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47,084,876 | Death of Mary Jane Barker | 1,172,908,099 | American girl who died accidentally in 1957 | [
"1950s missing person cases",
"1957 in New Jersey",
"Accidental deaths in New Jersey",
"Bellmawr, New Jersey",
"Child deaths",
"Deaths by person in New Jersey",
"Deaths by starvation",
"Missing person cases in New Jersey"
] | On February 25, 1957, Mary Jane Barker, an American 4-year-old girl from Bellmawr, New Jersey, went missing along with her playmate's dog. After an extensive search throughout the city, dubbed by the press as "the largest search in South Jersey", her dead body was discovered by her playmate in the closet of a vacant house near her home on March 3. The dog bounded out of the closet, seemingly unharmed.
Despite the initial suspicion of foul play, the death was ruled an accident; a case of starvation and exposure as Barker was unable to escape the closet. Investigators concluded that Barker died on February 28, three days after her disappearance. As a result, the mayor ordered closet doors to open more easily. The press surrounding the Barker case also led to the first calls about the "Boy in the Box".
## Birth and siblings
Mary Jane Barker was born in Bellmawr, New Jersey, U.S., on February 28, 1953, to Mr. and Mrs. Frank Barker. She had two older siblings: Carol Ann, 8 years older; and Frank Jr., 6 years older.
## Disappearance
Barker disappeared along with a four-month old black spaniel puppy at 10:30 a.m. on Monday, February 25, 1957, in Bellmawr. She was last seen playing in a nearby yard, going to meet with her friend and neighbor, 6-year-old Maria Freitta, the owner of the dog. Police were notified by 1:30 p.m. She was presumed kidnapped, and the next day footprints were found along a nearby stream bank which seemed those of a man, child, and dog. The police stated that the small footprints on the mud matched the size of Barker's shoes.
### Search
Her disappearance "touched off an intensive search for a kidnapper or murderer" according to The Philadelphia Inquirer. It was called "the largest search in South Jersey." Hundreds of volunteers and police searched the city. On the first night more than 200 civilians did a foot-by-foot search. Eventually well over a thousand people were involved. Her fourth birthday came and went with no sign of her.
On Wednesday, February 27, the parents made an appeal on television to anyone who may have kidnapped Barker, asking them to "leave the child in the nearest church." Vern Lovering, a 43-year old floor sander and convicted child molester, had been questioned, and said he was near the Barker home. On Thursday, February 28, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) conducted its own search, and the next day again questioned Lovering after police received a phone call demanding \$500 ransom. Police made an appeal to the kidnapper not to "act in haste or do harm to the child."
The grief of the Barker family was especially acute on February 28 and March 1 since those were the birthdays of Barker and her father, and they were planning to have a joint celebration that week. The police stated that they were working on several leads but had no developments. On Saturday, March 2, the FBI was officially called in following the provisions of the Federal Kidnapping Act. Several nearby dumps were searched to no avail.
## Discovery of body
On Sunday, March 3, Maria Freitta, the owner of the dog and the playmate of Barker, went with her mother to a vacant, newly built ranch house next door to her home. It was on 433 2nd Ave, owned by her aunt and uncle, Mr. and Mrs. Pat Vecchia. Maria managed to open a 3 ft × 5 ft bedroom closet's door, and her missing dog bounded out of the closet and leaped happily at her. Also in the closet was Barker, dead, in a seated position, the hood of her blue coat partially covering her blonde hair. She was found in the same clothes she had on when she disappeared. Bits of fur from her hat were rubbed off. Police Chief Edward Garrity stated he believed that Barker had recently been placed in the closet as the puppy had been fed recently, and there was no animal waste in the closet despite the dog not being housebroken.
During previous searches, including a visit by a repairman, no dog was heard. The house had been searched three times before, but the bedroom closet where her body was found was not searched. Rev. Harry McIntyre looked in bedroom closets on February 26, but it never occurred to him to search the front-bedroom closet. "I concentrated on the basement, believing the girl might have fallen down the stairs," he said. A volunteer fireman, John Reeves, also searched the first-floor bedroom but not the closet. Barker may have been too frightened to cry out.
