to be Talking Beasts. But others see Aslan's face and love Him, and come inside. Then the sun is put out, and Narnia (or, "the shadowlands") is ended. Aslan tells all the Narnians that, at last, they have come to stay with Him forever. And after that, He no longer appears as a Lion to them. As Lewis writes at the end of the tale, "And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has ever read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before."
About Aslan
Who's Aslan? Why, don't you know? He's the King—the King of the whole wood, and the Son of the great Emperor-beyond-the-Sea. He's wild, you know. If there's anyone who can appear before him without their knees knocking, they're either braver than most or else just silly. He isn't safe... But he is good. He'll often drop in, only you musn't press him to stay. He's not like a tame lion. Yes, Aslan is a lion—the Lion, the great Lion.
— The Chronicles of Narnia
Aslan is the creator of Narnia and the only character to appear in all seven of the Chronicles of Narnia. In some of the books, He only has a few brief appearances, but He is referenced in almost every chapter and is always a significant player in the story. His very name causes people to experience intense emotions. In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the sound of Aslan's name gives the traitor Edmund a sensation of mysterious horror. Peter feels suddenly brave and adventurous. Susan feels as if some delicious smell or some delightful strain of music had just floated by her. Lucy gets the feeling you have when you wake up in the morning and realize that it is the beginning of the holidays or the beginning of summer. After her winter is destroyed, the White Witch threatens to kill the next person who mentions the name of Aslan. Before he becomes a dragon, Eustace hates the name. When Jill first hears it, she says, "What a curious name!" But Eustace replies, "Not half so curious as Himself." One of the most interesting aspects of Aslan's character is that He can be both loving and terrifying. In Ch. 12 of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Lewis writes, "People who have not been in Narnia sometimes think that a thing cannot be good and terrible at the same time. If the children had ever thought so, they were cured of it now. For when they tried to look at Aslan's face they just caught a glimpse of the golden mane and the great, royal, solemn, overwhelming eyes; and then they found they couldn't look at him and went all trembly." Nothing has ever harmed the Great Lion except with His consent. When Jadis throws a metal bar from a lamppost at Aslan, it bounces off and falls harmlessly to the ground. After King Caspian X dies and enters Aslan's Country, the Lion asks Eustace to drive a thorn into His paw, and a large drop of blood splashes over the King and awakens him. And of course, Aslan allows Himself be bound on the Stone Table where the White Witch kills Him with her stone knife. But even then, Aslan does not remain dead. He has knowledge of a Deeper Magic which the White Witch did not know. As it says in The Last Battle, it was by His blood that all Narnia was saved.
Inspiration
In the late 1940s, C. S. Lewis began to have nightmares about lions (one in particular with a "big personality"). When Lewis first began writing the Chronicles, he admits that he did not know where the story would go. But then, "Aslan came bounding in." (Aslan is the Turkish word for lion.) Lewis says, "When I started The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, I don't think I foresaw what Aslan was going to do and suffer. I think He just insisted on behaving in His own way." An 11-year-old girl named Hila wrote to Lewis and asked what Aslan's other name in our world was (mentioned in VDT). Here is Lewis' response: "As to Aslan's other name, well I want you to guess. Has there never been anyone in this world who (1.) Arrived at the same time as Father Christmas. (2.) Said he was the son of the great Emperor. (3.) Gave himself up for someone else's fault to be jeered at and killed by wicked people. (4.) Came to life again. (5.) Is sometimes spoken of as a Lamb... Don't you really know His name in this world? Think it over and let me know your answer!" Of course, a widely discussed topic is the similarities between Aslan and Jesus Christ. In a letter to a young girl named Sophia, Lewis writes, "I don't say. 'Let us represent Christ as Aslan.' I say, 'Supposing there was a world like Narnia, and supposing, like ours, it needed redemption, let us imagine what sort of Incarnation and Passion and Resurrection Christ would have there.'"
Quotes
"Narnia, Narnia, Narnia, awake. Love. Think. Speak. Be walking trees. Be talking beasts. Be divine waters." (MN, Ch. 9)
"Rise up, Sir Peter Wolf's-Bane. And, whatever happens, never forget to wipe your sword." (LWW, Ch. 12)
"Once a king or queen in Narnia, always a king or queen. Bear it well, Sons of Adam! Bear it well, Daughters of Eve!" (LWW, Ch. 17)
"I tell no one any story but his own." (HHB, Ch. 11)
"Do not dare not to dare. Touch me. Smell me. Here are my paws, here is my tail, these are my whiskers. I am a true Beast." (HHB, Ch. 14)
"Ah! You have conquered me. You have great hearts." (PC, Ch. 15)
"You come of the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve. And that is both honour enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor on earth." (PC, Ch. 15)
"But I will not tell you how long or short the way will be; only that it lies across a river. But do not fear that, for I am the great Bridge Builder." (VDT, Ch. 16)
"But there I have another name. You must learn to know me by that name. This was the very reason why you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there." (VDT, Ch. 16)
"I have swallowed up girls and boys, women and men, kings and emperors, cities and realms." (SC, Ch. 2)
"You would not have called to me unless I had been calling to you." (SC, Ch. 2)
"Now it is time! Time! TIME. " (LB, Ch. 13)
"Come further in! Come further up!" (LB, Ch. 14)
"The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning." (LB, Ch. 16)
Portrayals
Liam Neeson (voice): Disney/Walden The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, 2005; Prince Caspian, 2008; Fox/Walden The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, 2010
Born: 7 July 1952 "The character of Aslan was probably the hardest to cast. He's an omnipotent character, he has to be, you know, powerful, untouchable, and at the same time be sympathetic and vulnerable. You don't want Him to be so strong and so omnipotent that at the point where He gives over Himself and gives His life, you don't feel sympathy for Him. Liam is just someone who has one incredible resonance and depth to his voice. I mean he has a voice that you can see coming out and hear coming out of a lion. He had the warmth in his voice that would draw you to him. When he turns fierce and shouts at the White Witch, it is a roar. It is a danger that he's able to project, that's why I think he was perfect for this character." — Director Andrew Adamson
David Suchet (voice): Focus on the Family Radio Theater, 1999 – 2002
Ronald Pickup (voice): BBC TV series, 1988 – 1990
Ailsa Berk/William Todd Jones/Timothy M. Rose (puppeteers): BBC TV series, 1988 – 1990
Stephen Thorne (voice): BBC Radio Tales of Narnia
Stephen Thorne (voice): LWW TV animated film, 1979
Bernard Kay: LWW TV series, 1967
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What wood is traditionally used to make Rolls Royce dashboards? | Rolls-Royce
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1966 Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud
Below is a full Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud Dashboard and Interior Wood Trim Set, Before we restored it.. The base substructure and the beautiful Burled Walnut Veneer were in good condition but the clear finish was cracked and flaking off. Refinishing was the best course of action.
Please note that many people think that this was the original color, but it was not.
These sets were originally medium-dark brown and the "orangish-yellow" color you see now, is from years of exposure to light.
Rolls-Royce stained the tops of the door panels and the other solid walnut components, but they did not stain the veneer, so we could see all of the natural beauty.
Unfortunately we were not able to take After pictures. Check back later to see if our customer sent us pictures to show how gorgeous their woodwork looked after we restored it.
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Incredible Restorations
We can repair almost cracked or damaged wood part, but sometimes the substructure is in such poor shape, repairing the part may not be the best choice.
Finding a good used "core" part is often the only alternative, and we may be able to help you locate one....so give us a call.
Depending on the complexity, there may be times when we can re-create parts if a suitable "sample" part is available for use as a pattern.
If you think your woodwork is beyond all hope, give us a call. You'd be surprised at what we can do!!!
The picnic tables below had suffered major water damage and the table on the left had cracked completely thru from front to back. Both tables were severly warped and the table on the right was warped nearly 1/2" from laying flat.
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Custom Decanter / Cracker Tin Storage Panels
Our customer sent us the original Decanter / Cracker Tin Panel and the smaller "flip" lid to have us restore them. They were both in such bad shape, that we could only use them for patterns. We re-created brand new custom replicas of the original parts. Our customer was very pleased.
(we apologize, but we cannot recall if these were from a Rolls-Royce or a Bentley, so we have put them in both sections on our website)
1963-66 Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud III
"Chinese Eye"
Just a brief history gleaned from the internet: This version of the Silver Cloud was built by coach builder Mulliner Park Ward and had the headlights placed in angled position rather than side by side. It affectionately became known as the "Chinese Eye" design and was offered in Fixed Head and Drop Head Coupe. There were 328 coach-built Silver Cloud III's, and about 100 were of this style.
Of course today, manufacturers would avoid this name....but it remains one of the most sought after models.
Below is a set of woodwork from a 1963 Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud III "Chinese Eye" - BEFORE it was veneered and BEFORE the clear finish was applied.
Below is a set of woodwork from a 1965 Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud III "Chinese Eye" - AFTER it was Refinished. We stained darker per our customer's request.
Above you can see the stock "Chinese Eye" Woodwork after we restored it. The Burled Walnut veneer that Mulliner Park Ward chose for this vehicle, had subtle but elegant patterns. Unfortunately, our camera couldn't pick up how rich this woodwork looked with the darker stain.
Above, you can see the "bookmatched" veneers on the door panels.
The craftsmen of that era put every effort forth, and spared no expense, to have their woodwork be the best in the world. We use the same woodworking techinques and principles in our restorations and we are proud to follow in the footsteps of those craftsmen.
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1982 Rolls-Royce Corniche
Below are two examples of the woodwork in the Dash area of the Corniche's. Rolls-Royce appointed these vehicles with just the right amount of woodwork on the dashboard and on the door panels.
The picture above has not been restored yet. You can see that the Burled Walnut, originally medium dark brown has changed in color, getting an orangish-red color, with a touch of yellow hues in it.
If you look closely, you can notice that the Glove box door and the map light trim panel to the right of the GBD have changed to a color a bit lighter than the Instrument panel portion of the Dashboard.
The Dashboard above has been restored. If you compare this picture with the one above it, you can see that the color has gotten closer to its' original color. The angle of the picture (above) along with the reflections in the finish, obscured the wood grain pattern, but it was even more distinct than the unrestored dashboard.
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1983 Rolls-Royce Silver Spur
The Rolls-Royce Silver Spur was appointed with even more gorgeous wood trim than the Corniche of this year. The Instrument Panel was basically the same. The Door Cappings were different and very tastefully done. The Silver Spur had Picnic Tables and Vanity Mirrors which greatly added to the feeling of luxury.
When the woodwork begins to show its' age, Silver Spur owners have us restore their woodwork.
Below are some before and after pictures of
Rolls-Royce Door Cappings that have finish failures or damage that definitely needed to be restored by us.
Above you can see a Rolls-Royce Door Capping that has suffered major damage from exposure to sun, heat and possibly moisture. Not to worry - If your Door Cappings are not looking too good, we can restore them for you. Some models had a dark brown stain on the top of the Door Capping, and when the clear finish starts to flake off, it tends to pull the stain up with it. Many folks think that it is the veneer that is coming off, but it is the clear finish and the underlying stain.
There is nothing like having us restore your Rolls-Royce woodwork back to looking "Showroom New".
Above is another style of Rolls-Royce Door Capping that we commonly restore. This set has been beautifully Refinished by us.
Above you can see typical seat belt buckle damage. These dings and dents are rather common, but of course if your Door Rails aren't looking so good, we can restore them for you. On this model, there was a very light stain on the top of the Door Capping. Also, you can see how the color of the Burled Walnut veneer has changed from its' original medium dark brown to this light orangish-red color. The color of the top of the Door Capping has changed to a "orangish-yellow" color.
Above you can see a close-up of typical seat belt buckle damage on another Rolls-Royce Door Capping.
Although this picture is quite dark, you can see how rich a restored Door Capping looks. The Burled Walnut veneer "goes back" to its' original medium dark brown color and the light and dark contrasts in the crossbanding come to life ! The top of the capping now looks as it should, adding a fine compliment to the other woods and tones.
Despite how bad these Rolls-Royce Door Cappings look, we were able to Refinish them.
Above is a set of Rolls-Royce Door Cappings that we Refinished.
1998-02 Rolls-Royce Silver Spur
(Door Panel - Major Damage Repair)
Below are Before and After pictures of a severely broken that our customer sent us.
As you can see, the door panel looked beyond repair....and our customer was worried that he would have to search the world to find replacements. New ones are non-existant, and finding suitable "used"
ones would have been like finding a needle in a hay stack.
Fortunately our customer had heard of us and knew if there was anyone in the world that could help....it would be us !!
Above, you can see that this Door Capping had suffered severe damage. Not only was the clear cracked...but the veneer and the inlay had been broken off and was missing.
What made matters worse, was that the solid wood "substructure" was broken completely through....from the top to the bottom, AND from the front to the back !! This part was in BAD shape.
Below, are pictures AFTER we repaired the Door Capping. We have included the Door panel from the other door, so you can compare damaged to undamaged.
As you can see, we were able to "save" the part for our customer.
Talk about being thrilled !!! Our custmer was Very Very happy with the results !!!!
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Our craftsmen treat each piece with the utmost care, and the attention paid to even the smallest of details is evident. Whether your damaged piece is 70 years old or from last years model, we can bring it back to pristine condition.
√ UNSURPASSED SERVICE
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Who supplied the voice for 'Zeebad' in the 'Magic Roundabout' movie? | Dashboard and wooden trim
FAQ's
Woodwork & wooden interior trim Restoration
Many wooden interiors have deteriorated to the point that the finish has perished and needs repairing. The process begins with the removal of the old finish. Many dashboards have a cross-banding edge and often over time pieces become loose or damaged. These will either be repaired or replaced.
Sometimes the veneer is 'blown' in the middle (as above). This can often be solved by my restoration processes allowing the original veneer to be saved thereby keeping its original authenticity. Alternatively, if the veneer is too damaged or rotten, the entire veneer can be replaced matching the grain as best as possible.
The rich warm honey colour that is often associated with well restored classic cars is best achieved with French polishing.
At Classic Dashboards I mainly use traditional methods such as French polishing. The woodwork is hand finished using French polish and wax to bring out the colour and characteristic of the woodgrain. Depending on your car and your tastes various finishes can be achieved.
Alternatively, a lacquered finish can be applied to your dashboards and wood trim. I use an ecological waterbased lacquer that is natural looking and not to 'plasticky' looking.
Featured here is a selection of some of the new veneers available for your dashboard in their original state prior to staining and French polishing.
Here are photos of a simple reveneering restoration of a TR6 dashboard for an old Triumph.
Many styles of veneer are available for your dashboards. Here are a few examples of the different patterns amd grains available. These photos are of the the veneer in its' original state and therefore is grey in colour and the grain (pattern) seems very flat.
Rest assured that this will all change as the restoration progresses.
Burr Walnut Veneer
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What wood was traditionally used to make Chippendale furniture? | Everything you need to know about Chippendale furniture
Everything you need to know about Chippendale furniture
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Chippendale is a style of furniture that became popular towards the end of the 18th century, designed by English cabinet maker Thomas Chippendale – after whom the style is named. Chippendale furniture is as popular as ever today, helping people create a period elegance in their homes.
If you want to learn more about the popular style of furniture and its origins, read on.
Who was Thomas Chippendale?
Thomas Chippendale was born in the early 1700s but little more is known of his early life until he married in 1748. A few years later, he moved to the edge of Covent Garden and set up home, as well as establishing workshops where he made furniture.
In 1754, Chippendale published a collection of furniture designs called Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker’s Director, which was enormously well-received by the public at the time. He was elected to the Society of Arts in 1759 and partnered with upholsterer James Rannie for a number of years until Rannie’s death, when Chippendale recruited his clerk Thomas Haig.
Chippendale married again in 1777 after the death of his first wife in 1772, and died in 1779 from tuberculosis.
Styles of Chippendale furniture
The Chippendale style is often described as being an anglicised type of Rococo, and Rococo is one of the styles Chippendale encompasses, along with Gothic and Chinese. Rococo Chippendale furniture often displays French influence, with chairs based on Louis XV designs, although usually less ostentatious. The ribbonback chair with a broad seat and cupid’s bow-style back rail is perhaps the most famous Chippendale design.
Gothic Chippendale furniture is characterised by s-shaped curves and pointed arches in the backs of chairs, while Gothic bookcases were triangular at the top and had wooden glazing bars to hold the glass in place.
Chinese Chippendale creations often included cabinets and shelves for china, and typically features pagoda-style pediments and glazing bars arranged in a fretwork design. This fretwork was also used on the edges of tea tables and on the backs and legs of chairs, often coated with lacquer.
Modern Chippendale furniture
Chippendale furniture continues to be popular in modern times as the furnishings are not only attractive and help to create an upmarket, classic feel in the home, they are also hardwearing and long-lasting. While original furniture from the 1700s is hard to come by – especially in a well-preserved form, you can invest in replica pieces made from solid mahogany that is virtually undetectable as a modern equivalent.
Mahogany is a reddish-brown hardwood that is extremely durable and ideal for carving. It resists wood rot and can be transformed into items of furniture that, with little maintenance, will last for years. You’ll find bedside tables, writing desks and dressing tables among the Chippendale furniture available, and simply need to wipe the furnishings down with a damp cloth to remove dust that has settled.
To keep your mahogany Chippendale furniture in good condition, avoid placing it near to sunlight, as this can cause the wood’s colour to fade. Similarly, furnishings should not stand near to radiators or fireplaces.
Avoid placing hot dishes directly on your Chippendale furniture, and use coasters lined underneath with felt, as other materials may scratch or damage the wood. You can also add extra shine to your furniture by giving it a regular polish when the pieces are beginning to look a little dull.
| Mahogany |
Which French Hussar is the hero of several short stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle? | Learning How to Date Antique Furniture
By Pamela Wiggins
Updated January 06, 2017.
Looking at the joinery, or the way a piece of antique furniture is put together, will provide many clues that help in determining the age. But there are a number of other factors to consider as well, including the tools that were used to craft a piece and what the individual components look like. Examining these elements individually, as well as furniture pieces in their entirety, will help you learn to correctly date them.
Examining Bottoms, Insides and Backs
Looking at the bottom or back of a piece, or inside its doors and drawers, can provide important clues about whether or not a piece of old furniture was machine cut or crafted by hand. Most handmade pieces will show some irregularities to the surface such as minor nicks indicative of a hand plane being used to smooth out the wood, and this is sometimes even more evident on the back than on the finished front surfaces.
Most machine made pieces date after 1860, according to art historian Lori Verderame (also known as Dr. Lori) so if the piece you’re examining is perfectly finished without shallow cuts being evident, this clue points to it being made in the late 1800s or beyond.
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7 Places to Find Inspiration for Crafting
Do All the Elements Match Exactly?
Smaller “matching” elements, such as wooden drawer knobs, chair spindles, or feet on a variety of objects, may have slight differences in the shape if they were hand crafted prior to 1860 or so.
Machine made furniture produced largely after 1860 will have components that match more perfectly than those made by hand. The reason? It’s almost impossible to make the same exact furniture element over and over identically without the use of machinery.
What Types of Tools Were Used When the Piece was Constructed?
When hand planes were used to smooth woods, they more often than not left some sort of uneven surface. As discussed above, this is especially evident on the back or underside of pieces made prior to the mid-1800s. Cuts and nicks can also leave proof that hand chisels and other tools operated with elbow grease were used to shape woods.
When circular saws were used, and this wasn’t prevalent until the mid-19th century, a circular pattern is usually present as evidence. Manually operated hand saws left a straighter pattern in comparison. That’s not to say wood crafters aren’t still making furniture by hand today, and they were doing so at the turn of the 20th century, too. Looking for other signs of age is also wise in addition to indicators of hand craftsmanship.
Looking at Woods and Upholstery Fabrics
Many people have trouble distinguishing different types of woods and finishes, so if you fall into this category don’t feel alone. But yes, different types of wood were used during different furniture periods and if you’re good at recognizing them this can prove to be another clue that helps determine the age of furniture.
For instance, oak was used in furniture made prior to 1700. After 1700, mahogany and walnut were very popular. Moving into the 1800s, maple and cherry showed up in fine furniture manufacture quite often. Many Victorian furniture manufacturers used mahogany and rosewood through the late 1800s. Then, around 1900, oak became very popular again.
Can you circa date solely on the type of wood used? Absolutely not. But materials can be an indicator of age when they fits in with the overall style and age of other components that make up the furniture you’re trying to date. The same goes with upholstery if it’s original, and that’s a key factor. Silk, wool, and cotton have been spun and woven into a variety of damasks, satins, and brocades with many different patterns. Consult a book with a upholstery guide like American Furniture: Tables, Chairs, Sofas & Beds by Marvin D. Schwartz (now out of print, but available through used booksellers) for more clues about fabric designs used at different periods in furniture history.
Looking for Old Screws and Other Hardware
Screws weren’t made completely by machine until 1848, according an Antique Trader column by regular contributor Fred Taylor. So if you find a furniture item using screws that have completely rounded shafts, pointed ends, and perfectly finished heads with matching cuts (much like a screw you would purchase today), the piece likely dates to the mid-19th century or later.
Screws made from about 1812 through the mid-1800s were partially machine made giving the threading a more even appearance, according to Taylor. But the heads were still finished with hacksaws to add the groove to fit a screwdriver like those made even earlier, so no two are exactly alike. The first screws were crafted in the 1700s by blacksmiths using square nail stock that was heated and pounded until it was somewhat round. The tips were blunt in these oldest screws, and each one was unique. If you find these hand finished screws in furniture, investigate other aspects of the pieces to see if they match the screws in age.
Other brass hardware can be an indicator of age as well. "Early 18th century hardware was cast from molten brass using molds made of sand," Taylor explains in his Antique Trader column. "This type of hardware is easy to recognize because it often has 'inclusions' from the sand itself in the brass, either grains of sand or or odd colors from impurities. The backs of this type of hardware were often left with the impression of the sand while the surfaces were polished."
Early 19th century brasses will also exhibit a rough texture, finish, and threading akin to the screws mentioned above while modern hardware will not. The presence of brass hardware at all also tells a tale. From the 1830s up until the Eastlake period in the 1880s, brass hardware fell out of favor in furniture manufacture and was sparsely used. If you have a piece with brasses, it's most likely pre-1830s or a revival piece from the late 1800s on.
Determining the Style of a Piece
The overall style – such as Chippendale , William and Mary , or Rococo Revival along with a host of others – can help you determine when a piece was made.
Keep in mind, however, that some styles have been prolifically reproduced over the years, like both Chipppendale and Queen Anne among others. It is very important to look for additional signs of age beyond your first glance at the style.
As you examine the piece, sleuth for clues that support your initial theory that you have a piece of authentic period furniture . And, realize that those masterpieces are actually few and far between. More than likely, you will discover that you own a later revival piece although it's awfully fun to dream big when you begin your research.
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Who was the Conservative Prime Minister of Great Britain from 1874 to 1880? | British Prime Ministers - 1859-1892
British Prime Ministers - 1859-1892
Conservative
The period 1847 to 1859 was one of ministerial instability. Disputes between the Liberals, under Lord John Russell and Vicomte Palmerston, the foreign minister, undermined the Liberal position, and in 1852 the Conservatives, under the leadership of Derby, returned to power. In 1853, however, the free trade Conservatives joined the Liberals, overthrew Derby, and placed in office a coalition ministry under Aberdeen. This government maintained itself until 1855, when, by reason of discontent aroused by his management of England's part in the Crimean War, Aberdeen resigned and was succeeded by Palmerston, at the head of another Liberal ministry. Foreign difficulties drove Palmerston from office early in 1858, and the establishment of a second Derby ministry marked a brief return of the Conservatives to control.
Vicomte Palmerston, Liberal Prime Minister from 1855-1858 and 1859-1865, did not become PM until he was 71, making him the oldest prime minister in history to take up the office for the first time. His premiership was dominated by foreign events, making him a truly global statesman. A vivacious aristocrat well known in society circles, Palmerston was first elected at the age of 26. Over the next four-and-a-half decades, he built up an impressive long record of ministerial service. He served first under Tory prime ministers as Junior Lord of the Admiralty and then, for two decades, as Secretary for War. During that period, Palmerston was chiefly known as a man of fashion, a junior minister without influence on the general policy of the cabinets he served. Around 1830, Palmerston defected from the Tories to the Whigs because of his support for Catholic emancipation and parliamentary reform. Earl Grey made him Foreign Secretary, a position in which he excelled, although he was headstrong and independent rather than instinctively diplomatic. Highly patriotic, Palmerston did not shirk from threatening the use of force in the national interest.
Palmerston became prime minister himself in 1855 when Lord Aberdeen was blamed for the disasters of the Crimean War. Palmerston successfully ended the war, and served as the Prime Minister for eight years despite his old age. In his first term, 1855-58, Palmerston had a chance to put his foreign experience into practice. He responded successfully to the Indian mutiny of 1857, supporting a lenient approach in the face of British calls for hard treatment. In February 1858 he introduced the Government of India Bill to transfer the administration of India from the East India Company to the Crown. Palmerston was out of office for a year and a half. During that time he helped to form the Liberal Party in 1859. He returned to government as PM a few days later.
The Liberal Party was the successor of the old Whig party, representing the political party opposed to Toryism or Conservatism, and claiming to be the originators and champions of political reform and progressive legislation. The term came into general use definitely as the name of one of the two great parties in the state when Mr Gladstone became its leader, but before this it had already become current coin, as a political appellation, through a natural association with the use of such phrases as "liberal ideas," in the sense of "favourable to change," or "in support of political freedom and democracy." Its old watchword, "Peace, retrenchment and reform," indicated its tendency to avoidance of a "spirited" foreign policy, and to parsimony in expenditure.
A defensive naval policy was central to the conditions definitely adopted by Lord Palmerston's Government in 1860, only ten years before the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War. A Royal Commission then solemnly decided that the English Channel, Britain's main sea frontier, should not be defended. Cruisers were to be placed on the trade routes, some sort of naval force was to be maintained in the Mediterranean, but the main reliance of this island people for safety in time of war was to be placed on the Army, the Militia, and the recently-formed Volunteer Force. It was held that the creation of any Grand Fleet involved a financial expenditure which this country would never undertake. In accordance with that policy, millions of pounds sterling were spent on the construction of fortifications along the coast, in their time the source of confidence on the part of the people.
Earl Russell, Liberal Prime Minister from 1846-51 and 1865-6, served twice as prime minister. Neither period of office proved smooth, and his achievements were limited by weak leadership and difficult circumstances. When Palmerston suddenly died in 1865, Russell formed a second government; his advanced age was outweighed by Queen Victoria's trust in him. Russell immediately tried to introduce a further Reform Bill to extend the political franchise, but his Cabinet failed to support him, and he resigned with little regret the next year.
The Earl of Derby, Conservative Prime Minister from 1852, 1858-9 and 1866-8, was unusual for serving in both Whig and Tory administrations. Derby is considered to be the father of the modern Conservative Party. His tenure as leader of the party lasted for 22 years - to date the all-time record for the party.
The new liberalism was paralleled by a new conservatism, whose principal exponent was Benjamin Disraeli. The new Conservatives likewise advocated franchise reform and legislation for the people, although they put more emphasis upon the latter than upon the former; and they especially favored a firm foreign policy, an extension of British interests in all parts of the world, and the adoption of a scheme of colonial federation. They appeared, at least, to have less regard for peace and for economy than had the Liberals.
Benjamin Disraeli, Conservative Prime Minister from 1868 and 1874-80, had an Anglican upbringing after the age of twelve. With Jews excluded from Parliament until 1858, this enabled Disraeli to follow a career that would otherwise have been denied him. He was Britain's first, and so far only, Jewish Prime Minister. After Derby's resignation in 1868, Queen Victoria invited Disraeli to become PM, and they soon struck up a remarkable rapport thanks to Disraeli's charm and skilful flattery. On finally achieving his long ambition, Disraeli declared, "I have climbed to the top of the greasy pole". Disraeli now faced Gladstone across the Dispatch Box, and it became Britain's most famous parliamentary rivalry.
British politics were dominated by the rivalry (though not enmity) between Disraeli and Gladstone until Disraeli's exit in 1880. Gladstone went on into the 1890s. William Ewart Gladstone, Liberal Prime Minister from 1868-74, 1880-85, 1886 and 1892-94, provoked strong reactions. Queen Victoria described him as a "half-mad firebrand". In 1867, Gladstone became leader of the Liberal party following Palmerston's resignation, and became prime minister for the first time the following year. The results of the doubling of the electorate were manifest in the substantial majority which the new Liberals acquired at the elections of 1868, and the Disraeli ministry (Derby had retired early in the year) gave place to a government presided over by the indubitable leader of the new Liberal forces, Gladstone. His policies were intended to improve individual liberty while loosening political and economic restraints.
In his first government (1868-1874) Gladstone legalized unions and took an interest in the Irish question (land tenure and home rule) but did nothing much about it. Her Majesty's Secretary of State for the Colonies repudiated [House of Lords, May 12, 1874] the course of action which has made Her Majesty the greatest sovereign whom the world has ever seen. "It is the wish of Her Majesty's Government to abstain from any territorial acquisitions and from contracting any new obligations." It was surprising to hear words that suggested he had become a pervert to the Manchester School of Radicals. Close upon the heels of this first word spoken for the right, came Mr. Disraeli's declaration determination that Her Majesty's dominions should not be diminished under his stewardship, and of hope that they would be increased.
Richard Cobden (1804-1865) was a member of the British Parliament and an advocate of free trade, a non-interventionist foreign policy, peace, and parliamentary reform. The apostle of Free Trade was a pioneer of progress, who noted how desirable it is to husband resources in times of profound peace, and so set free the springs of industry and lessen the burdens of the people. He was concerned by the dangers to nations from profuse and reckless expenditure of the public money. History tells in many a melancholy page how much such a policy has tended to the decline and fall of States.
By 1870 British policy had entirely changed in this direction. It had given up meddling in every petty dispute which breaks out on the Continent of Europe; it had ceased to talk of the balance of power; it had got quit of nearly all those wretched provisions, in the Treaty of 1815, which provided merely for dynasties, without reference to nationalities or the wishes of the people. It had seen the establishment of a free Italy, and a compact, powerful Fatherland in Germany.
Britian had withdrawn the troops from British colonies; it had re-arranged the military system, so as to make it more efficient for defensive purposes. Britain had become the workshop and the shipbuilding yard of the world ; the people were wealthier, more prosperous, more contented than they ever were before. Why should Britain keep up a standing army, more numerous in this island than it ever was in any period of history, and a navy which would be able in a fight to give a good account of herself against many combined fleets?
In 1874 a heavy defeat at the General Election led to Gladstone's arch-rival Disraeli becoming prime minister. Gladstone retired as leader of the Liberal Party, but remained a formidable opponent, attacking the government fiercely over their weak response to Turkish brutality in the Balkans, known as the Eastern Crisis.
Benjamin Disraeli became the head of a safe Conservative majority in both houses of Parliament. His advent signalized a decided change in governmental policies. Whereas Gladstone in the preceding years had occupied himself with domestic problems, internal reforms, and the material prosperity of the Kingdom, Disraeli attempted to kindle the imaginations of Englishmen by the idea of imperialism, by a picture of the British colonies consolidated with the mother country into the farthest flung and mightiest empire the world has ever seen. Great Britain's destiny was far more magnificent than the mere material prosperity of the British Isles : Englishmen should look abroad, around the world. Himself gifted with the vivid imagination of the east, Disraeli attempted to impress his dreams upon the narrow and somewhat conventional British mind.
In 1875, when he had been minister but a single year, an opportunity was offered him to make a sensational move in this new imperial policy. The Suez canal, built by a French company and formally opened in November of 1869, had been an immediate success and had changed radically the conditions of commerce with the Far East. Chinese, Australian, and Indian commerce, which formerly had gone the long voyage around the Cape of Good Hope, now sailed direct through the canal. Inasmuch as Great Britain had become the world's great sea-carrying nation, practically seventy-five per cent of the tonnage by this route was British. Above all, the canal was the direct route to Great Britain's richest colony, India.
Of the 400,000 shares of the canal company, 176,602 were owned by the inefficient and bankrupt Khedive of Egypt. In 1875 it came to Disraeli's knowledge that the Khedive was contemplating the sale of these shares, that indeed he was preparing to enter into negotiations with France on the matter. With the utmost haste and secrecy, Disraeli got into communication with the Khedive by telegraph and bought the shares for the British government for about four million pounds. The announcement of the purchase surprised and delighted the people. It was the first startling awakening in recent years to an interest in a world of affairs outside those of their own narrow islands. A year later, 1876, Disraeli proposed and put through Parliament a measure designed still further to impress upon Great Britain the imperial idea - namely, a measure creating the British Queen the Empress of India. Victoria, pleased at what she considered an addition to her titles, assumed the imperial dignity January 1, 1877.
During the five years covered by the life of the second Disraeli ministry [1874-1880] British imperialism reached flood tide. Conservative leaders interested themselves principally in foreign and colonial questions, and home affairs received but scant attention. The result was public discontent, and at the elections of 1880 the Liberals obtained a parliamentary majority of more than one hundred seats.
In 1880 Gladstone became PM for a second time, much against Queen Victoria's will. Gladstone obtained a new majority (1880-1885) during which suffrage was extended to allow farm workers to vote. Despite his anti-imperialism, Gladstone allowed the occupation of Egypt in 1882 to safeguard the Suez Canal, although his delay in going to the aid of Charles Gordon, besieged by the Mahdi in Khartoum, did not make him popular among imperialists, who counted with the support of the general public including workingmen.
Gladstone returned to power in 1886 and Home Rule took its place in the formal program of the Liberal party. The Conservatives opposed it solidly, many of the Irish Nationalists were dissatisfied with it, and upwards of a hundred Liberal members, led by Joseph Chamberlain, flatly refused to follow the majority of their fellow-partisans in voting for it. Under the name of Liberal Unionists these dissenters eventually broke entirely from their earlier affiliation; and, inclining more and more toward the position occupied by the Conservatives, they ended by losing their identity in the ranks of that party. Their accession brought the Conservatives new vigor, new issues, and even a new name, for the term Conservative was supplanted very generally by that of Unionist.
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, Marquess of Salisbury, Conservative Prime Minister from 1885-6, 1886-92 and 1895-1902, ranked among Britain's longest-serving prime ministers. Salisbury's main interests lay in the direction of foreign affairs, especially British interests in Africa. His other political legacy was strengthening the Conservative party by unifying different factions. Salisbury took over the Conservative leadership on Disraeli's death in 1881, and reluctantly became prime minister of a minority administration in 1885. The PM's diplomatic skills were demonstrated in 1890-91 through a settlement reached with the other European imperial powers over African territories.
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| Benjamin D'Israeli (merchant) |
Under what name did Scottish born actor David McDonald achieve fame? | BBC - History - Historic Figures: William Ewart Gladstone (1809 - 1898)
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William Ewart Gladstone © Four-times Liberal prime minister of Great Britain, Gladstone was one of the dominant political figures of the Victorian era and a passionate campaigner on a huge variety of issues, including home rule for Ireland.
William Ewart Gladstone was born on 29 December 1809 in Liverpool, the son of a prosperous merchant. He was educated at Eton and Oxford University and was elected to parliament in 1832, as a Tory. He made his mark from the start and held junior offices in Robert Peel's government of 1834 - 1835. Although he was slowly moving towards liberalism, in 1843 Gladstone entered Peel's Conservative cabinet. When the Conservatives split in 1846, Gladstone followed Peel in becoming a Liberal-Conservative. Between 1846 and 1859 Gladstone was politically isolated, although he held some cabinet posts, including chancellor of the exchequer, a position he would ultimately hold three times.
In 1859, he joined the Liberals, becoming their leader in 1867 and the following year, prime minister for the first time. His government created a national elementary programme and made major reforms in the justice system and the civil service. Ireland was always a focus for Gladstone. In 1869 he disestablished the Irish Protestant church and passed an Irish Land Act to rein-in unfair landlords. A heavy defeat in the 1874 general election led to Gladstone's arch-rival Benjamin Disraeli becoming Conservative prime minister, and Gladstone retired as Liberal leader. He remained a formidable government opponent, attacking the Conservatives over their failure to respond to Turkish brutality in the Balkans - the 'Eastern Crisis'.
In 1880, Gladstone became prime minister for the second time, combining this with the office of chancellor for two years. His failure to rescue General Charles Gordon from Khartoum and slow reaction to other imperial issues cost him dear, and in 1885 the government's budget was defeated, prompting him to resign.
Gladstone's third (1886) and fourth (1892 - 1894) terms as prime minister were dominated by his crusade for home rule in Ireland. The years he was out of office were devoted to the issue as well. His first home rule bill in 1886 split the Liberal Party and was rejected. In 1893, another home rule bill was rejected by the House of Lords. Gladstone found himself increasingly at odds with his cabinet and, in 1894, he resigned. He died of cancer on 19 May 1898 and was buried in Westminster Abbey.
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Who was the Tory Prime Minister of Great Britain from 1809 to 1812? | Spencer Perceval
Spencer Perceval
Prime Minister, 1809-1812
Spencer Perceval was born in Audley Square, London, on November 1, 1762, the second son of John, 2nd Earl of Egmont. He was educated at Harrow and at Trinity College, Cambridge, received his M.A. in 1782, and was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1786. In 1790 he married Jane Spencer-Wilson, with whom he had six sons and six daughters.
Perceval's political career began in 1790, when he became Deputy Recorder of Northampton. In 1796 the voters of Northampton sent him to Parliament, where he became a supporter of William Pitt the Younger. He subsequently served as Solicitor General (1801-1802) and as Attorney General (1802-1806).
In 1806, the Tory government of William Pitt the Younger gave way to that of William Wyndham Grenville, a Whig, and Perceval became a member of the opposition. An ardent opponent of Grenville's plan to offer emancipation to England's Catholics, he delivered a speech before the House of Commons which helped destroy Grenville's administration (1807).
Grenville's government gave way to a coalition government led by the Duke of Portland, a Tory. Perceval became the duke's Chancellor of the Exchequer, and then succeeded him as Prime Minister, on October 4, 1809.
Perceval's government was marred by upheavels caused by the Industrial Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, and the increasing madness of King George III . He also had difficulty bringing qualified men into his administration, and even had to serve as his own Chancellor of the Exchequer because no one was willing to take the job.
On May 11, 1812, while on his way to attend an inquiry into the recent Luddite riots, Perceval was shot and mortally wounded by John Bellingham, a bankrupt merchant who had tried unsuccessfully to recover his losses from the government. He died in the lobby of the House of Commons, and became the only British Prime Minister to be assassinated. Although he was deemed insane, Bellingham was subsequently executed for his crime, on May 18, 1812.
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| Spencer Perceval |
Which is the largest desert in South America? | British prime minister assassinated - May 11, 1812 - HISTORY.com
British prime minister assassinated
Publisher
A+E Networks
In London, Spencer Perceval, prime minister of Britain since 1809, is shot to death by demented businessman John Bellingham in the lobby of the House of Commons. Bellingham, who was inflamed by his failure to obtain government compensation for war debts incurred in Russia, gave himself up immediately.
Spencer Perceval had a profitable law practice before entering the House of Commons as a Tory in 1796. Industrious and organized, he successively held the senior cabinet posts of solicitor general and attorney general beginning in 1801. In 1807, he became chancellor of the exchequer, a post he continued to hold after becoming prime minister in 1809. As prime minister, Perceval faced a financial crisis in Britain brought on by the country’s extended involvement in the costly Napoleonic Wars. He also made political enemies through his opposition to the regency of the Prince of Wales, who later became King George IV. Nevertheless, the general situation was improving when he was assassinated on May 11, 1812. His assassin, though deemed insane, was executed one week later.
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Count Almasy is the name of which eponymous literary character? | The English Patient: Character Profiles | Novelguide
The English Patient: Character Profiles
Total Votes: 143
David Caravaggio
Caravaggio was a thief before the Second World War (in Canada), and was used for this purpose during the war in Cairo and Italy. He was tortured and had his thumbs removed by a German inquisitor. He comes to the villa after discovering Hana is there as he knew her as a child and young woman in Canada.
Geoffrey Clifton
Clifton is the husband of Katharine and both are referred to in the novel’s epigraph. Caravaggio reveals towards the end of the novel that Clifton had been working for British Intelligence.
Hana
During the war, Hana was a nurse and continues to nurse the English patient in the villa at the beginning of the novel. She is depicted as being mentally scarred by the war and is grieving for the death of her father.
Katharine Clifton
Katharine’s affair with the English patient is a central back story of the novel.
Kirpal Singh/Kip
He is most commonly referred to as Kip and during the war and through his stay at the villa he works in a bomb disposal unit for the British Army. After the death of his mentor, Lord Suffolk, he also helped to construct Bailey Bridges in the invasion of Italy. He leaves the villa in rage and disgust after learning of the dropping of atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Madox
Madox, like the Cliftons, does not appear in the present storyline in the villa. He was a colleague and friend of the English patient and committed suicide in church at the outbreak of war.
The English Patient/Count Ladislaus de Almásy
This eponymous anti-hero is also one of the main protagonists. The identity of this supposed English patient is revealed gradually and on Caravaggio’s prompting. Caravaggio believes correctly that this patient is not English but Hungarian, and worked for the German powers during the war.
| The English Patient |
If you ordered cebolla in a Spanish Restaurant what would you be served? | SparkNotes: The English Patient: Chapter IX
The English Patient
page 1 of 3
Summary
The English patient talks about "how one falls in love." He tells about the first time he ever saw Katharine, as she was emerging from a plane. She was too eager for his taste, and her husband Geoffrey, still in the flush of honeymoon, could not stop singing the praises of his new wife. After a month in Cairo, Katharine was more muted, reading constantly, but her husband was still young and excited. The English patient was fifteen years older than Katharine, and cynical about everlasting love. She was hungry for change, however: she learned everything she could read about the desert, and she grew up quickly.