Although the door was unlocked, a thumb screw inside apparently made it difficult for a child to open. The door had a knob on the outside, but only a small turn latch on the inside.
## Autopsy findings
On March 4, the autopsy indicated Barker had nothing in her system since some chocolate milk the morning of her disappearance, and had not eaten since she vanished. There was no indication of foul play; no signs of violence or sexual molestation. It was found she must have lived in the closet for three days without food or drink. An inspection of the closet showed marks from her attempt to escape.
It was found the dog was with her the whole time. The dog was "alive and frisky", which initially led investigators to believe she had been in the closet only a short time. The dog was first taken to a local veterinarian for study, but he concluded that it was possible that the dog had to be put down to examine its stomach contents. Dr. Robert Sauer, the veterinarian, stated that the survival of the dog for several days was consistent with the stamina of such an animal. On March 4, the dog was euthanized to allow veterinarians from the University of Pennsylvania to examine its stomach contents, and establish why the dog outlived Barker. Investigators wanted to know if the dog was without food or water since Barker's disappearance.
Camden County Coroner Robert J. Blake ruled her death an accident; a case of starvation with exposure as a contributing factor. A spokesman for the coroner said Barker became trapped in the closet, and died of fright and starvation. Due to a hole in the closet, she could not have suffocated.
## Aftermath
On March 7, Mayor Cornelius Devennel ordered all closet doors to be equipped with special knobs that could be opened easily from both inside and outside. This order was made mandatory for all new home constructions or reconstructions. A ceremony in her memory was held at the St. Francis de Sales Church that same day. On March 20, radio station WPEN presented Maria Freitta with a new puppy, an English Setter.
### Boy in the Box
The press surrounding the Barker case led to the first calls about the Boy in the Box. Frederick J. Benonis, who discovered the boy, had decided not to call the police until he listened to reports of the Barker case on his car radio.
## See also
- List of solved missing person cases
- List of unusual deaths |
140,675 | Yazdegerd II | 1,166,730,832 | Sasanian King of Kings of Iran from 438 to 457 | [
"457 deaths",
"5th-century Sasanian monarchs",
"City founders",
"People of the Roman–Sasanian Wars",
"Shahnameh characters",
"Yazdegerd II",
"Year of birth unknown"
] | Yazdegerd II (also spelled Yazdgerd and Yazdgird; Middle Persian: 𐭩𐭦𐭣𐭪𐭥𐭲𐭩), was the Sasanian King of Kings (shahanshah) of Iran from 438 to 457. He was the successor and son of Bahram V (r. 420–438).
His reign was marked by wars against the Eastern Roman Empire in the west and the Kidarites in the east, as well as by his efforts and attempts to strengthen royal centralisation in the bureaucracy by imposing Zoroastrianism on the non-Zoroastrians within the country, namely the Christians. This backfired in Armenia, culminating in a large-scale rebellion led by the military leader Vardan Mamikonian, who was ultimately defeated and killed at the Battle of Avarayr in 451. Nevertheless, religious freedom was subsequently allowed in the country.
Yazdegerd II was the first Sasanian ruler to assume the title of kay ("king"), which evidently associates him and the dynasty to the mythical Kayanian dynasty commemorated in the Avesta. His death led to a dynastic struggle between his two sons Hormizd III and Peroz I for the throne, with the latter emerging victorious.
## Etymology
The name of Yazdegerd is a combination of the Old Iranian yazad yazata- "divine being" and -karta "made", and thus stands for "God-made", comparable to Iranian Bagkart and Greek Theoktistos. The name of Yazdegerd is known in other languages as; Pahlavi Yazdekert; New Persian Yazd(e)gerd; Syriac Yazdegerd, Izdegerd, and Yazdeger; Armenian Yazkert; Talmudic Izdeger and Azger; Arabic Yazdeijerd; Greek Isdigerdes.
## War with the Romans
In 438, shah Bahram V (r. 420–438) died, and was succeeded by Yazdegerd II. His western neighbours, the Romans, had since their peace treaty with Iran in 387 agreed that both empires were obligated to cooperate in the defense of the Caucasus against nomadic attacks. The Romans helped in the defense of the Caucasus by paying the Iranians roughly 500 lbs (226 kg) of gold at irregular intervals. While the Romans saw this payment as political subsidies, the Iranians saw it as tribute, which proved that Rome was the deputy of Iran. The Roman emperor Theodosius II's unwillingness to continue the payment made Yazdegerd II declare war against the Romans, which had ultimately little success for either side.
The Romans were invaded in their southern provinces by the Vandals, causing Theodosius II to ask for peace and send his commander, Anatolius, personally to Yazdegerd II's camp. In the ensuing negotiations in 440, both empires promised not to build any new fortifications in Mesopotamia and that the Sasanian Empire would get some payment in order to protect the Caucasus from incursions.
## War with the Huns
Since the reign of Shapur II (r. 309–379), Iran had to deal with nomadic invaders in the east known as "Iranian Huns" and made up of Hephthalites, Kidarites, Chionites and Alkhans). They seized Tokharistan and Gandhara from Shapur II and his Kushano-Sasanian clients, and eventually Kabul from Shapur III (r. 383–388). Archaeological, numismatic, and sigillographic evidence demonstrates the Huns ruled a realm just as refined as that of the Sasanians. They swiftly adopted Iranian imperial symbolism and titulature. Their coins also imitated Sasanian imperial coinage. The modern historian Richard Payne states: "Far from the destructive xyonan of the Iranian accounts or the marauding barbarians of the Roman historians, the Hun kingdoms of post-Iranian Central Asia were city-based, tax-raising, ideologically innovative states the kings of kings found themselves hard pressed to unseat." Hard-pressed by the Huns, Iran fought an almost uninterrupted war with them on its northern and northeastern marches, notably under Bahram V and Yazdegerd II, who both attempted to regain Tokharistan, but only succeeded in preserving Abarshahr. The Sasanian efforts were disrupted in the early 5th-century by the Kidarites, who forced Yazdegerd I (r. 399–420), Bahram V, and/or Yazdegerd II to pay them tribute. Although this did not trouble the Iranian treasury, it was nevertheless humiliating. Yazdegerd II eventually refused to pay tribute.
In 450, he launched an expedition into deep Kidarite territory in Central Asia, raiding and capturing forts and cities, which resulted in the accumulation of many captives and riches. In 453, he moved his court to Nishapur in Abarshahr to face the threat from the Kidarites and left his minister (wuzurg framadar) Mihr Narseh in charge of the Sasanian Empire. He spent many years at war against the Kidarites. His forces initially suffered a severe defeat, but fighting continued. According to the Šahrestānīhā ī Ērānšahr ("The Provincial Capitals of Iran"), Yazdegerd II fortified the city of Damghan and turned it into a strong border post against the Kidarites. It was sometime during this period that Yazdegerd II created the province of Eran-Khwarrah-Yazdegerd ("Iran, glory of Yazdegerd"), which was in the northern part of the Gurgan province. After he managed to secure the eastern portion of his empire against the Kidarite incursions, Yazdegerd II shifted his focus on Armenia and Caucasian Albania to defend the Caucasus with the Romans against the increasing Hun threat.
## Religious policy
The policies of Yazdegerd II have been a matter of discussion; Arabic and Persian sources emphasize his personal piety and hostility towards the aristocracy, while Armenian and Syriac sources describe him as a religious fanatic. The latter aspect is often stressed in modern historiography. The unsteadiness of the empire was ever-increasing under Yazdegerd II, who had an uneasy relationship with the aristocracy and was facing a great challenge by the Kidarite in the east. At the beginning of Yazdegerd II's reign, he suffered several defeats at the hands of the Kidarites, for which he put the blame on the Christians, due to much of his cavalry consisting of Iberians and Armenians. Persecutions of Christians first started in 446 with the Christian nobles of Karkh in Mesopotamia. He later shifted his focus towards the Christian aristocracy of Iberia and Armenia. Yazdegerd II's persecutions of non-Zoroastrians generally seem to have been limited, with the aristocracy being the primary target.