Geoffrey's praise meant very little to Katharine, but she was charmed by the English patient's nuance. When she asked if she could read his Herodotus, he gracefully declined to give it to her, as his notes were in it. But he promised to show it to her when he returned from his journey. When he did return from the journey, which had been successful, Geoffrey threw a party for him. Before the party, he loaned Katharine his Herodotus to read as she pleased.
At the party, Katharine chose to read a famous story from Herodotus, but one the English patient usually skips over. It was the story of a very beautiful queen whose husband, the king, praised her beauty all the time. The king was telling a man named Gyges of his wife's beauty, but she was so beautiful that the king wanted Gyges to see for himself. So he arranged for Gyges to sneak into her room and hide in order to watch her while she undressed. The queen saw Gyges sneak out of her room and realized what her husband had done. The next day, she called for Gyges and offered him one of two options: either to slay his friend the king and thus possess her and the kingdom, or to stand there and be slain immediately. Gyges kills the king and reigns with the queen for twenty-eight years. After Katharine finishes this anecdote, which seems quite human and familiar, the English patient realizes he is in love with her.
In the months that followed, the patient and Katharine would be in the same company frequently, as they traveled in similar circles. She and Geoffrey were stationed in Cairo and moving in the circles of the city's society. The pateient would go to events just to see her, and could think of little besides her body, which became the inspiration for one of his books. Naturally, he grew more formal around her, as he did not want her to know of his secret thoughts. One day, at a formal garden party, Katharine came to him and said simply, "I want you to ravish me." After that, the English patient became her lover, and they would steal glances and touches everywhere. The only person they had to avoid was Geoffrey. However, Geoffrey was enmeshed in the circle of British aristocracy, and had a strong web of relations who watched out for him and would let him know if they ever found out about his young wife's infidelity.
Katharine became frustrated at what she called the patient's "inhumanity," his hatred of ownership, of identity, of being owned. She needed words to convince her that she was special to him, but he had none for her. She decided to leave him and go back to her husband.
The English patient remembers Madox, his best friend in the desert for ten years. Madox could describe his love of the desert in words, whereas the patient could only write factually about the environment around him. The two friends were different in many ways. Madox, for one thing, was entirely faithful to his wife in England. The English patient never knew for certain whether Madox knew about his relationship with Katharine, but he suspected he did. When Madox returned to England at the start of the war in 1939, he and his wife went to church, where they heard a very jingoistic sermon from the priest in support of the war. Madox took out his desert pistol and shot himself right on the spot. The patient reasons that Madox was a man who died because of nations.
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If you ordered queso in a Spanish Restaurant what would you be served? | How to Make Queso Dip -Acapulcos Mexican Family Restaurant
1. Put all ingredients in a double boiler and heat on medium.
2. Cook until melted and well blended, stirring occasionally.
3. Serve with fresh tostadas or hot flour tortillas.
The type of cheese used in queso dip is always the biggest source of argument among chefs. While the flavor of monterey jack is typically considered paramount, it’s an American cheese so it is not considered authentic.
However you choose to make your queso, it is important that you keep it heated while guests indulge. The queso will start to solidify when left to rest, so it’s a good idea to serve it in a crockpot or use a warming tray. If you have a candle heater or coffee warmer lying around, these work great for keeping your serving dish warm!
If you are still struggling to make a queso that is up to your standards, feel free to visit Acapulcos Mexican Family Restaurant. We serve up authentic Mexican food daily, and we’ve heard that our queso is some of the best around. Visit one of our locations throughout Massachusetts and Connecticut today.
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Lisbeth Salander is the name of which eponymous literary character? | How to Order Food at Spanish Restaurants
By Lisa & Tony Sierra
Updated December 07, 2016.
Spanish meals at home or at restaurants are eaten in separate courses. Whether it is a restaurant in Spain or in your neighborhood, you’ll need to learn to order from the Spanish menu, or as it is commonly called la carta.
Start by reading the list of course names below that you may see on a menu at any Spanish restaurant, as well as what may be offered in each course. You will not see every heading listed below since there is a wide variety of ways to organize a menu. Menus also depend on the region, as well as the number of stars (or forks) the restaurant has been awarded.
Spanish Menu of the Day: Menú del Día
During the midday meal or la comida, the Menú del Día or Menu of the Day is generally offered and is the most economical way to eat at a Spanish restaurant. It normally includes a soup or salad, main course with a side dish and dessert -- all for one price. It’s a great way to taste what the natives are eating in the region and it will probably include dishes that you would not have ordered if left on your own.
continue reading below our video
BBQ Side Dishes: The 411
This is also a good way to avoid having to choose from a long list of menu items.
Dining Out in Spain, A Gallery of Typical Menus of the Day and Tapas Menus
Appetizers: Entremeses or Entrantes
This is a small dish that may or may not be “finger” food. It is common to see sausages such as chorizo or morcilla (blood sausage), lomo (cured pork loin), jamón (ham), or queso (cheese) in this section. There will probably be a selection of both hot and cold dishes.
First Course: Primer Plato
You may or may not see this section on the menu. The first course is generally a lighter course, similar to the entremeses above. Soups and salads or sopas y ensaladas also appear in this section. These can include hot and cold soups, as well as asparagus Vinaigrette , traditional green salad , avocado or other types of fruit salads; however, normally these salads will not be sweet.
Second Course: Segundo Plato
The second course is the “main” course of the meal. In this section, you will see all kinds of dishes, such as cocidos/estofados or stews, asados or roasts, chuletas or chops, or grilled fish. Rather than list Primer Plato and Segundo Plato, the restaurant may list their dishes by type of food, such as fish, meat, etc. We explain more about that below.
Main Courses: Platos Principales
As you can see, not every restaurant will organize their menu in the same way. Sometimes, instead of listing the Primer Plato and Segundo Plato, or Carnes or Pescados, they may list all of the main dishes in this section.
Specialties or Specialties of the House: Especialidades or Especialidades de la Casa
As the name implies, this section is going to contain the signature dishes of the restaurant, or what the restaurant is known for. This section usually contains only main courses.
Fish: Pescados
This section will contain the fish dishes and they will almost always be main dishes. Since Spain sits between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, there is a big variety of fish and seafood on any menu. Each region will offer different fish dishes.
Meat: Carnes
As with the fish section, the meat section of a Spanish menu will contain the meat dishes, whether they are beef, veal (ternera) lamb (cordero ), pork (cerdo), or suckling pig (cochinillo) and they will be large, main courses.
Dessert: Postre
Dessert may be a simple offering of fresh fruit and cheese. However, Spanish desserts include a wide variety of ice creams, ice cream cakes, and sorbets , as well as custards such as flan , natillas, cuajada, or crema catalana .
Wines - Vinos
If you are at a true restaurant, not a café or tavern, typically you can request to see the wine list, as you would here in the USA. There will generally be sections for each type of wine: Red Wine (Vino Tinto), White Wine (Vino Blanco), Rose or Claret Wine (Vino Rosado or Vino Clarete). You will probably also see a section for sherries or jerez .
What to Order on a Spanish Menu
By this time, you are probably wondering which dishes to order because you now have the idea that you won't order one from each section! Let's simplify this: It is customary to order one dish from the Primer Plato, one from the Segundo Plato and Entremeses and Postres are optional, as is vino. Many times, if several people at the table have ordered salad, it is served in a large dish and placed in the middle of the table for everyone to eat.
Sample Menus
Below is a short list of some restaurants that have their menus listed on the internet. Three of the restaurants are in Spain and one is located in San Francisco, California. Each menu is organized in its own way and there is truly a wide variety of dishes offered.
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Who voiced the character of Bruce the shark in Finding Nemo? | Bruce | Disney's Sebastian & Dory Wiki | Fandom powered by Wikia
Bruce is a great white shark and a character from the Disney/Pixar 2003 film Finding Nemo . He is voiced by Barry Humphries.
Contents
[ show ]
Personality
Bruce is a kind and pleasant shark. He is also shown to be jolly, laidback, and a jokester. However, his personality changes when his instincts start to kick in, and this makes him turn into a mindless, fish-eating shark.
Role in the Film
Bruce first appears just after Marlin and Dory meet and invites them to a meeting, to which both of them soon comply. He brings them to where his friends, Anchor and Chum are waiting for him: at a sunken submarine. The three sharks are running a program in which they plan to stop eating fish.
The meeting begins and the sharks say the pledge. Bruce then says that for this meeting, the sharks need to bring a fish friend. Anchor reveals his, who is extremely scared and soon swims away. However, Chum says that he seems to have misplaced his friend (he ate his friend) and Bruce advises him to choose Marlin or Dory as his friend and Chum chooses Marlin.
The testimonies begin and while Marlin is up, he notices the mask of the diver that took Nemo and reveals to the others that his son was taken by divers and Dory shows sympathy for him. Bruce is touched by Marlin's search for his son, as he never knew his father and begins to sob, but in comforted by his friends. When Dory gets hurt, a bit of her blood goes into his nose and he likes the taste. He attempts to get a bite out of her and Marlin, which results in a chase through the submarine while Anchor and Chum try to stop Bruce. Dory releases a torpedo that goes into Bruce's mouth and he throws it out into a surrounding mine field and his friends tell him where it's heading for. He turns around and sees that the torpedo is about to touch one of the bombs. The three sharks quickly swim away from the area.
Bruce, once again trying not to eat fish, appears briefly with the othe sharks at the end of the film, briefly scaring the other fish in the area until he reveals that he just wanted to make sure Dory got back safely.
Gallery
Trivia
The name Bruce might have been a reference to the movie Jaws. During the production of the film, director Steven Spielberg gave the name Bruce to the mechanical shark that was used.
Another reference to the Steven Spielberg film Jaws is shown in the scene when Dory and Marlin are stuck in a missile pod, and they release the missile, which gets stuck in Bruce's mouth, allowing them to escape.
At one point during the chase scene, Bruce manages to partially break a door in the submarine open. He then sticks his head into the opening and shouts "HERE'S BRUCIE!" This is obviously a reference to a famous scene in Stanley Kubrick's 1980 horror film The Shining, when Jack Nicholson's character uses an ax to smash part the door to the room where his wife his hiding, then sticks his head into the opening and shouts "HERE'S Johnny!"
| Barry Humphries |
Lack of vitamin B1 causes what disease in humans? | Bruce | Disney Fan Fiction Wiki | Fandom powered by Wikia
Bruce is a great white shark and a character from the Disney/Pixar 2003 film Finding Nemo . He is voiced by Barry Humphries.
Contents
[ show ]
Personality
Bruce is a kind and pleasant shark. He is also shown to be jolly, laidback, and a jokester. However, his personality changes when his instincts start to kick in, and this makes him turn into a mindless, fish-eating shark.
Role in the Film
Bruce first appears just after Marlin and Dory meet and invites them to a meeting, to which both of them soon comply. He brings them to where his friends, Anchor and Chum are waiting for him: at a sunken submarine. The three sharks are running a program in which they plan to stop eating fish.
The meeting begins and the sharks say the pledge. Bruce then says that for this meeting, the sharks need to bring a fish friend. Anchor reveals his, who is extremely scared and soon swims away. However, Chum says that he seems to have misplaced his friend (he ate his friend) and Bruce advises him to choose Marlin or Dory as his friend and Chum chooses Marlin.
The testimonies begin and while Marlin is up, he notices the mask of the diver that took Nemo and reveals to the others that his son was taken by divers and Dory shows sympathy for him. Bruce is touched by Marlin's search for his son, as he never knew his father and begins to sob, but in comforted by his friends. When Dory gets hurt, a bit of her blood goes into his nose and he likes the taste. He attempts to get a bite out of her and Marlin, which results in a chase through the submarine while Anchor and Chum try to stop Bruce. Dory releases a torpedo that goes into Bruce's mouth and he throws it out into a surrounding mine field and his friends tell him where it's heading for. He turns around and sees that the torpedo is about to touch one of the bombs. The three sharks quickly swim away from the area.
Bruce, once again trying not to eat fish, appears briefly with the othe sharks at the end of the film, briefly scaring the other fish in the area until he reveals that he just wanted to make sure Dory got back safely.
Gallery
Trivia
The name Bruce might have been a reference to the movie Jaws. During the production of the film, director Steven Spielberg gave the name Bruce to the mechanical shark that was used.
Another reference to the Steven Spielberg film Jaws is shown in the scene when Dory and Marlin are stuck in a missile pod, and they release the missile, which gets stuck in Bruce's mouth, allowing them to escape.
At one point during the chase scene, Bruce manages to partially break a door in the submarine open. He then sticks his head into the opening and shouts "HERE'S BRUCIE!" This is obviously a reference to a famous scene in Stanley Kubrick's 1980 horror film The Shining, when Jack Nicholson's character uses an ax to smash part the door to the room where his wife his hiding, then sticks his head into the opening and shouts "HERE'S Johnny!"
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"What is the real name of wrestler turned actor ""The Rock""?" | Dwayne Johnson - Biography - IMDb
Dwayne Johnson
Biography
Showing all 117 items
Jump to: Overview (4) | Mini Bio (1) | Spouse (1) | Trade Mark (15) | Trivia (78) | Personal Quotes (14) | Salary (4)
Overview (4)
6' 5¼" (1.96 m)
Mini Bio (1)
Dwayne Douglas Johnson, also known as The Rock, was born on May 2, 1972 in Hayward, California, to Ata Johnson (born Feagaimaleata Fitisemanu Maivia) and Canadian-born professional wrestler Rocky Johnson (born Wayde Douglas Bowles). His father is black (of Black Nova Scotian descent), and his mother is of Samoan background (her own father was Peter Fanene Maivia , also a professional wrestler). While growing up, Dwayne traveled around a lot with his parents and watched his father perform in the ring. During his high school years, Dwayne began playing football and he soon received a full scholarship from the University of Miami where he had tremendous success as a football player. In 1995, Dwayne suffered a back injury which cost him a place in the NFL. He then signed a 3 year deal with the Canadian League but left after a year to pursue a career in wrestling. He made his wrestling debut in the USWA under the name Flex Kavanah where he won the tag team championship with Brett Sawyer. In 1996, Dwayne joined the WWE and became Rocky Maivia where he joined a group known as "The Nation of Domination" and turned heel. Rocky eventually took over leadership of the "Nation" and began taking the persona of The Rock. After the "Nation" split, The Rock joined another elite group of wrestlers known as the "Corporation" and began a memorable feud with Steve Austin . Soon the Rock was kicked out of the "Corporation". He turned face and became known as "The Peoples Champion". In 2000, the Rock took time off from WWE to film his appearance in The Mummy Returns (2001). He returned in 2001 during the WCW/ECW invasion where he joined a team of WWE wrestlers at The Scorpion King (2002), a prequel to The Mummy Returns (2001).
Dwayne has a daughter, Simone Alexandra, born in 2001, with his ex-wife Dany Garcia .
- IMDb Mini Biography By: Zak Hamza < [email protected]> / ritual < [email protected]>
Spouse (1)
Trademark move: Charging Double Leg Spinebuster
Finishing move: Rock Bottom
Trademark Phrase: "Just bring it!"
Trademark Phrase: "Lay a smack down on your candy ass"
Very muscular physique
Trivia (78)
First ever 8 time WWE World Heavyweight Champion.
Was the first person to ever kick out of the "Stone Cold Stunner" while fighting Stone Cold Steve Austin ( Steve Austin ) at Wrestlemania XV.
His favorite eyebrow trademark (not including his own) is Groucho Marx 's.
Was a member of Miami's NCAA national championship football team in 1991. Later in his career, he played as Warren Sapp 's backup at defensive tackle.
Received guidance and training from Bret Hart (aka "The Hitman") when he first came to the WWF.
A member of the elite group of wrestlers, such as Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair to hold the WWF and WCW world titles on several different occasions.
Named one of E!'s "top 20 entertainers of 2001".
He once appeared on Martha Stewart Living (1991) to cook one of his favorite family recipes.
Attended Freedom High School, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Another former student was Daniel Dae Kim .
Has a wax figure likeness of himself at Madame Tussaud's museum
Met, Dany Garcia , when she was 22, and they married the day after his 25th birthday. He did not meet her parents until shortly before their wedding. Tonga Fifita , the wrestler known as Haku, was his Best Man.
Decided to attend the University of Miami because they didn't openly express interest in him.
His $5.5-million paycheck for The Scorpion King (2002) earned him a listing in the Guinness Book of World Records, as his salary was the highest for any actor receiving top billing for the first time.
First athlete to host Saturday Night Live (1975) for a second time. Though, he was promoting the film ( The Scorpion King (2002)) with his second stint, his pro-wrestling and CFL background makes him the show's first two-time athlete-host.
He owns the rights to name "The Rock" (including logos, phrases, etc). The rights to the name "The Rock" were previously owned by WWE, Inc. (which is the main reason why Vince McMahon has received executive producer credits in some of the Rock's films).
Once, while putting on a show for WWF road agent Pat Patterson, sold his opponent's moves so well, his then-girlfriend Dany Garcia thought he was actually hurt.
Growing up, he considered what his father did, "wrestling"; he once tried amateur wrestling, and found he didn't like it.
He was offered a promotional deal with "Dunkin' Donuts", which would have seen the company name a donut after him. Thinking it would make him appear big-headed, he graciously turned the offer down.
His last match in the WWE before leaving to film The Rundown (2003) was against Bill Goldberg at the 2003 Backlash Pay-Per-View.
Accidentally smashed the tail-light of a Porsche while filming the movie Walking Tall (2004).
Dwayne's father is black, of Black Nova Scotian descent (his father's ancestors were African-Americans who moved to Canada). Dwayne's mother is of Samoan background.
Was teammates with Doug Flutie with the Calgary Stampeders of the Canadian Football League (CFL).
In his first semester at the University of Miami, he earned a .7 grade point average. He was majoring in criminology.
His wedding anniversary falls on the same day as Stu Hart 's birthday. Stu's son, Bret Hart , would often give him tips on how to improve in his matches.
Has played his own father in an episode of the situation comedy That '70s Show (1998).
In The Rundown (2003), he tells one of the rebels that Muhammad Ali would win a match against Mike Tyson . To intimidate his opponents, his father, Rocky Johnson , would often perform the "Ali shuffle" during his wrestling matches.
While filming The Scorpion King (2002), accidentally hit Michael Clarke Duncan during a fight sequence. Duncan leaned in too far for a hit, and his chin connected with The Rock's elbow.
Is the third youngest superstar to hold the IC Championship. Jeff Hardy is the youngest at 23, and Randy Orton is the second youngest, also at 23, only a few months older than Hardy.
He weighed 290 pounds during his college football career, but reduced his weight to about 265 pounds late in his wrestling career. He has lost an addition 30 pounds recently for his part in Southland Tales (2006), some of which he since regained.
Dwayne is a skilled light tackle salt water fisherman.
Major Title Wins Include: WWF/WWE Heavyweight Title (7); WWF Intercontinental Title; WWF Tag Team Title w/ Mick Foley ; WWE Tag Team Title w/ Chris Jericho ; WWF Royal Rumble Winner; WCW Heavyweight Title; USWA Tag Team Titles w/Bret Sawyer.
Son of Ata Johnson and Rocky Johnson .
Ranked #61 on VH1's 100 Hottest Hotties
The WWE named their Thursday night show WWE Smackdown! (1999) after one of The Rock's catchphrases, "Layeth the Smack Down.".
Officially proclaimed himself "The Rock" during a promo where he attacked Ron Simmons (Faarooq) in a WWE Raw (1993) telecast.
He originally chose "Flex Kavana" as his stage name, because he didn't want to seem like he was trading off his family's legacy ( Rocky Johnson , his father, and High Chief Peter Fanene Maivia his grandfather). Ironically, WWE officials came up with "Rocky Maivia" after they felt "Flex Kavana" wasn't exactly a great name.
When Rocky Maivia was first considering going by the name The Rock for short, he resisted because he felt it would be stealing the former nickname of WWE Hall-of-Famer Don Muraco . He was talked into it by Vince Russo .
Was good friends with the late actor Michael Clarke Duncan .
His cousin, Tanoai Reed , is his stunt double for many of his movies.
During a visit to Samoa in July 2004, he was anointed by Head of State Susuga Malietoa Tanumafili II with the chiefly title of 'Seiuli, Son of Malietoa'.
Attended the Republican National Convention in 2004
Cousin of Solofa Fatu Jr. (Rikishi) and Rodney Anoai (Yokozuna).
As of 2008, Doom (2005) and Southland Tales (2006) are the two only R-rated films he has starred in. All of his other films have received PG-13, at the most.
While filming Be Cool (2005), he was Punk'd (2003) by Ashton Kutcher 's crew. They set his trailer on fire, which didn't seem to faze him. It was only after Vince, one of the Punk'd (2003) crew, blamed the fire on him that things got really heated and they revealed the gag.
Was Tim Burton 's second choice for the role of Willy Wonka in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), which went to Johnny Depp .
Has two daughters: Simone Alexander Johnson with ex-wife Dany Garcia , born August 14, 2001 in Davie, Florida, and Jasmine Johnson with girlfriend Lauren Hashian , born December 16, 2015.
With his wife, donated $2 million to the University of Miami for the new Robert and Judi Prokop Newman Alumni Center's living room, to be named "The Dany and Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson Living Room". The donation was announced at the Miami premiere of Gridiron Gang (2006).
Made his WWF television debut at the Survivor Series (1996).
In an interview with "Entertainment Magazine", he no longer wants to be known as "The Rock". Because of his retirement from the wrestling business, he now considers himself an actor: "I no longer am a wrestler, I am now pursuing a future as an actor and someday as a director. I am not the Rock. I am Dwayne Johnson.". [October 2006]
Not only was his father, Rocky Johnson , a wrestler, but his grandfather, three uncles, and six cousins (one adopted) have been in wrestling too.
Has a fear of spiders.
Has a stepbrother, Jared.
Remains close friends with WWE writer Brian Gewirtz .
Inducted his father and grandfather, Rocky Johnson and Peter Fanene Maivia into the WWE Hall of Fame on March 29, 2008.
Honored by the Congressional Award in Washington, DC on June 19, 2008 with the Horizon Award. The Horizon Award is a special recognition from the Joint Leadership of the United States Congress and the Congressional Award Board of Directors. The Horizon Award is presented to individuals from the private sectors who have contributed to expanding opportunities for all Americans through their own personal contributions, and who have set exceptional examples for young people through their successes in life.
Has expressed his desire to play a villain in a James Bond film. Dwayne's grandfather Peter Fanene Maivia appeared as a Bond villain in You Only Live Twice (1967).
Although he has lived in the United States for most of his life, he has Samoan citizenship as his mother is Samoan. He has often stated in interviews he is proud of his Samoan heritage and feels honored to be a Samoan.
Has stated that the film adaptation of Doom (2005) was a complete failure, and that the movie did a huge disservice to fans of the video game franchise.
Was contacted about appearing at the Flair farewell address the night following WrestleMania XXIV (2008) but declined due to scheduling conflicts.
After making it big in the movie industry, Dwayne was able to fulfill an ambition he'd listed on his agenda of priority "To Do" items, and bought a home for his parents, a luxury they'd never theretofore known. His first major personal indulgence was his purchase of a Rolex watch.
Is a published author.
While he was filming his swordfight scene with Michael Clarke Duncan in The Scorpion King (2002), the breaking of the swords was real and unintended, and openly stated that it was extremely dangerous because it was not planned and it could have cut anybody.
The Rock returned to the WWE, and in 2013, he won the WWE Championship by defeating CM Punk at the Royal Rumble and retained the title at Elimination Chamber pay per views.
Indian Actor Varun Dhawan is a self professed die hard fan of The Rock.
His ex-wife, Dany Garcia , is his manager.
First movie experience at 8-years-old was Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981).
Is an official Priest registered in California for a special YouTube video for his best friend (Nick Mundy). The video is called Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson's Wedding Surprise!.
While on tour to promote San Andreas (2015), he set a world record of 105 selfies in three minutes, averaging out to one selfie every 1.7 seconds.
As a high school student he found it very difficult to make friends due to his lofty (6'4 / 225lbs) and mustachioed demeanor which led his fellow students to suspect he was an undercover narc cop, not unlike Johnny Depp 's 21 Jump Street (1987) character.
By the time Dwayne was 16-years-old, he had already enrolled in four high schools due to his frequent expulsions: McKinley HS (Honolulu, HI), Glencliff HS (Nashville, TN), McGavock HS (Nashville, TN) and Freedom HS (Bethlehem, PA).
(December 16, 2015) Has a daughter named Jasmine Johnson, with his girlfriend Lauren Hashian .
Cousin of former wrestler Umaga.
Cousin of wrestler Roman Reigns.
Uncle to wrestlers Jimmy (Jonathan Solofa Fatu) and Jey (Joshua Samuel Fatu) Also known as "The Usos".
Dwayne Johnson was named as Forbes' of highest-paid actor.
Johnson commanded $64.5 million between June 2015 and June 2016, more than doubling his earnings from the previous year and bumping Robert Downey Jr. from the top of the list, where he was perched for three consecutive years.
According to Forbes, his estimated earnings for 2016 was approximately $64.5 million making him the highest paid actor for that year.
He was already 6"4" and 225 pounds when he was in high school. Many students thought he was an undercover police officer, such as in 21 Jump Street, and he had trouble making friends.
Personal Quotes (14)
Finally...The Rock...has come back to [whatever city he's in at the time]
You will go one on one with the Great One!
Who in the blue hell are you?
[Referring to his 0.7 grade point average in college] It's pretty hard to get a point seven. You have to do close to nothing.
Can you smell what The Rock is cooking!
The Rock will take you down Know Your Role Boulevard which is on the corner of Jabroni Drive and check you directly into the Smackdown Hotel!
It doesn't matter what you think.
I have so much love and respect for the fans. I'll never forget where I came from. I love the business. I grew up in the business. And everyone always asks me, from Letterman [ David Letterman ] to Stone Phillips , what I miss about wrestling. Hands down, I miss the interaction with the fans. Outside of the ring I loved it, too. I mean, how hard is it to sign an autograph? Don't be an a**hole to your fans. And there's many [in WWE] that won't, which is bulls**t. But inside the ring, just that energy and feeding off that energy is great. There's something so special about it. And every night I would just have a blueprint of what I would say and rely so much on ad-libbing and waiting to see what happens when I get out there and let it materialize organically and see what happens. Every night was a different crowd and they gave me so much energy, and I'll always love that and always miss that for sure. [Interview with WWE.com in October 2005]
To a degree, all of my promos are scripted, in that there are certain lines and phrases that I plan to include.
[about his wrestling career] I am amazed at the number of people who think I only work on the days and nights they see me on television.
A huge percentage of football players at Division I-A schools - especially those that are typically ranked in the top 25 - do not make the active roster as freshmen.
[on playing Hercules in Brett Ratner 's adaptation of Hercules (2014)] Understand, for me when I was a kid, Hercules was always a hero of mine, from Steve Reeves to the multiple guys who have played Hercules, but the idea and the notion of this man. When I first got into movies, I thought, "Gosh, I would love to do that one day.". I always thought that the version of Hercules that I want to play was one that was more dramatic and survived in barren lands and not necessarily slick in any way or anything like that. It's been around and been on my mind for some time.
No matter who you are, being kind is the easiest thing you can do.
It's nice to be important but more important to be nice. I heard that from a friend when I was about 15, and I've never forgotten it.
Salary (4)
| Dwayne Johnson |
What the official language of Surinam in South America? | Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson: 'Homosexuality Would Be A Career Boost' | Contactmusic.com
Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson: 'Homosexuality Would Be A Career...
Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson: 'Homosexuality Would Be A Career Boost'
Dwayne Johnson
Dwayne Johnson - also known as The Rock - thinks that gay celebrities should reveal themselves as it will give them a career boost.
Picture: Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson 2007 Taurus World Stunt Awards held at Paramount Pictures Studios - Arrivals Los Angeles, California - 20.05.07
Wrestling superstar and actor, DWAYNE 'THE ROCK' JOHNSON , believes that his gay celebrity friends should come forward about their sexuality - believing that it will serve as a tremendous career boost. 'The Mummy Returns' star landed his own spin-off in 'The Scorpion King', as well as landing the role of a gay bodyguard in John Travolta's comedy, 'Be Cool'.
Related: Dwayne Johnson Will Star In A "Baywatch" Movie. Everything Is Beautiful And Nothing Hurts.
The Rock claims that the role has opened his eyes to homosexuality in the movie business, thinking that it should no longer be held against the career of a Hollywood star. In an interview with gay magazine, 'OUT', saying: "I know a lot of gay actors in Hollywood who don't want to come out, and whatever the reasons are I respect that. But I think if people love you now, and if you came out, they would love you more, and if they didn't, then they weren't real people to begin with."
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"Which Australian group had a top 40 hit in Britain in 2006 with ""Truly Madly Deeply""?" | Savage garden - Artists - Slow Radio
90,00
Brisbane, Australia
In 1993, multi-instrumentalist and producer Daniel Jones placed an advertisement in Brisbane newspaper Time Off seeking a vocalist for his five-piece band Red Edge. Darren Hayes, who was studying at a university in Brisbane at the time, responded and was asked to join immediately after his first audition.
In June 1994, Darren and Daniel left Red Edge to pursue a career together. The new duo was named "Savage Garden" – a name taken from The Vampire Chronicles by Anne Rice ("The mind of each man is a savage garden...") of which Darren was a fan.
By the end of that year, the pair had penned enough songs for a demo tape, which they sent to various record companies around the world. In 1995, they entered the studio to work on their eponymous debut album.
In July 1996, under Roadshow Music, the duo released their debut single "I Want You". The single was a hit in Australia and became the highest-selling single by an Australian artist of the year. The success of the single garnered much interest from many US record labels and, in September, Columbia Records won the bidding war to sign the band. In November, a second single, "To the Moon and Back", was released and was another chart hit – reaching #1 in January of the following year.
"I Want You" was released in the United States in February 1997, where it peaked at #4 and quickly achieved gold status. "Truly Madly Deeply", the band's third Australian single, was released in March and reached #1 just before "I Want You" was released across Europe in April. The duo's debut album, Savage Garden, entered the Australian charts at #1 in March and remained at that peak for 17 weeks – it was released around the world two weeks later. At the end of May, "To the Moon and Back" was the most played song on US radio.
In June, a fourth single, "Break Me Shake Me" was released in Australia as the band's debut album sat at #3 on the US charts and was certified gold by RIAA. By the end of August, the album had gone seven-times platinum in Australia, triple-platinum in Canada, and double-platinum in New Zealand and Singapore. At the end of August, Savage Garden was nominated for a record 13 ARIA Awards. The 10 ARIAs won by them in September was also a record, and one that still stands today. Riding this massive wave of popularity was the release of their fifth Australian single, "Universe".
In November, "Truly Madly Deeply" became their third US release, shooting up the charts to blow Elton John's "Candle in the Wind 1997" out of its 14-week run at the number-one spot. By the end of 1997, Hayes and Jones had become international stars.
In January 1998, "All Around Me", was released as a radio only single in Australia, though about 3000 physical copies were produced and given away at their second concert in Brisbane. By the end of the year, "Truly Madly Deeply" was the most-played song on US radio and the only one-sided single to spend a full year in the Top 30 of the Billboard Hot 100.
In November 1998, "Santa Monica", the final single from the debut album, was released exclusively in Japan, accompanied by a live video with their performance of the song at the Hard Rock Cafe.
As of 2005, the band's debut album had been certified twelve-times platinum in Australia, seven-times platinum in the United States, and double-platinum in the United Kingdom.
In February 1999, "The Animal Song" (featured in the Touchstone film The Other Sister) became a hit in Australia and the US. That September saw the release of a new single previewing their forthcoming album; the smooth, romantic ballad, "I Knew I Loved You".
In November of that year, the duo's second album, Affirmation, was released around the world. It took a month for it to go platinum in the US, largely due to the success of the single "I Knew I Loved You," which hit #1 on the charts, eventually going platinum and becoming the most-played single on US radio for the year.
Affirmation saw a new turn for Savage Garden; their looks had more similarities to that of mainstream pop and some of their new songs possessed a more adult contemporary sound.
The group finished out the year by winning two Billboard Music Awards: Adult Contemporary Single of the Year and Hot 100 Singles Airplay of the Year.
In February 2000, as "Crash and Burn" became the third single from their second album, 1997's "Truly Madly Deeply" was amazingly still on the Monitor/Billboard Adult Contemporary Airplay Chart, breaking the record for length of time of any single on that chart. It would finally drop off the chart after 123 weeks, while "Crash and Burn" peaked at #24.
In June, Darren Hayes performed "'O Sole Mio" at Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti's annual charitable benefit concert Pavarotti and Friends. Savage Garden's great success was reflected once again at the Billboard Music Awards, where they won Best Adult Contemporary Video and No. 1 Adult Contemporary Song of the Year, for "I Knew I Loved You", and No. 1 Adult Contemporary Artist of the Year. "I Knew I Loved You" stayed on the Monitor/Billboard Adult Contemporary Airplay Chart for 124 weeks – overtaking the duo's own record previously set by "Truly Madly Deeply".
In October 2001, Savage Garden officially announced their breakup and the duo went their separate ways. Darren began work on his first solo album. The first single, "Insatiable", was released in 2002 and the album, Spin was released the same year. Spin spawned several UK Top 40 singles, including "I Miss You", "Strange Relationship", and "Crush (1980 Me)".
Darren's second solo album, The Tension and the Spark, was released in 2004, its first single "Pop!ular" becoming a dance hit. Despite a follow-up single, "Darkness", the second album failed to repeat the success of his debut solo album.
In 2007, Darren's third solo album, This Delicate Thing We've Made, was released. This double CD album has spawned two singles, "On the Verge of Something Wonderful" and "Me, Myself and I".
Darren Hayes has confirmed that Savage Garden will "never by any chance" reunite
The greatest hits package Truly Madly Completely: The Best of Savage Garden was released on November 7, 2005 – with a US release following in early 2006 – and included a new single by Darren Hayes entitled "So Beautiful". The collection contained the hits from both studio albums, alongside five B-Sides and two new songs by Darren Hayes. Several variations of the release also included a bonus DVD featuring several music video clips, as well as the Parallel Lives documentary, which was earlier released as a bonus feature of the Superstars and Cannonballs DVD/VHS.
This page was last updated 28.01.2010 10:07:40 AM
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With what instrument would you associate the classical performer Murray Perahia? | Top 100 Best Aussie Songs Of All Time - Max
Top 100 Best Aussie Songs Of All Time - Max
Top 100
Daddy Cool’s classic, Eagle Rock has taken out the number one spot in MAX’s countdown of the Top 100 'Greatest Australian Songs Of All Time' - as determined by a panel of Australia's finest musicians.
Eagle Rock, the debut hit single for the Melbourne rock outfit, is an Australian anthem and at the time of its release broke national chart records. Making up the Top 10 in the countdown was (2) The Easybeats – Friday On My Mind, (3) You Am I - Berlin Chair, (4) INXS - Never Tear Us Apart, (5) AC/DC - It’s A Long Way To The Top, (6) Cold Chisel - Flame Trees, (7) Midnight Oil - Power And The Passion (8) Midnight Oil - Beds Are Burning, (9) AC/DC - Highway To Hell, (10) Divinyls - Pleasure And Pain.
AC/DC had the most appearances, with seven of their songs making the list of 100. Gotye’s worldwide monster hit, Somebody That I Used To Know just missed out on the Top 10, coming in at number 11 ahead of his 2007 release, Hearts A Mess. Other artists featured in the countdown include Paul Kelly, Stevie Wright, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Crowded House, Australian Crawl, Hunters & Collectors, The Saints and more.
MAX surveyed some of the country’s greatest songwriters and artists to decide the Top 100. Ian 'Molly' Meldrum hosted the show which included contributors: Paul Kelly, Jimmy Barnes, Wally De Backer, Daryl Braithwaite, Don Walker, John Butler, Tina Arena, Keith Urban, James Reyne, Megan Washington, Kasey Chambers, Andrew Stockdale and many more.
Gotye's 'Somebody That I Used to Know' was #11
100. I Was Only 19 – Redgum
99. So Beautiful – Pete Murray
98. Horses – Daryl Braithwaite
97. Just Keep Walking – INXS
96. The Day You Went Away – Wendy Matthews
95. Early Warning – Baby Animals
94. Everyone’s Waiting – Missy Higgins
93. Sounds Of Then – Gang Gajang
92. Do You Love Me – Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
91. Tucker’s Daughter – Ian Moss
90. You’re The Voice – John Farnham
89. Truly, Madly, Deeply – Savage Garden
88. Jailbreak – AC/DC
87. She’s So Fine – The Easybeats
86. April Sun in Cuba – Dragon
85. To Her Door – Paul Kelly
84. Breathe Me – Sia
82. Into Temptation – Crowded House
81. Wish You Well – Bernard Fanning
80. Girls On the Avenue – Richard Clapton
79. Rock ‘n’ Roll Outlaw – Rose Tattoo
78. My Happiness – Powderfinger
77. Don’t Change – INXS
76. Horror Movie – Skyhooks
74. You Shook Me All Night Long – AC/DC
73. High Voltage – AC/DC
72. Love Is In The Air – John Paul Young
71. ! (The Song Formerly Known As) – Regurgitator
70. Short Memory – Midnight Oil
69. Clap Your Hands – Sia
68. Rain – Dragon
67. That Ain’t Bad – Ratcat
66. Great Southern Land – Icehouse
65. Down Under – Men At Work
64. Coma – Max Sharam
63. Am I Ever Gonna See Your Face Again - The Angels
62. I Touch Myself – Divinyls
61. Better Be Home Soon – Crowded House
60. Can’t Help Myself – Icehouse
59. What’s My Scene? – Hoodoo Gurus
58. Come Said the Boy – Mondo Rock
57. Can’t Get You Out Of My Head – Kylie Minogue
56. The Unguarded Moment – The Church
55. Took The Children Away – Archie Roach
54. Khe Sanh – Cold Chisel
53. We Can Get Together – Icehouse
52. New York Mining Disaster 1941 – Bee Gees&
51. Torn – Natalie Imbruglia
50. Almost With You – The Church
49. TNT – AC/DC
48. From St Kilda to Kings Cross – Paul Kelly
47. Red Right Hand – Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
46. Straight Lines – Silverchair
45. Help Is On Its Way – Little River Band
44. Working Class Man – Jimmy Barnes
43. Nips Are Getting Bigger – Mental As Anything
42. One Crowded Hour – Augie March
41. The Honeymoon Is Over – The Cruel Sea
40. Boys In Town – Divinyls
39. Fall At Your Feet – Crowded House
38. (I’m) Stranded – The Saints
37. The Carnival Is Over – The Seekers
36. Forever Now – Cold Chisel
35. Need You Tonight – INXS
34. Most People I Know (Think That I’m Crazy) – Billy Thorpe
33. Heavy Heart – You Am I
32. The Real Thing – Russell Morris
31. Cattle and Cane – The Go-Betweens
30. I’ll Be Gone – Spectrum
29. Before Too Long – Paul Kelly
28. Wide Open Road – The Triffids
27. Don’t Dream It’s Over – Crowded House
26. Bad Boy For Love – Rose Tattoo
25. Under The Milky Way – The Church
24. Hey Little Girl – Icehouse
23. The Loved One – The Loved Ones
22. Alone With You – Sunnyboys
21. Throw Your Arms Around Me – Hunters & Collectors
20. Reckless – Australian Crawl
18. Know Your Product – The Saints
17. Quasimodo’s Dream – The Reels
16. Into My Arms – Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
15. Back In Black – AC/DC
14. How To Make Gravy – Paul Kelly
13. Evie – Stevie Wright
12. Hearts A Mess – Gotye
11. Somebody That I Used To Know – Gotye
10. Pleasure And Pain – Divinyls
9. Highway To Hell – AC/DC
8. Beds Are Burning – Midnight Oil
7. Power And The Passion – Midnight Oil
6. Flame Trees – Cold Chisel
5. It’s A Long Way To The Top – AC/DC
4. Never Tear Us Apart – INXS
3. Berlin Chair – You Am I
2. Friday On My Mind – The Easybeats
1. Eagle Rock – Daddy Cool
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Until 1999 what was the trophy played for in cricket by the Australian states? | ICC Cricket World Cup Trophy, Cricket trophy | edubilla.com
ICC Cricket World Cup Trophy
Started Year
‹ › ×
History Of ICC Cricket World Cup Trophy
The ICC Cricket World Cup Trophy is presented to the winners of the World Cup finals. The current trophy was created for the 1999 championships, and was the first permanent prize in the tournament's history; prior to this, different trophies were made for each World Cup.The trophy was designed and produced in London by a team of craftsmen from Garrard & Co over a period of two months.