Yazdegerd II had originally continued his father's policies of appeasing the magnates. However, after some time, he turned away from them and started a policy of his own. When the magnates told him that his new policies had offended the people, he disagreed, saying that: "it is not correct for you to presume that the ways in which my father behaved towards you, maintaining you close to him, and bestowing upon you all that bounty, are incumbent upon all the kings that come after him ... each age has its own customs." Yazdegerd II, however, was still fully aware of the longstanding conflict between the crown and the nobility and priesthood, which had culminated in the murder of several Sasanian monarchs.
Yazdegerd II's primary goal throughout his reign was thus to combat the internal and external issues posing a danger to country by strengthening the royal centralisation of the bureaucracy, which demanded the cooperation of the aristocracy. The justification behind this is later apparent when Yazdegerd II appointed Adhur-Hormizd as the new governor (marzban) of Armenia in 451, putting an end to the persecution of non-Zoroastrians in Armenia and allowing religious freedom in the country. This would have been an unlikely decision to have been made by a religious fanatic. Indeed, according to the modern historian Scott McDonough, the Zoroastrian faith was perhaps a "test of personal loyalty" for Yazdegerd II. He also targeted Zoroastrian aristocrats, dismantling their advantage of entry to the court and castrated men in his field armies to generate eunuchs more dutiful to him than to their own families. However, Yazdegerd II's policy of integrating the Christian nobility into the bureaucracy still had problematic consequences; before the appointment of Adhur-Hormizd, Armenia had been plunged into a major rebellion. The cause of the rebellion was the attempt of Mihr Narseh to impose the Zurvanite variant of Zoroastrianism in Armenia. His intentions differed from those of Yazdegerd II. As a result, many of the Armenian nobles (but not all) rallied under Vardan Mamikonian, the supreme commander (sparapet) of Armenia. The Armenian rebels tried to appeal to the Romans for help, but to no avail. Meanwhile, another faction of Armenians, led by the marzban Vasak Siwni allied themselves with the Sasanians.
On 2 June 451, the Sasanian and rebel forces clashed at Avarayr, with the Sasanians emerging victorious. Nine generals, including Vardan Mamikonian, were killed, with a large number of the Armenian nobles and soldiers meeting the same fate. The Sasanians, however, had also suffered heavy losses due to the resolute struggle by the Armenian rebels. Although Yazdegerd II put an end to the persecutions in the country afterward, tensions continued until 510 when a kinsman of Vardan Mamikonian, Vard Mamikonian, was appointed marzban by Yazdegerd II's grandson, Kavad I (r. 488–531).
Jews were also the subject of persecution under Yazdegerd II; he is said to have issued decrees prohibiting them from observing the Sabbath openly, and ordered executions of several Jewish leaders. This resulted in the Jewish community of Spahan publicly retaliating by flaying two Zoroastrian priests alive, leading in turn to more persecutions against the Jews.
## Personality
Yazdegerd II was an astute and well-read ruler whose motto was "Question, examine, see. Let us choose and hold that which is best." He is generally praised in Persian sources, and is described as a compassionate and benevolent ruler. He is commended for abandoning his father's overindulgence in hunting, feasting, and having long audience sessions. According to the medieval historians Ibn al-Balkhi and Hamza al-Isfahani, he was known as "Yazdegerd the Gentle" (Yazdegerd-e Narm). However, the favorable account of Yazdegerd II is due to his policy of persecuting non-Zoroastrians within the empire, which appeased the Iranian aristocracy and especially the Zoroastrian priesthood, which sought to use the Sasanian Empire to impose their authority over the religious and cultural life of its people. This is the opposite of the policy of his grandfather and namesake, Yazdegerd I (known as the "sinner"), who is the subject of hostility in Persian sources due to his tolerant policy towards his non-Zoroastrian subjects, and his refusal to comply with the demands of the aristocracy and priesthood.
## Fortifications
In the 440s, Yazdegerd II had a mudbrick defensive system constructed at Derbent to fend off incursions from the north. An inscription on one of its walls report that the tribute paid by the Romans was used for the renewal of the fortress. Near the city, he founded the fortified settlement of Shahristan-i Yazdegerd (present-day ruins of Torpakh-kala), which became the main hub of the soldiers stationed in the region, whose leader held the title of "marzban of Chol." According to the New Persian chronicle Tarikh-i Yazd ("History of Yazd") of 1441, the city of Yazd in central Iran was refounded by Yazdegerd II.
## Coin mints and imperial ideology
The reign of Yazdegerd II marks the start of a new inscription on the Sasanian coins; mazdēsn bay kay ("The Mazda-worshipping majesty, the king"), which displays his fondness of the legendary Avestan dynasty, the Kayanians, who also used the title of kay. This is due to a shift in the political perspective of the Sasanian Empire−originally disposed towards the West, was now changed to the East. This shift, which had already started under Yazdegerd I and Bahram V, reached its zenith under Yazdegerd II and his son and successor Peroz I (r. 459–484). It may have been triggered due to the advent of hostile tribes on the eastern front of Iran. The war against the Hunnic tribes may have awakened the mythical rivalry existing between the Iranian Kayanian rulers and their Turanian enemies, which is demonstrated in the Younger Avesta. It may have thus been as a result of the conflict between Iran and its eastern enemies, that resulted in the adoption of the title of kay, used by the very same Iranian mythical kings in their war against the Turanians in the East.
Likewise, it was most likely during this period that legendary and epic texts were collected by the Sasanians, including the legend of the Iranian hero-king Fereydun (Frēdōn in Middle Persian), who split up his kingdom among his three sons; his eldest son Salm receiving the empire of the West, Rome; the second eldest Tur receiving the empire of the East, Turan; and the youngest Iraj receiving the heartland of the empire, Iran. Accordingly, influenced by the texts about the Kayanians, Yazdegerd II may believed to be the heir of the Fereydun and Iraj, thus possibly deeming not only Roman domains in West as belonging to Iran, but also the eastern domains of the Huns. Thus the Sasanians may have sought to symbolically assert their rights over those lands by assuming the Kayanian title of kay. The traditional titulature of "King of Kings" was generally missing from Yazdegerd II's coinage.
A new design also appeared on the reverse of the Sasanian coins, where the traditional fire altar flanked by two attendants, now imitates them in a more venerated manner. This presumably further demonstrates Yazdegerd II's fealty to Zoroastrianism. The provinces of Asoristan and Khuzistan provided the most mints for Yazdegerd II in the west, whilst the provinces of Gurgan and Marw provided the most in the east, undoubtedly to support the Sasanians in their wars on the two fronts.
## Death and succession
Yazdegerd II died in 457; he had reportedly not designed a successor and instead—according to the medieval historian al-Tha'alibi—entrusted the task to the elite. Civil war soon followed; his eldest son Hormizd III ascended to the throne at the city of Ray in northern Iran, while Peroz fled to the northeastern part of the empire and began raising an army in order to claim the throne for himself. The empire thus fell into a dynastic struggle and became divided. The mother of the two brothers, Denag, temporarily ruled as regent of the empire from its capital, Ctesiphon.
## Family
### Marriages
- Denag, an Iranian princess, possibly from the royal Sasanian family.
### Issue
- Hormizd III, seventeenth shah of the Sasanian Empire (r. 457–459).
- Peroz I, eighteenth shah of the Sasanian Empire (r. 459–484).
- Zarer, Sasanian prince, who tried to claim the throne by rebelling in 485.
- Balash, nineteenth shah of the Sasanian Empire (r. 484–488).
- Vachagan III (r. 485–510), king of Caucasian Albania. His exact relation with Yazdegerd II is uncertain, he was either a son or nephew of his.