World Cup Trophies:
1975-Prudential Cups trophy:
The Prudential Cups trophy were awarded to the winners of the World Cup from 1975-1983 when Prudential plc was the primary sponsors. The trophies' designs changed when the sponsors changed until the 1999 World Cup. So the first three world cups had a similar trophy while 1987 (Reliance World Cup sponsored by Reliance Industries), 1992 (Benson and Hedges Cup, sponsored by Benson and Hedges) and 1996 (Wills World Cup, sponsored by Wills, an ITC brand) had different trophies because of different sponsors until the International Cricket Council decided to award its own trophy
Trophy Winners:
1983-India national cricket team
Reliance World Cup Trophy:
The 1987 Cricket World Cup (also known as the Reliance World Cup for sponsorship reasons) was the fourth edition of the ICC Cricket World Cup tournament. It was held from 8 October to 8 November 1987 in India and Pakistan – the first such tournament to be held outside England. The one-day format was unchanged from the eight-team 1983 event except for a reduction in the number of overs a team played from 60 to 50, the current standard.
Trophy Winners:
1987-Australia national cricket team
Benson and Hedges Cup Trophy:
The Benson & Hedges Cup was a one-day cricket competition for first-class counties in England and Wales that was held from 1972 to 2002, one of cricket's longest sponsorship deals.
It was the third major one-day competition established in England and Wales after the Sunday League and the Gillette Cup. Traditionally a 'big day out' for the finalist's supporters, it was the less prestigious of the two cups. It began as a 55 over a side game, but was later reduced to 50. The winning team in the first cup final in 1972, Leicestershire won £2,500, the losing finalists Yorkshire £1,000 and Chris Balderstone, winner of the man of the match – the coveted 'Gold Award' – £100.
Trophy Winners:
Sri Lanka have won the Wills World Cup Trophy in 1996
ICC Cricket World Cup Trophy:
The ICC Cricket World Cup Trophy is presented to the winning team of the ICC Cricket World Cup. The current trophy is 60 cm high, is made from silver and gold, and features a golden globe held up by three silver columns. The columns, shaped as stumps and bails, represents the three fundamental aspects of cricket: batting, bowling and fielding, while the globe characterises a cricket ball.It is designed with platonic dimensions, so that it can be easily recognised from any angle. The trophy weighs approximately 11 kilograms and has the names of the previous winners inscribed on its base. There is still room for another ten teams to have their name inscribed.
ICC Cricket World Cup Trophy Archieve
Australia national cricket team-[4]1999,2003,2007,2011:
The Australian cricket team is the national cricket team of Australia. It is the joint oldest team in Test cricket, having played in the first Test match in 1877.The team also plays One Day International cricket and Twenty20 International, participating in both the first ODI, against England in the 1970–71 seasonand the first Twenty20 International, against New Zealand in the 2004–05 season, winning both games. The team draws its players from teams playing in the Australian domestic competitions – the Sheffield Shield, the Australian domestic limited-overs cricket tournament and the Big Bash League.
The Australian team has played 773 Test matches, winning 362, losing 205, drawing 204 and tying two.Australia is ranked the number-one team overall in Test cricket in terms of overall wins, win-loss ratio and wins percentage. As at 10 January 2015, Australia is ranked second in the ICC Test Championship on 118 rating points, 6 points behind South Africa.
Australia has played 843 ODI matches, winning 518, losing 286, tying nine and with 30 ending in no-result.They have led the ICC ODI Championship since its inception for all but a period of 48 days in 2007. Australia have made record six World Cup final appearances (1975, 1987, 1996, 1999, 2003 and 2007) and have won the World Cup a record four times in total; 1987 Cricket World Cup, 1999 Cricket World Cup, 2003 Cricket World Cup and 2007 Cricket World Cup. Australia is the first team to appear in 4 consecutive World Cup finals (1996, 1999, 2003 and 2007), surpassing the old record of 3 consecutive World Cup appearances by West Indies (1975, 1979 and 1983).
The team was undefeated in 34 consecutive World Cup matches until 19 March at the 2011 Cricket World Cup where Pakistan beat them by 4 wickets.Australia have also won the ICC Champions Trophy twice – in 2006 and in 2009 – making them the first and the only team to become back to back winners in the Champions Trophy tournaments. The team has also played 39 Twenty20 Internationals,making the final of the 2010 ICC World Twenty20, which they lost to England.
2011-India national cricket team:
The Indian cricket team is the national cricket team of India. Governed by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), it is a full member of the International Cricket Council (ICC) with Test and One Day International (ODI) status.
Although cricket was introduced to India by European merchant sailors in the 18th century, and the first cricket club in India was established in Calcutta in 1792, India's national cricket team did not play its first Test match until 25 June 1932 at Lord's.They became the sixth team to be granted Test cricket status. In its first fifty years of international cricket, India was one of the weaker teams in international cricket, winning only 35 of the 196 Test matches it played during the period.The team, however, gained strength in the 1970s with the emergence of players such as batsmen Sunil Gavaskar and Gundappa Vishwanath, all-rounder Kapil Dev and the Indian spin quartet – Erapalli Prasanna and Srinivas Venkataraghavan (both off spinners), Bhagwat Chandrasekhar (a leg spinner), and Bishen Singh Bedi (a left-arm spinner). Traditionally much stronger at home than abroad, the Indian team has improved its overseas form since the start of the 21st century, winning Test matches in Australia, England and South Africa. It has won the Cricket World Cup twice – in 1983 under the captaincy of Kapil Dev and in 2011 under Mahendra Singh Dhoni's captaincy. After winning the 2011 World Cup, India became only the third team after West Indies and Australia to have won the World Cup more than once,and the first cricket team to win the World Cup at home. It has won the 2007 ICC World Twenty20 and 2013 ICC Champions Trophy, under the captaincy of Dhoni. It was also the joint champions of 2002 ICC Champions Trophy, along with Sri Lanka.
The Indian cricket team is currently ranked seventh in Tests, second in ODIs and second in T20Is by the ICC.Virat Kohli is the current captain of the team in Tests while Dhoni is the ODI and T20I captain. The Indian cricket team has rivalries with other Test-playing nations, most notably with Pakistan, the political arch-rival of India. However in recent times, rivalries with nations like Australia, England and South Africa have also gained prominence
Most Popular Trophies
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What was the first name of Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan? | National Selection Panel | Cricket Australia
National Selection Panel
Rod Marsh was appointed to a part-time position on the National Selection Panel (NSP) in November 2011, following the Australian Team Performance Review, and became full-time Chairman of the NSP as of July 1, 2014 replacing John Inverarity.
Rod Marsh remains one fo the most respected wicketkeepers to have ever played international cricket.
His Test career spanned 14 years from 1970-1984. During this time he made 355 dismissals. He was also an excellent batsmen scoring three Test centruries and stabilising the Australian lower order for years.
Rod was the head of the Australian Cricket Academy in Adelaide where he helped develop talented players including Ricky Ponting, Glenn McGrath and Brett Lee into world class cricketers.
He has also worked in the UK as the National Academy and was a selector for England until 2005.
Darren Lehmann
Darren Lehmann took over the role as Australian men's coach just 16 days out from the First Test of The Ashes in the UK on June 24, 2013.
Lehmann has had an exceptional record as head coach of the Queensland Bulls, winning the Bupa Sheffield Shield and Ryobi One-Day Cup and the KFC T20 Big Bash League title with the Brisbane Heat all within the last two years.
Trevor Hohns
Trevor Hohns was a national selector from 1993 to 2006, including 10 years as Chairman of the panel.
Since 2011, he has been a selector for Queensland Cricket and a State Talent Manager in Queensland. In rejoining the NSP on July 1, 2014, Hohns has stood down as the Queensland Selection Panel Chair.
Matthew Mott
Mott became the Head Coach of the Southern Stars in 2015, successfully claiming the Ashes trophy back after 12 years on his first overseas tour as coach. Mott played for Victoria and Queensland and coached Glamorgan before taking on his current role.
Avril Fahey
Avril Fahey played six Tests and 40 One Day Internationals for the Australia national women's cricket team. She also captained the Western Fury in 45 matches and was the first woman to play 150 matches for Western Australia. Fahey retired from cricket in 2012 and joined the WNSP the same year.
Julie Hayes
Julie Hayes is a former NSW and Australian player. Hayes played six Tests, 59 One Day Internationals and two Women's Twenty20 Internationals for the Australia national cricket team. She was the 140th woman to play Test Cricket for Australia. Julie joined the WNSP in 2010.
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Which of the Mitford sisters wrote the semi-autobiography Pursuit of Love in 1945? | Nancy Mitford (Author of The Pursuit of Love)
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Nancy Mitford, CBE (28 November 1904, London – 30 June 1973, Versailles), styled The Hon. Nancy Mitford before her marriage and The Hon. Mrs Peter Rodd thereafter, was an English novelist and biographer, one of the Bright Young People on the London social scene in the inter-war years. She was born at 1 Graham Street (now Graham Place) in Belgravia, London, the eldest daughter of Lord Redesdale and was brought up at Asthall Manor in Oxfordshire. She was the eldest of the six controversial Mitford sisters.
She is best remembered for her series of novels about upper-class life in England and France, particularly the four published after 1945; but she also wrote four well-received, well-researched popular biographies (of Louis XIV, Madame de Pom Nancy Mitford, CBE (28 November 1904, London – 30 June 1973, Versailles), styled The Hon. Nancy Mitford before her marriage and The Hon. Mrs Peter Rodd thereafter, was an English novelist and biographer, one of the Bright Young People on the London social scene in the inter-war years. She was born at 1 Graham Street (now Graham Place) in Belgravia, London, the eldest daughter of Lord Redesdale and was brought up at Asthall Manor in Oxfordshire. She was the eldest of the six controversial Mitford sisters.
She is best remembered for her series of novels about upper-class life in England and France, particularly the four published after 1945; but she also wrote four well-received, well-researched popular biographies (of Louis XIV, Madame de Pompadour, Voltaire, and Frederick the Great). She was one of the noted Mitford sisters and the first to publicise the extraordinary family life of her very English and very eccentric family, giving rise to a "Mitford industry" which continues.
Her Published Works:
A Talent to Annoy; Essays, Journalism and Reviews 1929–1968 edited by Charlotte Mosley (1986)
Collections of Letters:
Love from Nancy: The Letters of Nancy Mitford edited by Charlotte Mosley (1993)
The Letters of Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh edited by Charlotte Mosley (1996)
The Bookshop at 10 Curzon Street: Letters between Nancy Mitford and Heywood Hill 1952–73 edited by John Saumarez Smith (2004)
The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters edited by Charlotte Mosley (2007)
Works as Editor:
The Ladies of Alderley: Letters 1841–1850 (1938)
The Stanleys of Alderley: Their letters 1851–1865 (1939)
(Mitford edited these two volumes of letters, written by the family of her great-grandparents, Edward Stanley, 2nd Baron Stanley of Alderley and his wife Henrietta Maria, daughter of the 13th Viscount Dillon).
Noblesse Oblige (1956)
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In which American city do the Padres play major league baseball? | Nancy Mitford :: Nancy
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Nancy Mitford was born on 28 November 1904 in London, the eldest of the six legendary Mitford sisters. Their father, Lord Redesdale, a countryman at heart, worked in London at the office of The Lady until 1914. After the war he moved his family to Oxfordshire.
Nancy and her sisters were educated at home and relied mainly on one another for company. Her high spirits and funniness lit up the family atmosphere but she was also a remorseless tease. The jokes, rivalries and passions of the Mitford childhood went straight into her highly autobiographical novels.
Nancy grew up partly in the 1920s of The Bright Young Things and partly in the politically polarized 1930s. Her sisters Diana and Unity were drawn to the extreme Right and Jessica to the Left. Nancy wavered between the two but could never take politics – or indeed anything– very seriously.
Nancy started writing for magazines in 1929 and became a regular contributor to The Lady. In 1931, she published her first novel,Highland Fling.
During the war she worked at Heywood Hill, the Mayfair bookshop, which became a meeting place for London literary society and her friends.
Nancy fell in love with three un- satisfactory men. The first, Hamish Erskine, was homosexual but her infatuation with him lasted five years. In 1933 she married Peter Rodd, a clever, delinquent bore. They separated after the war and were divorced in 1958. In London during the war she met Gaston Palewski, a Free French officer and General de Gaulle’s chief of staff, at whose feet she laid all her passion and loyalty for over thirty years. Gaston never returned her love but they remained friends until her death.
‘If one can't be happy one must be amused don't you agree? ' Nancy wrote to a friend. It could stand as the motto for her life. She hid her deepest feelings behind a sparkling flow of jokes and witty turns of phrase, and was the star of any gathering.
Childless and unfulfilled in love she may have been, but Nancy found huge success as a writer. Her fifth novel, The Pursuit of Love(1945), was a phenomenal best seller and made her financially independent for the first time.
In 1946 she moved to Paris to be near Gaston Palewski and remained in France for the rest of her life. She adored the country and saw everything French through rose-tinted spectacles. Separation and distance from her various friends and relations produced a flood of marvellous letters that are as important a part of her literary output as her books.
In the late 1950s Nancy started writing about the history of France, describing historical characters as if they were her friends and contemporaries. These biographies were as successful as her
novels. The Sun King, a brilliant evocation of the court of Louis XIV, was a worldwide bestseller.
In the early 1950s Nancy wrote a regular column for the Sunday Times and continued to be in demand as a journalist and reviewer
until the end of her life. Her friend Evelyn Waugh said that it was her true metier. A light-hearted article she contributed to Encounter on the English aristocracy in 1954 sparked a hullabaloo over upper-class and non upper-class (U and non-U) speech and was a tease that even she thought went too far.
In 1969 she moved to a house in Versailles and soon afterwards began to suffer from the onset of a rare form of Hodgkin's disease. Except for a few periods of remission, she was in great pain for over four years, which she bore with heroic courage.
Nancy died on 30 June 1973 at home in Versailles. Her ashes are buried at the Church of St. Mary's in Swinbrook, Oxfordshire,
where her parents and her sisters Pamela, Diana and Unity also lie.
BOOKS ABOUT NANCY
NANCY MITFORD: A Memoir (1975)
by Harold Acton
THE HOUSE OF MITFORD: Portrait of a Family (1984)
by Jonathan Guinness with Catherine Guinness
NANCY MITFORD: A Biography (1985)
by Selina Hastings
The Biography of an Extraordinary Family (2001)
by Mary S. Lovell
LIFE IN A COLD CLIMATE, NANCY MITFORD:
A Portrait of a Contradictory Woman (2003)
by Laura Thompson
Images clockwise from top left: Portrait courtesy of the Cecil Beaton Studio Archive at Sotheby's, family portrait © The Mitford Archive, portrait and plaque photograph © The Mitford Archive, drawing of Nancy by Cecil Beaton, contact sheet courtesy of the Cecil Beaton Studio Archive at Sotheby's, painting by Mogens Tvede © The Mitford Archive, photograph by Bassano © National Portrait Gallery, London. Personal effects © The Mitford Archive,
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"What room literally means, ""exercise naked""?" | Gymnasium | Define Gymnasium at Dictionary.com
gymnasium
noun (pl) -siums, -sia (-zɪə)
1.
a large room or hall equipped with bars, weights, ropes, etc, for games or physical training
2.
(in various European countries) a secondary school that prepares pupils for university
Word Origin
C16: from Latin: school for gymnastics, from Greek gumnasion, from gumnazein to exercise naked, from gumnos naked
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition
© William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
Word Origin and History for gymnasium
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n.
1590s, "place of exercise," from Latin gymnasium "school for gymnastics," from Greek gymnasion "public place where athletic exercises are practiced; gymnastics school," in plural, "bodily exercises," from gymnazein "to exercise or train," literally or figuratively, literally "to train naked," from gymnos "naked" (see naked ). Introduced to German 15c. as a name for "high school" (more or less paralleling a sense in Latin); in English it has remained purely athletic.
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper
| Gymnasium |
By what name is rapper Robert De Winkle better known? | A History of Gymnastics: From Ancient Greece to Modern Times | Scholastic
A History of Gymnastics: From Ancient Greece to Modern Times
Find out about the Ancient Greek origin of gymnastics, and learn additional details about modern competitions and scoring.
Grades
3–5, 6–8, 9–12
The sport of gymnastics, which derives its name from the ancient Greek word for disciplinary exercises, combines physical skills such as body control, coordination, dexterity, gracefulness, and strength with tumbling and acrobatic skills, all performed in an artistic manner. Gymnastics is performed by both men and women at many levels, from local clubs and schools to colleges and universities, and in elite national and international competitions.
History
Gymnastics was introduced in early Greek civilization to facilitate bodily development through a series of exercises that included running, jumping, swimming, throwing, wrestling, and weight lifting. Many basic gymnastic events were practiced in some form before the introduction by the Greeks of gymnazein, literally, "to exercise naked." Physical fitness was a highly valued attribute in ancient Greece, and both men and women participated in vigorous gymnastic exercises. The Romans, after conquering Greece, developed the activities into a more formal sport, and they used the gymnasiums to physically prepare their legions for warfare. With the decline of Rome, however, interest in gymnastics dwindled, with tumbling remaining as a form of entertainment.
Modern Gymnastics
In 1774, a Prussian, Johann Bernhard Basedow, included physical exercises with other forms of instruction at his school in Dessau, Saxony. With this action began the modernization of gymnastics, and also thrust the Germanic countries into the forefront in the sport. In the late 1700s, Friedrich Ludwig Jahn of Germany developed the side bar, the horizontal bar, the parallel bars, the balance beam, and jumping events. He, more than anyone else, is considered the "father of modern gymnastics." Gymnastics flourished in Germany in the 1800s, while in Sweden a more graceful form of the sport, stressing rhythmic movement, was developed by Guts Muth. The opening (1811) of Jahn's school in Berlin, to promote his version of the sport, was followed by the formation of many clubs in Europe and later in England. The sport was introduced to the United States by Dr. Dudley Allen Sargent, who taught gymnastics in several U.S. universities about the time of the Civil War, and who is credited with inventing more than 30 pieces of apparatus. Most of the growth of gymnastics in the United States centered on the activities of European immigrants, who introduced the sport in their new cities in the 1880s. Clubs were formed as Turnverein and Sokol groups, and gymnasts were often referred to as "turners." Modern gymnastics excluded some traditional events, such as weight lifting and wrestling, and emphasized form rather than personal rivalry.
Modern Competition
Men's gymnastics was on the schedule of the first modern Olympic Games in 1896, and it has been on the Olympic agenda continually since 1924. Olympic gymnastic competition for women began in 1936 with an all-around competition, and in 1952 competition for the separate events was added. In the early Olympic competitions the dominant male gymnasts were from Germany, Sweden, Italy, and Switzerland, the countries where the sport first developed. But by the 1950s, Japan, the Soviet Union, and the Eastern European countries began to produce the leading male and female gymnasts.
Modern gymnastics gained considerable popularity because of the performances of Olga Korbut of the Soviet Union in the 1972 Olympics, and Nadia Comaneci of Romania in the 1976 Olympics. The widespread television coverage of these dramatic performances gave the sport the publicity that it lacked in the past. Many countries other than the traditional mainstays at the time — the USSR, Japan, East and West Germany, and other Eastern European nations — began to promote gymnastics, particularly for women; among these countries were China and the United States.
Modern international competition has six events for men and four events for women. The men's events are the rings, parallel bars, horizontal bar, side or pommel-horse, long or vaulting horse, and floor (or free) exercise. These events emphasize upper body strength and flexibility along with acrobatics. The women's events are the vaulting horse, balance beam, uneven bars, and floor exercise, which is performed with musical accompaniment. These events combine graceful, dancelike movements with strength and acrobatic skills. In the United States, tumbling and trampoline exercises are also included in many competitions.
Teams for international competitions are made up of six gymnasts. In the team competition each gymnast performs on every piece of equipment, and the team with the highest number of points wins. There is also a separate competition for the all-around title, which goes to the gymnast with the highest point total after performing on each piece of equipment, and a competition to determine the highest score for each individual apparatus.
Another type of competitive gymnastics for women is called rhythmic gymnastics, an Olympic sport since 1984. Acrobatic skills are not used. The rhythmic gymnast performs graceful, dancelike movements while holding and moving items such as a ball, hoop, rope, ribbon, or Indian clubs, with musical accompaniment. Routines are performed individually or in group performances for six gymnasts.
Scoring
Gymnastic competitions are judged and scored on both an individual and a team basis. Each competitor must accomplish a required number of specific types of moves on each piece of equipment. Judges award points to each participant in each event on a 0-to-10 scale, 10 being perfect. Judging is strictly subjective; however, guidelines are provided for judges so that they can arrive at relatively unbiased scores.
Usually there are four judges, and the highest and lowest scores are dropped to provide a more objective evaluation. Gymnasts try to perform the most difficult routines in the most graceful way, thus impressing the judges with their mastery of the sport.
Bibliography
Bott, Jenny, Rhythmic Gymnastics (1995); Cooper, Phyllis S., and Trnka, Milan, Teaching Basic Gymnastics, 3d ed. (1993); Feeney, Rik, Gymnastics: A Guide for Parents and Athletes (1992); Karolyi, Bela, Feel No Fear (1994); Lihs, Harriet R., Teaching Gymnastics, 2d ed. (1994); YMCA Gymnastics, 3d ed. (1990).
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In which sport do Scotland play Canada for the Strathcona Cup? | Strathcona Cup | The View From The Hack
The View From The Hack
"We thank Thee, Lord, for snaw and ice. But still we ask for mair."
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Weekend Curling 1-3 February
Happy new month everyone – is it really February already?
The Scottish Curling Tour for 2012/13 comes to an end this weekend with the Petrofac Aberdeen City Open at Curl Aberdeen.
Play got underway today (Friday) with four teams still in with a chance of being overall tour champions for the season. The event, and indeed the tour, concludes on Sunday.
Read about the event on the SCT blog here and be sure to check the official event page here during the weekend.
Fans of Canadian curling should turn their attention to the 2013 Canadian Junior Curling Championships that begin tomorrow (Saturday) in Fort McMurray, Alberta. This event runs until Sunday 10 February – check out the event website here and read a preview here .
There is a new format for this year’s competition and a new team as well – Nunavut are making their first ever appearance at the Canadian Juniors.
Keep an eye out for Alberta’s skip Thomas Scoffin – he is making his record seventh consecutive appearance in these championships. He also holds the record for being the youngest ever skip at the juniors as he was just 12 when he competed in 2007. Scoffin skipped Canada to a bronze medal at the Winter Youth Olympics in Innsbruck, Austria where I was volunteering on the ice crew. I was thoroughly impressed by Scoffin and his team and believe he will go a very long way in our sport.
Aside from upcoming events, I am delighted to report that Scotland have won the Strathcona Cup. The tourists beat their Canadian hosts by a total score of 2876-2620. Congratulations to all involved – read all about it here . You can also read what Robin Copland makes of the tour here . The tourists return to Scotland tomorrow (Saturday) so before you ask them all about how the tour went, take a look at this video to get an idea.
If you want to do some forward planning or light reading this weekend then this next part of tonight’s post is for you…
The World Curling Federation has announced the schedules of play for this year’s World Championships. The men’s is here and the women’s is here . Scotland’s women will kick-off against Canada on Saturday 16 March while the men face Japan on Saturday 30 March.
The Curling History Blog had some new posts in January about a Grand Match and a belt buckle. Read them here .
Tickets went on sale today (Friday) for the 2014 Continental Cup in Las Vegas. Find out more here .
And finally, I came across this song and music video about our sport. It is part of a charity bonspiel that takes place in Manitoba, Canada.
Don’t forget to check back at the start of the week for a roundup of the weekend’s curling. Also, if you weren’t already aware, my site has a Facebook page, YouTube channel and a Twitter feed for you to keep up with what’s happening in the world of curling.
Midweek Miscellany
A few things to catch up on from around the world.
The 2013 Pacific-Asia Junior Championships came to an end today (Wednesday). Japan’s junior women and China’s junior men won their respective events and will now compete at the World Junior Championships in Sochi, Russia.
The full report is here . John Brown made some interesting observations on the event here .
Applications are now open for the RCCC’s 2013 Summer Camp. Spaces on the camp, in Stirling, are limited to 48 – full details here .
The World Curling Federation has announced that the 2014 World Men’s Curling Championship will be held in Beijing, China. This will represent the first time that a WMCC is held in the Pacific-Asia zone. You can read all about this landmark decision here .
A new RCCC Tartan has been produced for this year’s Strathcona Cup tour to Canada and you can now order some for yourself. Take a look here . Talking of the tour, the Scottish tourists are currently winning 876-738. Keep track of their progress across Canada here .
EJCC / Strathcona Cup
This is my 100th post since I began back in September – I’m sure I can manage at least 100 more before the season is out…
The European Junior Curling Challenge ended in Prague yesterday (Tuesday). The last remaining places at the World Junior Championships were secured by the Italian junior men and the Danish junior women – congratulations to them both. England’s junior men finished 10th out of 13 while the junior women came in 8th out of 12.
The full report is here . John Brown was over in Prague coaching the English junior women’s team – see what he made of the tournament and see how England fared here and here .
As I mentioned in an earlier post , the Strathcona Cup Tour departed today (Wednesday). Read the RCCC’s preview here and don’t forget to check the official tour website regularly – safe journey and best of luck to all involved.
First Curling Of 2013
Happy New Year everyone.
2012 has become 2013 and we have much to look forward to in the world of curling before the season is over.
Before I tell you about what is happening in the immediate future, here are some bits of news.
Firstly, it wouldn’t be a New Year without the Queen’s New Year Honours List. I am delighted to see that the World Curling Federation’s President, Kate Caithness, was made an OBE in this year’s list for services to curling and international disability sport. Read more about her award here . Many congratulations to Kate.
I spotted this video of Team Muirhead as part of CurlingZone’s ‘Far From Home’ series – well worth a watch.
2013 is a Strathcona Cup year which means that a group of 61 Scottish curlers are due to head off for a tour of Canada in an attempt to win the cup, currently in Canadian hands. The tour departs Edinburgh on Wednesday 9 January but to find out where they will be going, who is playing and some history of the event, I recommend the excellent Tour website which can be found here . Best of luck and a safe journey to everyone going – it’s hard not to be a little jealous when you read the itineraries.
So on to what is taking place here and now.
The Curling Champions Tour makes its second stop in Scotland from today (Thursday) with the Mercure Perth Masters. I’ve been looking forward to this one ever since I compiled this season’s calendar – I will be watching today (Thursday) and will be back again for finals day on Sunday.
The event website is here , the Facebook page is here and, in this anniversary year for the event, you can even get a dedicated app – see the advert on the competition homepage for details.
Play gets underway at 16.45 today (Thursday) and the final is at 15.00 on Sunday.
As for the teams, it is a truly special gathering of some of the world’s best curlers. Canada, Finland, Sweden, China, Czech Republic, Switzerland, Denmark, Norway, Netherlands, USA, Russia, Japan and, of course, Scotland are all represented in Perth.
So who should you be looking out for if you find yourself in Perth this weekend? It’s hard to know where to start but here are some to keep an eye on:
2006 Olympic Gold medallist Brad Gushue from Canada
Recently crowned European champions Team Niklas Edin from Sweden
The ever-popular Norwegian Thomas Ulsrud with a different lineup to normal
Canadian Mike McEwen and his team looking for a third straight Masters title
But don’t forget local interest with the likes of Warwick Smith, Ewan MacDonald and Tom Brewster and the junior teams of Grant Hardie and Kyle Smith.
Best of luck to all the teams taking part – it should be a great event.
The other event taking place at the moment is the 2013 European Junior Curling Challenge. Getting underway today (Thursday) in Prague, Czech Republic, this event is for junior men’s and junior women’s teams not already qualified for the 2013 World Junior Curling Championships in Sochi, Russia.
The schedule and team lists are available here and the event website is here .
13 junior men’s teams are hoping to make it to Sochi – Austria, Denmark, England, Estonia, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Netherlands, Poland, Slovenia and Turkey.
The 12 women’s teams attempting to qualify are Denmark, England, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia and Turkey.
‘Home’ interest lies with the two England teams competing in Prague. The junior men are skipped by Ben Fowler while the girls have Hetty Garnier at skip and Olympian Angharad Ward playing third.
Best of luck to all the teams and to my Slovenian friends who toured Scotland recently – no doubt they will be dreaming of a place in Sochi.
Here’s to 2013.
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Which mountain is nicknamed the Tiger of the Alps? | Curling - The Canadian Encyclopedia
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MLA 7th Edition
Gerald Redmond Revised: Patricia G. Bailey "Curling" The Canadian Encyclopedia. Eds. Jeremy Freeborn. Toronto: Historica Canada, 2010. Web. 17 Jan. 2017.
Gerald Redmond Revised: Patricia G. Bailey "Curling" The Canadian Encyclopedia. Eds. Jeremy Freeborn. Toronto: Historica Canada, 2010. Web. 17 Jan. 2017.
APA 6th Edition
Gerald Redmond Revised: Patricia G. Bailey, R. The Canadian Encyclopedia. (2010). Curling. Retrieved January 17, 2017, from http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/curling/
Gerald Redmond Revised: Patricia G. Bailey, R. The Canadian Encyclopedia. (2010). Curling. Retrieved January 17, 2017, from http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/curling/
Chicago 16th Edition
Gerald Redmond Revised: Patricia G. Bailey. "Curling" In The Canadian Encyclopedia. Historica Canada, 1985–. Article published May 9, 2010. http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/curling/.
Gerald Redmond Revised: Patricia G. Bailey. "Curling" In The Canadian Encyclopedia. Historica Canada, 1985–. Article published May 9, 2010. http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/curling/.
Turabian
Gerald Redmond Revised: Patricia G. Bailey. 2010. Curling. The Canadian Encyclopedia http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/curling/ (accessed January 17, 2017).
Gerald Redmond Revised: Patricia G. Bailey. 2010. Curling. The Canadian Encyclopedia http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/curling/ (accessed January 17, 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.
Updates? Omissions? Article suggestions? We want to hear from you!
Sports
Curling
Curling is a sport in which two teams of four players each send stones over an ice surface toward a target circle in an attempt to place nearest the centre. In Canada, curling has steadily grown in popularity since the first club was formed in Montréal in 1807. The national championships (Brier, Scotties) and Olympic trials are among some of the most popular sporting events in the country, and many winners of these tournaments have also achieved victory on the international stage. Curling is one of the country’s most popular sports, and is the most televised women’s sport in Canada.
Curling is a sport in which two teams of four players each send stones over an ice surface toward a target circle in an attempt to place nearest the centre. In Canada, curling has steadily grown in popularity since the first club was formed in Montréal in 1807. The national championships (Brier, Scotties) and Olympic trials are among some of the most popular sporting events in the country, and many winners of these tournaments have also achieved victory on the international stage. Curling is one of the country’s most popular sports and the most televised women’s sport in Canada.
Scottish Heritage
Although there is some artistic and etymological evidence from the 16th century in the Low Countries of Europe pointing to a similar ice game, most authorities agree that curling as we know it today was codified in Scotland and exported from there in organized form. Certainly the origins and early evolution of this sport in Canada were due to the consistent, enthusiastic and ubiquitous presence of the Scots . Undoubtedly, too, curling has thrived to a prodigious and unparalleled extent here. Factors contributing to its contemporary popularity in Canada include the wintry climate, the traditions of the game, certain technological advances and the active patronage of influential persons (many of them Scottish). From their influential position in Canadian society, many Scots were comfortably situated to indulge in and promote the traditions of their native land, including curling.
First Clubs in Canada
Some historians have suggested, without documentation, that curling began on the North American continent among Scottish soldiers during the Seven Years' War of 1756–63 . Curling certainly occurred informally before 1800, until a group of Scots who were identified chiefly with the fur trade formed the Montréal Curling Club in 1807, described as the first sports club in Canada. Other Scots formed clubs in Kingston (1820), Québec City (1821) and Halifax (1824). These pioneering enthusiasts experimented with local "stones" made of iron or maple, as well as imported stones from Scotland.
By 1839, when more clubs had been formed, locally made granite curling stones were being advertised in Toronto at $8 a pair. A year later, the first book on curling in Canada was published — James Bicket's The Canadian Curler's Manual. Intercity matches began in 1835, interprovincial ones in 1858, and in 1865 the first international bonspiel was held between American and Canadian clubs at Buffalo, New York. Much of this progress was aided by the long, cold winters and the availability of innumerable lakes and rivers, ensuring abundant and safe ice on which to enjoy curling. Indeed, these conditions surpassed even those in Scotland, an unusual occurrence for a transplanted sport.
In fact, it was often too cold to participate outdoors, and curling fanatics took their sport indoors; members of the Montréal Curling Club were likely the first to do this in 1838. The neighbouring Thistle Club constructed an enclosed rink six years later. By 1859, Toronto had its first indoor facility, and soon indoor curling rinks became common across Canada. During the 1880s and 1890s, until ice hockey arenas were created, these rinks were being used by many fledgling ice-hockey teams.
A Canadian Game
Despite the dominating Scottish influence, other nationalities participated from an early date. Because a Canadian-born curler, William Reynolds, had won the Denham Medal in 1843, a Toronto newspaper claimed: "Curling may now be considered in this Province a Canadian rather than a Scottish game." Similar sentiments were expressed in Québec in 1861 when a French Canadian (Benjamin Rousseau) won a gold medal in curling competition. And the progress of non-Scottish teams (often called "barbarians") against Scottish-born teams was keenly reported.
Since the Earl of Dalhousie was reported as a member of the Québec City Curling Club in 1828, the sport has included many famous figures within its ranks, such as Sir John A. Macdonald , Lord Aberdeen and Lord Strathcona . The vice-regal support of the governors general was especially significant. Lord Dufferin (1872–78) was an ardent proponent and had a rink built at his own expense at his official residence, Rideau Hall . In 1880, he instituted the Governor General's Prize, one of Canada's coveted curling trophies. His successors also sponsored the sport, adding to its prestige.
Another stimulus to the sport was provided when a Scottish curling team, captained by Reverend John Kerr, toured Canada in 1902–03. The team played matches in 11 cities from Halifax to Winnipeg , then visited 6 American cities. The Scots lost more matches than they won and returned home tremendously impressed with the status and progress of curling in the Dominion . When a Canadian team first toured Scotland in 1908, it won 23 of 26 matches, including three international contests for the Strathcona Cup.
Curling in the West
By 1910, almost every town in the West had an arena, and Winnipeg was the acknowledged curling centre of Canada. In 1950, it had more curling clubs than Montréal and Toronto combined; and Manitoba had more clubs than Ontario and Québec . The Flin Flon club was the largest in the world, with more than 50 rinks. During the 1940s, outdoor curling with cement-filled jam tins became a craze across the Prairie Provinces. The West was also the host of the first "Carspiel," which was held at Nipawin , SK, in 1947, with four Hudson sedans valued at $2,200 each as prizes. The popularity of curling in the West would be reflected by the number of national and international champions from that region over the coming decades.
The Brier
By the 1920s, curling enthusiasts had begun to organize nationwide competitions. A Dominion championship competition was inaugurated in 1927, sponsored by the W. D. Macdonald Co, for a trophy known as the Brier (the first Brier champion was Murray Macneill of Nova Scotia ). This annual event gave curling a significant impetus and became one of the most prestigious trophies in Canadian sport. Sponsorship has changed a number of times; since 2005, the Canadian national men’s curling championship has been known as the Tim Hortons Brier. The Brier has been held annually since 1927 (except for 1943–45 during the Second World War ). In 2002–03, many curling teams boycotted the competition owing to disagreement with the Canadian Curling Association over prize money and sponsorship.
From 1927 to 1939, the Brier was held annually in Toronto at the Granite Club. Meetings at the Granite Club also led to the formation of the Dominion Curling Association in 1935 (renamed the Canadian Curling Association in 1968). In 1940, the Brier was hosted for the first time in Winnipeg , the city that many consider the national (and even international) centre of curling.
The western provinces produced many national champions in the first decades of the Brier. In 1949, Ken Watson of Manitoba became the first curler to win the Brier three times. Ten years later, Ernie Richardson formed the famous Richardson Rink in Regina , SK, which went on to win four Briers in five years. Two other curling teams, both from Alberta , won the Brier three times each during this time period: Matt Baldwin (1954, 1957 and 1958) and Ron Northcott (1966, 1968 and 1969).
In the mid-1970s, there was a short shift in success from Western Canada to Eastern Canada. For the first time there were Brier champions from Québec and Newfoundland . Jack MacDuff skipped his Newfoundland rink to a Brier title in 1976 in Regina, SK, and a year later Jim Ursel won the Brier in his home town of Montréal . Since the mid-1970s, Alberta and Manitoba have dominated the Brier, although other provinces have also provided national champions.
Men’s World Championship
In 1959, there was added incentive to win the Brier. For the first time, the Brier champion would represent Canada internationally. The World Championship, known initially as the “Scotch Cup,” was a five-game series between Canada and Scotland. Richardson ’s curling rink from Saskatchewan won the first two Scotch Cups in dominating fashion, winning all ten games. Hec Gervais of Edmonton won the 1961 championship (the same year the United States joined the tournament), followed by Richardson, who once again won back-to-back titles in 1962 and 1963.
The 1964 Scotch Cup was played in Canada for the first time, with Calgary hosting at the Stampede Corral. Vancouver’ s Lyall Dagg won the Cup that year, but in 1965 an American team was victorious. One year later, when the Scotch Cup returned to Canada with Vancouver as the host, Calgary’s Ron Northcott went undefeated.
In 1968, Air Canada sponsored a new world curling championship known as the Silver Broom. The first (played in Pointe-Claire , Montréal, QC ) was won by Northcott, who won it again the following year. In fact, Canada was victorious at the first five Air Canada Silver Broom World Curling Championships: the Don Duguid Rink won in 1970 and 1971, and the Orest Meleschuk rink won in 1972.
In the 1970s, Canada struggled during the World Men’s Curling Championship. After Meleschuk’s victory in 1972, Canada did not win again for eight years. However, Canadian dominance at the world championship level was restored in the 1980s with seven victories: Rick Folk (1980); Al Hackner (1982, 1985); Ed Werenich (1983); Ed Lukowich (1986); Russ Howard (1987); and Pat Ryan (1989).
Canada would continue to dominate the World Men’s Curling Championships over the next two decades: Ed Werenich (1990); Russ Howard (1993); Rick Folk (1994); Kerry Burtnyk (1995); Jeff Stoughton (1996); Wayne Middaugh (1998); Greg McAulay (2000); Randy Ferbey (2002, 2003, 2005); Glenn Howard (2007, 2012); Kevin Martin (2008); and Kevin Koe (2010).
Since 1995, the world curling championship has been sponsored by Ford Canada and is known as the Ford World Curling Championship when played in Canada.
Women’s Curling
The copious quantities of whisky said to be consumed at bonspiels apparently delayed the participation of women in curling, but in 1894, the first ladies' curling club was formed in Montréal . Before 1900 there were several women's clubs in Eastern and Western Canada, and curling was soon established as a sport for both sexes and almost all ages.
National Women’s Championship
However, it would take over half a century for women to have their own national curling championship. The first Canadian National Women’s Curling Championship was played in 1960 in Oshawa , ON. The event took place 33 years after the first Canadian National Men’s Curling Championship in Toronto .
For the first year, the Western Canadian champion was flown to Oshawa to play the Eastern Canadian champion. The event, known as the Dominion Diamond D Championship, was won by Joyce McKee of Saskatoon , SK. A year later, tournament organizers used a similar round-robin format as the Brier with McKee defending her title.
Dominion continued sponsoring the event until 1967. Notable champions in the 1960s included Mabel DeWare of Moncton , NB (1963), who went on to become a cabinet minister in the New Brunswick legislature and a senator in the Canadian government, and Betty Duguid of Winnipeg , MB (1967), sister of two-time world men’s curling champion Don Duguid.
The province of Saskatchewan dominated the women’s national championship from 1969 to 1974, winning six straight national titles. From 1971 to 1973, Vera Pezer won three consecutive titles as a skip, a record until Nova Scotia ’s Colleen Jones won four straight titles from 2001 to 2004.
In 1972, Macdonald Tobacco Company became the primary sponsor of the National Women’s Curling Championship and the tournament was renamed the Macdonald Lassies Championship. However, despite giving the event strong promotional and public relations support, they were pressured by the Canadian government to end their sponsorship in 1979 because of the government’s anti-tobacco thrust.
Scotties Tournament of Hearts
In 1982, a new era in women’s curling began when Scott Paper became the primary sponsor of the national women’s curling championship. The new event was initially known as the Scott Tournament of Hearts before a name change was made in 2007 to the Scotties Tournament of Hearts. According to curling historian Doug Maxwell, “the Scott Tournament of Hearts is Canada’s longest-running, sponsored national event.”
The other significant change to the Canadian women’s curling championship in the 1980s was the adoption of the Team Canada concept. In essence, this meant the reigning champions did not have to participate in provincial playdowns to qualify for the national championships; instead, they received an automatic berth and were known as Team Canada. (The Team Canada concept was instituted at the Brier for the first time in 2015.)
The most successful Canadian curler in the history of the Scott Tournament of Hearts is Nova Scotia’s Colleen Jones, who won six titles. The Halifax native won the first Scott Tournament of Hearts in 1982, followed by victories in 1999 and 2001–04. When Jones was not curling, she could be seen regularly on CBC as a sports broadcaster.
After the Colleen Jones dynasty, Winnipeg ’s Jennifer Jones went on a notable run starting in 2005, when she won four Scotties in six years. Another repeat national champion is Ottawa’s Rachel Homan, who won the Scotties Tournament of Hearts in 2013 and 2014.
Women’s World Championship
The first Women’s World Curling Championship took place in 1979 with Gaby Casanova of Switzerland capturing the title. Marj Mitchell’s rink from Saskatchewan became the first Canadian team to win the Women’s World Curling Championship in 1980. Just three years later, Mitchell died of cancer at age 35. (Since 1998, the Scotties Tournament of Hearts Sponsorship Award has been named in Mitchell’s honour.)
The first Women’s World Curling Championship on Canadian soil took place in 1983 in Moose Jaw , SK with Switzerland hammering Norway 18–3 in the gold medal game. Canada’s Penny LaRocque of Nova Scotia lost 6–3 to Norway in the semifinal.
From 1984 to 1987, Canadian teams won four consecutive World Women’s Curling Championships, solidifying Canada as a superpower in women’s as well as men’s curling: three-time Scotties champion Connie Laliberte won in 1984; Linda Moore won in 1985; Marilyn Darte (later Bodogh) won in 1986; and Pat Sanders won in 1987.
In 1989, the Women’s World Curling Championship took place in the same location (Milwaukee, Wisconsin) as the Men’s World Curling Championship for the first time. Heather Houston defeated Norway’s Trine Trulsen in the gold medal game to join men’s champion Pat Ryan as Canadian world champions. The Women’s World Curling Championship would remain in the same location as the Men’s World Curling Championship until 2004. Since 2005, a World Championship has taken place in Canada every year, with the Women’s World Curling Championship in Canada in even years and the Men’s World Curling Championship in Canada in odd years.
In the 1990s, Canadian women won four World Women’s Curling Championships. Sandra Schmirler ’s curling team from Saskatchewan won three titles (1993, 1994, 1997). Marilyn Bodogh also won the second Women’s World Curling Championship of her career in 1996 in front of an appreciative crowd at Copps Coliseum in Hamilton .
In the 2000s, Canadian women won five World Women’s Curling Championships: Kelley Law (2000); Colleen Jones (2001, 2004); Kelly Scott (2007); and Jennifer Jones (2008).
Canadian Mixed Championship
Another important national curling competition, the Canadian Mixed Curling Championship, began in 1964. Over the years, many Canadian mixed curling champions have also won the Brier or Scotties Tournament of Hearts. The list includes Rick Folk, Barry Fry, Jan Betker, Jeff Stoughton, Colleen Jones, Kevin Koe, Jean-Michel Ménard, Mark Dacey and Kim Kelly. In 2004 in Timmins , ON, Shannon Kleibrink of Alberta (who went on to skip Canada to a bronze medal at the 2006 Olympic Winter Games in Turin) became the first female curler to win the Canadian Mixed Curling Championship as a skip.
Other National Championships
Other curling competitions held in Canada include championships for Canadian Schoolboys (first held in 1950); National Seniors (since 1965); Canadian Junior Girls (1971); the Canadian Senior Ladies (55 and over; established 1973); the Canadian Masters (60 and over; established 2000) and the Canadian Wheelchair Curling Championship (established 2004).
Olympic Success
There has been some debate about when curling became an Olympic sport. In 2006, the International Olympic Committee determined that curling had debuted at the first Olympic Winter Games in 1924. Thus, the British are now considered the first Olympic curling champions because of their 1924 win. After the 1924 Games, curling was a demonstration sport at the 1928 and 1932 Olympics, and then returned as a demonstration sport to the 1988 games.
In 1998 at Nagano, Japan, the sport was for the first time an official Olympic event. Though the Canadian men's team led by Mike Harris settled for silver, Sandra Schmirler 's team from Regina captured the first women's Olympic gold medal in curling. Sadly, Schmirler died of cancer at age 36 just two years later in 2000.
The men's competition at the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City was a battle between Canada, Norway and Switzerland. These well-matched teams played intense and close games, resulting in Norway taking the gold medal after a hard-fought game against Canada. The Canadians, skipped by Kevin Martin, won the silver medal and the Swiss the bronze. The Canadian women, skipped by Kelley Law, won the bronze medal. At the 2006 Olympic Games in Turin, Italy, the Canadian men's curling team won the gold, and the women's team, skipped by Shannon Kleibrink, again won the bronze.
The Canadian men’s team that won the 2006 Olympic Winter Games was skipped by Brad Gushue of St. John’s , Newfoundland . In the semifinal, the Canadian team scored five points in the ninth end on the way to an 11–5 win over the United States and then in the final scored a remarkable six points in the sixth end en route to a 10–4 win over Finland.
Canadian curlers enjoyed success once again at the 2010 Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver . The Canadian men, led this time by Kevin Martin, won a second consecutive Olympic gold. The team, undefeated in round-robin play, proceeded to the final match where they defeated Norway 6–3. The women's team, led by Cheryl Bernard, were edged out by Sweden (6–7) and won silver.
At the 2014 Olympic Winter Games in Sochi, Canada won the gold medal in men’s and women’s curling at the same Olympics for the first time. The men’s team, led by skip Brad Jacobs, finished with a record of 7–2 in the round robin, beat China 10–6 in the semifinal, and Great Britain 9–3 in the gold medal game.
The women’s team, led by skip Jennifer Jones, enjoyed unprecedented Olympic success. They became the first Canadian women’s team at an Olympic Winter Games or World Women’s Curling Championship to go undefeated throughout the entire tournament. Jones’ team beat Great Britain 6–4 in the semifinal and Sweden 6–3 in the final to win Olympic gold.
In recent years, the Canadian Olympic Curling Trials has arguably passed the Brier and the Scotties Tournament of Hearts as the most important national curling event on Canadian soil. Canada’s elite curling teams have made the Olympic Winter Games a top priority and regularly form their teams in four-year cycles to maximize their preparation. In fact, winning the Canadian Olympic Curling Trials can be just as prestigious for Canadian curlers as winning an Olympic medal because of how difficult it is to beat the other elite teams throughout Canada.
Suggested Reading
W.A. Creelman, Curling: Past and Present (1950); Perry Lefko, Shannon England, The Queen of Curling: The Sandra Schmirler Story (2000); Gerald Redmond, The Sporting Scots of Nineteenth-Century Canada (1982); D.B. Smith, Curling: An Illustrated History (1981).
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Which is North America's largest desert? | THE DESERTS OF NORTH AMERICA
The North American deserts are highly accessible, well-researched and very diverse, so they provide a good basis for understanding desert ecology. These deserts are found in a broad band running down the western side of the USA and into Mexico. They lie in a large basin between the Rocky Mountains to the east and the Sierra Nevada to the west. They receive relatively little water - typically less than 25 cm (10 inches) per year - because most of the precipitation falls on the higher mountain ranges and not in the lower-lying desert regions (which are in the "rain shadow" of the mountains).
Approximate boundaries of the four main deserts of North America
These North American deserts are grouped into four major types - the Great Basin Desert, Sonoran Desert, Chihuahuan Desert and Mojave Desert - depending on their characteristic physical features (rainfall, topography, soil types) and characteristic vegetation and associated animal communities.
The Great Basin Desert is the largest desert area of North America. It is also the most northerly, covering most of Nevada (Ne), the western third of Utah (U) and parts of Idaho (Id) and Oregon (Or). It is a cold desert because of its northerly location and its relatively high altitude - most of the land lies above 1200 metres (4000 ft), but in the 'rain shadow' of the higher mountain ranges. Much of the precipitation occurs as winter snowfall, but not all of this melts into the ground because some of it evaporates in spring. The vegetation tends to be very uniform over large areas of this desert. It is dominated by various types of sagebrush , or by saltbush where the soil has a high salt concentration. In fact, the soils often have a high salt content (sodium and calcium ions) caused by evaporation of water in the hot summer months, and no vegetation can grow in the saltiest regions.
The Mojave Desert occurs further south and covers the southern part of Nevada and part of California (Ca) but elements of it extend into Arizona (Az) where it blends into the Sonoran Desert. Again, it is classed as a cold desert because of the low winter temperatures. The precipitation occurs in winter, usually as rain but sometimes as snow at the higher elevations. The features of the Mohave Desert are difficult to define because of the marked variation in topography, soils and climate. For example, the northern section is composed of low-growing shrubs, similar to those of the Great Basin Desert, whereas the southern section blends into the Sonoran Desert, with extensive tracts of creosote bush. The Mohave Desert includes Death Valley - the lowest (below sea level) and driest of all desert regions, where there may be no rain for several years. The Majove Desert contains some highly characteristic plants and animals - most notably the joshua tree at higher elevations.
The Sonoran Desert covers the southern part of Arizona and part of California, but extends south into the mainland of Mexico and into the extended isthmus of the state of Baja California (BC) in Mexico. The Sonoran Desert is a hot desert and, unlike all the other desert regions of North America, it receives both winter and summer rains. This pattern of rainfall is caused by the seasonal shifts of major storm tracks across the USA. The Sonoran Desert receives winter rainfall from moisture-laden air carried on winds from the Pacific Ocean, and summer rainfall from air carried northwestwards from the Gulf of Mexico. As a consequence, parts of the Sonoran Desert can support unusually lush vegetation, including several trees and sub-trees, and some very large cacti such as the saguaro and cardon . The Baja California peninsula of Mexico is also included in the Sonoran Desert, but the west-facing slopes of this peninsula receive moisture-laden air from the Pacific Ocean and have some uniquely lush vegetation, including epiphytic plants that gain their moisture from the sea mists.
The Chihuahuan Desert occupies the extreme west of Texas (Tx) and part of New Mexico (NM), but the largest part of this desert occurs in mainland Mexico. This desert region receives summer rains from the Gulf of Mexico - typically about 20-30 cm per year. Over much of this desert the soils are derived from calcareous rocks and thus have relatively high pH. The Chihuahuan Desert also lies at relatively high elevation (typically about 1200 metres, or 4000 ft) and thus has cool winters with periodic frosts, but the summers are hot. The combination of relatively high rainfall, calcareous soils and cool winter temperatures favours the growth of grasses, yuccas and agaves . There are many small cacti , but few of the larger cacti associated with the Sonoran Desert.
Whilst some of the best desert areas of North America are now protected from development by being designated as State Parks, National Parks or National Monuments, vast areas of land dominated by creosote bush and other less spectacular vegetation are now been used for irrigated agriculture, drawing water from major rivers. When irrigated, these desert can be phenomenally productive because of their year-round warmth and solar intensity.
Irrigated agriculture (right) compared with the natural vegetation (left and foreground)
| Sonoran Desert |
‘Ba' is the chemical symbol for which element? | Largest Desert in the World - Desert Map
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The World's Largest Deserts
A map showing the generalized location of Earth's ten largest deserts and a table of over 20 major deserts.
World desert map: This map shows the generalized location of Earth's ten largest deserts on the basis of surface area. The table at the bottom of this page provides the names, generalized locations, and surface areas of over twenty major deserts. Base map by NOAA.
Sand dunes in the Sahara Desert of Libya: Most people think of deserts as "sandy" landscapes. That is true part of the time. This is a view of sand dunes in the Sahara Desert of Libya - an area known as the Ubari (or Awbari) Sand Sea. Photo © iStockphoto / PatrickPoendl.
What is a Desert?
A desert is a landscape or region that receives very little precipitation - less than 250 mm per year (about ten inches). Approximately 1/3 of Earth's land surface is a desert. There are four different types of deserts based upon their geographic situation: 1) polar deserts, 2) subtropical deserts, 3) cold winter deserts, and 4) cool coastal deserts. As shown on the map above, deserts occur on all of Earth's continents.
The Largest Desert
The two largest deserts on Earth are in the polar areas. The Antarctic Polar Desert covers the continent of Antarctica and has a size of about 5.5 million square miles. The second-largest desert is the Arctic Polar Desert. It extends over parts of Alaska, Canada, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia. It has a surface area of about 5.4 million square miles.
McMurdo Dry Valleys: The largest deserts on Earth are in the polar regions. This is one of the McMurdo "dry valleys" near Lake Hoare, Antarctica. The Canada Glacier is in the background. Photograph by Peter West, National Science Foundation.
Non-Polar Deserts
The rest of Earth's deserts are outside of the polar areas. The largest is the Sahara Desert, a subtropical desert in northern Africa. It covers a surface area of about 3.5 million square miles. A list of more than twenty of the largest non-polar deserts can be found below.
Vegetation of the Sonoran Desert in Arizona: Cacti and grasses in Arizona's Sonoran Desert. Photo © iStockphoto / vlynder.
The Desert Environment
When most people think of a desert, they imagine a landscape covered with sand and sand dunes. Although many deserts are sand-covered, most are not. Many desert landscapes are rocky surfaces. They are rocky because any sand-size or smaller particles on the surface are quickly blown away. Rocky deserts are barren wind-swept landscapes.
Most deserts receive so little precipitation that surface streams usually only flow immediately after rainfall - unless the stream has a source of water outside of the desert. Streams that enter a desert usually suffer major water losses before they exit. Some of the water is lost to evaporation. Some is lost to transpiration (taken up by plants and then released to the atmosphere from the plants). And, some is lost to infiltration (water soaking into the ground through the bottom of the stream channel).
Desert Fauna and Flora
The plants and animals that live in a desert must be adapted to the environment. Plants must be very tolerant to intense sun, prolonged periods without precipitation, and have an ability to prevent moisture loss to conditions of severe temperature ranges, dry winds, and low humidity.
Animals must be able to tolerate temperature extremes, temperature ranges, and have an ability to survive with very little water. Many animals adapt to desert conditions by living underground and being active at night.
Major Deserts of the World
Name
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What was the first name of Tory Prime Minister Harold McMillan? | Maurice Harold Macmillan, 1st Earl of Stockton (1894 - 1986) - Genealogy
Maurice Harold Macmillan, 1st Earl of Stockton
Also Known As:
52 Cadogan Pl, Kensington, Greater London, United Kingdom
Death:
in Chelwood Gate, East Sussex, United Kingdom
Place of Burial:
St Giles' Church Horsted Keynes
Immediate Family:
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
Managed by:
Dorothy Evelyn Macmillan (born Cavendish)
Son:
Maurice Crawford MacMillan, Helen Artie Tarleton MacMillan
Wife:
Dorothy Evelyn Macmillan (o.s. Cavendish)
Children:
Feb 10 1894 - 52 Cadogan Place, Chelsea, Londres
Death:
Dec 29 1986 - Chelwood Gate, Sussex
Wife:
Dorothy Evelyn Macmillan (nacida Cavendisch)
Children:
Feb 10 1894 - 52 Cadogan Place, London England
Death:
Dec 29 1986 - Birch Grove, Sussex England
Wife:
Feb 10 1894 - 52 Cadogan Place, London England
Death:
Dec 29 1986 - Birch Grove, Sussex England
Wife:
Feb 10 1894 - 52 Cadogan Place, Chelsea, London, Middlesex, England
Death:
Dec 29 1986 - Chelwood Gate, Sussex, England
Wife:
Dorothy Evelyn Macmillan (born Cavendish)
Children:
Dorothy Evelyn Macmillan (born Cavendish)
Children:
Dec 29 1986 - Chelwood Gate, Sussex
Parents:
Maurice Crawford Macmillan, Helen Artie Tarleton Macmillan (born Belles)
Wife:
St George Hanover Square, London, England
Spouse (implied):
Haywards Heath, West Sussex, England
Birth date:
http://ww2gravestone.com/people/macmillan-maurice-harold/
Maurice Harold Macmillan, 1st Earl of Stockton, OM, PC (10 February 1894 – 29 December 1986) was a British Conservative politician and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 10 January 1957 to 18 October 1963.
Nicknamed 'Supermac' and known for his pragmatism, wit and unflappability, Macmillan achieved notoriety before the Second World War as a Tory radical and critic of appeasement. Rising to high office as a protegé of wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill, he believed in the essential decency of the post-war settlement and the necessity of a mixed economy, and in his premiership pursued corporatist policies to develop the domestic market as the engine of growth.[2] As a One Nation Tory of the Disraelian tradition, haunted by memories of the Great Depression, he championed a Keynesian strategy of public investment to maintain demand, winning a second term in 1959 on an electioneering budget. Benefiting from favourable international conditions,[3] he presided over an age of affluence, marked by low unemployment and high if uneven growth. In his Bedford speech of July 1957 he told the nation they had 'never had it so good',[4] but warned of the dangers of inflation, summing up the fragile prosperity of the 1950s.[5]
In international affairs Macmillan rebuilt the special relationship with the United States from the wreckage of Suez, and redrew the world map by decolonising sub-Saharan Africa. Reconfiguring the nation's defences to meet the realities of the nuclear age, he ended National Service, strengthened the nuclear deterrent by acquiring Polaris, and pioneered the Nuclear Test Ban with the United States and the Soviet Union. Belatedly recognising the dangers of strategic dependence, he sought a new role for Britain in Europe, but his unwillingness to disclose United States nuclear secrets to France contributed to a French veto of the United Kingdom's entry into the European Economic Community.[6]
Macmillan's government in its final year was rocked by the Vassall and Profumo scandals, which seemed to symbolise for the rebellious youth of the 1960s the moral decay of the British establishment.[7] Resigning prematurely after a medical misdiagnosis, Macmillan lived out a long retirement as an elder statesman of global stature. He was as trenchant a critic of his successors in his old age as he had been of his predecessors in his youth. When asked what represented the greatest challenge for a statesman, Macmillan replied: 'Events, my dear boy, events'.[8]
Contents [hide]
[edit]Early life
[edit]Family
Harold Macmillan was born at 52 Cadogan Place in Chelsea, London, to Maurice Crawford Macmillan (1853–1936), publisher, and Helen (Nellie) Artie Tarleton Belles (1856–1937), artist and socialite, from Spencer, Indiana, US.[9] He had two brothers, Daniel, eight years his senior, and Arthur, four years his senior.[10] His paternal grandfather, Daniel MacMillan (1813–1857), was the son of a Scottish crofter who founded Macmillan Publishers.
[edit]Education
Macmillan was first educated at Summer Fields School and then at Eton but left during his first half after a serious attack of pneumonia.[11][12] It is also suggested he was sent down for a brief affair with another boy [13]He also went up to Balliol College, Oxford in 1912, where he obtained a First in Mods (Latin & Greek language & literature, the first half of the four-year Oxford Greats course) and became an officer of the Oxford Union Society before the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914.
[edit]War service
Macmillan served with distinction as a captain in the Grenadier Guards during the war, and was wounded on three occasions. During the Battle of the Somme, he spent an entire day wounded and lying in a slit trench with a bullet in his pelvis, reading the classical Greek playwright Aeschylus in his original language.[14] Macmillan spent the final two years of the war in hospital undergoing a long series of operations, and saw no further active service.[15] His hip wound took four years to heal completely, and left him with a slight shuffle to his walk (and a limp grip in his right hand from a separate hand wound) for the rest of his life. As was common for contemporary former officers, he continued to be known as 'Captain Macmillan' until the early 1930s. Of the 28 freshmen who started at Balliol with Macmillan, only he and one other survived.[16]
[edit]Canadian aide-de-campship
Macmillan lost so many of his fellow students during the war that afterwards he refused to return to Oxford, saying the university would never be the same.[17] According to his entry in Who's Who (1987) he obtained "1st. Class Hon. Moderations 1919", suggesting that he was awarded a degree in absentia. He served instead in Ottawa, Canada, in 1919 as ADC to Victor Cavendish, 9th Duke of Devonshire, then Governor General of Canada and future father-in-law.[18]
[edit]Publishing
On his return to London in 1920 he joined the family firm Macmillan Publishers as a junior partner, remaining with the company until his appointment to ministerial office in 1940.
[edit]Marriage
Macmillan married Lady Dorothy Cavendish, daughter of the 9th Duke of Devonshire, on 21 April 1920. Her great-uncle was Spencer Cavendish, 8th Duke of Devonshire, who was leader of the Liberal Party in the 1870s, and a close colleague of William Gladstone, Joseph Chamberlain and Lord Salisbury. Lady Dorothy was also descended from William Cavendish, 4th Duke of Devonshire, who served as Prime Minister from 1756–1757 in communion with Newcastle and Pitt the Elder. Her nephew William Cavendish, Marquess of Hartington married Kathleen, a sister of John F. Kennedy. Between 1929 and 1935 Lady Dorothy had a long affair with the Conservative politician Robert Boothby, in full public view of Westminster and established society. Boothby was widely rumoured to have been the father of Macmillan's youngest daughter Sarah. The stress caused by this may have contributed to Macmillan's nervous breakdown in 1931.[19] Lady Dorothy died on 21 May 1966, aged 65.
The Macmillans had four children:
Maurice Macmillan, Viscount Macmillan of Ovenden (1921–1984)
Lady Caroline Faber (born 1923)
Lady Catherine Amery (1926–1991)
Sarah Macmillan (1930–1970)
[edit]Brother-in-law
On 26 November 1950, Lady Dorothy's brother Edward Cavendish, the 10th Duke of Devonshire had a heart attack and died in the presence of John Bodkin Adams, the suspected serial killer. Thirteen days before, Edith Alice Morrell, another patient of Adams, had also died. Adams was tried in 1957 for her murder but controversially acquitted. Political interference has been suspected[20][21] and indeed, the case was prosecuted by a member of Macmillan's cabinet, Sir Reginald Manningham-Buller. Home office pathologist Francis Camps linked Adams to a total of 163 suspicious deaths.[21]
[edit]Eileen O'Casey
Eileen Kathleen O'Casey (née Reynolds), the actress wife of Irish dramatist Seán O'Casey, had a close relationship with Macmillan, who had published her husband’s plays. There is disagreement over whether he proposed after she was widowed. According to her husband's biographer: 'Eileen and O'Casey's marriage had become celibate by the time she was in her fifties, now a strikingly handsome woman, notable for her warm wit, who, on her own candid admission, fulfilled her sexual needs outside marriage ... One ardent, lifelong admirer was Macmillan, who in later life gently broached to her the idea of marriage, which she declined.'[22]
Eileen's obituary notice in the Evening Standard states: 'It was the death of Sean O'Casey in 1964, and of Dorothy Macmillan, two years later, that cemented Macmillan and Eileen’s intimacy. She became the light which illuminated his prime years, eventually even replacing Dorothy in his affections.'[23] O'Casey's biographer notes that 'Eileen was the first woman whom Macmillan asked to sit in Lady Dorothy’s place at table in Birch Grove; he also took her out frequently to dine at Buck’s Club.'[24]
Eileen's obituary in The Times records that 'she became one of Harold Macmillan's closest friends. The two grew even closer after the death of their respective spouses. That Macmillan never proposed marriage was a source of bewilderment to outsiders, although Eileen was understanding about his shyness....Her relationship with Macmillan, which only ended with his death in 1986, was a source of comfort to her in old age. For his part, he relied completely on her honest, outspoken Irish perspective. She recalled one lunch when Lord Home asked Macmillan to accept a peerage: "Harold turned to me and said 'What about that Eileen?' I told him I thought it nicer to keep the name Harold Macmillan to the end of his days and said, 'Titles are two-a-penny these days. Butchers and bakers and candlestick makers are all getting them.' I got the impression that Alec Home was a bit annoyed with me."[25]
[edit]Political career (1924–1957)
[edit]Private Member (1924–1929, 1931–1940)
Elected to the House of Commons in 1924 for the depressed northern industrial constituency of Stockton-on-Tees, Macmillan lost his seat in 1929 in the face of high regional unemployment, but returned in 1931. He spent the 1930s on the backbenches, with his championing of economic planning, anti-appeasement ideals and sharp criticism of Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain serving to isolate him from the party leadership. During this time (1938) he published the first edition of his book The Middle Way, which advocated a broadly centrist political philosophy both domestically and internationally.
[edit]Supply Parliamentary Secretary (1940–1942)
In the Second World War Macmillan at last attained office, serving in the wartime coalition government as the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Supply from 1940 to 1942. The task of the department was to provide armaments and other equipment to the British Army and Royal Air Force. Macmillan travelled up and down the country to co-ordinate production, working with some success under Lord Beaverbrook to increase the supply and quality of armoured vehicles.[26]
[edit]Colonial Under-Secretary (1942)
Macmillan was appointed as Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies in 1942, in his own words, 'leaving a madhouse in order to enter a mausoleum'.[27] Though a junior minister he was sworn of the Privy Council and spoke in the House of Commons for successive Colonial Secretaries Lord Moyne and Lord Cranborne. Macmillan was given responsibility for increasing colonial production and trade, and signalled the future direction of British policy when in June 1942 he declared:
“ The governing principle of the Colonial Empire should be the principle of partnership between the various elements composing it. Out of partnership comes understanding and friendship. Within the fabric of the Commonwealth lies the future of the Colonial territories.[28] ”
[edit]Minister Resident in the Mediterranean (1942–1945)
Macmillan attained real power and Cabinet rank upon being sent to North Africa in 1942 as British government representative to the Allies in the Mediterranean, reporting directly to Prime Minister Winston Churchill over the head of the Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden. During this assignment Macmillan served as liaison and mediator between Churchill and US General Dwight D. Eisenhower in North Africa, building a rapport with the latter that would prove helpful in his later career.[29]
As minister resident with a roving commission, Macmillan also the minister advising General Keightley of V Corps, the senior Allied commander in Austria responsible for Operation Keelhaul, which included the forced repatriation of up to 70,000 prisoners of war to the Soviet Union and Tito's Yugoslavia in 1945. The deportations and Macmillan's involvement later became a source of controversy because of the harsh treatment meted out to Nazi collaborators and anti-partisans by the receiving countries, and because in the confusion V Corps went beyond the terms agreed at Yalta and AFHQ directives by repatriating 4000 White Russian troops and 11,000 civilian family members who could not properly be regarded as Soviet citizens.[30][31]
[edit]Air Secretary (1945)
Macmillan returned to England after the European war and was Secretary of State for Air for two months in Churchill's caretaker government, 'much of which was taken up in electioneering', there being 'nothing much to be done in the way of forward planning'.[32] He felt himself 'almost a stranger at home',[33] and lost his seat in the landslide Labour victory of 1945, but soon returned to Parliament in a November 1945 by-election in Bromley.
[edit]Housing Minister (1951–1954)
With the Conservative victory in 1951 Macmillan became Minister of Housing under Churchill, who entrusted Macmillan with fulfilling the latter's conference promise to build 300,000 houses per year. 'It is a gamble—it will make or mar your political career,' Churchill said, 'but every humble home will bless your name if you succeed.'[34] Macmillan achieved the target a year ahead of schedule.[35]
[edit]Defence Minister (1954–1955)
Macmillan served as Minister of Defence from October 1954, but found his authority restricted by Churchill's personal involvement.[36] In the opinion of The Economist: 'He gave the impression that his own undoubted capacity for imaginative running of his own show melted way when an august superior was breathing down his neck.'[37]
A major theme of Macmillan's tenure at Defence was the ministry's growing reliance on the nuclear deterrent, in the view of some critics, to the detriment of conventional forces.[38] The Defence White Paper of February 1955, announcing the decision to produce the hydrogen bomb, received bipartisan support.[39]
By this time Macmillan had lost the wire-rimmed glasses, toothy grin and brylcreemed hair of wartime photographs, and instead grew his hair thick and glossy, had his teeth capped and walked with the ramrod bearing of a former Guards officer—acquiring the distinguished appearance of his later career.
[edit]Foreign Secretary (1955)
Macmillan served as Foreign Secretary in April-December 1955 in the government of Anthony Eden. Returning from the Geneva Summit of that year he made headlines by declaring: 'There ain’t gonna be no war.'[40] Of the role of Foreign Secretary Macmillan famously observed:
“ Nothing he can say can do very much good and almost anything he may say may do a great deal of harm. Anything he says that is not obvious is dangerous; whatever is not trite is risky. He is forever poised between the cliché and the indiscretion.[41] ”
[edit]Chancellor of the Exchequer (1955–1957)
Macmillan served as Chancellor of the Exchequer 1955–1957. In this office he insisted that Eden's de facto deputy Rab Butler not be treated as senior to him, and threatened resignation until he was allowed to cut bread and milk subsidies. One of Macmillan's innovations at the Treasury was the introduction of premium bonds,[42] announced in his budget of 17 April 1956.[43] Although the Labour Opposition initially decried the sale as a 'squalid raffle', it proved an immediate hit with the public. During the Suez Crisis, according to Shadow Chancellor Harold Wilson, Macmillan was 'first in, first out': first very supportive of the invasion, then a prime mover in Britain's withdrawal in the wake of the financial crisis.
[edit]Prime Minister (1957–1963)
Macmillan with Indian Minister and head of Indian delegation Ashoke Kumar Sen and wife Anjana, daughter of Sudhi Ranjan Das
[edit]First government (1957–1959)
Anthony Eden resigned in January 1957. At that time the Conservative Party had no formal mechanism for selecting a new leader, effectively leaving the choice of the new leader, and Prime Minister, in the hands of the Sovereign, Queen Elizabeth II. The Queen appointed Macmillan Prime Minister after taking advice from Winston Churchill and Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 5th Marquess of Salisbury, surprising some observers who expected that Rab Butler would be chosen. The political situation after Suez was so desperate that on taking office on 10 January he told Queen Elizabeth II he could not guarantee his government would last "six weeks".[44]
Macmillan populated his government with many who had studied at the same school as he: he filled government posts with 35 former Etonians, 7 of whom sat in Cabinet.[45] He was also devoted to family members: when Andrew Cavendish, 11th Duke of Devonshire was later appointed (Minister for Colonial Affairs from 1963 to 1964 amongst other positions) he described his uncle's behaviour as "the greatest act of nepotism ever".[21]
He was nicknamed Supermac in 1958 by cartoonist Victor 'Vicky' Weisz. It was intended as mockery, but backfired, coming to be used in a neutral or friendly fashion. Weisz tried to label him with other names, including "Mac the Knife" at the time of widespread cabinet changes in 1962, but none of these caught on.[citation needed]
[edit]Economy
Macmillan brought the monetary concerns of the Exchequer into office; the economy was his prime concern. His One Nation approach to the economy was to seek high or full employment. This contrasted with his mainly monetarist Treasury ministers who argued that the support of sterling required strict controls on money and hence an unavoidable rise in unemployment. Their advice was rejected and in January 1958 the three Treasury ministers Peter Thorneycroft, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Nigel Birch, Economic Secretary to the Treasury, and Enoch Powell, the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, resigned. Macmillan, away on a tour of the Commonwealth, brushed aside this incident as 'a little local difficulty'.
[edit]Foreign policy
Macmillan took close control of foreign policy. He worked to narrow the post-Suez rift with the United States, where his wartime friendship with Dwight D. Eisenhower was key; the two had a productive conference in Bermuda as early as March 1957.
In February 1959 Macmillan became the first Western leader to visit the Soviet Union since the Second World War.[46] Talks with Nikita Khrushchev eased tensions in East-West relations over West Berlin and led to an agreement in principle to stop nuclear tests and to hold a further summit meeting of Allied and Soviet heads of government.[47]
In the Middle East, faced by the 1958 collapse of the Baghdad Pact and the spread of Soviet influence, Macmillan acted decisively to restore the confidence of Gulf allies, using the RAF and special forces to defeat a revolt backed by Saudi Arabia and Egypt against the Sultan of Oman in July 1957,[48] deploying airborne battalions to defend Jordan against Syrian subversion in July 1958,[49] and deterring a threatened Iraqi invasion of Kuwait by landing a brigade group in July 1960.[50]
Macmillan was also a major proponent and architect of decolonisation. The Gold Coast was granted independence as Ghana, and Malaya and North Borneo as Malaysia in 1957.
[edit]Nuclear deterrent
First successful British H-bomb test - Operation Grapple X Round C1, which took place over Kiritimati
In April 1957 Macmillan reaffirmed his strong support for the British nuclear deterrent. A succession of prime ministers since the Second World War had been determined to persuade the United States to revive wartime co-operation in the area of nuclear weapons research. Macmillan believed that one way to encourage such co-operation would be for the United Kingdom to speed up the development of its own hydrogen bomb, which was successfully tested on 8 November 1957.
Macmillan's decision led to increased demands on the Windscale and (subsequently) Calder Hall nuclear plants to produce plutonium for military purposes.[51] As a result the safety margins of the radioactive materials inside the Windscale reactor were eroded. This contributed to the Windscale accident on the night of 10 October 1957, in which a fire broke out in the plutonium plant of Pile No. 1, and nuclear contaminants travelled up a chimney where the filters blocked some but not all of the contaminated material. The radioactive cloud spread to south-east England and fallout reached mainland Europe. Although scientists had warned of the dangers of such an accident for some time, the government blamed the workers who had put out the fire for 'an error of judgement', rather than the political pressure for fast-tracking the megaton bomb.[52][53]
Macmillan, concerned that public confidence in the nuclear programme might be shaken and that technical information might be misused by opponents of defence co-operation in the US Congress, withheld all but the summary of a report into the Windscale fire prepared for the Atomic Energy Authority by Sir William Penney, director of the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment.[54] While subsequently released files show that 'Macmillan's cuts were few and covered up few technical details',[55] and that even the full report at the time found no danger to public health, later official estimates acknowledged the release of polonium-210 may have led directly to 25 to 50 deaths, and anti-nuclear groups linked it to 1,000 fatal cancers.[56][57]
On 25 March 1957 Macmillan also acceded to Eisenhower's request to base 60 Thor IRBMs in England under joint control, to replace the nuclear bombers of the Strategic Air Command, which had been stationed under joint control in the country since 1948, and were approaching obsolescence. Partly as a consequence of this favour, in late October 1957, the US McMahon Act was eased to facilitate nuclear co-operation between the two governments, initially with a view to producing cleaner weapons and reducing the need for duplicate testing.[58] The Mutual Defence Agreement followed on 3 July 1958, speeding up British ballistic missile development,[59] notwithstanding unease expressed at the time about the impetus co-operation might give to atomic proliferation by arousing the jealousy of France and other allies.[60]
[edit]Election campaign (1959)
Macmillan led the Conservatives to victory in the October 1959 general election, increasing his party's majority from 67 to 107 seats. The successful campaign was based on the economic improvements achieved; the slogan "Life's Better Under the Conservatives" was matched by Macmillan's own remark, "indeed let us be frank about it—most of our people have never had it so good." [61], usually paraphrased as "You've never had it so good". Such rhetoric reflected a new reality of working-class affluence; it has been argued: "The key factor in the Conservative victory was that average real pay for industrial workers had risen since Churchill’s 1951 victory by over 20 per cent".[62]
Critics contended that the actual economic growth rate was weak and distorted by increased defence spending.[citation needed]
[edit]Second government (1959–1963)
[edit]Economy
Britain's balance of payments problems led to the imposition of a wage freeze in 1961 and, amongst other factors, this caused the government to lose popularity and a series of by-elections in March 1962.
Fearing for his own position, Macmillan organised a major Cabinet change in July 1962—also named 'the night of long knives' as a symbol of his alleged betrayal of the Conservative party. Eight junior Ministers were sacked at the same time. The Cabinet changes were widely seen as a sign of panic, and the young Liberal MP Jeremy Thorpe said of Macmillan's dismissal of so many of his colleagues, 'greater love hath no man than this, than to lay down his friends for his life'.
Macmillan supported the creation of the National Incomes Commission as a means to institute controls on income as part of his growth-without-inflation policy. A further series of subtle indicators and controls were also introduced during his premiership.
[edit]Foreign policy
British decolonisation in Africa.
The special relationship with the United States continued after the election of President John F. Kennedy, whose sister had married a nephew of Macmillan's wife. The Prime Minister was supportive throughout the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 and Kennedy consulted him by telephone every day. The British Ambassador David Ormsby-Gore was a close family friend of the President and actively involved in White House discussions on how to resolve the crisis.
Macmillan's first government had seen the first phase of the sub-Saharan African independence movement, which accelerated under his second government. His celebrated 'wind of change' speech in Cape Town on his African tour in February 1960 is considered a landmark in the process of decolonisation.
Nigeria, the Southern Cameroons and British Somaliland were granted independence in 1960, Sierra Leone and Tanganyika in 1961, Uganda in 1962, and Kenya in 1963. Zanzibar merged with Tanganyika to form Tanzania in 1963. All remained within the Commonwealth but British Somaliland, which merged with Italian Somaliland to form Somalia.
Macmillan's policy overrode the hostility of white minorities and the Conservative Monday Club. South Africa left the multiracial Commonwealth in 1961 and Macmillan acquiesced to the dissolution of the Central African Federation by the end of 1963.
In East Asia, Singapore became independent in 1963.
The speedy transfer of power maintained the goodwill of the new nations but critics contended it was premature. In justification Macmillan quoted Lord Macaulay in 1851:
“ Many politicians of our time are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposition that no people ought to be free until they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story, who resolved not to go into the water till he had learnt to swim. If men are to wait for liberty till they become wise and good in slavery, they may indeed wait for ever.[63] ”
[edit]Skybolt crisis
Macmillan cancelled the Blue Streak ballistic missile system in April 1960 over concerns about its vulnerability to a pre-emptive attack. Instead he opted to replace the existing Blue Steel stand-off bomb with the Skybolt missile system, to be developed jointly with the United States. From the same year Macmillan also permitted the US Navy to station Polaris submarines at Holy Loch, Scotland, as a replacement for Thor. When Skybolt was in turn unilaterally cancelled by US Defence Secretary Robert McNamara, Macmillan negotiated with US President John F. Kennedy the purchase of Polaris missiles from the United States under the Nassau agreement in December 1962.
[edit]Partial Test Ban Treaty (1962)
Macmillan was also a force in the successful negotiations leading to the signing of the 1962 Partial Test Ban Treaty by the United Kingdom, the United States and the Soviet Union. His previous attempt to create an agreement at the May 1960 summit in Paris had collapsed due to the U-2 Crisis of 1960.
[edit]Europe
Macmillan worked with states outside the European Economic Community (EEC) to form the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), which from 3 May 1960 established a free-trade area between the member countries. Macmillan also saw the value of rapprochement with the EEC, to which his government sought belated entry. In the event, Britain's application to join was vetoed by French president Charles de Gaulle on 29 January 1963, in part due to de Gaulle's fear that 'the end would be a colossal Atlantic Community dependent on America', and in part in anger at the Anglo-American nuclear deal, from which France, technologically lagging far behind, had been excluded.[64]
[edit]Profumo affair
The Profumo affair of spring and summer 1963 permanently damaged the credibility of Macmillan's government. He survived a Parliamentary vote with a majority of 69, one less than had been thought necessary for his survival, and was afterwards joined in the smoking-room only by his son and son-in-law, not by any Cabinet minister. Nonetheless, Butler and Maudling (who was very popular with backbench MPs at that time) declined to push for his resignation, especially after a tide of support from Conservative activists around the country.
[edit]Retirement (1963–1986)
[edit]Resignation
The Profumo affair may have exacerbated Macmillan's ill-health. He was taken ill on the eve of the Conservative Party conference, diagnosed incorrectly with inoperable prostate cancer. Consequently, he resigned on 18 October 1963. He felt privately that he was being hounded from office by a backbench minority:
“ Some few will be content with the success they have had in the assassination of their leader and will not care very much who the successor is ... They are a band that in the end does not amount to more than 15 or 20 at the most.[65] ”
[edit]Succession
Macmillan was succeeded as Prime Minister by the Foreign Secretary Alec Douglas-Home in a controversial move; it was alleged that Macmillan had pulled strings and utilised the party's grandees, nicknamed 'The Magic Circle', to ensure that Butler was not chosen as his successor.
Macmillan initially refused a peerage and retired from politics in September 1964.
[edit]Oxford Chancellor (1960–1986)
Macmillan had been elected Chancellor of the University of Oxford in 1960, in a campaign masterminded by Hugh Trevor-Roper, and continued in this distinguished office for life, frequently presiding over college events, making speeches and tirelessly raising funds. According to Sir Patrick Neill QC, the vice-chancellor, Macmillan 'would talk late into the night with eager groups of students who were often startled by the radical views he put forward, well into his last decade.'[66]
[edit]Return to publishing
In retirement Macmillan also took up the chairmanship of his family's publishing house, Macmillan Publishers, from 1964 to 1974. He brought out a six-volume autobiography:
Winds of Change, 1914–1939 (1966) ISBN 0333066391
The Blast of War, 1939–1945 (1967) ISBN 0333003586
Tides of Fortune, 1945–1955 (1969) ISBN 0333040775
Riding the Storm, 1956–1959 (1971) ISBN 0333103106
Pointing the Way, 1959–1961 (1972) ISBN 0333124111
At the End of the Day, 1961–1963 (1973) ISBN 0333124138
The read was described by Macmillan's political enemy Enoch Powell as inducing 'a sensation akin to that of chewing on cardboard'. His wartime diaries were better received.
War Diaries: Politics and War in the Mediterranean, January 1943 – May 1945 (London: St. Martin's Press, 1984) ISBN 0312855664
[edit]Political interventions
Macmillan made occasional political interventions in retirement. Responding to a remark made by Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson about not having boots in which to go to school, Macmillan retorted: 'If Mr Wilson did not have boots to go to school that is because he was too big for them.'[67]
Macmillan accepted the distinction of the Order of Merit from the Queen in 1976. In October of that year he called for 'a Government of National Unity', including all parties, that could command the public support to resolve the economic crisis. Asked who could lead such a coalition, he replied: 'Mr Gladstone formed his last Government when he was eighty-three. I'm only eighty-two. You mustn't put temptation in my way.'[68] His plea was interpreted by party leaders as a bid for power and rejected.