- Unnamed daughter, who married the Caucasian Albanian king Aswagen (r. 415–440). |
255,645 | Wilt Chamberlain | 1,166,655,654 | American basketball player (1936–1999) | [
"1936 births",
"1999 deaths",
"African-American basketball coaches",
"African-American basketball players",
"African-American volleyball players",
"All-American college men's basketball players",
"American Basketball Association announcers",
"American men's basketball players",
"American men's volleyball players",
"Basketball coaches from Pennsylvania",
"Basketball players from Philadelphia",
"Centers (basketball)",
"Harlem Globetrotters players",
"Kansas Jayhawks men's basketball players",
"Los Angeles Lakers players",
"Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame inductees",
"National Basketball Association All-Stars",
"National Basketball Association Most Valuable Player Award winners",
"National Basketball Association broadcasters",
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"Pennsylvania Republicans",
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"Philadelphia Warriors players",
"Player-coaches",
"San Diego Conquistadors coaches",
"San Francisco Warriors players",
"Track and field athletes from Pennsylvania",
"Track and field people from California",
"Wilt Chamberlain"
] | Wilton Norman Chamberlain (/ˈtʃeɪmbərlɪn/ ; August 21, 1936 – October 12, 1999) was an American professional basketball player. Standing tall, he played center in the National Basketball Association (NBA) for 14 seasons and is widely regarded as one of the sport's greatest players. Chamberlain was enshrined in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1978 and elected to the NBA's 35th, 50th, and 75th anniversary teams. Following his professional basketball career, Chamberlain played volleyball in the short-lived International Volleyball Association (IVA). He served one term as league president and is enshrined in the IVA Hall of Fame. Renowned for his strength, he played the antagonist in the 1984 Arnold Schwarzenegger film, Conan the Destroyer. Chamberlain was also a lifelong bachelor and became well-known for his claim of having had sex with 20,000 women.
According to former teammate Billy Cunningham, "The NBA Guide reads like Wilt's personal diary". Chamberlain holds 72 NBA records, including several regular season records in scoring, rebounding, and durability; blocks were not counted during his career. He is best-remembered as the only player to score 100 points in a single game. He also once gathered 55 rebounds, and never fouled out. Chamberlain is the only player to average 30 points and 20 rebounds per game in a season, a feat he accomplished seven times. He once averaged 50 points per game, as well as 48 minutes per game. Chamberlain ultimately won two NBA championships, four regular-season Most Valuable Player (MVP) awards, the Rookie of the Year, one Finals MVP, and one All-Star Game MVP; he was selected to thirteen All-Star Games and ten All-NBA Teams (seven First and three Second teams). He won seven scoring, eleven rebounding, nine durability, and nine field goal percentage titles; and he once led the league in assists.
While in college, Chamberlain played for the Kansas Jayhawks, and lost the national championship game to the North Carolina Tar Heels in triple overtime. He also played for the Harlem Globetrotters before joining the NBA, where he played for the Philadelphia / San Francisco Warriors, Philadelphia 76ers, and Los Angeles Lakers. Chamberlain had an on-court rivalry with Boston Celtics' center Bill Russell, suffering a long string of losses before breaking through and winning the 1967 NBA Finals as a member of the 76ers. Chamberlain won his second championship as a member of the 1972 Lakers, a team which set a record with a 33-game winning streak.
Sportswriters knew Chamberlain by several nicknames during his playing career, calling attention to his height since his high school days. He disliked the ones that negatively portrayed his height, such as "Wilt the Stilt" and "Goliath", preferring "The Big Dipper", inspired by his friends who saw him dip his head as he walked through doorways. The name was retained in one of Chamberlain's signature moves, the "dipper dunk". He was one of the first players to make prominent use of shots like the fade away jump shot, and the finger roll. His success near the basket led to the widening of the lane, offensive goaltending rules, and the banning of inbounds passes over the backboard. Chamberlain, always a poor free throw shooter, had the ability to leap from the foul line, which led to the ruling that a free-throw shooter must keep his feet behind the line.
## Early years
Wilton Norman Chamberlain was born on August 21, 1936, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, into a family of nine children; he was the son of domestic worker and homemaker Olivia Ruth Johnson and William Chamberlain, a welder, custodian, and handyman. He was a frail child, nearly dying of pneumonia in his early years and missing a whole year of school as a result. Chamberlain was tall from an early age, measuring by 10 years old. In his early childhood, Chamberlain was not interested in basketball, which he thought of as "a game for sissies". According to Chamberlain; however, "basketball was king in Philadelphia", so he eventually turned to the sport in seventh grade, while attending Shoemaker Junior High School.