Macmillan still travelled widely, visiting China in October 1979, where he held talks with its leader, senior Vice-Premier Deng Xiaoping.[69]
[edit]Relations with Thatcher
Macmillan found himself drawn more actively into politics after Margaret Thatcher became Conservative leader and Prime Minister, and the record of his own premiership came under attack from the monetarists in the party, whose theories Thatcher supported. In a celebrated speech he wondered aloud where such theories had come from:
“ Was it America? Or was it Tibet? It is quite true, many of Your Lordships will remember it operating in the nursery. How do you treat a cold? One nanny said, 'Feed a cold'; she was a neo-Keynesian. The other said, 'Starve a cold'; she was a monetarist.[70] ”
On Macmillan's advice in April 1982 Thatcher excluded the Treasury from her Falklands War Cabinet. She later said: 'I never regretted following Harold Macmillan's advice. We were never tempted to compromise the security of our forces for financial reasons. Everything we did was governed by military necessity.'[71]
Macmillan finally accepted a peerage in 1984 and was created Earl of Stockton and Viscount Macmillan of Ovenden. He took the title from his former parliamentary seat on the border of the Durham coalfields, and in his maiden speech in the House of Lords he criticised Thatcher's handling of the coal miners' strike and her characterisation of Marxist militants as 'the enemy within'.[72] He received an unprecedented standing ovation for his oration which included the words:
“ It breaks my heart to see—and I cannot interfere—what is happening in our country today. This terrible strike, by the best men in the world, who beat the Kaiser's and Hitler's armies and never gave in. It is pointless and we cannot afford that kind of thing. Then there is the growing division of Conservative prosperity in the south and the ailing north and Midlands. We used to have battles and rows but they were quarrels. Now there is a new kind of wicked hatred that has been brought in by different types of people.[70] ”
As Chancellor of Oxford Lord Stockton also condemned the university's refusal in February 1985 to award Thatcher an honorary degree. He noted that the decision represented a break with tradition, and predicted that the snub would rebound on the university.[73]
Stockton is widely supposed to have likened Thatcher's policy of privatisation to 'selling the family silver'. What he did say (at a dinner of the Tory Reform Group at the Royal Overseas League on 8 November 1985) was that the sale of assets was commonplace among individuals or states when they encountered financial difficulties: 'First of all the Georgian silver goes. And then all that nice furniture that used to be in the salon. Then the Canalettos go.' Profitable parts of the steel industry and the railways had been privatised, along with British Telecom: 'They were like two Rembrandts still left.'[74]
Stockton's speech was much commented on and a few days later he made a speech in the House of Lords to clarify what he had meant:
“ When I ventured the other day to criticise the system I was, I am afraid, misunderstood. As a Conservative, I am naturally in favour of returning into private ownership and private management all those means of production and distribution which are now controlled by state capitalism. I am sure they will be more efficient. What I ventured to question was the using of these huge sums as if they were income.[75] ”
In the last month of his life, he mournfully observed:
“ Sixty-three years ago ... the unemployment figure (in Stockton-on-Tees) was then 29%. Last November ... the unemployment (there) is 28%. A rather sad end to one's life. ”
[edit]Death and funeral
The Macmillan family graves in 2000 at St.Giles Church, Horsted Keynes. Harold Macmillan's grave is on the right.
Harold Macmillan, 1st Earl of Stockton, died on 29 December 1986, at Birch Grove, the Macmillan family mansion on the edge of Ashdown Forest near Chelwood Gate in East Sussex. He was aged 92 years and 322 days—the greatest age attained by a British Prime Minister until surpassed by James Callaghan on 14 February 2005. His grandson and heir Alexander, Viscount Macmillan of Ovenden, said: 'In the last 48 hours he was very weak but entirely reasonable and intelligent. His last words were, "I think I will go to sleep now".'[76][77]
Thatcher, on receiving the news, hailed him as 'a very remarkable man and a very great patriot', and said that his dislike of 'selling the family silver' had never come between them. He was 'unique in the affection of the British people'.[78]
Tributes came from around the world. US President Ronald Reagan said: 'The American people share in the loss of a voice of wisdom and humanity who, with eloquence and gentle wit, brought to the problems of today the experience of a long life of public service.'[66] Outlawed ANC president Oliver Tambo sent his condolences: 'As South Africans we shall always remember him for his efforts to encourage the apartheid regime to bow to the winds of change that continue to blow in South Africa.'[66] Commonwealth Secretary-General Sir Shridath Ramphal affirmed: 'His own leadership in providing from Britain a worthy response to African national consciousness shaped the post-war era and made the modern Commonwealth possible.'[66]
A private funeral was held on 5 January 1987 at St Giles Church, Horsted Keynes, West Sussex, where Lord Stockton had regularly worshipped and read the lesson.[79] Two hundred mourners attended,[77] including 64 members of the Macmillan family, Thatcher and former premiers Lord Home of the Hirsel and Edward Heath, Lord Hailsham of St Marylebone,[76] and 'scores of country neighbours'.[79] The Prince of Wales sent a wreath 'in admiring memory'.[76] Stockton was buried beside his wife, Lady Dorothy, and next to the graves of his parents and of his son, Maurice Macmillan.[79]
The House of Commons paid its tribute on 12 January 1987, with much reference made to the dead statesman's book, The Middle Way.[80] Thatcher said: 'In his retirement Harold Macmillan occupied a unique place in the nation's affections', while Labour leader Neil Kinnock struck a more critical note:
“ Death and distance cannot lend sufficient enchantment to alter the view that the period over which he presided in the 1950s, whilst certainly and thankfully a period of rising affluence and confidence, was also a time of opportunities missed, of changes avoided. Harold Macmillan was, of course, not solely or even pre-eminently responsible for that. But we cannot but record with frustration the fact that the vigorous and perceptive attacker of the status quo in the 1930s became its emblem for a time in the late 1950s before returning to be its critic in the 1980s.[80] ”
A public memorial service, attended by the Queen and thousands of mourners, was held on 10 February 1987 in Westminster Abbey.[81]
Stockton's son Maurice had become heir to the earldom, but predeceased him suddenly a month after his father's elevation. The 1st Earl was succeeded instead by his grandson, Maurice's son, Alexander, Lord Macmillan, who become the 2nd Earl of Stockton.
[edit]
Harold Macmillan, 1st Earl of Stockton, OM, PC's Timeline
1894
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Baltimore is the largest city in which American state? | Harold Macmillan (Politician) - Pics, Videos, Dating, & News
Harold Macmillan
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Born Feb 10, 1894
Maurice Harold Macmillan, 1st Earl of Stockton, OM, PC, FRS was Conservative Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 10 January 1957 to 18 October 1963. Nicknamed 'Supermac' and known for his pragmatism, wit and unflappability, Macmillan achieved notoriety before the Second World War as a Tory radical and critic of appeasement.… Read More
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Sailing Through Summer Squalls Financial Times
Google News - Aug 26, 2011
'Every government has to contend with what <mark>Harold Macmillan</mark> once allegedly referred to as âevents, dear boy, eventsâ. It is in the manner of its response that its governing mettle is defined. In its first 15 months, boldness has been the hallmark of'
Radio Review: The Day The Wall Went Up The Guardian
Google News - Aug 23, 2011
'<mark>Harold Macmillan</mark> was out shooting grouse when he heard what was happening in Berlin: "He carried on shooting grouse." Today's programme looked at lives suddenly altered. A boy died on his fifth birthday, having fallen into a river'
America's Lost Ally Frontier Post
Google News - Aug 19, 2011
'During the Second World War, a future prime minister, <mark>Harold Macmillan</mark>, said America is âthe new Roman empire and we Britons, like the Greeks of old, must teach them how to make it go.â How goes the tutoring of Rome by Athens?'
America's Lost Ally Washington Post
Google News - Aug 17, 2011
'During the Second World War, a future prime minister, <mark>Harold Macmillan</mark>, said America is âthe new Roman empire and we Britons, like the Greeks of old, must teach them how to make it go.â How goes the tutoring of Rome by Athens?'
Learn about the memorable moments in the evolution of Harold Macmillan.
CHILDHOOD
1894 Birth Born in 1894.
1897 3 Years Old Macmillan claimed to remember Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, which occurred in 1897, but his memory seems to his biographer suspiciously similar to Philip Guedalla's account. … Read More
He remembered Queen Victoriaâs funeral, the Relief of Mafeking and the victory of the âgallant little Japsâ against the Russians at Tsushima.<br /><br /> Macmillan received an intensive early education, closely guided by his American mother. He learned French at home every morning from a succession of nursery maids, and exercised daily at Mr Macpherson's Gymnasium and Dancing Academy, around the corner from the family home. From the age of six or seven he received introductory lessons in classical Latin and Greek at Mr Gladstone's day school, close by in Sloane Square.<br /><br /> Macmillan attended Summer Fields School, Oxford (1903â06). He was Third Scholar at Eton College, but his time there (1906â10) was blighted by recurrent illness, starting with a near-fatal attack of pneumonia in his first half; he missed his final year after being invalided out, and was taught at home by private tutors (1910â11), notably Ronald Knox, who did much to instil his High church Anglicanism. He won an exhibition to Balliol, but was less of a scholar than his older brother Dan. Read Less
TEENAGE
1905 11 Years Old As a child, teenager and later young man, he was an admirer of the policies and leadership of a succession of Liberal Prime Ministers, starting with Henry Campbell-Bannerman, who came to power near the end of 1905 when Macmillan was only 11 years old, and then H. H. Asquith, whom he later described as having "intellectual sincerity and moral nobility", and particularly of Asquith's successor, David Lloyd George, whom he regarded as a "man of action", likely to accomplish his goals. … Read More
He went up to Balliol College, Oxford (1912â14), where he joined many political societies. His political opinions at this stage were an eclectic mix of moderate Conservatism, moderate Liberalism and Fabian Socialism. Read Less
1913 19 Years Old He read avidly about Disraeli, but was also particularly impressed by a speech by Lloyd George at the Oxford Union Society in 1913, where he had become a member and debater. … Read More
He was a protégé of the then President Walter Monckton, later a Cabinet colleague, and became Secretary then Junior Treasurer (elected unopposed in March 1914, then an unusual occurrence) of the Union and would, in his biographers' view, "almost certainly" have been President had the war not intervened. Read Less
TWENTIES
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He obtained a First in Honours Moderations, informally known as Mods (consisting of Latin and Greek, the first half of the four-year Oxford Literae Humaniores course, informally known as Greats), in Hilary Term 1914. … Read More
With his final exams over two years away, he enjoyed an idyllic Trinity (summer) term at Oxford, just before the outbreak of the First World War.<br /><br /> In his memoirs Macmillan later told of how he was at a ball in London on the night of Sunday 28 June, at which "Mr Cassiniâs band" played, and had emerged to hear newspaper vendors proclaiming the âMurder of the Archdukeâ. No such ball has been traced, and the Archdukeâs murder was not announced in the British Press until 2 July. However, it has recently been suggested that Macmillan may have confused a similar ball which took place on the night of Monday 3 August, when speculation was rife about a German invasion of Belgium and British entry into the war. Read Less
Volunteering immediately for active service in the Great War, Macmillan joined the British Army and was commissioned as a temporary second lieutenant in the King's Royal Rifle Corps on 19 November 1914.
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Promoted to lieutenant on 30 January 1915, he soon transferred to the Grenadier Guards. … Read More
He fought on the front lines in France, where the casualty rate was known to be high, as was the probability of an "early and violent death". He served with distinction as a captain and was wounded on three occasions. Read Less
Shot in the right hand and receiving a glancing bullet wound to the head in the Battle of Loos in September 1915, Macmillan was sent to Lennox Gardens in Chelsea for hospital treatment, then joined a reserve battalion at Chelsea Barracks from January to March 1916, until his hand had healed. … Read More
He then returned to the front lines in France. Read Less
1916 22 Years Old Leading an advance platoon in the Battle of FlersâCourcelette (part of the Battle of the Somme) in September 1916, he was severely wounded, and lay for ten hours in a slit trench, sometimes feigning death when Germans passed, and reading the classical playwright Aeschylus in the original Greek. … Read More
The then-Prime Minister Asquith's own son, Raymond Asquith, was a brother officer in Macmillan's regiment, and was killed that month. Read Less
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Macmillan spent the final two years of the war in hospital undergoing a long series of operations. He was still on crutches on Armistice Day, 11 November 1918. … Read More
His hip wound took four years to heal completely, and he was left with a slight shuffle to his walk and a limp grip in his right hand from his previous wound, which affected his handwriting.<br /><br /> Macmillan saw himself as both a âgownsmanâ and a âswordsmanâ and would later display open contempt for other politicians (e.g. Rab Butler, Hugh Gaitskell, Harold Wilson) who, often through no fault of their own, had not seen military service in either World War.<br /><br /> Of the 28 students who started at Balliol with Macmillan, only he and one other survived the war. As a result, he refused to return to Oxford to complete his degree, saying the university would never be the same; in later years he joked that he had been "sent down by the Kaiser". Read Less
Owing to the impending contraction of the Army after the war, a regular commission in the Grenadiers was out of the question. However, at the end of 1918 Macmillan joined the Guards Reserve Battalion at Chelsea Barracks for "light duties". … Read More
On one occasion he had to command reliable troops in a nearby park as a unit of Guardsmen was briefly refusing to reembark for France, although the incident was resolved peacefully. The incident prompted an inquiry from the War Office as to whether the Guards Reserve Battalion âcould be relied onâ. Read Less
1919 25 Years Old Macmillan then served in Ottawa, Canada, in 1919 as ADC to Victor Cavendish, 9th Duke of Devonshire, then Governor General of Canada, and his future father-in-law.
The engagement of Captain Macmillan to the Duke's daughter Lady Dorothy was announced on 7 January 1920.
He relinquished his commission on 1 April 1920.
On his return to London in 1920 he joined the family publishing firm Macmillan Publishers as a junior partner, remaining with the company until his appointment to ministerial office in 1940. … Read More
He resumed with the firm from 1945 to 1951 when the party was in opposition. Read Less
Macmillan married Lady Dorothy Cavendish, the daughter of the 9th Duke of Devonshire, on 21 April 1920. … Read More
Her great-uncle was Spencer Cavendish, 8th Duke of Devonshire, who was leader of the Liberal Party in the 1870s, and a close colleague of William Ewart Gladstone, Joseph Chamberlain and Lord Salisbury. Lady Dorothy was also descended from William Cavendish, 4th Duke of Devonshire, who served as Prime Minister from 1756 to 1757 in communion with Newcastle and Pitt the Elder. Her nephew William Cavendish, Marquess of Hartington married Kathleen, a sister of John F. Kennedy. Read Less
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As was common for contemporary former officers, he continued to be known as 'Captain Macmillan' until the early 1930s and was listed as such in every General Election between 1923 and 1931. … Read More
As late as his North African posting of 1942-3 he reminded Churchill that he held the rank of captain in the Guards reserve. Read Less
Macmillan contested the depressed northern industrial constituency of Stockton-on-Tees in 1923. … Read More
The campaign cost him about £200-£300 out of his own pocket. The collapse in the Liberal vote let him win in 1924. Read Less
THIRTIES
1927 - 1928 2 More Events
1927 33 Years Old In 1927 four MPs, including Boothby and Macmillan, published a short book advocating radical measures.
1928 34 Years Old In 1928 Macmillan was described by his political hero, and now Parliamentary colleague, David Lloyd George, as a "born rebel".
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In 1929 Lady Dorothy began a lifelong affair with the Conservative politician Robert Boothby, an arrangement that scandalised high society but remained unknown to the general public. … Read More
Philip Frere, a partner in Frere Cholmely solicitors, urged Macmillan not to divorce his wife, which at that time would have been fatal to a public career even for the "innocent party". Macmillan and Lady Dorothy lived largely separate lives in private thereafter. The stress caused by this may have contributed to Macmillan's nervous breakdown in 1931. He was often treated with condescension by his aristocratic in-laws and was observed to be a sad and isolated figure at Chatsworth in the 1930s. Campbell suggests that Macmillan's humiliation was first a major cause of his odd and rebellious behaviour in the 1930s then, in subsequent decades, made him a harder and more ruthless politician than his rivals Eden and Butler.<br /><br /> The Macmillans had four children: <br /><br /> Lady Dorothy died on 21 May 1966, aged 65, after 46 years of marriage.<br /><br /> Macmillan was in close friendship in old age with Ava Anderson, Viscountess Waverley, née Bodley (1896â1973), the widow of John Anderson, 1st Viscount Waverley. Eileen O'Casey, née Reynolds (1900â95), the actress wife of Irish dramatist Seán O'Casey, was another female friend, Macmillan publishing her husband's plays. Although she is said to have replaced Lady Dorothy in Macmillan's affections, there is disagreement over how intimate they became after the death of their respective spouses, and whether he proposed. Read Less
Macmillan lost his seat in 1929 in the face of high regional unemployment.
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He almost became Conservative candidate for the safe seat of Hitchin in 1931 but the sitting MP, Guy Molesworth Kindersley cancelled his retirement plans, in part because of his own association with the anti-Baldwin rebels and his suspicion of Macmillan's sympathy for Oswald Mosley's promises of radical measures to reduce unemployment.
Instead, the fortunate resignation of the new candidate at Stockton allowed Macmillan to be re-selected there, and he returned to the House of Commons for his old seat in 1931. … Read More
Macmillan spent the 1930s on the backbenches. Read Less
In March 1932 he published âThe State and Industryâ (not to be confused with his earlier pamphlet âIndustry and the Stateâ).
In September 1932 he made his first visit to the USSR. … Read More
Macmillan also published âThe Next Stepâ. He advocated cheap money and state direction of investment. Read Less
FORTIES
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In 1935 he was one of 15 MPs to write âPlanning for Employmentâ.
His next publication, âThe Next Five Yearsâ, was overshadowed by Lloyd Georgeâs proposed "New Deal" in 1935. … Read More
Macmillan Press also published the work of the economist John Maynard Keynes.<br /><br /> Macmillan resigned the Conservative whip in protest at the lifting of sanctions on Italy after her conquest of Abyssinia. "Chips" Channon described him as the âunprepossessing, bookish, eccentric member for Stockton-on-Teesâ and recorded (8 July 1936) that he had been sent a âfrigid noteâ by Conservative Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin. Baldwin later mentioned that he had survived by steering a middle course between Harold Macmillan and (the extreme right-winger) John Gretton. Read Less
1937 43 Years Old The Next Five Years Group, to which Macmillan had belonged, was wound up in November 1937.
1938 44 Years Old His book âThe Middle Wayâ appeared in June 1938, advocating a broadly centrist political philosophy both domestically and internationally. … Read More
Macmillan took control of the magazine âNew Outlookâ and made sure it published political tracts rather than purely theoretical work.<br /><br /> Macmillan supported Chamberlainâs first flight for talks with Hitler at Berchtesgaden, but not his subsequent flights to Bad Godesberg and Munich. After Munich he was looking for a â1931 in reverseâ, i.e. a Labour-dominated coalition in which some Conservatives would serve, the reverse of the Conservative-dominated coalition which had governed Britain since 1931. He supported the independent candidate, Lindsay, at the Oxford by-election. He wrote a pamphlet âThe Price of Peaceâ calling for alliance between Britain, France and the USSR, but expecting Poland to make territorial âaccommodationâ to Germany (i.e. give up the Danzig corridor). Read Less
1939 45 Years Old In âEconomic Aspects of Defenceâ, early in 1939, he called for a Ministry of Supply.
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Macmillan visited Finland in February 1940, then the subject of great sympathy in Britain as she was being attacked by the USSR, then loosely allied to Nazi Germany. … Read More
He wore a white fur hat, later to be seen on a trip to the USSR in the late 1950s. His last speech from the backbenches was to attack the government for not doing enough to help Finland. Britain was saved from a potentially embarrassing commitment when the Winter War ended in March 1940 (Finland would later fight on the German side against the USSR).<br /><br /> Macmillan voted against the Government in the Norway Debate, helping to bring down Neville Chamberlain as Prime Minister, and tried to join in with Colonel Josiah Wedgwood singing âRule Britanniaâ in the House of Commons Chamber. Read Less
Macmillan at last attained office by serving in the wartime coalition government as the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Supply from 1940. … Read More
Channon commented (29 May 1940) that there was âsome amusement over Harold Macmillanâs so obvious enjoyment of his new positionâ.<br /><br /> Macmillan's job was to provide armaments and other equipment to the British Army and Royal Air Force. He travelled up and down the country to co-ordinate production, working with some success under Lord Beaverbrook to increase the supply and quality of armoured vehicles. Read Less
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Macmillan was appointed Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies in 1942, in his own words "leaving a madhouse to enter a mausoleum". … Read More
Though a junior minister he was a member of the Privy Council, and he spoke in the House of Commons for Colonial Secretaries Lord Moyne and Lord Cranborne. Read Less
Macmillan was given responsibility for increasing colonial production and trade, and signalled the future policy direction when in June 1942 he declared: … Read More
Macmillan predicted that the Conservatives faced landslide defeat after the war, causing Channon to write (6 Sep 1944) of âthe foolish prophecy of that nice ass Harold Macmillanâ. Read Less
In October 1942 Harold Nicolson recorded Macmillan as predicting âextreme socialismâ after the war.
Macmillan nearly resigned when Oliver Stanley was appointed Secretary of State in November 1942, as he would no longer be the spokesman in the Commons as he had been under Cranborne. … Read More
Brendan Bracken advised him not to quit. Read Less
After Harry Crookshank had refused the job, Macmillan attained real power and Cabinet rank late in 1942 as British Minister Resident at Algiers in the Mediterranean, recently liberated in Operation Torch. … Read More
He reported directly to the Prime Minister instead of to the Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden. Oliver Lyttelton had a similar job at Cairo, whilst Robert Murphy was Macmillan's US counterpart. Macmillan built a rapport with US General Dwight D. Eisenhower, then Supreme Allied Commander in the Mediterranean (SACMED), which proved helpful in his career, and Richard Crossman later recalled that Macmillanâs âGreeks in the Roman Empireâ metaphor dated from this time (i.e. that as the USA replaced Britain as the world's leading power, British politicians and diplomats should aim to guide her in the same way that Greek slaves and freedmen had advised powerful Romans). At the Casablanca Conference Macmillan helped to secure US acceptance, if not recognition, of the Free French leader Charles de Gaulle.<br /><br /> Macmillan was badly burned in a plane crash, trying to climb back into the plane to rescue a Frenchman. He had to have a plaster cast put on his face. In his delirium he imagined himself back in a Somme casualty clearing station and asked for a message to be passed to his mother, now dead. Read Less
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Together with Gladwyn Jebb he helped to negotiate the Italian armistice in August 1943, between the fall of Sicily and the Salerno Landings. … Read More
This caused friction with Eden and the Foreign Office. He was based at Caserta for the rest of the war. Read Less
He was appointed UK High Commissioner for the Advisory Council for Italy late in 1943.
He visited London in October 1943 and again clashed with Eden. … Read More
Eden appointed Duff Cooper as Ambassador to France (still under German occupation) and Noel Charles as Ambassador to Italy to reduce Macmillanâs influence. Read Less
FIFTIES
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In May 1944 Macmillan infuriated Eden by demanding an early peace treaty with Italy (at that time a pro-Allied regime under Badoglio held some power in the southern, liberated, part of Italy), a move which Churchill favoured.
In June 1944 he argued for a British-led thrust up the Ljubljana Gap into Central Europe (Operation âArmpitâ) instead of the planned diversion of US and Free French forces to the South of France (Operation Dragoon). … Read More
This proposal impressed Churchill and General Alexander, but did not meet with American approval. Eden sent out Robert Dixon to abolish the job of Resident Minister, there being then no job for Macmillan back in the UK, but he managed to prevent his job being abolished. Churchill visited Italy in August 1944. Read Less
On 14 September 1944 Macmillan was appointed Chief Commissioner of the Allied Central Commission for Italy (in succession to General Macfarlane). … Read More
He continued to be British Minister Resident at Allied Headquarters and British Political adviser to "Jumbo" Wilson, now Supreme Commander, Mediterranean. Read Less
On 10 November 1944 he was appointed Acting President of the Allied Commission (the Supreme Commander being President).
Macmillan visited Greece on 11 December 1944. … Read More
As the Germans had withdrawn, British troops under General Scobie had deployed to Athens, but there were concerns that the largely pro-communist Greek resistance, EAM and its military wing ELAS, would take power (see Greek Civil War) or come into conflict with British troops. Macmillan rode in a tank and was under sniper fire at the British Embassy. Despite the hostility of large sections of British and American opinion, who were sympathetic to the guerillas and hostile to what was seen as imperialist behaviour, he persuaded a reluctant Churchill, who visited Athens later in the month, to accept Archbishop Damaskinos as Regent on behalf of the exiled King George. A truce was negotiated in January 1945, enabling a pro-British regime to remain in power, as Churchill had demanded in the Percentages agreement the previous autumn. Read Less
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Macmillan was also the minister advising General Keightley of V Corps, the senior Allied commander in Austria responsible for Operation Keelhaul, which included the forced repatriation of up to 70,000 prisoners of war to the Soviet Union and Josip Broz Tito's Yugoslavia in 1945. … Read More
The deportations and Macmillan's involvement later became a source of controversy because of the harsh treatment meted out to Nazi collaborators and anti-partisans by the receiving countries, and because in the confusion V Corps went beyond the terms agreed at Yalta and Allied Forces Headquarters directives by repatriating 4000 White Russian troops and 11,000 civilian family members, who could not properly be regarded as Soviet citizens. Read Less
Macmillan toyed with an offer to succeed Duff Cooper as MP for the safe Conservative seat of Westminster St George's. Criticised locally for his long absence, he suggested that Lady Dorothy stand for Stockton in 1945, as she had been nursing the seat for five years. … Read More
She was apparently willing. However, it was thought better for him to be seen to defend his seat, and Lord Beaverbrook had already spoken to Churchill to arrange that Macmillan be given another seat in the event of defeat.<br /><br /> Macmillan returned to England after the European war, feeling himself 'almost a stranger at home'. He was Secretary of State for Air for two months in Churchill's caretaker government, 'much of which was taken up in electioneering', there being 'nothing much to be done in the way of forward planning'. Read Less
Macmillan indeed lost Stockton in the landslide Labour victory of 1945, but returned to Parliament in the November 1945 by-election in Bromley. … Read More
In his diary Harold Nicolson noted the feelings of the Tory backbenchers: "They feel that Winston is too old and Anthony (Eden) too weak. They want Harold Macmillan to lead them."<br /><br /> Although Macmillan played an important role in drafting the âIndustrial Charterâ (âCrossbencherâ in the âSunday Expressâ called it the second edition of âThe Middle Wayâ) he now, as MP for a safe seat, adopted a somewhat more right-wing public persona, defending private enterprise and fiercely opposing the Labour government in the House of Commons. Read Less
1951 - 1952 2 More Events
1951 57 Years Old With the Conservative victory in 1951 Macmillan became Minister of Housing under Churchill, who entrusted him with fulfilling the pledge to build 300,000 houses per year (up from the previous target of 200,000 a year), made in response to a speech from the floor at the 1950 Party Conference. … Read More
Macmillan thought at first that Housing, which ranked 13 out of 16 in the Cabinet list, was a poisoned chalice, writing in his diary (28 October 1951) that it was ânot my cup of tea at all ⦠I really havenât a clue how to set about the jobâ. It meant obtaining scarce steel, cement and timber when the Treasury were trying to maximise exports and minimise imports. 'It is a gambleâit will make or mar your political career,' Churchill said, 'but every humble home will bless your name if you succeed.' Read Less
1952 58 Years Old By July 1952 Macmillan was already criticising Butler (then Chancellor of the Exchequer) in his diary, accusing him of âdislik(ing) and fear(ing) himâ; in fact there is no evidence that Butler regarded Macmillan as a rival at this stage.
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In April 1953 Beaverbrook encouraged Macmillan to think that in a future leadership contest he might emerge in a dead heat between Eden and Butler, as the young Beaverbrook (Max Aitken as he had been at the time) had helped Bonar Law to do in 1911.
In July 1953 Macmillan considered postponing his gall bladder operation in case Churchill, who had just suffered a serious stroke whilst Eden was also in hospital, had to step down.
Macmillan achieved his housing target by the end of 1953, a year ahead of schedule.
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1954 - 1955 3 More Events
1954 60 Years Old Macmillan was Minister of Defence from October 1954, but found his authority restricted by Churchill's personal involvement. … Read More
In the opinion of The Economist: 'He gave the impression that his own undoubted capacity for imaginative running of his own show melted way when an august superior was breathing down his neck.'<br /><br /> A major theme of his tenure at Defence was the ministry's growing reliance on the nuclear deterrent, in the view of some critics, to the detriment of conventional forces. The Defence White Paper of February 1955, announcing the decision to produce the hydrogen bomb, received bipartisan support.<br /><br /> âIt breaks my heart to see the lion-hearted Churchill begin to sink into a sort of Petainâ, Macmillan wrote in his diary as the Prime Ministerâs mental and physical powers visibly decayed. Macmillan was one of the few ministers brave enough to tell Churchill to his face that it was time for him to retire.<br /><br /> During the Second World War Macmillan's toothy grin, baggy trousers and rimless glasses had given him, as his biographer puts it, "an air of an early Bolshevik leader". By the 1950s he had had his teeth capped, grew his hair in a more shapely style, wore Savile Row suits and walked with the ramrod bearing of a former Guards officer, acquiring the distinguished appearance of his later career. Campbell writes âthere has been no more startling personal reinvention in British politicsâ. He very often wore either an Old Etonian or a Brigade of Guards tie. Read Less
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Macmillan was Foreign Secretary in AprilâDecember 1955 in the government of Anthony Eden, who had taken over as prime minister from the retiring Churchill. … Read More
Returning from the Geneva Summit of that year he made headlines by declaring: 'There ain't gonna be no war.' Of the role of Foreign Secretary Macmillan observed: Read Less
Macmillan was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer in December 1955. … Read More
He had enjoyed his eight months as Foreign Secretary and did not wish to move. He insisted on being âundisputed head of the home frontâ and that Eden's de facto deputy Rab Butler, whom he was replacing as Chancellor, not have the title "Deputy Prime Minister" and not be treated as senior to him. He even tried (in vain) to demand that Salisbury, not Butler, should preside over the Cabinet in Edenâs absence. Macmillan later claimed in his memoirs that he had still expected Butler, his junior by eight years, to succeed Eden, but correspondence with Lord Woolton at the time makes clear that Macmillan was very much thinking of the succession. Read Less
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As early as January 1956 he told Edenâs press secretary William Clark that it would be âinteresting to see how long Anthony can stay in the saddleâ.
Macmillan planned to reverse the 6d cut in income tax which Butler had made a year previously, but backed off after a âfrank talkâ with Butler, who threatened resignation, on 28 March 1956. … Read More
He settled for spending cuts instead, and himself threatened resignation until he was allowed to cut bread and milk subsidies, something the Cabinet had not permitted Butler to do. Read Less
One of his innovations at the Treasury was the introduction of premium bonds, announced in his budget of 17 April 1956. Although the Labour Opposition initially decried them as a 'squalid raffle', they proved an immediate hit with the public, with £1,000 won in the first prize draw in June 1957. In November 1956 Britain invaded Egypt in collusion with France and Israel in the Suez Crisis. … Read More
According to Labour Shadow Chancellor Harold Wilson, Macmillan was 'first in, first out': first very supportive of the invasion, then a prime mover in Britain's humiliating withdrawal in the wake of the financial crisis caused by pressure from the US government. Since the Egyptian Revolution of 1952, relations between Britain and Egypt had deteriorated. The Egyptian government, which came to be dominated by Gamal Abdel Nasser, was opposed to the British military presence in the Arab World. The Egyptian nationalisation of the Suez Canal by Nasser on 26 July 1956 prompted the British government and the French government of Guy Mollet to commence plans for invading Egypt, regaining the canal, and toppling Nasser. Macmillan wrote in his diary: "If Nasser 'gets away with it', we are done for. The whole Arab world will despise us... Nuri British-backed Prime Minister of Iraq and our friends will fall. It may well be the end of British influence and strength forever. So, in the last resort, we must use force and defy opinion, here and overseas". Read Less
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Macmillan threatened to resign if force was not used against Nasser. He was heavily involved in the secret planning of the invasion with France and Israel. It was he who first suggested collusion with Israel. Read Less
On 5 August 1956 Macmillan met Churchill at Chartwell, and told him that the government's plan for simply regaining control of the canal was not enough and suggested involving Israel, recording in his diary for that day: "Surely, if we landed we must seek out the Egyptian forces; destroy them; and bring down Nasser's government. … Read More
Churchill seemed to agree with all this." Macmillan knew President Eisenhower well, but misjudged his strong opposition to a military solution. Read Less
Macmillan met Eisenhower privately on 25 September 1956 and convinced himself that the US would not oppose the invasion, despite the misgivings of the British Ambassador, Sir Roger Makins, who was also present. … Read More
Macmillan failed to heed a warning from Secretary of State John Foster Dulles that whatever the British government did should wait until after the US presidential election on 6 November, and failed to report Dulles' remarks to Eden.<br /><br /> The treasury was his portfolio, but he did not recognise the financial disaster that could result from US government actions. Sterling was draining out of the Bank of England at an alarming rate, and it was getting worse. The canal was blocked by the Egyptians, and most oil shipments were delayed as tankers had to go around Africa. The US government refused any financial help until Britain withdrew its forces from Egypt. When he did realise this, he changed his mind and called for withdrawal on US terms, while exaggerating the financial crisis. On 6 November Macmillan informed the Cabinet that Britain had lost $370m in the first few days of November alone. Faced with Macmillan's prediction of doom, the cabinet had no choice but to accept these terms and withdraw. The Canal remained in Egyptian hands, and Nasser's government continued its support of Arab and African national resistance movements opposed to the British and French presence in the region and on the continent. Read Less
During his time as prime minister, average living standards steadily rose while numerous social reforms were carried out. The 1956 Clean Air Act was passed during his time as Chancellor; his premiership saw the 1957 Housing Act, the 1960 Offices Act, the 1960 Noise Abatement Act, the Factories Act 1961, the introduction of a graduated pension scheme to provide an additional income to retirers, the establishment of a Child's Special Allowance for the orphaned children of divorced parents, and a reduction in the standard work week from 48 to 42 hours.
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Maurice Harold Macmillan, 1st Earl of Stockton, (10 February 1894 â 29 December 1986) was a British Conservative politician and statesman who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 10 January 1957 to 19 October 1963. Nicknamed "Supermac," he was known for his pragmatism, wit and unflappability. <br /><br />Macmillan served in the Grenadier Guards during the First World War. He was wounded three times, most severely in September 1916 during the Battle of the Somme. He spent the rest of the war in a military hospital unable to walk, and suffered pain and partial immobility for the rest of his life. After the war Macmillan joined his family business, then entered Parliament in the 1924 General Election, for the northern industrial constituency of Stockton-on-Tees. After losing his seat in 1929, he regained it in 1931, soon after which he spoke out against the high rate of unemployment in Stockton-On-Tees, and against appeasement. <br /><br />Rising to high office during the Second World War as a protégé of wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Macmillan then served as Foreign Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer under Churchill's successor Sir Anthony Eden. Read Less
When Eden resigned in 1957 after the Suez Crisis, Macmillan succeeded him as Prime Minister. … Read More
As a One Nation Tory of the Disraelian tradition, haunted by memories of the Great Depression, he believed in the post-war settlement and the necessity of a mixed economy, championing a Keynesian strategy of public investment to maintain demand and pursuing corporatist policies to develop the domestic market as the engine of growth. Benefiting from favourable international conditions, he presided over an age of affluence, marked by low unemployment and high if uneven growth. In his Bedford speech in July 1957 he told the nation they had 'never had it so good', but warned of the dangers of inflation, summing up the fragile prosperity of the 1950s. Read Less
His political standing destroyed, Eden resigned on grounds of ill health on 9 January 1957. … Read More
At that time the Conservative Party had no formal mechanism for selecting a new leader, and the Queen appointed Macmillan Prime Minister after taking advice from Churchill and the Marquess of Salisbury, who had asked the Cabinet individually for their opinions, all but two or three opting for Macmillan. This surprised some observers who had expected that Eden's deputy Rab Butler would be chosen. The political situation after Suez was so desperate that on taking office on 10 January he told the Queen he could not guarantee his government would last "six weeks" â though ultimately he would be in charge of the government for more than six years.<br /><br /> From the start of his premiership, Macmillan set out to portray an image of calm and style, in contrast to his excitable predecessor. On his first evening as Prime Minister he took the Chief Whip Edward Heath for oysters at the Turf Club. He silenced the klaxon on the Prime Ministerial car, which Eden had used frequently, and advertised his love of reading Anthony Trollope and Jane Austen. On the door of the Private Secretariesâ room at Number Ten he hung a quote from The Gondoliers: âQuiet, calm deliberation disentangles every knotâ. Read Less
Macmillan took close control of foreign policy. He worked to narrow the post-Suez Crisis (1956) rift with the United States, where his wartime friendship with Eisenhower was key; the two had a productive conference in Bermuda as early as March 1957. … Read More
In February 1959 Macmillan visited the Soviet Union. Talks with Nikita Khrushchev eased tensions in East-West relations over West Berlin and led to an agreement in principle to stop nuclear tests and to hold a further summit meeting of Allied and Soviet heads of government.<br /><br /> In the Middle East, faced by the 1958 collapse of the Baghdad Pact and the spread of Soviet influence, Macmillan acted decisively to restore the confidence of Persian Gulf allies, using the Royal Air Force and special forces to defeat a revolt backed by Saudi Arabia and Egypt against the Sultan of Oman, Said bin Taimur, in July 1957; deploying airborne battalions to defend Jordan against Syrian subversion in July 1958,; and deterring a threatened Iraqi invasion of Kuwait by landing a brigade group in July 1960.<br /><br /> Macmillan was a major proponent and architect of decolonisation. The Gold Coast was granted independence as Ghana, and the Federation of Malaya achieved independence within the Commonwealth of Nations in 1957. Read Less
In April 1957 Macmillan reaffirmed his strong support for the British nuclear weapons programme. … Read More
A succession of prime ministers since the Second World War had been determined to persuade the United States to revive wartime co-operation in the area of nuclear weapons research. Read Less
Macmillan believed that one way to encourage such co-operation would be for the United Kingdom to speed up the development of its own hydrogen bomb, which was successfully tested on 8 November 1957. … Read More
Macmillan's decision led to increased demands on the Windscale and (subsequently) Calder Hall nuclear plants to produce plutonium for military purposes. As a result, safety margins for radioactive materials inside the Windscale reactor were eroded. This contributed to the Windscale fire on the night of 10 October 1957, which broke out in the plutonium plant of Pile No. 1, and nuclear contaminants travelled up a chimney where the filters blocked some, but not all, of the contaminated material. The radioactive cloud spread to south-east England and fallout reached mainland Europe. Although scientists had warned of the dangers of such an accident for some time, the government blamed the workers who had put out the fire for 'an error of judgement', rather than the political pressure for fast-tracking the megaton bomb.<br /><br /> Concerned that public confidence in the nuclear programme might be shaken and that technical information might be misused by opponents of defence co-operation in the US Congress, Macmillan withheld all but the summary of a report into the fire prepared for the Atomic Energy Authority by Sir William Penney, director of the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment. While subsequently released files show that 'Macmillan's cuts were few and covered up few technical details', and that even the full report found no danger to public health, but later official estimates acknowledged that the release of polonium-210 may have led directly to 25 to 50 deaths, and anti-nuclear groups linked it to 1,000 fatal cancers. Read Less
On 25 March 1957 Macmillan acceded to Eisenhower's request to base 60 Thor IRBMs in England under joint control to replace the nuclear bombers of the Strategic Air Command, which had been stationed under joint control since 1948 and were approaching obsolescence. … Read More
Partly as a consequence of this favour, in late October 1957 the US McMahon Act was eased to facilitate nuclear co-operation between the two governments, initially with a view to producing cleaner weapons and reducing the need for duplicate testing. The Mutual Defence Agreement followed on 3 July 1958, speeding up British ballistic missile development, notwithstanding unease expressed at the time about the impetus co-operation might give to atomic proliferation by arousing the jealousy of France and other allies. Read Less
For a full list of Ministerial office-holders, see Conservative Government 1957â64. … Read More
Change Note: In a radical reshuffle dubbed "The Night of the Long Knives", Macmillan sacked a third of his Cabinet and instituted many other changes.<br /><br /> During his premiership in the early 1960s Macmillan was savagely satirised for his alleged decrepitude by the comedian Peter Cook in the stage review Beyond the Fringe. 'Even when insulted to his face attending the show,' a biographer notes, 'Macmillan felt it was better to be mocked than ignored.' One of the sketches was revived by Cook for television.<br /><br /> Richard Vernon stars as Macmillan, with Michael Gough as Eden, in a three-hour-and-ten-minute BBC television play by Ian Curteis.<br /><br /> Macmillan appears as a supporting character, played by Ian Collier, in the 1981 miniseries Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years produced by Southern Television for ITV. Read Less
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The Conservatives were re-elected in 1959 with an increased majority on an electioneering budget. … Read More
In international affairs, Macmillan rebuilt the special relationship with the United States from the wreckage of the Suez Crisis (of which he had been one of the architects), and redrew the world map by decolonising sub-Saharan Africa. Reconfiguring the nation's defences to meet the realities of the nuclear age, he ended National Service, strengthened the nuclear forces by acquiring Polaris, and pioneered the Nuclear Test Ban with the United States and the Soviet Union. Belatedly recognising the dangers of strategic dependence, he sought a new role for Britain in Europe, but his unwillingness to disclose United States nuclear secrets to France contributed to a French veto of the United Kingdom's entry into the European Economic Community.<br /><br /> Near the end of his premiership, his government was rocked by the Vassall and Profumo scandals, which seemed to symbolise for the rebellious youth of the 1960s the moral decay of the British establishment. After his resignation, Macmillan lived out a long retirement as an elder statesman. He was as trenchant a critic of his successors in his old age as he had been of his predecessors in his youth. Read Less
Macmillan led the Conservatives to victory in the 1959 general election, increasing his party's majority from 67 to 107 seats. … Read More
The campaign was based on the economic improvements achieved; the slogan "Life's Better Under the Conservatives" was matched by Macmillan's own remark, '"indeed let us be frank about it â most of our people have never had it so good," usually paraphrased as "You've never had it so good." Such rhetoric reflected a new reality of working-class affluence; it has been argued that "the key factor in the Conservative victory was that average real pay for industrial workers had risen since Churchill's 1951 victory by over 20 per cent".<br /><br /> The Daily Mirror, despite being a staunch supporter of the Labour Party, wished Macmillan "good luck" on its front page after his win.<br /><br /> Britain's balance of payments problems led Chancellor Selwyn Lloyd to impose a seven-month wage freeze in 1961 and, amongst other factors, this caused the government to lose popularity and a series of by-elections in March 1962, of which the most famous was Orpington on 14 March. Butler leaked to the âDaily Mailâ on 11 July 1962 that a major reshuffle was imminent. Macmillan feared for his own position and later (1 August) claimed to Lloyd that Butler, who sat for a rural East Anglian seat likely to suffer from EEC agricultural protectionism, had been planning to split the party over EEC entry (there is no evidence that this was so). Read Less
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Macleod greatly accelerated decolonisation and by the time he was moved to Conservative Party chairman and Leader of the Commons in 1961 he had made the decision to give independence to Nigeria, Tanganyika, Kenya, Nyasaland (as Malawi) and Northern Rhodesia (as Zambia). … Read More
Nigeria, the Southern Cameroons and British Somaliland were granted independence in 1960, Sierra Leone and Tanganyika in 1961, Trinidad and Tobago and Uganda in 1962, and Kenya in 1963. Zanzibar merged with Tanganyika to form Tanzania in 1963. All remained within the Commonwealth but British Somaliland, which merged with Italian Somaliland to form Somalia. Read Less
Macmillan's policy overrode the hostility of white minorities and the Conservative Monday Club. South Africa left the multiracial Commonwealth in 1961 and Macmillan acquiesced to the dissolution of the Central African Federation by the end of 1963. … Read More
In Southeast Asia, Malaya, Sabah (British North Borneo), Sarawak and Singapore became independent as Malaysia in 1963.<br /><br /> The speedy transfer of power maintained the goodwill of the new nations but critics contended it was premature. In justification Macmillan quoted Lord Macaulay in 1851: Read Less
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In the reshuffle known as the 'Night of the Long Knives' Macmillan sacked eight Ministers, including Selwyn Lloyd. The Cabinet changes were widely seen as a sign of panic, and the young Liberal MP Jeremy Thorpe said of Macmillan's dismissals 'greater love hath no man than this, than to lay down his friends for his life'. Macmillan was openly criticised by his predecessor Lord Avon, an almost unprecedented act. <br /><br />Macmillan supported the creation of the National Incomes Commission (NIC) to institute controls on income as part of his growth-without-inflation policy. The NIC was founded in October 1962. However, largely due to employers and the Trades Union Congress (TUC) boycotting it, the NIC proved to be ineffectual. Instead, the National Economic Development Council (NEDC) was created. A further series of subtle indicators and controls was introduced during his premiership. <br /><br />In the age of jet aircraft Macmillan travelled more than any previous Prime Minister, apart from Lloyd George who made many trips to conferences in 1919â22. <br /><br />The special relationship with the United States continued after the election of President John F. Kennedy, whose sister Kathleen Cavendish, Marchioness of Hartington had married William Cavendish, Marquess of Hartington, the nephew of Macmillan's wife. Read Less
He was supportive throughout the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 and Kennedy consulted him by telephone every day. … Read More
The British Ambassador David Ormsby-Gore was a close family friend of the President and actively involved in White House discussions on how to resolve the crisis. Read Less
When Skybolt was unilaterally cancelled by US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, Macmillan negotiated with President Kennedy the purchase of Polaris missiles under the Nassau agreement in December 1962. … Read More
Macmillan worked with states outside the European Economic Community (EEC) to form the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), which from 3 May 1960 established a free-trade area. Read Less
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Macmillan also saw the value of rapprochement with the EEC, to which his government sought belated entry, but Britain's application was vetoed by French president Charles de Gaulle on 29 January 1963. … Read More
De Gaulle was always strongly opposed to British entry for many reasons. He sensed the British were inevitably closely linked to the Americans. He saw the EEC as a continental arrangement primarily between France and Germany, and if Britain joined France's role would diminish.<br /><br /> Macmillan's previous attempt to create an agreement at the May 1960 summit in Paris had collapsed due to the 1960 U-2 incident. Read Less
He was a force in the negotiations leading to the signing of the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty by the United Kingdom, the United States and the Soviet Union. … Read More
He sent Lord Hailsham to negotiate the Test Ban Treaty, a sign that he was grooming him as a potential successor. Read Less
President Kennedy visited Macmillan's country home, Birch Grove, on 29â30 June 1963, for talks about the planned Multilateral Force. … Read More
They never met again, and this was to be Kennedyâs last visit to the UK. He was assassinated in November, shortly after the end of Macmillan's premiership. Read Less
D.R. Thorpe writes that from January 1963 âMacmillanâs strategy lay in ruinsâ leaving him looking for a âgraceful exitâ. … Read More
The Vassall Affair turned the press against him. Read Less
The Profumo affair of 1963 permanently damaged the credibility of Macmillan's government. … Read More
In the ensuing Parliamentary debate he was seen as a pathetic figure, while Nigel Birch declared, in the words of Browning on Wordsworth, that it would âNever (be) Glad Confident Morning Againâ. Read Less
On 17 June 1963 he survived a Parliamentary vote with a majority of 69, one fewer than had been thought necessary for his survival, and was afterwards joined in the smoking-room only by his son and son-in-law, not by any Cabinet minister. … Read More
However, Butler and Maudling (who was very popular with backbench MPs at that time) declined to push for his resignation, especially after a tide of support from Conservative activists around the country. Read Less
By the summer of 1963 Conservative Party Chairman Lord Poole was urging Macmillan to retire. The full Denning report into the Profumo Scandal was published on 26 September 1963. … Read More
Macmillan had a meeting with Butler on 11 September and was careful to keep his options open (retire now, retire in the New Year, or fight the next election). He talked the matter over with his son Maurice and other senior ministers. Over lunch with Lord Swinton on 30 September he favoured stepping down, but only if Hailsham could be shoehorned in as his successor. He saw Butler on the morning of 7 October and told him he planned to stay on lead the Conservatives into the next General Election, then was struck down by prostate trouble on the night of 7â8 October, on the eve of the Conservative Party conference.<br /><br /> Macmillan was operated on at 11.30am on Thursday 10 October. Although it is sometimes stated that he believed himself to have inoperable prostate cancer, he in fact knew it was benign before the operation. Macmillan was almost ready to leave hospital within ten days of the diagnosis and could easily have carried on, in the opinion of his doctor Sir John Richardson. His illness gave him a way out. Read Less
He finally resigned, receiving the Queen from his hospital bed, on 18 October 1963. … Read More
He felt privately that he was being hounded from office by a backbench minority: <br /><br /> C. P. Snow wrote to Macmillan that his reputation would endure as, like Churchill, he was âpsychologically interestingâ.<br /><br /> An early biographer George Hutchinson called him âThe Last Edwardian at Number Tenâ (1980), mistakenly in the view of Nigel Fisher. Fisher described him as âcomplex, almost chameleonâ. At times he portrayed himself as the descendant of a Scottish crofter, as a businessman, aristocrat, intellectual and soldier. Labour leader Harold Wilson wrote that his ârole as a poseur was itself a poseâ. Wilson also argued that behind the public nonchalance lay a real professional. Fisher also wrote that he âhad a talent for pursuing progressive policies but presenting them tactfully in a Conservative tone of voiceâ.<br /><br /> Historian John Vincent explores the image Macmillan crafted of himself for his colleagues and constituents: Read Less
Set in 1963 during the Profumo scandal, Hugh Whitemore's play A Letter of Resignation, first staged at the Comedy Theatre in October 1997, dramatises the occasion when Macmillan, staying with friends in Scotland, received a political bombshell, the letter of resignation from Profumo, his war minister. … Read More
Edward Fox portrayed Macmillan with uncanny accuracy, but the play also explores the involvement of MI5 and the troubled relationship between Macmillan and his wife (Clare Higgins) who had made no secret of her adultery with the wayward Tory MP, Robert Boothby. The play was directed by Christopher Morahan.<br /><br /> Macmillan was played by Kevin Quarmby in Gemma Fairlie's production of James Graham's play Eden's Empire at the Finborough Theatre, London, in 2006.<br /><br /> Never So Good is a four-act play by Howard Brenton, a portrait of Macmillan against a back-drop of fading Empire, two world wars, the Suez crisis, adultery and Tory politics at the Ritz.<br /><br /> Brenton paints the portrait of a brilliant, witty but complex man, tragically out of kilter with his times, an Old Etonian who eventually loses his way in a world of shifting values.<br /><br /> The play premiered at the National Theatre in March 2008, directed by Howard Davies with Jeremy Irons as Macmillan. Read Less
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In which capital city was nerve-gas released on the Underground in 1995? | BBC NEWS | Europe | History of train tunnel tragedies
Tuesday, 18 February, 2003, 15:37 GMT
History of train tunnel tragedies
The Paris attacks left eight dead and 200 injured
The deadly subway arson in South Korea is the latest mass loss of life from accidents and attacks on trains in tunnels around the world.
Correspondents say mass-transit subway systems generally have excellent safety records, but the presence of large numbers of people in enclosed spaces can hamper rescues efforts when problems do occur.
South Korean arson
Many people were trapped in carriages engulfed in smoke and flames
More than 100 people are now known to have died in flames and smoke after a man apparently set fire to flammable liquid inside a station in Daegu, South Korea.
Many of the victims were trapped in carriages unable to escape, while the thousands of rescuers who rushed to the city-centre station had to battle the heat and fumes.
The intensity of the fire - which began at the tail end of the morning rush hour on 18 February 2003 - left victims' bodies charred and entangled with each other, rescuers said.
Austrian inferno
Only 12 people survived a blaze inside a funicular train in the Austrian ski resort of Kaprun in November 2000.
A total of 155 people - most of them skiers - died when the fire started, possibly triggered by a faulty electric heater.
Victims were trapped inside the carriages of the train which was 600 metres into the 3.2-kilometre-long (two-mile-long) mountain tunnel when the fire started.
Prosecutors later blamed a "mosaic of mistakes" for the fire itself and the trouble encountered by people trying to escape and the rescuers who were trying to reach them.
In July 1995, the French capital's rail system was hit repeatedly by bombers.
The worst attack happened on 25 July at the Saint-Michel suburban railway (RER) station.
A gas bottle packed with explosives and nails was detonated, causing horrific injuries to many passengers.
Other devices were planted at the Maison Blanche metro and Musee d'Orsay RER stations.
In all, eight people died and more than 200 were injured.
Two members of the Algerian Armed Islamic Group were found guilty of taking part in the attacks and jailed for life.
Tokyo attack
Poison gas was pumped into the Tokyo subway
Four months earlier, in March 1995, members of the Aum Shinrikyo released sarin gas into the subway system of Japan's capital.
Twelve people died and about 5,000 more were taken ill as the nerve agent spread.
Several members of the cult were subsequently convicted of murder and sentenced to death.
Read more here
Azerbaijan bombs
In 1994, the metro system of Baku, the capital city of the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan, came under attack.
In separate incidents several months apart, bombs were detonated on trains.
The attacks, blamed on a northern separatist group, left at least 20 dead and scores injured.
London fire
A discarded match was blamed for the blaze in London's King's Cross underground station which killed 31 people in November 1987.
King's Cross escalators caught fire, trapping people underground
Hundreds of commuters were using the key interchange station when the fire broke out towards the end of the evening rush hour.
Wooden escalators caught fire, trapping passengers underground.
The heat was so intense that it damaged concrete walls and fire officers took hours to bring the blaze under control.
On This Day: King's Cross fire
Moorgate crash
The worst London Underground disaster happened on 28 February 1975 when a train failed to stop and smashed into a dead-end tunnel.
The cause of the crash - which killed 43 people - remains unknown.
The train failed to stop but the driver had been in good health and had not taken any alcohol or drugs. He was known as a careful and conscientious driver.
About 70 other passengers were also injured in the crash which left the front three carriages crushed into the rear of the train.
| Tokyo |
Down which river's valley does the mistral blow? | Sarin Gas Attack in Tokyo Subway
Sarin Gas Attack in Tokyo Subway
Sarin Gas Attack in Tokyo Subway
The Deadliest Terrorist Attack in Japan
Tokyo, Japan metro train at platform. (Photo by Raymond Patrick / Getty Images)
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By Jennifer Rosenberg
On March 20, 1995, members of the Aum Shinrikyo religious cult orchestrated a coordinated sarin gas attack on subway trains in Tokyo, Japan. The sarin gas killed a dozen people, injured thousands more, and is still considered the worst terrorist attack in Japan.
The Sarin Gas Attack in Tokyo
On Monday, March 20, 1995, five members of the Aum Shinrikyo religious cult boarded separate subway trains in Tokyo. Each cult member carried either two or three bags of sarin in liquid form, tightly enclosed in plastic, and then wrapped in newspapers. Each also carried an umbrella.
Around 8 a.m., the cult members dropped their packages onto the floor of the trains, then used the sharp end of their umbrellas to puncture holes through the plastic. As the liquid poured out of the holes, it seeped onto the train floors and started to turn into toxic sarin gas.
The cult members then exited their subway trains and were picked up in pre-arranged get-away cars, leaving the sarin gas, estimated to be 500 times more potent than cyanide gas, to dissipate among the passengers that remained in the subway.
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Subway Passengers Get Sick
The Tokyo subway system, the busiest in the world, was packed with commuters during rush hour traffic. As the sarin gas spread, people on the trains started to become sick. At first, passengers suffered from runny noses and watery eyes. Then blurred vision and coughing.
However, not realizing that they had been exposed to sarin gas because it is odorless, many passengers stepped off the subway trains at the next train station, unaware they were helping to spread the toxic gas. Since sarin gas can cling to clothes for up to 30 minutes, these passengers spread the toxic gas throughout a number of train stations.
The train engineers also did not immediately realize a toxic gas had been released on their cars; thus, many of the trains continued on to station after station. At each stop, the sarin gas poured from the trains' open doors and into the stations.
The sarin gas spread to thousands of people within Tokyo's subway system. Some were lucky enough to receive only light exposure and thus suffer only from runny noses, watery eyes, blurred vision, coughing, rapid breathing, confusion, drowsiness, weakness, and headache. Others suffered from vomiting and diarrhea. Still others became paralyzed, began convulsing, went into a coma, or died.
While over 5,000 people were affected, twelve died from exposure. Many victims suffered long-term effects that still haunt them.
Aum Shinrikyo: The Perpetrators
In 1995, the religious cult of Aum Shinrikyo ("Supreme Truth") had approximately 40,000 members and a net worth of $1.5 billion. Founded in 1987 by Shoko Asahara, it had its basis in Buddhism, but had grown to include the Christian idea of an apocalypse in its beliefs.
Believing World War III was about to begin, Aum Shinrikyo began to stockpile weapons, even building several chemical factories to manufacture biological weapons. Much of their angst was focused against the Japanese government.
The March 1995 sarin attack was not the first use of biological weapons by the Aum Shinrikyo. In addition to several other unsuccessful attempts, the group is believed to have been behind a June 27, 1994 attack in the Japanese city of Matsumoto. During this attack, the group used a truck to release sarin gas into a neighborhood that housed three judges who were expected to rule against them in a court case. The attack left seven dead and about 500 more affected.
Unfortunately, because of the Aum Shinrikyo's protected religious status, the police were unable to arrest any of its members in 1994. Not so after the 1995 sarin gas attack in Tokyo.
Within 48 hours of the 1995 sarin gas attack, police raided multiple locations of the Aum Shinrikyo cult. About 100 Aum Shinrikyo members were arrested. After a number of trials, thirteen Aum Shinrikyo members were sentenced to death, including the group's leader Shoko Asahara.
However, by 2010, none of these death sentences had yet been carried out.
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Which King of England was imprisoned by Leopold of Austria in Durenstein Castle? | King Richard's Return, Imprisonment and Ransom - Angus DonaldAngus Donald
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King Richard’s Return, Imprisonment and Ransom
Richard the Lionheart left the Holy Land in the second week of October 1192. The Third Crusade had been only a partial success and, after three years of fighting the Saracens, the Christian warriors were exhausted and their numbers much depleted by disease, desertion and death in battle. Richard finally agreed a three-year truce with Saladin, the great Muslim general, under which the Christians were to keep a thin strip of land on the Mediterranean coast and several important strongholds, and pilgrims were to be allowed to visit Jerusalem unmolested.
This face-saving temporary agreement allowed King Richard to make plans for his return home, something that he badly needed to do. In his absence, King Philip Augustus of France had been encroaching on his lands in Normandy, and his ambitious younger brother Prince John had been steadily increasing his power in England, illegally taking and garrisoning castles with his own men and constantly undermining the authority of the officials put in place by King Richard to govern the country in his absence. King Richard fully intended to return to the Holy Land, once he had settled matters in Europe and seen off the threat to his throne from his brother, but events were to conspire against him.
Unfortunately, the Lionheart’s forthright character meant that he had made many powerful enemies during the course of the Crusade. He had fallen out with Philip of France, a close boyhood friend, and had insulted Duke Leopold of Austria, the leader of the German contingent of the crusaders. He had even alienated Henry VI, the Holy Roman Emperor, by supporting King Tancred of Sicily against him. The Emperor controlled most of Germany and much of the Italian peninsula, southern Spain was in Muslim hands, corsairs infested the North African coast, and France was barred to him by King Philip – so Richard knew that he would have a problem getting home by land. Furthermore, the naval technology of the day did not allow ships to overcome the powerful currents flowing through the straits of Gibraltar and pass westward into the Atlantic, thus preventing Richard from taking the long way back to England by sea.
The whole story of Richard’s return is not entirely clear; the facts are fragmentary, and sometimes seem contradictory, but most scholars agree that Richard decided to attempt a clandestine eastern land route homeward. After sending his wife Berengaria by fast ship to Rome where she would be protected by the Pope, he made a feint westward towards Sicily, then doubled back, entered the Adriatic and sailed north. It was the end of the shipping season, the weather was stormy, and after a couple of stops Richard ultimately landed on the northern Adriatic coast at Aquileia, near Trieste in north-eastern Italy – although some scholars suggest that this landing wasn’t planned and he was shipwrecked there after bad weather. Either way that’s where the King found himself, on or about the 10th December 1192, ashore, with only a few companions, and hundreds of miles from friendly lands.
Disguised as a Templar knight, or possibly as a merchant, Richard headed north into the heart of Europe, making for safe territory controlled by his brother-in-law Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony. However, after an icy, gruelling, dangerous journey on poor roads, the King was apprehended by Duke Leopold of Austria’s men. It was only a few days before Christmas, the weather was awful and the King was apparently sheltering in a ‘disreputable house’ or brothel in the outskirts of Vienna. Some stories suggest that it was his aristocratic habit of demanding roast chicken for dinner, rather than humbler fare, that led to his discovery; other tales say that it was his companions’ practice of calling him ‘Sire’ that somehow gave away his royal identity.
Duke Leopold must have been delighted to have his great enemy the King of England in his clutches, and he promptly locked up Richard in Durnstein Castle, a stronghold on the Danube fifty miles to the west of Vienna. He also informed his overlord, Henry VI, the Holy Roman Emperor, of his windfall, and a letter still exists from Henry VI to Philip Augustus of France, which has the Holy Roman Emperor gloating shamelessly about the capture of this returning royal pilgrim. Seizing King Richard was considered an illegal act, as Pope Celestine III had decreed that knights who took part in the Crusade were not to be molested as they travelled to and from the Holy Land. Both Emperor Henry and Duke Leopold were subsequently excommunicated for Richard’s detention.
As was the custom of the day, Richard was passed from stronghold to stronghold in the German-speaking lands controlled by Henry and Leopold until he wound up at Ochsenfurt in mid-March 1193. It was there that English emissaries, in the shape of the abbots of Boxley and Robertsbridge, caught up with their captive King and began the long negotiations for his ransom and eventual release.
Negotiations for Richard’s release took the best part of a year, and after strenuous diplomatic efforts by Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine, the payment of 100,000 marks – an enormous sum, perhaps twice the gross domestic product of the whole of England at the time – and the handing over of hostages, the King was released in early February 1194.
Sadly, there is no historical basis for the legend of Blondel and his role in locating his captive king. The legend goes like this: after King Richard’s imprisonment in Europe, his loyal friend and faithful trouvère Blondel – a nickname for anyone with blond hair – searched high and low for him, playing his lute outside the walls of castles all over Germany in an attempt to find his lord. While singing a song under the walls of Durnstein Castle, a song he had written with King Richard during the Crusade, Blondel was rewarded by a familiar voice singing the second verse from a small cell in a tower high above him. The loyal trouvère had found his King, and all would now be well.
Although this charming legend has many highly improbable elements, there really was a Blondel, a famous trouvère from Nesle in France who was a contemporary of the Lionheart and, if he didn’t actually seek out King Richard by playing music under castle walls in Austria, at least he has been immortalised in another way, as some twenty-five of his songs have been preserved in French museums and libraries – including one that begins ‘Ma joi me semont … ‘ on which I have loosely based Alan Dale’s song ‘My Joy Summons Me’ which my fictional hero writes with Richard in Holy Warrior, and uses to discover his sovereign’s cell in King’s Man.
In reality, the Emperor and Duke Leopold would have gained little advantage in hiding King Richard’s whereabouts from Richard’s followers. They wanted the ransom money, and they needed to be in touch with the King’s subjects if they were to negotiate a price. I have to admit that because I like the legend of Blondel, and wanted to include it as a key element of the story, I have made slightly more of the importance of finding King Richard than would bear close historical scrutiny.
If anyone is interested in reading in more depth about the real history of Blondel de Nesle, trouvère culture in general and King Richard’s capture, imprisonment and ransom, I’d recommend David Boyle’s excellent book Blondel’s Song (Penguin Viking, 2005).
Angus Donald, July 2011
| Richard I of England |
What now common device was proposed by Townes in 1958 and built by Maiman in 1960? (Townes got the Nobel Prize and Maiman filed the patent) | Travel Photo: Durnstein Castle, Austria | The Roaming Boomers
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Posted by David Porter on Saturday, September 12, 2015 · 1 Comment
Click photo for larger view. ©2015, David A. Porter
I snagged this photograph of Durnstein Castle while sailing with Viking River Cruises on the Danube River in Austria.
Here’s the scoop on the castle from Wikipedia:
“The Kuenring family had bought the area surrounding the castle from the Tegernsee Abbey in the late 11th century. Hadmar I of Kuenring, who had also founded Zwettl Abbey, had the present castle constructed in the middle of the 12th century in a strategic location overlooking the river Danube. The castle is connected to the city of Dürnstein through a defensive wall extending from the city walls.
The castle is known for being one of the places where Richard I of England was imprisoned after being captured near Vienna by Leopold V, Duke of Austria, in 1192.
In 1428 and 1432, Hussites plundered city and castle of Dürnstein.
Near the end of the Thirty Years’ War, Swedish troops under Lennart Torstensson conquered Dürnstein in 1645. Upon their departure, they destroyed parts of the structure. As of 1622, the castle was no longer inhabited permanently, but was still listed as a possible shelter in the Austro-Turkish War (1663–1664). In 1663, Conrad Balthasar of Starhemberg purchased the castle, which is still owned by his heirs to this date. From 1679 on, however, the castle was no longer habitable and was abandoned.”
There is a path that visitors can hike up to view the castle and enjoy a panoramic view of the Danube. However, we opted for a tour of the Durnstein Abbey with an organ recital instead. I’ll tell you more about the abbey in another post. 🙂
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What was seen and recognised for the first time by Johann Galle in 1846? | Neptune Completes First Orbit Since Its Discovery in 1846
Neptune Completes First Orbit Since Its Discovery in 1846
By Geoff Gaherty, Starry Night Education |
July 12, 2011 11:03am ET
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On the night Johann Galle first spotted Neptune in 1846, it was in the constellation Aquarius close to the planet Saturn as seen here.
Credit: Starry Night Software
Tonight the planet Neptune completes its first trip around the sun since humans first discovered the gas giant planet.
Neptune is the only planet to have been discovered by mathematics . French astronomer Urbain Le Verrier noticed irregularities in the motions of other planets, and from these perturbations calculated that there must be an eighth planet lurking out beyond Uranus.
Using Le Verrier’s calculations, German astronomer Johann Galle at the Berlin Observatory located the new planet on Sept. 23, 1846.
Neptune's orbit is shaped roughly like an oval, with the planet taking about 165 years to complete a single circuit. The average distance between Neptune and the sun is nearly 2.8 billion miles (4.5 billion kilometers). That's roughly 30 times as far away as Earth.
On the night Galle discovered Neptune, it was just north of the planet Saturn in the constellation Aquarius. Tonight Neptune is back in Aquarius.
The sky maps available here show how Neptune appeared to astronomers when it was first seen in 1846, as well as how it appears tonight.
Tonight marks exactly one Neptunian year, 165.6 Earth years, later, and Neptune has returned to Aquarius. Saturn is currently in Virgo, on the other side of the sky as seen here.
Credit: Starry Night Software
Why does Neptune appear to be in a different position tonight than it was in 1846? The answer is complicated and has been explained by Peter Jedicke of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada.
Writing in the RASC "Observer’s Handbook 2011," Jedicke explains that he used the International Celestial Reference Frame to determine that Neptune returns to the exact point in its orbit where it was discovered tonight at 22:27 Universal Time, or 6:27 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time.
Happy Birthday, Neptune!
This article was provided to SPACE.com by Starry Night Education , the leader in space science curriculum solutions. Follow Starry Night on Twitter @StarryNightEdu .
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Which office has been held by Horace King, Selwyn Lloyd and George Thomas? | Phil Plait writes Slate’s Bad Astronomy blog and is an astronomer, public speaker, science evangelizer, and author of Death From the Skies!
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So today is Neptune's birthday! Um. Well, kinda.
Yeah, as usual, stuff like this gets complicated. I realized this anniversary was coming up about a year ago, and contacted an old friend about it: Kelly Beatty, editor at Sky and Telescope magazine, who then contacted astronomers John Westfall and Roger Sinnott. We had some fun email exchanges about all this! I think I have a good grip on this now, so let me explain.
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The short form
First, to celebrate a birthday, you need the birthdate. That's the first complication. Neptune was discovered on September 23, 1846 by astronomer Johann Galle using star charts by Johann Encke, and they are generally given credit for it. However, that date of September 23 is a bit dicey! Galle and Encke report that they found Neptune on 9/23 at 12:00:15 "Berlin M.T.", according to Westfall. But they reckoned the day starting at noon! And since they're using Berlin mean time, you have to account for the longitude of Berlin with respect to 0° longitude on Earth. According to Westfall, once you do all that, you get a discovery time of September 23 at 23:06:40.
Worse yet, there may be some imprecision in the exact time the astronomers reported the discovery, although Galle reported the time to a fraction of a second . Westfall reports that might be as much as 1.2 hours, preferring a discovery time of September 24, 1846 at 00:15 GMT.
Who's right? Turns out, it doesn't matter much, since we only need to know the time to within a few hours to get the right date for the birthday. Still, Westfall appears to have looked at this pretty hard, so you know what? Good enough. I'll use his numbers.
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A year by any other name would take as long
OK, so we have the birthdate. Now, how long is a Neptune year?
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Yeah, well, that turns out not to be so easy to answer either! There are lots of ways to measure a year . And worse, Neptune's year isn't constant; the gravity of Uranus tugs on Neptune, accelerating it, changing its period around the Sun. The effect is small, but measurable, and in fact it was Neptune's effect on Uranus that allowed astronomers to find it in the first place! So the time it takes Neptune to circle the Sun once changes over time. Arg.
But there's a way to cut through that: instead of trying to figure out Neptune's exact period and adding it to the discovery date, we can ask when Neptune returns to the same position in the sky where it was when it was discovered, call that one Neptunian year, and be done with it. Doing that based on the Neptune's position as seen from Earth is complicated (of course) and is biased. After all Neptune is orbiting the Sun, not Earth.
In fact, it's not that simple (stop me if you've heard that before). Neptune actually orbits the solar system's barycenter, its center of mass. You might think that would be the center of the Sun, but Jupiter is big enough to pull on the Sun a bit, making the entire solar system off-center (think of it like an adult and child holding hands and spinning around; the mass of the kid pulls the grownup a bit off-center as they circle each other -- or just look at the animation here and let yourself get dizzy). The other planets contribute as well. This makes things a lot harder to figure out, and this is getting ridiculous as it is. [Note added after I finished this article but before it got posted: Tammy Plotner at Universe Today does in fact go into the barycenter argument, and correctly concludes that yesterday was the barycentric Neptunian birthday. It comes down to a matter of preference, I think.]
So instead, let's simplify (yay!), pick a coordinate system based on the center of the Sun, get the coordinates of Neptune when it was discovered, and then figure out when it returns to those same coordinates. We can use Neptune's heliocentric longitude to do this.
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Heliocentric longitude and latitude are like their counterparts on Earth, except measured from the center of the Sun. And instead of using Earth's equator as we do for long and lat on Earth, for the heliocentric coordinates we use the Earth's orbit around the Sun! That defines a plane on the sky just like the Earth's equator does on the Earth's surface. And just like 0° longitude on Earth is arbitrary (it passes through Greenwich, England, where the coordinate system was defined), heliocentric longitude has its zero point as the position on the sky of Earth's vernal equinox, where the Earth's orbit intersects the projection of the Earth's equator on the sky.
Yeah, I know. This makes my head hurt sometimes too. I think what's most frightening about all this is that I understand it. Still, the diagram here (click to embiggen) shows the layout. All you really need to know is that the yellow line there points to 0° heliocentric longitude in the sky. Think of it as a benchmark. Halfway around the sky is 180° longitude, and so on.
So imagine you were at the center of the Sun (wearing sunblock 1012) in 1846 and looking at Neptune at the moment humans on Earth discovered it. You ask yourself, "How far east is Neptune at this moment, as measured from 0°?" The number you get, if you're using Westfall's time and date of discovery, is 329° 05’ 51.5”. OK, cool.
Then you wait about 165 years. At some point, Neptune will have that exact same longitude again. When is that date? Drum roll please...
July 12, 2011, at 18:38 GMT
Aha! So why not use that? If you live in the US, at 14:38 Eastern time, Neptune will have completed one circuit around the Sun since it was discovered, according to its own calendar.
Phew! And as you can see, if we're off by a couple of hours either way, the date stays the same for us here in the States. I'm good with that.
Oh -- by the way, we can use these numbers to then ask how long Neptune's year is. The amount of time between these two dates is 60,191.8 days, or 164.8 Earth years. On Neptune, I'd only be a little over 3 months old.
This too shall pass
I almost hesitate to mention that as seen from Earth, Neptune will pass this same spot in the sky not once but five times! That's because the Earth is moving around the Sun as well, and our perspective changes. Explaining it here will make both our heads explode, so I'll just link to a video of Brian Cox talking about it . He does a great job. But if you're keeping track at home, according to Westfall Neptune has already passed this position in the sky as seen from Earth three times (in April and July 2010, and in February in 2011) and will again twice more this year (in October and November).
But at this point I'm done. July 12 is good enough for me.
Bismillach, NO!
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What is the first name of Andy Murray's brother who won the Mixed Doubles at Wimbledon in 2007 with Jelena Jankovic? | BBC SPORT | Tennis | Murray wins Wimbledon mixed title
BBC Sport at Wimbledon
Murray and Jankovic were playing in their first event together
Jamie Murray became the first Briton for 20 years to win a senior title at Wimbledon as he and Serbia's Jelena Jankovic won the mixed doubles.
The 21-year-old Scot, elder brother of British number one Andy, follows in the footsteps of Jeremy Bates and Jo Durie, who won the same title in 1987.
Murray and Jankovic beat fifth seeds Jonas Bjorkman of Sweden and Australia's Alicia Molik 6-4 3-6 6-1.
It was the last match of the tournament and was played on Centre Court.
Interview: Jamie Murray and Jelena Jankovic
After a pulsating men's final the arena was empty for the start of the mixed final, but it soon filled up with spectators keen to witness a small moment of British tennis history.
The home favourite did not make the best of starts, dropping serve straight away, but Murray and Jankovic soon recovered the break.
It could be a good bet - and you'd probably get some good odds too!
Jamie Murray when asked by BBC Sport in March on his chances of winning a Grand slam title before Andy
And when doubles expert Bjorkman was broken in game nine, Murray and Jankovic held onto the advantage to seal the first set.
It was a different story in the second, however, as the fifth seeds raced into a 5-1 lead and quickly got back on level terms.
The momentum appeared to be with the more established pair but it was not the case.
Bjorkman was broken to love in the second game of the deciding set and, with the Wimbledon crowd increasingly vociferous, a second break followed in game six.
It fell to the beaming Jankovic to serve out and she did so comfortably, sealing a first Grand Slam title for both players.
An elated Murray said: "I don't know if it's sunk in, but it feels pretty good."
He paid tribute to his Serbian partner, the world number three in singles but a self-confessed doubles novice.
606: DEBATE
A brilliant performance by the pair, I'm really chuffed for Jamie
KG
"She won the match in the end because she kept returning the guy's serve and I couldn't do it," he said.
Jankovic, who lost to eventual finalist Marion Bartoli in the fourth round of the women's singles, admitted that a first Grand Slam win was especially sweet.
"It's really an incredible feeling for me to be there and to hold the trophy," she said.
"It's something that I always dreamed of, and I would love one day to have that feeling with the singles trophy."
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Who married Wendy Deng in 1999? | Jamie Murray and John Peers ease into Wimbledon men's doubles semi-finals with win against Alexander Peya and Bruno Soares | Daily Mail Online
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Over to you, Andy. Brother Jamie Murray and partner John Peers cruised into the Wimbledon men’s doubles semi-finals with a straight sets victory against Alexander Peya and Bruno Soares.
They stunned reigning champions Vasek Pospisil and Jack Sock in an epic three-and-a-half hour match on Monday, but this was a far more straightforward affair to reach the final four pairs.
Murray won the mixed doubles here in 2007 with Jelena Jankovic, but this is the furthest he has made it in the men’s competition and is now within touching distance of his second Wimbledon title.
Jamie Murray and partner John Peers cruised into the Wimbledon men’s doubles semi-finals on Tuesday
Murray and Peers swept Bruno Soares (left) and Alexander Peya aside in straight sets on Court No 2
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Andy, 28, thus far only has one - admittedly the 2013 singles title - but for Jamie, in a sport where his younger brother is one of the top dogs, that would at least provide some brotherly bragging rights. The 29-year-old cannot have had many over the years.
Murray Jnr says he rarely watches Murray Snr, even on television, because he feels he jinxes his results. ‘I’ve lost a lot of matches when he hasn’t been there as well,’ Jamie said. ‘I’m not quite sure that’s true. He can watch me. It would be great if we’re both in the semi-finals.’
He and Australian partner Peers won an early break which proved enough to win the first set. There was exhibition stuff at 4-4 in the second as Murray returned serve with a lob on to the baseline, Soares ran back and pinged the ball between his legs before the Scot tucked a volley away at the net.
It went on serve until the tie break when Murray and Peers stole ahead, winning a 15-shot rally to make it 4-0 and rousing the crowd beyond any point previously in the match.
Murray pumps his fist in celebration during the men's doubles quarter-final clash
Murray will enter the Wimbledon men's doubles semi-finals with Peers for the first time in his career
At least until Murray won the tie break with an ace and responded by wagging his forefinger in the direction of his camp. He was the No 1 Murray at Wimbledon, for a day at least.
The third set was the easiest of the three, concluding the match 6-4, 7-6, 6-3 in one hour and 51 minutes to set up a match against Jonathan Erlich and Philipp Petzschner. ‘The semi-final will be a tough match,’ Murray added, ‘but it will be difficult for our opponents as well, we’re playing well and feel good about our game. We’ll fancy our chances.’
Andy faces Pospisil on Wednesday in his quarter-final match, an opponent who will no doubt be tired from the gruelling encounter with Jamie from earlier in the week. And Great Britain’s No 1 will be spurred on even more by sibling rivalry, no doubt.
The 29-year-old occasionally struggled with the throw on his serve but was in good form on Tuesday
Great Britain’s No 1 Andy Murray will be spurred on to join his brother in a Wimbledon semi-final
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How many coloured squares are there on a standard 'Rubik's Cube'? | Basic Concepts and Notations - Understanding the Rubik's Cube - Joe Converse
Basic Notations Extended Notations Large Cube Basics Large Cube Notations Conjugates and Commutators
Basic Concepts and Notations
Many people look at the cube and see 54 colored squares. This is bad. There are not 54 individual pieces to move. There are only 26 pieces (8 corners, 12 edges, and 6 centers), and only 20 of them move (the centers do not). Realizations like this are the key to understanding the Rubik's cube and how to solve it. The notes below outline some of the main insights to remember when working with any Rubik's cube puzzle. Don't just read these notes. Understand them and make them unconciously obvious.
Centers
A center is always a center. No moves can ever make a center be an edge or a corner. A center has only 1 color on it and this color never changes. The centers never move, they only rotate. This is especially key. The relative positions of the 6 center pieces will never change. This defines the relative positions of the colors for you. In most cases (though not all since color patterns are not compeltely standard), white is opposite yellow, red is opposite orange, blue is opposite green. Looking straight at red with yellow on top, green is to the right. That defines your cube. Learn this color pattern well.
Edges
An edge is always an edge. No moves can ever make an edge be a center or a corner. An edge has 2 colors on it, and which 2 colors never change. An edge is only solved when both colors are on the correct faces, not just one of them.
Corners
A corner is always a corner. No moves can ever make a corner be a center or an edge. A corner has 3 colors on it, and which 3 colors never change. A corner is solved when any two of them are on the correct face, but not just one of them.
Wait? Not all 3 need colors need to be on the correct face? But can't you have the red-blue-yellow corner in between the red and yellow faces such that they look right but have the blue side on the green face? The answer is no, though it's not immediately obvious, and brings us to the next point to understand.
Not all color patterns are possible.
Why? Because there aren't 54 pieces, there are 26. In the example above, the red-blue-yellow corner always exists in the order "red-blue-yellow" when you move clockwise around looking at it. To be in the red-yellow-green position with yellow and red correct, but blue on the green face would require it to look like "red-yellow-blue" (again clockwise) which it never ever can (if it does, then someone took the stickers off and put them back on wrong and the only way to solve it is to take them off and put them back on correctly). The only color patterns possible are those which can be made from the 24 pieces which inherently lock some color squares together in particular ways. But wait! There's more!
Not all piece combinations are possible.
Why aren't all arrangements possible? Because you can't arbitrarily move the pieces. You can only rotate entire faces at a time. Thus only those arrangements attainable by a series of such moves is possible. Thus, for example, you can't have everything right except one edge flipped with the wrong orientation (though 2 edges flipped wrong is possible). There are about 519 quintillion (519 followed by 18 zeros) different ways of putting the pieces into the cube. But only 1 in 12 (43 quintillion) of them are possible to get from a solved cube (and thus are possible to solve). If you meet one of the others, someone has taken the cube apart and put it back together wrong, and the only possible way to sovle it is to take it apart and put it back together correctly. Along the way through the solution here it'll be pointed out how to tell if this has happened. And while we've just hinted at it, let's say this explicitly:
Not all moves are possible.
The only moves you can make is to rotate a face. Further, there are only 3 such rotations possible for each face: rotate 90 degrees clockwise, rotate 90 degrees counter-clockwise, or rotate 180 degrees. Anything else is equivalent to one of those (3 90-degree clockwise is equal to a single 90-degree counter-clockwise, for example, and 13578 rotations of 90-degrees counter-clockwise is equal to a single 180 degree rotation). Everything you can ever do is just some combination of these 3 moves on the 6 faces. There is no other way to move pieces around.
Position and Orientation
When we talk about the position of a piece, we mean where it is located relative to the centers. A corner, for example, is always located between two centers, and is considered to be in the same position regardless of which of its colors are on those two faces. Similarly a corner is in the same position if it is between the same three faces, regardless of which of its colors is on each face. The two different ways an edge can be in a particular position, or three different ways a corner can be in a particular position, are different orientations of the piece. To be solved, every piece on the cube must both be in the correct position and have the correct orientation. But during the process of solving it, it will sometimes be easier to only worry about one of these two aspects at a time.
Good then. So now instead of seeing 54 colored squares that can move randomly about, you see 20 (moveable) pieces, 6 faces (defined by the center pieces, which never move), and only 18 possible moves. These facts make the cube a much more tractable puzzle, and with this understanding we can now solve it.
| fifty four |
Chapter titles of which classic novel include 'Nantucket', 'Ambergris' and 'Ahab's Leg'? | 3D Geometry, Shape and Space :: Cubes : nrich.maths.org
Partly Painted Cube
Stage: 4 Challenge Level:
Jo made a cube from some smaller cubes, painted some of the faces of the large cube, and then took it apart again. 45 small cubes had no paint on them at all. How many small cubes did Jo use?
Holes
Stage: 1 and 2 Challenge Level:
I've made some cubes and some cubes with holes in. This challenge invites you to explore the difference in the number of small cubes I've used. Can you see any patterns?
Painted Cube
Stage: 3 Challenge Level:
Imagine a large cube made from small red cubes being dropped into a pot of yellow paint. How many of the small cubes will have yellow paint on their faces?
The Third Dimension
Stage: 1 and 2 Challenge Level:
Here are four cubes joined together. How many other arrangements of four cubes can you find? Can you draw them on dotty paper?
A Puzzling Cube
Stage: 2 Challenge Level:
Here are the six faces of a cube - in no particular order. Here are three views of the cube. Can you deduce where the faces are in relation to each other and record them on the net of this cube?
Stage: 3 and 4 Challenge Level:
In a three-dimensional version of noughts and crosses, how many winning lines can you make?
Nine Colours
Stage: 3 and 4 Challenge Level:
You have 27 small cubes, 3 each of nine colours. Use the small cubes to make a 3 by 3 by 3 cube so that each face of the bigger cube contains one of every colour.
Cubes Cut Into Four Pieces
Stage: 1 Challenge Level:
Eight children each had a cube made from modelling clay. They cut them into four pieces which were all exactly the same shape and size. Whose pieces are the same? Can you decide who made each set?
Stage: 1 and 2 Challenge Level:
Investigate the number of faces you can see when you arrange three cubes in different ways.
Changing Areas, Changing Volumes
Stage: 3 Challenge Level:
How can you change the surface area of a cuboid but keep its volume the same? How can you change the volume but keep the surface area the same?
Stage: 1 and 2 Challenge Level:
Can you create more models that follow these rules?
Drilling Many Cubes
Stage: 3 Challenge Level:
A useful visualising exercise which offers opportunities for discussion and generalising, and which could be used for thinking about the formulae needed for generating the results on a spreadsheet.
Start Cube Drilling
Stage: 1 Challenge Level:
Imagine a 3 by 3 by 3 cube. If you and a friend drill holes in some of the small cubes in the ways described, how many will have holes drilled through them?
Painted Faces
Stage: 2 Challenge Level:
Imagine a 3 by 3 by 3 cube made of 9 small cubes. Each face of the large cube is painted a different colour. How many small cubes will have two painted faces? Where are they?
Cube Drilling
Stage: 2 Challenge Level:
Imagine a 4 by 4 by 4 cube. If you and a friend drill holes in some of the small cubes in the ways described, how many will not have holes drilled through them?
Cubic Net
Stage: 4 and 5 Challenge Level:
This is an interactive net of a Rubik's cube. Twists of the 3D cube become mixes of the squares on the 2D net. Have a play and see how many scrambles you can undo!
Interpenetrating Solids
Stage: 5 Challenge Level:
This problem provides training in visualisation and representation of 3D shapes. You will need to imagine rotating cubes, squashing cubes and even superimposing cubes!
Cheese Cutting
Stage: 5 Challenge Level:
In this problem we see how many pieces we can cut a cube of cheese into using a limited number of slices. How many pieces will you be able to make?
Stage: 2, 3 and 4
A description of how to make the five Platonic solids out of paper.
Making Maths: Link-a-cube
Stage: 2 Challenge Level:
Make a cube with three strips of paper. Colour three faces or use the numbers 1 to 6 to make a die.
Classic Cube
Stage: 5 Challenge Level:
The net of a cube is to be cut from a sheet of card 100 cm square. What is the maximum volume cube that can be made from a single piece of card?
Inside Out
Stage: 4 Challenge Level:
There are 27 small cubes in a 3 x 3 x 3 cube, 54 faces being visible at any one time. Is it possible to reorganise these cubes so that by dipping the large cube into a pot of paint three times you. . . .
Dice, Routes and Pathways
Stage: 1, 2 and 3
This article for teachers discusses examples of problems in which there is no obvious method but in which children can be encouraged to think deeply about the context and extend their ability to. . . .
Thinking 3D
Stage: 2 and 3
How can we as teachers begin to introduce 3D ideas to young children? Where do they start? How can we lay the foundations for a later enthusiasm for working in three dimensions?
Cubic Rotations
Stage: 4 Challenge Level:
There are thirteen axes of rotational symmetry of a unit cube. Describe them all. What is the average length of the parts of the axes of symmetry which lie inside the cube?
Classifying Solids Using Angle Deficiency
Stage: 3 and 4 Challenge Level:
Toni Beardon has chosen this article introducing a rich area for practical exploration and discovery in 3D geometry
Cubist Cuts
Stage: 3 Challenge Level:
A 3x3x3 cube may be reduced to unit cubes in six saw cuts. If after every cut you can rearrange the pieces before cutting straight through, can you do it in fewer?
Dicey
Stage: 2 Challenge Level:
A game has a special dice with a colour spot on each face. These three pictures show different views of the same dice. What colour is opposite blue?
Green Cube, Yellow Cube
Stage: 2 Challenge Level:
How can you paint the faces of these eight cubes so they can be put together to make a 2 x 2 cube that is green all over AND a 2 x 2 cube that is yellow all over?
Christmas Boxes
Stage: 3 Challenge Level:
Find all the ways to cut out a 'net' of six squares that can be folded into a cube.
Icosian Game
Stage: 3 Challenge Level:
This problem is about investigating whether it is possible to start at one vertex of a platonic solid and visit every other vertex once only returning to the vertex you started at.
Counting Triangles
Stage: 3 Challenge Level:
Triangles are formed by joining the vertices of a skeletal cube. How many different types of triangle are there? How many triangles altogether?
Take Ten
Stage: 3 Challenge Level:
Is it possible to remove ten unit cubes from a 3 by 3 by 3 cube made from 27 unit cubes so that the surface area of the remaining solid is the same as the surface area of the original 3 by 3 by 3. . . .
How Many Dice?
Stage: 3 Challenge Level:
A standard die has the numbers 1, 2 and 3 are opposite 6, 5 and 4 respectively so that opposite faces add to 7? If you make standard dice by writing 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 on blank cubes you will find. . . .
Tic Tac Toe
Stage: 3 Challenge Level:
In the game of Noughts and Crosses there are 8 distinct winning lines. How many distinct winning lines are there in a game played on a 3 by 3 by 3 board, with 27 cells?
Painting Cubes
Stage: 3 Challenge Level:
Imagine you have six different colours of paint. You paint a cube using a different colour for each of the six faces. How many different cubes can be painted using the same set of six colours?
Four Points on a Cube
Stage: 5 Challenge Level:
What is the surface area of the tetrahedron with one vertex at O the vertex of a unit cube and the other vertices at the centres of the faces of the cube not containing O?
Plane to See
Stage: 5 Challenge Level:
P is the midpoint of an edge of a cube and Q divides another edge in the ratio 1 to 4. Find the ratio of the volumes of the two pieces of the cube cut by a plane through PQ and a vertex.
All in the Mind
Stage: 3 Challenge Level:
Imagine you are suspending a cube from one vertex (corner) and allowing it to hang freely. Now imagine you are lowering it into water until it is exactly half submerged. What shape does the surface. . . .
Christmas Presents
Stage: 2 Challenge Level:
We need to wrap up this cube-shaped present, remembering that we can have no overlaps. What shapes can you find to use?
| i don't know |
Which Spaniard led an expedition which reached Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital in 1519? | The Spanish Conquest (1519-1521) : Mexico History
History | See all articles tagged history
The Spanish Conquest (1519-1521)
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April 21, 1519--the year Ce Acatl (One Reed) by Aztec reckoning-- marked the opening of a short but decisive chapter in Mexico's history. On that day a fleet of 11 Spanish galleons sailing along the eastern gulf coast dropped anchor just off the wind-swept beach on the island of San Juan de Ulúa. Under the command of the wily, daring Hernán Cortés, the vessels bore 550 Spanish soldiers and sailors, as well as 16 horses, the first of the species to tread the American continent.
The party disembarked to set up camp on the dunes behind the beach. In a friendly reception from the native Totonac Indians, greetings and gifts were exchanged. Cognizant of the existence of a great inland Empire, Cortés promptly dispatched a message requesting an audience with Aztec ruler Moctezuma II . (The term "Aztec" will be used throughout, although some historians prefer the less familiar designation "Mexica" for the last of Mexico's formidable pre-Hispanic civilizations.)
Runners had already carried word to the "Lord of Cuhúa" in Tenochitlán, the capital city set on an island in Lake Texcoco some 200 hundred miles away. They reported the arrival of fair-skinned, bearded strangers and fearsome "man-beasts" (cavalry) who had descended from "towers floating on the sea."
Cortés wasted no time in staking a claim for God and King, ceremoniously founding a settlement on the coast that he christened Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz, in reference to the fleet's arrival on Good Friday to what he believed to be a vast land of plenty. The Spanish Conquest had begun.
All odds were against this tiny band of adventurers who would soon venture into unknown territory to topple the mighty Aztec Empire. It could never have happened were it not for Cortés' remarkable fortitude and cunning, coupled with an incredible series of coincidental prior events.
In the wake the "discovery" of the Western Hemisphere by Christopher Columbus (1492), Spanish and Portuguese explorers continued the quest for riches in the New World. Among these were Francisco Hernández de Córdoba and Juan de Grijalba who, under the orders of Diego Veláquez, Spanish Governor of Cuba, set out on ill-fated ventures to the Yucatan and Mexico's gulf coast (1517-1518). Velázquez then commissioned the 34 year-old Cortés to lead a new expedition westward, but alarmed by escalating costs, had a last-minute change of heart.
The eager and ever-astute Cortés eluded cancellation of the enterprise by hastily setting sail. The fleet first landed on the island of Cozumel off the Yucatan peninsula. There Cortés ransomed fellow Spaniard Gerónimo de Aguilar who had been forced to live among the Mayas after surviving a 1511 shipwreck during a prior expedition. Aguilar proved an invaluable asset to Cortés, acting as his personal interpreter of both native language and culture.
Communication problems arose anew, however, as the Spaniards sailed farther north, encountering natives who spoke a different tongue. Fortuitously, the spoils of victory over a Tabascan chieftain at Potonchán included a gift of twenty native maidens, one of whom was fluent in both the Náhuatl and Mayan tongues. The comely and clever Malintzin was promptly baptized with a Spanish name, Marina, and appointed the task of intervening in further contacts with indigenous peoples. She translated Náhuatl to Mayan for Aguilar, who then put her words into Spanish.
Doña Marina soon earned her place as Cortés' most intimate adviser by first mastering Spanish and then becoming his mistress. Eventually she bore him a son, Martín, the first mixed-blood Mexican or mestizo. For having aided the Spaniards, today she is widely considered a traitor to her own people. The moniker by which she is mostly commonly known, la Malinche, gave rise to the modern-day term malinchista used in reference a Mexican who takes a fancy to anything of foreign origin.
Meanwhile, back in Tenochitlán, Moctezuma was in a quandary as to how to best deal with the unwelcome strangers. Ancient legend prophesied that Quetzalcoátl , the bearded, fair-skinned Toltec ruler-god, would return from the east in the year Ce Acatl to reclaim his kingdom. Evil omens that had confounded the Aztec priests and sorcerers over the previous decade only heightened Moctezuma's anxiety. First, despite fair weather, the waters of Lake Texcoco had suddenly boiled up, flooding the island of their capital city. Then an inexplicable conflagration had consumed the temple of their chief god, Huitzilopochtli. The voice of a woman wailing in the night had repeatedly disturbed the city's slumber. Immense comets with fiery tails had been seen shooting through day-time skies and a great column of fire had appeared in the east every night for an entire year. All of these were taken to be signs of Quetzalcoátl's imminent return.
A hostile reception of the mighty Plumed Serpent or his emissaries was unthinkable. So Moctezuma sent Cortés a cordial message, but cautioned him against proceeding to the Aztec capital. It was, he noted, an arduous journey through deserts, mountains and dangerous enemy territories. He also sent many fine gifts, tokens of his esteem which he hoped would placate the strangers or, better still, spur them to return from whence they came.
The gold and other Aztec finery only whetted the Spaniards' appetite for new world riches. Determined to carry forward, the next moves Cortés made were as astute as they were bold. After dispatching trusted envoys back to Spain to deliver letters and Aztec treasure to his monarch, Carlos V, he stripped and scuttled the remainder of his fleet. This drastic measure constituted a blatant act of rebellion against his direct superior, Governor Velázquez, but by effectively eliminating any means of desertion, Cortés hoped to assure the do-or-die loyalty of his men.
Through cunning and intrigue Cortés forged an alliance with the Totonacs at the coastal city-state Cempoala, then under Aztec dominion. The Spanish army was thus beefed up with more than a thousand native warriors plus 200 porters. With a small party left to hold the fort at Vera Cruz, Cortés commenced the hazardous journey towards the Aztec capital.
To the east of the great twin volcanoes Popocatépetl and Ixtaccíhuatl lay the first obstacle, the small kingdom of Tlaxcala whose fierce mountain people who had long managed to defy Aztec dominance. Suspecting the odd strangers to be agents of Moctezuma the Tlaxcalans promptly engaged the Spaniards in battle. Superior weaponry and military tactics, added to internecine rivalry between Tlaxcalan generals, helped Cortés prevail despite the fact that his troops were greatly outnumbered. The subsequent Spanish-Tlaxcalan alliance proved to be a crucial factor in the ultimate downfall of the Aztecs.
Next came a dangerous interlude at the great ceremonial center, Cholula. Warned by la Malinche that a plot was afoot to ambush and capture the Spaniards, Cortés outfoxed the Cholulan caciques (native chieftains), engineering a surprise attack in the city's center that left thousands dead. The Tlaxcalans joined in the fray, razing Cholula in a two-day rampage.
Finally the Spaniards approached their destination, descending into the Valley of Mexico from a high mountain pass between the great volcanoes. In early November 1519, with Cortés in the lead, they filed across the southern causeway into the magnificent Tenochtitlán. They were received with much ceremony by a retinue of lords and nobles headed by Moctezuma himself, and escorted to their quarters in the ancient palace of Atzayacatl, the emperor's father. The wary Moctezuma made great efforts to play the perfect host, showing his unwanted guests around the city and entertaining them with splendid banquets.
Aware of the precarious situation in which he had placed his band of adventurers, Cortés made an extraordinarily bold move to secure their safety. He took Moctezuma captive, holding him in the Spaniards quarters. This bizarre state of affairs continued for eight months until news came that Spanish troops sent by the Cuban Governor Velázquez had arrived at the coast had arrived to place Cortés under arrest. Leaving a garrison in charge in the Aztec capital, Cortés marched back eastward with a band of his finest soldiers. He defeated his intended captors in battle at Cempoala, and soon was headed back to Tenochtitlán with the newcomers in tow.
In his absence, Pedro de Alvarado, the garrison's commander, ordered an attack on the Aztecs in the midst of what he viewed as an alarmingly frenetic religious celebration. Enraged by the vicious slaughter, the native population rebelled. Upon his return, Cortés tried to quell the hostilities by persuading Moctezuma to mount the roof of Atzayacatl's palace and appeal to his people for peace. Their response was to shower the emperor with insults, stones and arrows, inflicting physical and mental injury that soon resulted in his death.
Under Moctezuma's successor, Cuitláhuac (who succumbed to smallpox several months later), the Aztecs mounted a full-scale siege on the conquistadores. With food and water scarce, the Spaniards and their Tlaxcalan allies attempted to slip out of the city under cover of darkness on what is now known as La Noche Triste, the Sad Night. An alarm was sounded and the Aztecs attacked with fury. Hundred of soliders were killed or captured. Others, weighted down with the gold and silver loot they had collected, fell into the canals and drowned. A despondent Cortés collapsed and wept beneath the famous ahuehuete tree that still stands today in the Mexico City suburb of Tacuba.
Damaged but not entirely disheartened, the surviving Spaniards and their allies retreated back into Tlaxcalan territory to regroup. In subsequent months they healed their wounds and trained for battle. Devising a new strategy, Cortés built a fleet of brigantines for his next attack.
In January 1521 the conquistadores once again entered the valley of Mexico. They staged a series of raids throughout the countryside and took the Aztec stronghold at Texcoco, from whence they could launch the newly built fleet. In May Cortés began his final assault on Tenochtitlán, bearing down from every direction, with separate divisions assigned to each of the city's three causeways and the flotilla moving in by water.
The Aztecs fought valiantly under leadership of the last Aztec emperor, Cuauhtemoc , whose name translates as "falling eagle" or alternately "setting sun." Ravaged by diseases introduced by the Spaniards, deprived of fresh water and food supplies from the mainland, they withstood an 80-day siege, surrendering August 13, 1521, only after their captured leader grasped the dagger in Cortés' belt and pleaded, "I have done all that I could to defend my people. Do with me now what you will."
Their fervor fueled by victory, the conquistadores lay the Aztec empire to waste, erasing the remnants of the culture as best they could, scorching Tenochtitlán by fire, leveling its majestic temples. The rubble would make up the foundations of a new world, the cradle of a brand new people.
Published or Updated on: August 29, 2007 by Dale Hoyt Palfrey © 2008
| Hernán Cortés |
The African Fish Eagle is the emblem of which team in the 2011 Rugby Union World Cup? | The road Cortés followed to reach Tenochtitlán
The road Cortés followed to reach Tenochtitlán
Bad omens!
The road Cortés followed to reach Tenochtitlán: Mexico is revealed to the world...
This article has generously been written specially for us by Xavier López Medellín and Felix Hinz. Xavier writes: ‘I was born in México City and currently live in Baja California. I have a PhD in Biological Sciences, but History is a great passion of mine, particularly the conquest of America and the XVIth century. I met Felix in 2002 and we’ve been partners since then working on our project Página de Relación.’ Felix Hinz is a Lecturer at the Department of History, University of Hildesheim (Germany); his doctoral thesis was on ‘mechanisms of Hispanization and the transformation of collective identities during and after the conquest of Mexico.’
Pic 1: Cortés’ expedition to Mexico: 1. Cuba 2. Cozumel 3. Grijalva River 4. San Juan de Ulúa, Chalchihuecan, Cempoala 5. Jalapa, Xico 6. Tlaxcala, 7. Cholula, 8. Paso de Cortés, 9. Tenochtitlán (Click on image to enlarge)
Hernán Cortés and his men departed from Cuba on September 11th [1519] and embarked on one of the most extraordinary adventures in the history of mankind: the conquest of Mexico. In the following months, not only would they encounter different civilizations, walk through forests with new and strange plants and animals and eat exotic food and beverages; they would also engage in ferocious combats with the natives, suffer from new diseases and bear the harsh conditions of an unknown and sometimes hostile country.
Pic 2: The shores of Cozumel (Click on image to enlarge)
On February 27th, they reached the island of Cozumel in the Caribbean Sea off the eastern coast of Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula. When they arrived, they noticed that the inhabitants of the small and scattered villages had fled to the interior of the island, terrified by the sight of the ships. When Cortés sent two of his captains to find the population, they found and seized a native and asked him to find and bring the rest of the inhabitants with the promise that they would not be harmed. Some caciques returned, and Cortés knew from them that there were at least two other Spaniards kept as slaves on the peninsula, so he wrote them letters explaining they were on the island waiting for them.
Pic 3: Cortés and Jerónimo de Aguilar meet (Click on image to enlarge)
Jerónimo de Aguilar had been enslaved in Yucatán for eight years after surviving a shipwreck and was the only one who returned with Cortés. The other, Gonzalo Guerrero, was already married with a Mayan woman and had children with her; he wanted to continue living among the Maya. The result of Jerónimo de Aguilar joining the expedition represented a great benefit for Cortés because through him he would be able to communicate with the Maya and learn more about this unknown land.
Pic 4: Grijalva River in the state of Tabasco (Click on image to enlarge)
The expedition left Cozumel and on March 22nd they reached the Grijalva River in the present state of Tabasco. The natives there were hostile because they had already engaged in combat with Spaniards from a previous expedition. Cortés’ troops defeated the natives in the Battle of Centla, their first battle that allowed them to introduce horses as a new weapon. After this combat, the natives made peace with the Spaniards on April 15th and the cacique brought them several gifts that included food, jewels and twenty women to cook for them. Among these women was Malinalli or Malintzin, who was baptized as Marina, and Cortés gave her to one of his captains since he was already married to Catalina Xuarez.
Pic 5: The present day island of San Juan de Ulúa (Click on image to enlarge)
They embarked again on their journey and reached the island of San Juan de Ulúa on April 21st. That night Cortés and his troops contacted the first Aztec ambassadors sent by Motecuhzoma, and exchanged greetings and gifts. Since Jerónimo de Aguilar only spoke Mayan he could not communicate with the Aztec ambassadors, on this occasion Malintzin would jump onto the stage, because she knew how to speak Mayan and Nahuatl (the Aztec language), so Cortés spoke in Spanish to Jerónimo de Aguilar who translated it into Mayan to Malintzin and then she translated it into Nahuatl to communicate with Motecuhzoma’s ambassadors. This was the beginning of a very close relationship between Cortés and Malintzin and she would become essential as interpreter because she soon learned Spanish.
Pic 6: Chalchihuecan beach (Click on image to enlarge)
With these meetings, Cortés realized that Motecuhzoma ruled a large, powerful and rich empire based in Central Mexico. From that time on his mind was set on one thing: to reach the heart of the empire and meet Motecuhzoma in person. Cortés also made a large display of his forces and fired the canons, something that had a tremendous impact on the ambassadors; he had now shown the superior combat forces of the newly arrived foreigners to Motecuhzoma.
The next morning, the Spaniards crossed to the mainland and founded their first, however rudimentary, settlement in a sandy area known as Chalchihuecan and named it Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz that would become Spain’s first political centre in Mexico. Hernán Cortés was now Captain General and he ordered his men to start building huts to shelter them from the intense sun and heat. However, there was not much to eat, the environmental conditions were very harsh and the mosquitos impossible to cope with!
Pic 7: Cempoala, Veracruz (Click on image to enlarge)
After the ambassadors from the Aztec empire left Cortés’ camp at Chalchihuecan, other natives who were in the vicinity but did not approach because they were afraid of the Aztecs, finally came to the encampment. The Spaniards noticed that they were different, using other kinds of clothes and ornaments and spoke a different language. However, some of them could speak Nahuatl and so Cortés learned they were Totonacs, inhabitants of Veracruz and under Motecuhzoma’s yoke. They were sent by their leader to invite them to their city: Cempoala.
The Totonacs guided some Spaniards to Cempoala, where Cortés learned from the local cacique that Motecuhzoma was a despotic ruler who demanded higher and higher tributes every year and that the Totonacs were severely punished if they did not comply in time. This was a great opportunity to make new alliances, so Cortés promised them to free them from the Aztecs if they joined him, and so they did. The Spaniards’ army started to increase in numbers...
Pic 8: Ruins of the Villa Rica settlement (Click on image to enlarge)
The rest of Cortés’ men were in charge of finding a better place to anchor the ships and moved the Villa Rica settlement to a new site. When Cortés arrived he started the construction of a more developed settlement with houses made of rock, he designed the streets and planned the construction of a small fortress where he would leave one of his captains in charge.
While at this new settlement, Cortés heard that Diego Velazquez, the governor of Cuba, had been granted a royal decree that authorized him to conquer and populate the regions that were now being discovered by Cortés. In response he assembled his most loyal captains and decided to send ambassadors with great presents to the Emperor in order to gain his trust and validate their deeds. A few days after Cortés’ ambassadors had departed he found out that some of his men wanted to rebel by stealing a ship and returning to Cuba. To set an example to the rest of his men, he punished them severely by hanging two and cutting the toes off another.
Pic 9: Cortés burns his boats (Click on image to enlarge)
Cortés then began preparations for the journey into Central Mexico. He left a strong garrison in their newly founded settlement in Veracruz, and also took a brave decision: to sink their ships to avoid another rebellion attempt to return to Cuba. He argued that the ships were no longer fit to sail and decided to dismantle them and kept all that could be useful: ropes, cannons, wood, even the nails!
Pic 10: Jalapa (Click on image to enlarge)
The Spaniards first returned to Cempoala where they gathered resources for their journey and took advice from the natives as to which route to follow: The cacique of Cempoala recommended taking the eastern road to Jalapa and from there to proceed to Tlaxcala, land of the fiercest enemies of Motecuhzoma. They departed on August 16th 1519 and headed east towards Jalapa and Xico and started the ascent of the Sierra Madre Oriental (Mexico’s eastern mountain range).
Pic 11: Zautla today (Click on image to enlarge)
They continued their journey eastward and passed through a high plateau with arid and cold landscapes in the upper parts of the Sierra. After three days of hunger, extreme cold and heavy rains, the landscape gradually changed to woodlands and finally they reached the town of Zacatula (Zautla). They were very tired, weak and starving and some of the natives in his army that came from tropical lands died of the intense cold. Back in those days, Zacatula was an important, well-resourced settlement and the Spaniards were able to recover their strength. Cortés asked the local cacique, a fat and shaky person named Olíntetl, if he was a vassal of Motecuhzoma, to which he replied: “What? Is there anyone who is not his vassal?”
Pic 12: Near Ixtacamaxtitlán (Click on image to enlarge)
Olíntetl was terrified of the reaction Motecuhzoma would have when he learned that Zacatula received these strangers without his permission, but Cortés told him that he came in the name of a more powerful ruler, to whom even Motecuhzoma would have to submit. At this meeting the Spaniards heard for the first time of the grandeur of the Aztec capital: México-Tenochtitlán, a city located in the middle of a lake with canals, large roads and endless luxuries.
They continued their journey to Tlaxcala, and passed through the lands of Ixtacamaxtitlán where they saw a large wall made of rocks that represented the border with Tlaxcala. Today, nothing of this wallremains and the memory of its builders seems to be lost in history. After inspecting the area, the Spaniards crossed the wall and continued to Tlaxcala; however, they soon found a group of armed men waiting to fight them. Cortés sent some horsemen to attack and the hostile soldiers started to run, but they suddenly turned around and attacked the horsemen, killing two horses: the natives now realized they could defeat them...
Pic 13: The landscape between Ixtacamaxtitlán and Tlaxcala (Click on image to enlarge)
Soon after, more forces from Tlaxcala appeared wearing the war banner of Tlaxcala with a white crane, but their attacks were not coordinated among their captains and they were unable to defeat the Spaniards; after a few battles they realized they could not defeat their enemy and surrendered to Cortés. This new alliance was not only beneficial to Cortés, who gained new forces and resources, but also to the people of Tlaxcala, since they had lived surrounded by allies of the Aztecs and could not access basic products like salt or cotton because these items were not produced in their own lands.
Pic 14: Supposed baptismal font of the Lords of Tlaxcala (Click on image to enlarge)
On September 18th 1519, the Spaniards arrived in Tlaxcala and were welcomed with celebrations and gifts, among which were the daughters of the four rulers from Tlaxcala. Cortés wanted to impose the Christian faith and in the following days a priest baptized the rulers and their daughters. Motecuhzoma was terrified that his enemies from Tlaxcala and the Spaniards would make an alliance and he was constantly sending ambassadors to Tlaxcala under the protection of Cortés.
Pic 15: Popocatépetl and Diego de Ordaz’ coat of arms with the fiery volcano (Click on image to enlarge)
From the lands of Tlaxcala, the Spaniards were impressed by the huge 5,500 meter volcano Popocatépetl (‘the mountain that smokes’) that is still active today. One of his soldiers, Diego de Ordaz, was eager to climb the volcano and take a closer look at it. Since the natives seemed to be terrified by it Cortés thought it would be a good idea if one of his men climbed it and returned successfully as proof of their braveness. The chronicles mention that the natives went as far as a shrine devoted to the gods of the volcano and the Spaniards went on on their own, but when Ordaz climbed the volcano it started to throw out fumes, rocks and fire. They waited an hour after it stopped and then climbed to its mouth and saw the lava inside; they could also see the magnificent city of Tenochtitlán from above and the best routes to access it. The natives were very impressed by this act, and years later Ordaz requested from the Emperor the right to use a coat of arms depicting a volcano.
Pic 16: Cholula today with Popocatépetl behind (Click on image to enlarge)
After spending more than twenty days in Tlaxcala recovering their strength and gathering information on Tenochtitlán and the best routes to get to it, the ambassadors of Motecuhzoma suggested to Cortés that he go to the holy city of Cholula, which was under Aztec control and located near Tlaxcala. The people of Tlaxcala disagreed, arguing that Motecuhzoma was setting a trap for them. However, Cortés resolved to meet the Aztec ruler and on October 11th, he enlisted his forces that now included 100,000 warriors from Tlaxcala, and started their journey to Cholula. As soon as they got close to the city, they were received by priests who walked them into the holy city, where they provided them with comfortable accommodation and plenty of food. The warriors from Tlaxcala were not welcomed and so had to remain outside the city.
Pic 17: The massacre of Cholula, Lienzo de Tlaxcala (Click on image to enlarge)
Something terrible happened in Cholula while the Spaniards were there. The native and Spanish chronicles tell different stories about what happened and that has been an issue of debate since the sixteenth century and we will not go deeper into it. Whatever the reasons, the Spaniards punished Cholula with extreme severity. It is generally accepted that Cortés called the nobles and warriors of Cholula to gather inside the main plaza, where he had previously located some of his men to block the access to the plaza and with a gunfire signal all of the Tlaxcala and Cempoala warriors rushed in and with the Spaniards they slaughtered them all. This terrible act is remembered by history as the massacre of Cholula, and changed the way the natives saw the Spaniards forever.
Pic 18: The ruins at Cholula (Click on image to enlarge)
Cortés remained in Cholula for the following days reorganizing his forces, sending messengers to his men in Veracruz, appointing new leaders for the city, and most importantly he sent Motecuhzoma’s ambassadors back complaining about the latter’s ill treatment of the Spaniards, so now they would march into Tenochtitlán as enemies making as much damage as they possibly could. Motecuhzoma quickly sent back gold presents and much food and cocoa, and confusedly argued that he had not ordered any attack, and insisted that they should not continue to Tenochtitlán, which was a sterile and wasted land with not enough food and accommodation for the Spaniards.
After further council with his captains and the leaders from Tlaxcala and Cempoala, they discussed the best route to take to continue. The Aztecs suggested going south and surrounding the volcanoes while those from Tlaxcala said it was probably a trap. Cortés then decided to take the hardest route by climbing the mountain range formed by the volcanoes Popocatépetl and Iztaccíhuatl, a route that was previously explored by Diego de Ordaz.
Pic 19: A view of Popocatépetl from Amecameca (Click on image to enlarge)
On November 1st. Cortés and his soldiers left Cholula and passed through Huejotzingo, where new ambassadors arrived with gifts and more persuasive words. However, Cortés was determined to see Tenochtitlán himself, so they started to climb the mountain range and spent the night between the two volcanoes, where they suffered from extreme cold. Today, the pass between both volcanoes is called The Pass of Cortés and it was from there that he got the first glimpse of the wonderful city of Tenochtitlán.
The next morning they started their descent towards Amecameca, where they were welcomed by the local cacique who complained about Motecuhzoma’s tyranny. Cortés spent two days in this city listening to the same complaints from ambassadors of the neighboring towns, and received them as allies. He and his men then took the road to Iztapalapa where they were received by a luxurious delegation headed by Cacama, Motecuhzoma’s nephew who was richly dressed and had many servants. His mission was to once and for all convince Cortés to turn back and return to Veracruz, which was of no use because the Spaniards were already on the doorsteps of Tenochtitlán.
Pic 20: Digital reconstruction of Tenochtitlan and its environs (Click on image to enlarge)
The Spaniards reached the Iztapalapa road that led to Tenochtitlán on the morning of November 8th 1519. Cortés was leading the group with some of his captains on horses and Malintzin at his side. They were followed by the footsoldiers, then came the large contingent of allied native soldiers and the women that helped them, and finally by natives pulling the cannons. On this road, just before reaching the city, in the small islet of Xolo, Motecuhzoma and Cortés met. The emperor of the Aztecs was wearing a large plumed crown, rich clothes and golden sandals, while his companions were bare footed but also lavishly dressed. The Aztecs kneeled and put their hand on the ground and then to their lips in a saluting gesture; Cortés approached them and tried to hug Motecuhzoma, but he was stopped by one of the Aztec nobles. No one was allowed to touch the emperor of Tenochtitlán.
The story of the journey of the Conquistadors to Central Mexico is fascinating; the facts narrated by various witnesses reveal a new and exotic world that kept the Spaniards in awe with every step. From here on their adventure continues from scouring the city and wondering at the marvelous palaces, to the rushed escape from the city, then laying siege to it and finally by destroying it to conquer it, but that is another story...
All images kindly supplied by Xavier López Medellín; pic no. 20 original by and copyright Tomás Filsinger.
This article was uploaded to the Mexicolore website on Jan 23rd 2012
Q. Guess which was, according to Spanish historian Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés, one of the first words in Mayan languages learnt by the Spanish conquistadors?
A. tak’in - ‘gold’! Talk about takin a liberty...
| i don't know |
Suzanne Packer who plays 'Tess Bateman' in 'Casualty' is the sister of which now retired, World Champion athlete? | Colin Jackson and his sister, Suzanne | The Sunday Times
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Colin Jackson and his sister, Suzanne
Colin Jackson CBE, 38, set the world record for the 110-metre hurdles in 1993 and won 44 consecutive hurdles victories. He retired from athletics in 2003 and is now a motivational speaker. He was runner-up in Strictly Come Dancing in 2005 and takes part in its end-of-year special on Christmas Day. He traced his family roots in a recent Who Do You Think You Are?, and in January he presents Colins Wales on ITV Wales. He lives alone in Cardiff. His sister, Suzanne Packer, 43, is an actress who plays the role of Tess Bateman in Casualty. She is divorced from the American actor Jesse Newman and lives in Cardiff with their son, Paris, 3
Published: 17 December 2006
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SUZANNE: The day Colin was born, I went upstairs with my father and grandfather to see Mum, who was on the bed holding this pinky, crinkly thing. I have flashes of memory of Colin dressed up to go to Sunday school, but mostly I remember him as an incredibly active child. He was never still.
Being nearly five years older, I was responsible for Colin — something I took on quite naturally. Mum and Dad both worked, so in the holidays we had to amuse ourselves.
We only went away once, to Brixham in Devon — our parents couldn’t afford holidays. But the housing estate where we lived was surrounded by greenery and woods. Colin and I would walk for miles, exploring and having adventures. We were never bored.
We used to play badminton. There was no net, just an imaginary line, and I’d make certain Colin was on the side where
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| Colin Jackson |
Which period in the Mesozoic era came between the Triassic and the Cretaceous? | Jackson dancing to a different tune - Telegraph
Jackson dancing to a different tune
By Robert Philip
12:01AM GMT 03 Mar 2006
It says much about our 'reality TV', celebrity-obsessed society that Colin Jackson is better known for his cha-cha-cha than for being one of our greatest athletes.
Described as the "best hurdler in history" by his fierce rival, Mark McKoy of Canada, Jackson won three outdoor and indoor world championships, seven European titles and two Commonwealth Games gold medals. His 110-metres hurdles world record of 12.91sec, set in 1993, may have been equalled by China's Liu Xiang in 2002, but his indoor 60m mark of 7.30 has stood unchallenged for 12 years. For all those achievements he earned the nation's admiration and a CBE, but it was only when he donned white tie and tails or ruffled silk shirt and skin-tight flares in Strictly Come Dancing that he won our hearts.
"And I don't mind that one bit," chuckles Jackson, who if chuckling ever became an Olympic sport would be a serial gold medallist.
"No one needs to tell me how lucky I am to have fallen into the position whereby you have 10 million watching you live on a Saturday night, with hundreds of thousands of people sending text messages to help you to stay in a dance competition."
Jackson is far more than a pair of gyrating hips, however. He brought a refreshing sense of fun yet revealing insight to the BBC's coverage of the Turin Winter Olympics and will be awarded another starring role by his new employers at the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne later this month. Given that his chosen sport of athletics now boasts so many great stages - the Olympics, World and European Championships, the Grand Prix circuit - have the Commonwealth Games not lost their lustre since he won his first gold medal in Auckland 16 years ago?
"Not at all. Just as tennis and golf have their four 'major' championships, so the Commonwealth Games are still part of track and field's grand slam. There aren't many British athletes who've managed to win every single title available to them - I didn't for one. So for the top athletes who will prepare for Melbourne, just as they would an Olympics, it's very, very important. And, of course, what made it so exciting for me is that the Commonwealth Games were one of the few occasions on which I represented Wales rather than Team GB.
"You do become separated - I wouldn't say segregated - from the rest of the British team and it's a time for your whole nation to get behind you. The English, Scots and Northern Irish athletes will feel exactly the same. Because I'm so proud to be Welsh, it was always a tremendous thrill to pull on that red vest and stand on the podium as the strains of Land of my Fathers filled the stadium. Look at me, I'm grinning just thinking about it - that's a really special experience."
The single missing piece of Jackson's personal grand slam is the Olympic title; a silver medallist at Seoul in 1988, injury and illness scuppered his ambitions in three subsequent Games' appearances in Barcelona, Atlanta and Sydney. Does he therefore look back on his previous existence as a hurdler with a sense of lingering regret?
"Obviously, I'd loved to have an Olympic gold in my possession, especially when I won everything else in between. At the time, that grand slam of titles was the be all and end all. I would have given anything to join that illustrious club of British Olympic champions, but where I am in my life now, I have to say it doesn't really make that much of a difference."
From the age of 14 until his retirement 22 years later in 2003, Jackson devoted mind and body to the Olympic title that would forever be denied him, training harder, dieting more strenuously (it is rumoured that if thirsty he would suck a raw carrot rather than drink water to avoid feeling bloated) and generally depriving himself of the pleasures of life enjoyed by most young men.
Was it worth the sacrifice or does he now feel he missed out? "No, I don't think I did miss out. As a teenager and young adult
you want to do things you enjoy and it so happened I enjoyed athletics, so as far as I'm concerned I had the luxury of spending those years doing something I really, really loved. I not only performed at the highest level, I got very well paid for it as well. Some teenagers prefer listening to music and staying out all hours of the night and if that's what they enjoy, then that's fantastic. But what I enjoyed was training and socialising with people who shared the same desires and hopes and dreams. I had a total commitment and undying passion for running 24/7, which is why I now look back and think I was mental.
"But the spin-offs were unbelievable, and not just in financial terms. Most teenagers probably travel no further than Ibiza and, again, if that's their scene then good luck to them. But as an athlete I got to go to places
I'd never dreamed of visiting when I was an apprentice electrician - and all at someone else's expense. I competed in Slovenia, Croatia, Yugoslavia, East Germany and Russia, long before the map of Europe changed and they became popular tourist destinations. And that's a great education because it gave me a little insight into other cultures and a flavour of what life was like beyond these shores. Sport gave me so many opportunities, not all of which I probably fully appreciated at the time."
Now, having swapped running spikes for television smile, has Jackson renounced the existence of the devout ascetic, rejecting his previously monastic diet to devour chip butties and tankards of frothing ale? "No, and I think that natural fitness built up over the years was one of the key elements why I was able to cope with the six-hours-a-day training I had to put in for Strictly Come
Dancing. I never acquired a taste for alcohol so, though I'm not as fit as I was, I still look after myself."
Although his sister, Suzanne Packer, is a well known face on our screens - she plays Tess Bateman in Casualty - Jackson was initially reluctant to follow his sibling into television when the BBC came a'wooing.
"I'm a realist, so I knew the days when I was earning £25,000 a race weren't going to last forever - at the height of my athletics career I was living in a fantasyland. When that door closes you sit back and think, 'OK, what happens now?'. I hoped another door would open but when the BBC first approached I said no. Why? I think I just wanted a breather, to get out of the public eye for a while.
" 'Well, give it a try, you might like it' was their reply and they were right, I absolutely love it. It's exciting, you're constantly being challenged, which is great, and I've had to reinvent myself, getting the audience to believe in Colin Jackson the so-called presenter and not the athlete any more. And that's quite difficult, because I'm just me and I can't try to be what I'm not. I'll never be a serious journalist telling you about a drugs scandal, so what I try to do is bring out the different personalities of the various athletes and, hopefully, help the audience feel part of my learning curve.
"Even as an athlete, I'd like to think I was a bit of an entertainer and sport - any sport - is an entertainment. Football, cricket, tennis or whatever crosses boundaries, not only geographical but cultural and linguistic. Everyone understands sport, because at its most simple, everyone knows you're the winner if you cross the line first. But, to me, it's deadly important that people like you as much off the track as they do on it."
Jackson cheerfully admits that he is doubly blessed by being given a second high-profile and glamorous career in which he not only excels but which provides the same buzz and adrenalin rush of awaiting the starter's pistol. But what is the best thing about television compared to athletics? "When I was flying home from the Winter Olympics, where I had been out in the fresh air working as a broadcaster and eating wonderful Italian food, it suddenly dawned on me that with the Commonwealth Games just around the corner, if I was still competing I'd be in the gym and starving right now. Instead of which I have a few commitments to fulfil, then I'm off skiing for five days before heading for the sunshine of Melbourne.
"Going to a major championship as an athlete is entirely different because the pressure is incredible. It's judgment time when the whole world will be able to see how hard you've worked. That's when you turn into a peacock and want to show off your feathers. But the more you achieve, then the more feathers you've got to display until you think, 'I can't give you any bloody more, my tail is as wide as it can possibly get'. What excites you when you're young becomes tiresome as you grow older, especially when you spot this other peacock away in the distance and as he comes closer and closer you see he has a little bit more tail feathers than you."
But never mind the ancient sport of chuckling, if ballroom dancing succeeds in becoming a member of the Olympic family, can we expect to see Colin Jackson strutting his stuff for the paso doble gold medal?
"Eh, no. It will be a tool I'll always have but, to be honest, thank God there have been no family weddings since I finished that show or I'd be in big trouble. Every gran and auntie would be grabbing me demanding, 'Come on, Colin, let's be having a little bit of a jig'. That's been the saving grace and, hopefully, there will be no weddings between now and the next series. They now regard me as the Fred Astaire of the Jackson family."
And so, as the song goes: I won't dance, don't ask me, I won't dance, don't ask me, I won't dance, madame, with you, My heart won't let my feet do things that they should do. . .
| i don't know |
Which nineteenth century conflict is the background to the novel 'Cold Mountain' by Charles Frazier? | Cold Mountain
From Clio's Vault, April 2016
Cold Mountain : An American Odyssey
by Deborah Cole
I am sometimes asked the way to the Cold Mountain.
There is no path that goes all the way.
Even in summer the ice never melts;
Far into the morning the mists gather thick.
How, you may ask, did I manage to get here?
My heart is not like your heart.
If only your heart were like mine
You too would be living where I live now.
Translated by Arthur Waley
This poet, his poem, and even his mountain retreat refer to the term 'Cold Mountain.' For instance, Han-shan's name translates as "The Master of Cold Mountain." In addition, the poet retired to a place called Cold Mountain, located in the T'ien-t'ai mountain range, which extends along the coast of Chekiang Province, south of the Bay of Hangchow. Scholars believe he lived during the late eighth and early ninth centuries.
According to William Theodore de Bary, Han-shan wrote poems like the one quoted above during the "golden age of Chinese poetry", and during the "rise of Ch'an (Zen) Buddhism in the T'ang dynasty." Arthur Waley wrote, in the introduction to his translated poems: "In his poems the Cold Mountain is often the name of a state of mind rather than a locality. It is on this conception, as well as on that of the 'hidden treasure,' the Buddha who is to be sought not somewhere outside us, but 'at home' in the heart, that the mysticism of the poems is based." Like Han-shan's poems, the film Cold Mountain consists of layers of meaning, which at first are concealed from the viewer. For example, Cold Mountain refers to the town, its people, and the events that take place there. From a spiritual point of view, Cold Mountain is a state of mind, especially for the Jude Law's character, Inman, who is able to cope with the horrors of war by remembering his life in his hometown of Cold Mountain prior to the war, and remembering his sweetheart, Ada, who is waiting there for his return. The poem also says, "There is no path that goes all the way." This is true for Inman because the war prevents him from physically returning. However, he can still travel there in his mind. Understanding this 'state of mind' is important to understanding the film's subtle nuances.
Anthony Minghella, director and screenplay writer, based Cold Mountain roughly on Charles Frazier's novel of the same title, which won the National Book Award. The film, released by Miramax Films in 2003, stars Nicole Kidman, Renee Zellweger, and Jude Law. Nicole Kidman portrays Ada Monroe, a Southern belle from Charleston who moves to the town of Cold Mountain, North Carolina, with her preacher father, played by Donald Sutherland. Renée Zellweger depicts Ruby Thewes, a young mountain girl who helps Ada become self-reliant after the death of her father. Other notable actors include Brendan Gleeson (Stobrod Thewes, Ruby's father), Natalie Portman (Sara), and Kathy Baker (Sally Swanger).
Following the success of the book, The Cold Mountain, the film version, won eight Golden Globe Awards® nominations. Those nominations were in the Drama category for Best Motion Picture, Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role (Nicole Kidman), Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role (Jude Law), Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role (Renée Zellweger), Best Director and Best Screenplay (Anthony Minghella), Best Original Score (Gabriel Yared), and Best Original Song (Music and Lyrics by Sting). Renée Zellweger was the only winner. The film also won seven Academy Awards® nominations.
The actors receiving those nominations were Jude Law (Actor in a Leading Role), Renée Zellweger (Actress in a Supporting Role), John Seale (Cinematography), Walter Murch (Film Editing), Gabriel Yared (Music - Original Score), "Scarlet Tide," Music and Lyrics by T Bone Burnett and Elvis Costello (Music - Original Song), and "You Will Be My Ain True Love," Music and Lyrics by Sting (Music - Original Song). Again, Renée Zellweger was the only winner.
Reflecting the multiple layers of Zen poetry, the film has several storylines, which interweave throughout the film. The main plot is the account of two people, W. P. Inman, a Confederate soldier, and his sweetheart, Ada Monroe. They scarcely become acquainted before Inman leaves to fight, but they write to each other while separated. After the infamous Battle of the Crater, Inman becomes disgusted with the war, and ashamed of his part in it. He is wounded critically in a skirmish following the battle and recuperates in a military hospital for many months. Once he is well enough to travel, Inman deserts the army and makes his way home to Cold Mountain. During his travels, Inman encounters both friends and foes. He must endure the trials he faces in these confrontations in order to return home.
Meanwhile, a second storyline emerges when Ada's father dies and his death leaves her alone when all their slaves leave the farm.
Ada is incapable of taking care of herself. Even though she has been "educated beyond the point considered wise for females," she does not know how to survive off the land. Her salvation is Ruby Thewes, a mountain girl with little formal education, who teaches Ada how to stay alive by using resources found on the farm. In exchange, Ada teaches Ruby the joy of reading for pleasure's sake. Each of the major characters in the film makes a life-changing journey in a physical or emotional sense. On the surface, Cold Mountain appears to be a film about the American Civil War but in actuality, it is about a soldier returning from war, the aftermath of the war, and the effects of the war on society in general.
At first, Cold Mountain appears to be difficult to review from a historical perspective because the Battle of the Crater is the only Civil War battle scene depicted. However, upon closer inspection, viewers can also analyze the film from a historical viewpoint by examining settings, costumes, and music. In addition, the audience can study Cold Mountain by investigating the historical accuracy of the story and its characters. Lastly, spectators can scrutinize the film from a historical literary angle.
The opening scenes of Cold Mountain reflect the actions of both Confederate and Union soldiers prior to the Battle of the Crater in July 1864 during the waning days of the war, the battle itself, and its aftermath.
The movie shows "Northern soldiers laying explosives under Confederate defenses." The film jumps to the Confederate side showing men stripping the clothes off the bodies of dead soldiers before placing them in coffins. A young boy distributes the clothes. Next, the audience sees Inman for the first time. As Inman and his best friend, watch the young boy pass out the clothes, they recognize him as being the boy of a neighbor from Cold Mountain. They cannot believe that "Ma Oakley's boy" is there and think he is not old enough to fight. The movie jumps back to the Northern soldiers as they finish placing the explosives and light the fuse. Viewers see hundreds of Northern soldiers face down waiting for the detonation. The explosion creates a massive hole, which traps the advancing Federal soldiers. The Confederate soldiers start shooting the Union soldiers caught in the crater. One Confederate soldier says, "It's a turkey shoot." At this point, movie watchers glimpse Inman's disgust, anger, and sadness with the war.
Cold Mountain authentically illustrates the Battle of the Crater. On July 30 at 4:45 pm, Union troops detonated a mine located under Confederate lines. The explosion killed 300 Confederate soldiers and created a crater 170 feet long, 60 feet wide, and 30 feet deep. The poorly-led Union troops rushed into the hole instead of going around it. As the crater became packed, Confederate soldiers began firing at the trapped Federals. This Civil War battle, which lasted ten hours, killed nearly 6,000 men.
Production designer Dante Ferretti, six-time Academy Award nominee, contributes significantly to the historical accuracy of Cold Mountain. The movie was filmed on location in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Romania. Film executives chose Romania because it most represented 19th century America.
More importantly, the landscape has not been disfigured. Farmers still harvest crops by hand and use carts for transportation. In addition, the Carpathian Mountains resemble the North Carolina landscape. Ferretti researched towns in the Blue Ridge and Smoky Mountains and then, constructed buildings based on that information using logs, as they would have in the 19th century. Ferretti built the crater outside of Bucharest. They found that the original battlefield landscape had changed drastically since the Civil War. It had actually once been a golf course.
The costumes also reflect Cold Mountain 's historical authenticity. Ann Roth, one of the most sought-after costume designers in the entertainment industry, created a realistic 19th century wardrobe for the film. The buttons and buckles of costumes reflected her attention to detail. Roth also consulted advisors who specialized in Civil War uniforms and equipage. In addition, Inman carries an 1860 Beauregard LeMat, a favored weapon of Confederate cavalry troops. The gun featured awesome firepower with its nine .41 caliber bullets and one 20 gauge single barrel that fired a slug or buckshot . This was the type of pistol carried by Confederate General J.E.B. Stuart.
Music is an integral part of Cold Mountain.
Background music interweaves the dialogue throughout the film. Known for his work on the movie soundtrack for O Brother, Where Art Thou?, T-Bone Burnett, executive music producer for the film, gathers artists from folk and blue grass to assemble an awe-inspiring soundtrack. Jack White of the White Stripes, who plays the character of Georgia, performs traditional folk music from the period. "Wayfaring Stranger" and "Great High Mountain" are among the songs that he sings. Sacred Harp singing is another type of music used in the film. Singers sit facing inward in a hollow square. Each person can lead the singers by standing in the center, selecting a song, and beating time with their hand. No instruments accompany the singers. Sacred Harp singing (also known as fasola singing or shape note singing) is a community social event. The Sacred Harp is a songbook containing psalm tunes, odes and anthems from late 18th century and early 19th century American composers, and folk songs and revival hymns from the beginning of the 19th century until the Civil War. B. F. White and E. J. King published the first Sacred Harp songbook in 1844. The Sacred Harp Singers from the Liberty Church in Alabama provide the shape note singing in the movie. Two songs they sing are "I'm Going Home" and "Idumea." As a side note, Nicole Kidman did her own piano playing.
Anthony Minghella based his screenplay of the movie firmly on the novel by Charles Frazier. Frazier's inspiration for the book was the stories told to him by his father about his great-great-uncle, W. P. Inman, who like the character in the movie, walked away from the Civil War back to the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. Although there is a mountain in North Carolina called Cold Mountain, there is no town by the same name. Cold Mountain is located in the Shining Rock Wilderness, part of the Pisgah National Forest.
Frazier also utilizes journals and letters of women to develop his female characters. These women are not the stereotypical women of the 19th century about which most people think. They are intelligent, headstrong, and opinionated women. Like Ada's character in the movie, these women, over the course of the Civil War, grow stronger and more confident. Another area the film depicts accurately comes in the form of a book, which Inman carries throughout his travels. Ada gives him the book, written by William Bartram, before he leaves to fight. An early American nature writer, Bartram, who traveled throughout Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas, wrote about the beautiful landscape he encountered. Therefore, a soldier from this area very well could have carried with him a Bartram book.
The movie resembles Homer's Odyssey in that both are epic stories, but more importantly the characters make the same types of journeys and have similar encounters. Wearied by war like Odysseus, Inman searches for his Penelope (Ada) who lives at the base of "Cold Mountain," (Ithaca). Similarly, in his travels home, Inman faces obstacles (sirens, strange forest people), which he must overcome to get back to his sweetheart. Both men also return home to find a situation more dangerous than they have encountered either in the war or during their voyage home. Ada faces her own dilemmas. Like Penelope, she must fend off the advances of an unwanted suitor. Additionally, upon Inman's return home, Ada does not recognize him at first.
Preview audiences criticized Cold Mountain for not delving deeply enough into the historical context of the war. However, not only are the characters splendidly developed, the landscape portrays the 19th century beautifully, and the film depicts how the Civil War changed the life of ordinary citizens. Besides the characters and setting, the costumes and story also supply a historical element, which does justice to the era. Viewers must realize that history encompasses not only the large picture, such as the Civil War, but also details, people, places, and things.
Suggestions for further reading:
Charles Frazier, Cold Mountain; John Ele, The Winter People; Drew Gilpin Faust, Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War; Homer, The Odyssey; Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward Angel; C. Vann Woodward, ed., Mary Chesnut's Civil War; John Jakes, Savannah, or A Gift for Mr. Lincoln; Michael Shaara, Killer Angels; Jeff and Michael Shaara, Gods & Generals: A Novel of the Civil War; Jeff Shaara, Last Full Measure.
| American Civil War |
The US state of Pennsylvania has a coastline on which of the Great Lakes? | Cold Mountain
From Clio's Vault, April 2016
Cold Mountain : An American Odyssey
by Deborah Cole
I am sometimes asked the way to the Cold Mountain.
There is no path that goes all the way.
Even in summer the ice never melts;
Far into the morning the mists gather thick.
How, you may ask, did I manage to get here?
My heart is not like your heart.
If only your heart were like mine
You too would be living where I live now.
Translated by Arthur Waley
This poet, his poem, and even his mountain retreat refer to the term 'Cold Mountain.' For instance, Han-shan's name translates as "The Master of Cold Mountain." In addition, the poet retired to a place called Cold Mountain, located in the T'ien-t'ai mountain range, which extends along the coast of Chekiang Province, south of the Bay of Hangchow. Scholars believe he lived during the late eighth and early ninth centuries.
According to William Theodore de Bary, Han-shan wrote poems like the one quoted above during the "golden age of Chinese poetry", and during the "rise of Ch'an (Zen) Buddhism in the T'ang dynasty." Arthur Waley wrote, in the introduction to his translated poems: "In his poems the Cold Mountain is often the name of a state of mind rather than a locality. It is on this conception, as well as on that of the 'hidden treasure,' the Buddha who is to be sought not somewhere outside us, but 'at home' in the heart, that the mysticism of the poems is based." Like Han-shan's poems, the film Cold Mountain consists of layers of meaning, which at first are concealed from the viewer. For example, Cold Mountain refers to the town, its people, and the events that take place there. From a spiritual point of view, Cold Mountain is a state of mind, especially for the Jude Law's character, Inman, who is able to cope with the horrors of war by remembering his life in his hometown of Cold Mountain prior to the war, and remembering his sweetheart, Ada, who is waiting there for his return. The poem also says, "There is no path that goes all the way." This is true for Inman because the war prevents him from physically returning. However, he can still travel there in his mind. Understanding this 'state of mind' is important to understanding the film's subtle nuances.
Anthony Minghella, director and screenplay writer, based Cold Mountain roughly on Charles Frazier's novel of the same title, which won the National Book Award. The film, released by Miramax Films in 2003, stars Nicole Kidman, Renee Zellweger, and Jude Law. Nicole Kidman portrays Ada Monroe, a Southern belle from Charleston who moves to the town of Cold Mountain, North Carolina, with her preacher father, played by Donald Sutherland. Renée Zellweger depicts Ruby Thewes, a young mountain girl who helps Ada become self-reliant after the death of her father. Other notable actors include Brendan Gleeson (Stobrod Thewes, Ruby's father), Natalie Portman (Sara), and Kathy Baker (Sally Swanger).
Following the success of the book, The Cold Mountain, the film version, won eight Golden Globe Awards® nominations. Those nominations were in the Drama category for Best Motion Picture, Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role (Nicole Kidman), Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role (Jude Law), Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role (Renée Zellweger), Best Director and Best Screenplay (Anthony Minghella), Best Original Score (Gabriel Yared), and Best Original Song (Music and Lyrics by Sting). Renée Zellweger was the only winner. The film also won seven Academy Awards® nominations.
The actors receiving those nominations were Jude Law (Actor in a Leading Role), Renée Zellweger (Actress in a Supporting Role), John Seale (Cinematography), Walter Murch (Film Editing), Gabriel Yared (Music - Original Score), "Scarlet Tide," Music and Lyrics by T Bone Burnett and Elvis Costello (Music - Original Song), and "You Will Be My Ain True Love," Music and Lyrics by Sting (Music - Original Song). Again, Renée Zellweger was the only winner.
Reflecting the multiple layers of Zen poetry, the film has several storylines, which interweave throughout the film. The main plot is the account of two people, W. P. Inman, a Confederate soldier, and his sweetheart, Ada Monroe. They scarcely become acquainted before Inman leaves to fight, but they write to each other while separated. After the infamous Battle of the Crater, Inman becomes disgusted with the war, and ashamed of his part in it. He is wounded critically in a skirmish following the battle and recuperates in a military hospital for many months. Once he is well enough to travel, Inman deserts the army and makes his way home to Cold Mountain. During his travels, Inman encounters both friends and foes. He must endure the trials he faces in these confrontations in order to return home.
Meanwhile, a second storyline emerges when Ada's father dies and his death leaves her alone when all their slaves leave the farm.
Ada is incapable of taking care of herself. Even though she has been "educated beyond the point considered wise for females," she does not know how to survive off the land. Her salvation is Ruby Thewes, a mountain girl with little formal education, who teaches Ada how to stay alive by using resources found on the farm. In exchange, Ada teaches Ruby the joy of reading for pleasure's sake. Each of the major characters in the film makes a life-changing journey in a physical or emotional sense. On the surface, Cold Mountain appears to be a film about the American Civil War but in actuality, it is about a soldier returning from war, the aftermath of the war, and the effects of the war on society in general.
At first, Cold Mountain appears to be difficult to review from a historical perspective because the Battle of the Crater is the only Civil War battle scene depicted. However, upon closer inspection, viewers can also analyze the film from a historical viewpoint by examining settings, costumes, and music. In addition, the audience can study Cold Mountain by investigating the historical accuracy of the story and its characters. Lastly, spectators can scrutinize the film from a historical literary angle.
The opening scenes of Cold Mountain reflect the actions of both Confederate and Union soldiers prior to the Battle of the Crater in July 1864 during the waning days of the war, the battle itself, and its aftermath.
The movie shows "Northern soldiers laying explosives under Confederate defenses." The film jumps to the Confederate side showing men stripping the clothes off the bodies of dead soldiers before placing them in coffins. A young boy distributes the clothes. Next, the audience sees Inman for the first time. As Inman and his best friend, watch the young boy pass out the clothes, they recognize him as being the boy of a neighbor from Cold Mountain. They cannot believe that "Ma Oakley's boy" is there and think he is not old enough to fight. The movie jumps back to the Northern soldiers as they finish placing the explosives and light the fuse. Viewers see hundreds of Northern soldiers face down waiting for the detonation. The explosion creates a massive hole, which traps the advancing Federal soldiers. The Confederate soldiers start shooting the Union soldiers caught in the crater. One Confederate soldier says, "It's a turkey shoot." At this point, movie watchers glimpse Inman's disgust, anger, and sadness with the war.
Cold Mountain authentically illustrates the Battle of the Crater. On July 30 at 4:45 pm, Union troops detonated a mine located under Confederate lines. The explosion killed 300 Confederate soldiers and created a crater 170 feet long, 60 feet wide, and 30 feet deep. The poorly-led Union troops rushed into the hole instead of going around it. As the crater became packed, Confederate soldiers began firing at the trapped Federals. This Civil War battle, which lasted ten hours, killed nearly 6,000 men.
Production designer Dante Ferretti, six-time Academy Award nominee, contributes significantly to the historical accuracy of Cold Mountain. The movie was filmed on location in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Romania. Film executives chose Romania because it most represented 19th century America.
More importantly, the landscape has not been disfigured. Farmers still harvest crops by hand and use carts for transportation. In addition, the Carpathian Mountains resemble the North Carolina landscape. Ferretti researched towns in the Blue Ridge and Smoky Mountains and then, constructed buildings based on that information using logs, as they would have in the 19th century. Ferretti built the crater outside of Bucharest. They found that the original battlefield landscape had changed drastically since the Civil War. It had actually once been a golf course.
The costumes also reflect Cold Mountain 's historical authenticity. Ann Roth, one of the most sought-after costume designers in the entertainment industry, created a realistic 19th century wardrobe for the film. The buttons and buckles of costumes reflected her attention to detail. Roth also consulted advisors who specialized in Civil War uniforms and equipage. In addition, Inman carries an 1860 Beauregard LeMat, a favored weapon of Confederate cavalry troops. The gun featured awesome firepower with its nine .41 caliber bullets and one 20 gauge single barrel that fired a slug or buckshot . This was the type of pistol carried by Confederate General J.E.B. Stuart.
Music is an integral part of Cold Mountain.
Background music interweaves the dialogue throughout the film. Known for his work on the movie soundtrack for O Brother, Where Art Thou?, T-Bone Burnett, executive music producer for the film, gathers artists from folk and blue grass to assemble an awe-inspiring soundtrack. Jack White of the White Stripes, who plays the character of Georgia, performs traditional folk music from the period. "Wayfaring Stranger" and "Great High Mountain" are among the songs that he sings. Sacred Harp singing is another type of music used in the film. Singers sit facing inward in a hollow square. Each person can lead the singers by standing in the center, selecting a song, and beating time with their hand. No instruments accompany the singers. Sacred Harp singing (also known as fasola singing or shape note singing) is a community social event. The Sacred Harp is a songbook containing psalm tunes, odes and anthems from late 18th century and early 19th century American composers, and folk songs and revival hymns from the beginning of the 19th century until the Civil War. B. F. White and E. J. King published the first Sacred Harp songbook in 1844. The Sacred Harp Singers from the Liberty Church in Alabama provide the shape note singing in the movie. Two songs they sing are "I'm Going Home" and "Idumea." As a side note, Nicole Kidman did her own piano playing.
Anthony Minghella based his screenplay of the movie firmly on the novel by Charles Frazier. Frazier's inspiration for the book was the stories told to him by his father about his great-great-uncle, W. P. Inman, who like the character in the movie, walked away from the Civil War back to the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. Although there is a mountain in North Carolina called Cold Mountain, there is no town by the same name. Cold Mountain is located in the Shining Rock Wilderness, part of the Pisgah National Forest.
Frazier also utilizes journals and letters of women to develop his female characters. These women are not the stereotypical women of the 19th century about which most people think. They are intelligent, headstrong, and opinionated women. Like Ada's character in the movie, these women, over the course of the Civil War, grow stronger and more confident. Another area the film depicts accurately comes in the form of a book, which Inman carries throughout his travels. Ada gives him the book, written by William Bartram, before he leaves to fight. An early American nature writer, Bartram, who traveled throughout Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas, wrote about the beautiful landscape he encountered. Therefore, a soldier from this area very well could have carried with him a Bartram book.
The movie resembles Homer's Odyssey in that both are epic stories, but more importantly the characters make the same types of journeys and have similar encounters. Wearied by war like Odysseus, Inman searches for his Penelope (Ada) who lives at the base of "Cold Mountain," (Ithaca). Similarly, in his travels home, Inman faces obstacles (sirens, strange forest people), which he must overcome to get back to his sweetheart. Both men also return home to find a situation more dangerous than they have encountered either in the war or during their voyage home. Ada faces her own dilemmas. Like Penelope, she must fend off the advances of an unwanted suitor. Additionally, upon Inman's return home, Ada does not recognize him at first.
Preview audiences criticized Cold Mountain for not delving deeply enough into the historical context of the war. However, not only are the characters splendidly developed, the landscape portrays the 19th century beautifully, and the film depicts how the Civil War changed the life of ordinary citizens. Besides the characters and setting, the costumes and story also supply a historical element, which does justice to the era. Viewers must realize that history encompasses not only the large picture, such as the Civil War, but also details, people, places, and things.
Suggestions for further reading:
Charles Frazier, Cold Mountain; John Ele, The Winter People; Drew Gilpin Faust, Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War; Homer, The Odyssey; Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward Angel; C. Vann Woodward, ed., Mary Chesnut's Civil War; John Jakes, Savannah, or A Gift for Mr. Lincoln; Michael Shaara, Killer Angels; Jeff and Michael Shaara, Gods & Generals: A Novel of the Civil War; Jeff Shaara, Last Full Measure.
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"Give the two words that complete the line of the poem 'Night Mail' by W. H. Auden. ""This is the Night Mail crossing the border. Bringing the cheque and the ..... ..... "".?" | Night Mail Reviews & Ratings - IMDb
IMDb
6 out of 7 people found the following review useful:
One of the most important documentaries to ever come out of Britain
from United Kingdom
23 August 2011
From 1933, the GPO (General Post Office) Film Unit produced many documentaries, inspired by the likes of Nanook of the North, to promote their service. The films had many talented British film-makers working for them, including the likes of Basil Wright and Alberto Cavalcanti (both on the production team here), and have recently been released in three DVD collector's editions by the British Film Institute. As well as producing some damn fine films, they are key works in understanding the mentality and living conditions of a Britain long gone, when we took pride in our work. They are both uplifting in their detail and wholly depressing given the state of Britain today. I'm only 27 and feel this way, so God knows what the old folk must think.
Night Mail follows the midnight postal train from London to Scotland, looking at various things such as the sorting room, the loading of the train, and the inspired way of collecting mail from various places by catching the bags at high speeds in a retracting net. The last ten minutes features a now famous poem by W.H. Auden, read to the music of Benjamin Britten, that is read rhythmically to the sounds of the train. Starting slow, it gradually picks up pace as the train gets faster, and ends at a breathless pace.
Finishing at around the 30 minute mark, it leaves a great impression regardless of its slight running time. As mentioned before, it manages to capture the spirit of old Britain, and of a time when our public services were actually efficient. Now, the Post Office seems to lose more mail than it delivers, and if you're lucky to catch a train that arrives on time, you have the pleasure in sitting near some gormless scumbag listening to his s**t dance music out loud, or some lazy fat single mother who won't deal with their screaming baby. But anyway, the quality of the film-making is often overwhelming for a documentary short, using interesting camera angles, lovely cinematography, and informative narration. I was surprised to see that the average user rating for this on IMDb is 6.8, considering this is one of the best, and most important documentaries to come out Britain. Ever.
www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com
from Charlottesville, VA
4 January 2000
Anyone interested in Auden's poetry will find this film well worth seeing. Benjamin Britten, with whom Auden was romantically involved at the time, wrote the music. In order to sync words and music, much of Auden's original text had to be excised.
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7 out of 9 people found the following review useful:
A unique glimpse of postal services in 1936
from London, England
27 February 2009
Made in 1936 (in black and white of course) NIGHTMAIL has become an icon of the British documentary movement. The budget was only £2,000 and the film was made as a promotional film for the Post Office services. The GPO film unit deserves a posthumous Oscar.
The quality of directing, lighting and camera work in this documentary beats that of many of today's films and brings an almost Hitchcockian atmosphere and tension to the screen.
This is the story of the Travelling Post office from Euston station in London to Glasgow in Scotland, in the days when the railways were efficient, frequent and run by proud workers who wore waistcoats, ties and hats and spoke politely to one another like the team that they were. It is surprising how old the men all seem now, in these days of youth culture, gentle character-full faces bearing no guile, tired and lined but proud and honest. The journey begins with the great spoutings of steam and turning of oiled wheels and the sound of banging doors, cries and whistles that emanate from all mainline stations and follows the trains from station to station throughout the night as they pick up mail along the way. A weird and wonderful Heath-Robinson device had been invented whereby bundles of post could be hurled onto a moving train as it passed through the station, propelled from a rope net on a pulley with such precise timing that it would land with a forceful thud onto the moving train. Long before emails and mobile phones had been dreamt of the only means of co-ordinating the system and ensuring safe delivery was the telephone, and this was used to perfect effect as the arrival of the Night Mail train would be phoned through from one station to the next down the line, accurate to the last minute, this being essential for the bundle to be aimed and "fired" at the right moment by those on the look-out. Rushing through sleeping towns and landscapes, main stations and rural ones, the efficiency of the Travelling Post Office and the men who worked on it throughout the night to get the post to its destination is awe inspiring. There is nothing mundane about it it almost has a spiritual quality about it not dissimilar to the night-life photographs of Brassai.
The ultimate section of the film is positively inspired, when the score by Benjamin Britten is combined with the words of W. H. Auden in time to the sounds and rhythms of the train, making one want nothing more than to be on that train, to be part of the workforce, to be part of the team that works for the Night Mail that delivers the post to letterboxes all across England. It evokes the England of John Betjeman and of Alan Bennet, of strong tea and washing on lines, of lonely sheep and flint walls, of industrial chimneys and cloth caps, of invention and hard-work, of grand-fathers and family reunions, of childhood and of old age, when the work is done and stories are told of how it was.
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15 out of 25 people found the following review useful:
Utopia, 1936-style
from Birmingham, England
28 May 2002
This film was made by the General Post Office (GPO) an organisation that has seen many manifestations and name changes since 1936. It depicts a near-utopian world populated by chirpy proletarians working through the night to sort and deliver the mail. The technology is ancient, steam trains, hand trolleys, manual sorting. Bags of unsorted letters are hung on the side of the railway line and caught by a mechanical grab as the train passes. Bags of sorted letters are similarly hung out of the train and caught in a net as it flashes by. The impression was given of extreme efficiency but I was struck by the lack of controls. If a bag missed the net, probably no-one ever noticed until it was found months later half-eaten in a field full of sheep along the railway line. The photography was excellent with lots of silhouettes against the night sky. The sound quality in the print I saw was poor but the dialogue given to the plucky workers was clunky anyway and largely not worth hearing. The voice giving the commentary had to be heard to be believed. My favourite character was the manager in a suit who wandered amiably down the train dispensing dubious advice. Some things never change. Night Mail is largely remembered today because of Benjamin Britten's and WH Auden's collaboration on the film but their contribution is limited to a brief section at the end.
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11 out of 18 people found the following review useful:
Night Mail 1936 Style
from England
24 June 2003
If you've ever studied film or Media in England you would have certainly come across the GPO Film Unit during your studies. A unit formed by John Grierson after being influenced by Robert Flaherty of 'Nanook of the North' fame!
This documentary shows how the people of 1930's United Kingdom got there mail from a to b!
Directed Basil Wright with commentary by John Grierson & Stuart Legg and superb and now famous poem finale by the now great W.H. Auden this is a good documentary.
8/10
from Tunbridge Wells, England
30 January 2012
"Night Mail" is still a famous film 75 years after it was made in 1936. It is not, however, a feature film but a documentary, only 25 minutes long, about an everyday subject, the journey of the mail train from London to Scotland. It is perhaps the best-remembered of a series of films produced by the GPO Film Unit publicising the work of the British General Post Office.
Part of the reason for its fame is the collaboration between two giants of the English cultural scene, the poet W. H. Auden and his friend the composer Benjamin Britten. Auden's poem written for the film, the one starting "This is the Night Mail crossing the border, Bringing the cheque and the postal order" has been much anthologised; I was introduced to it at primary school, and some of its evocative lines, such as "But a jug in the bedroom gently shakes" and "Letters with faces scrawled in the margin" have remained with me ever since. In the film itself the poem is read out in the closing few minutes, beginning slowly but picking up speed in order to imitate the rhythm of the train's wheels, and then slowing down again as the train approaches its final destination in Aberdeen. It is accompanied by Britten's music which also evokes the sounds and rhythms of a moving train.
The film is, however, also notable for its purely visual qualities, with some striking black-and-white photography of the train and the landscapes, both rural and industrial, through which it passes. There are films where virtually every shot reminds us of a painting; here every shot reminds us of a documentary photograph, perhaps something from "National Geographic". The film also serves as a piece of social history, even if the obviously scripted dialogue between the men in the on-board sorting office owes more to upper-class preconceptions about how working-class Britons spoke than to reality. (These scenes were not shot on board the train itself but in a studio). We may today regard the steam locomotive as a quaint and cosy part of the nostalgia industry, and that system of nets used for loading and unloading mailbags while the train is in motion certainly has, to our eyes, a Heath-Robinson air about it. Nevertheless, in 1936 the Royal Mail had a well-deserved reputation for efficiency, and the film helps us to understand how it achieved this reputation with the aid of what would have been the state-of-the-art technology of the period.
I haven't awarded the film a score out of ten, as it seems pointless trying to compare it with the full-length dramas which I normally review. A recent viewing on the "Sky Arts" channel, however, has enabled me to appreciate a much talked-about film which for me had for a long time just been a memory from a school poetry lesson.
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3 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
A Brilliantly Noirish Night Journey from London to Glasgow
3 August 2008
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
Here, courtesy of an excellent DVD from The British Film Institute, is the real-life counterpart of "The Flying Scot". Produced by John Grierson for the General Post Office Film Unit, brilliantly directed by Harry Watt and Basil Wright, "Night Mail" is a short account (25 minutes) of the special train literally a traveling post office that made a 365 nights-a-year journey from Euston station in London to Glasgow in Scotland in the 1930s and beyond. (The film was released by Associated British in 1936). With carriages staffed by the real mail sorters, it's impossible to separate the studio material from actuality. The only giveaways are the snatches of dialogue which have obviously been post-synced by professionals under the direction of Alberto Cavalcanti. True, in almost all cases, the directors have taken great care to cleverly obscure the mouths of the workers, but their accents are undoubtedly those of actors akin to the credited off-camera commentators, Stuart Legg and John Grierson himself.
Many people have praised the Benjamin Britten score and the brief poem by W.H. Auden, but for me, the chief joys of the film lay in the cinematography by Chick Fowle and Jonah Jones. Just about the whole movie was shot at night as the train speeds through unusually bleak, blighted landscapes, which give this film a distinctive, noirish quality that is reinforced by the smelters, mills and smoke-stacks of Scotland's dismally sterile, impersonal and uninviting factory towns.
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1 out of 2 people found the following review useful:
NIGHT MAIL {Short} (Harry Watt & Basil Wright, 1936) ***
from Naxxar, Malta
4 January 2014
Unlike the WAR COMES TO America (1945) entry in the WHY WE FIGHT documentary series, this famed British effort in a comparable if longer-running and, decidedly, less enthusing cycle of "Transport" films has not stood well the test of time. I was even tempted to shave off another half-a-star to its rating, but I guess much like a normal movie one needs to assess such items within the context of the time in which they were made. In its case, too, one has to consider what it was attempting to do both narratively (a depiction of the train service, often dependent on split-second timing, run at night by the Post Office throughout the United Kingdom) and technically (still, though much has been said of its adherence to the celebrated montage generally frantic and frequently symbolic typified by classic Soviet cinema, this is only intermittently evident here!). However, the justifiably lauded finale edited to the rhythm of a W.H. Auden poem remains exhilarating to watch.
For what it is worth, a certain amount of nostalgia played into this viewing not only because we are basically watching a way-of-life that is fast approaching extinction (in the face of the technological wonders of our age), but due to the fact that my father used to work as a postman and, as a kid, I spent a good many Summer's day both at his office and on the road, observing and even helping out in the daily distribution of the local and international mail!
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1 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
How Scots got their mail
27 July 2016
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
"Night Mail" is a British 25-minute short film from 1936, so this one has its 80th anniversary this year and is still in black-and-white of course. But it does have sound. This was the year when Nazis came into Power in Germany and politics became a huge issue in films in the 10 years after that. But here we still have a completely unpolitical film, which shows us how busy postal workers were already in the 1930s in order to make sure everybody gets their mail the next day. And "everybody" means Scots in this very case as this is where the train is headed and we see how people are working through the night to make sure the letters reach their mailboxes on time. I personally must say the contents in here are nothing too exciting, so I am a bit surprised that this film is a lot more known today than thousands of other movies from that time. Probably for sentimental value. I guess you must be a postal worked yourself or just be really interested in trains to appreciate this little documentary. I myself did not really and that's why I give it a thumbs-down. Not recommended.
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Which harbour is the setting for the painting 'Impression, Sunrise', which gave rise to the name of the art movement? | 3.1.4 Rhythm
Self-Test
3.1.4 Rhythm
Rhythm is created through word stress, timing, single/double off-beats, metre, word order and punctuation. All these elements combine to make the music of the poem. Further on in this poetry discussion, there will be an examination of the poet's deliberate use of one or all of the following: alliteration , assonance , consonance and sound variation to enhance a particular rhythm.
Word Stress
When word stress , originating from the many and varied stresses found in spoken English, is applied to poetry, it generally refers to something like the fluid regularities of the body, such as, heartbeat, breathing and walking. So one of the keys to one's understanding of rhythm in poetry, lies in one's keeping in mind that English words can be composed of a single syllable, or even double or multiple syllables and that uniformity does not exist in each of these forms.
Single Syllable Words
In the first place, for example, monosyllabic or single syllable words are of two kinds, stressed and unstressed:
Unstressed - words such as the following: a/ an/ the/ of/ on/ in/ is/ and. (Words like "is", "and" and "the" sometimes emerge in a context as stressed syllables.
Stressed - words such as the following: bowl/ time/ dipped/ rack
See an extract from a poem below containing stressed and unstressed single syllable words:
What is the matter with Mary Jane?
She's crying with all her might and main,
And she won't eat her dinner - rice pudding again -
What is the matter with Mary Jane?
From A.A.Milne's "Rice Pudding".
In The Book of Verse for children (1962). R.L. Green (Comp.). London: J.M. Dent & Sons.)
Words of Two Syllables
Then, there are duo-syllabic words or words of two syllables which can take the stress on either syllable:
Stress on first syllable
In compound words there is a stress on each syllable:
/ / / /
eyesight/ gumnut
(NB In compound words or words in which there are two heavy stresses, the second stress is slightly lighter than the first.)
Usually words cannot lose their normal stress but there are times when we under-emphasise a normally stressed word to bring out a particular meaning. See the difference in meaning between the following:
^ / / / ^
^ ^ / / ^
between both pages
Where two stresses occur side by side, the second stress is usually the heavier. So in spoken language all stresses are felt whether they are heavy or less heavy. This factor contributes to feeling and tone in a sentence or phrase. They are the means of setting up the beat of a rhythm. The poet relies on the stress patterns of words to construct his/her verses and his/her skilful use of stress patterns can produce whatever kind of "music" desired in the poem (Leonard, 1991).
Timing
As well as stress, the poet has to be aware of timing . English is what is called a "timed" language: a sentence has a beat which occurs at almost equal intervals. One could have two sentences almost identical in structure and, although one may be longer than the other, the speaker will take approximately the same time to say both sentences because he/she learns in speaking the language to keep the beat of a rhythm, for example:
The monument lost its fame.
The statue lost its fame.
Both of the above sentences would be delivered in approximately the same amount of time. Of course, timing has an elastic quality and is subject to a speaker's stopping or pausing. This same idea of timing is transferred to the speaker/reader of poetry.
Single/Double Off-beats
Lastly, in considering rhythm, one needs to realise that any monotony in our spoken language is counteracted by the creation of a single or double off-beats , for example:
/ ^ /
/ ^ ^ /
lyrical style
The single offbeat in "lyric style" does not have the light and quick double off-beat of "lyrical style" in which two syllables are covered in the time of one (Leonard, 1991). The poet is quick to imitate and utilise the single or double off-beats to create contrast, or change of pace or a rhythm that reflects the theme. For example, W.H. Auden in his poem, "Night Mail" relies heavily on the contrasting effects of single or double off-beats to create the illusion of a train's journey through the countryside:
/ ^ ^ / ^ / ^ ^ / ^
This is the/ Night Mail/ crossing the/ border
/ ^ ^ / ^ ^ / ^ / ^
Bringing the cheque and the postal order
(In The Four Corners (1968). A.K. Thomson. (Ed.). Brisbane: The Jacranda Press.)
Rhythm
Cadden (1984) speaks of Rhythm as the music of a poem out of which the message is transmitted. He points out that originally, when considering the rhythm of a poem, the reader would also have to consider what is called metre . He reminds his readers that poets writing before modern times, had to give a great deal of thought to the metre in which they would set their poem because metre provides a powerful control and energy within the poem. In so many of the works of the great poets of the past, he adds, such as Shakespeare, Milton and Pope, the message was forcefully delivered through the chosen metre.
Metre
The idea of metre is borrowed from the Classical Greek and Latin poetry which demanded that a verse (a line of poetry) should follow a precise and regular pattern, that is, it should conform to having a number of set syllables in a line and a specific arrangement of stressed and unstressed syllables. In this way, the poet achieved a firmly connected and unified piece of work. However, when one reads a poem written in a specific metre, one pays attention to the actual movement in the verse and not to the constricting stresses of metre, unless the poem in question is a nursery rhyme or doggerel (Cadden, 1984). One needs to realise that Greek verse was originally performed to movement or dance which took place around a rough stone altar dedicated to a god, and probably to the sound of a dactylic drum played by a priest.
Iambic Pentameter
The reader of a line of poetry will stress the important words in the line. See the line below from John Keats' poem, "When I have fears that I may cease to be" (1818) which is written in the metre called iambic pentameter . (See Seven Centuries of Poetry in English (1991), J. Leonard (Ed.). Melbourne: Oxford University Press.). This expression means that there are five feet in a line, each line consisting of an unstressed syllable (expressed as ^) followed by a stressed syllable (expressed as /):
^ / ^ / ^ / ^ / ^ /
When I /have fears/ that I/ may cease/ to be
The reader of this line would put stresses on what he/she would consider as the important words in the line, namely, "fears" and "I", and "cease" and "be" and would so read it in the following way:
/ / / /
When I have fears that I may cease to be
The rhythm of a poem, therefore, is the natural movement that the poet has created from word to word, and then line to line. It makes a strong musical contribution to the feeling aspects of the poem, tone , mood and atmosphere , be they gloomy, happy, light and carefree, harsh, angry, frightening or whatever.
Word Order
Rhythm is assisted by word order . If the poet decides to place words out of their usual order, he/she does so in order to emphasise certain words; for example, in "Hurrahing in Harvest" Gerard Manley Hopkins uses the following inversion of word order to highlight the wonder of the constant wind activity up among the clouds creating unusual but delicate shapes:
what lovely behaviour
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