## High school career
### Overbrook High School (1953–1955)
Chamberlain stood when he entered Philadelphia's Overbrook High School. As an avid track and field athlete, he high jumped 6 feet, 6 inches, ran the 440 yards in 49.0 seconds and the 880 yards in 1:58.3, put the shot 53 feet, 4 inches, and long jumped 22 feet.
Chamberlain was the star player for the Overbrook Hilltoppers basketball team, wearing jersey number five. Chamberlain had a natural advantage against his peers; he became renowned for his scoring talent, physical strength, and shot-blocking abilities. According to ESPN journalist Hal Bock, Chamberlain was "scary, flat-out frightening ... before he came along, very few players at the center position possessed his level of athleticism, stature, and stamina. Chamberlain changed the game in fundamental ways no other player did." In this period of his life, his three lifelong nicknames "Wilt the Stilt", "Goliath", and "The Big Dipper"—his favorite—were coined.
Chamberlain led the team to two city championships over three seasons, with Overbrook logging a 56–3 win-loss record. He broke Hall of Fame guard Tom Gola's Philadelphia-high-school scoring record (2,222 points) and graduated with 2,252 points, averaging 37.4 points per game.
#### 1953: city runner-up
Chamberlain averaged 31 points per game during the 1953 high-school season and led his team to a 71–62 win over the Northeast High School team of Hall of Fame guard Guy Rodgers. Chamberlain scored 34 points as Overbrook won the Philadelphia Public League title and gained a spot in the city championship game against West Catholic High School, the winner of the rival Catholic league. In that game, West Catholic quadruple-teamed Chamberlain throughout the game, and despite his 29 points, the Hilltoppers lost 54–42.
#### 1954: city champions
In his second season, Chamberlain led Overbrook to a 19–0 season. He scored a high-school record 71 points against Roxborough. The Hilltoppers comfortably won the Public League title after again beating Northeast High, as Chamberlain scored 40 points. Overbrook then won the city title by defeating South Catholic 74–50. Chamberlain scored 32 points and Overbrook finished the season undefeated.
During summer vacations, Chamberlain worked as a bellhop at Kutsher's Hotel. Owners Milton and Helen Kutsher maintained a lifelong friendship with Chamberlain. Red Auerbach, the coach of the NBA's Boston Celtics, was also athletic director of the summer basketball league at Kutscher's; Auerbach spotted Chamberlain playing there and had him play one-on-one against University of Kansas (KU) standout and national champion B. H. Born, elected NCAA Most Outstanding Player in 1953. Chamberlain won 25–10; Born was so dejected he gave up a promising NBA career and became a tractor engineer; according to Born, "If there were high school kids that good, I figured I wasn't going to make it to the pros". Auerbach wanted Chamberlain to go to a New England university so the Celtics could draft him as a territorial pick but Chamberlain did not respond.
#### 1955: city champions
In Chamberlain's third and final Overbrook season, he continued his high scoring, logging 74, 78, and 90 points in three consecutive games. The Hilltoppers suffered just one loss, to Farrell High 59–58. Overbrook won the Public League a third time, beating West Philadelphia 78–60; in the city championship game, they again played West Catholic. Chamberlain scored 35 points and led Overbrook to an 83–42 victory; he has been retroactively honored as Mr. Basketball USA for 1955, the earliest-such selection.
### Christian Street YMCA
In 1953, while still a sophomore in high school, Chamberlain won his first championship. He led Christian Street YMCA to the title in the national YMCA tournament in High Point, North Carolina, beating the local favorite and defending champion High Point team 85–79. Chamberlain was the youngest member of the team.
### Quakertown Fays
At the ages of 16 and 17, Chamberlain, using the pseudonym George Marcus, played several games for the semi-professional team Quakertown Fays. The games were reported in Philadelphia publications but Chamberlain tried to keep them secret from the Amateur Athletic Union.
## College career
After his last Overbrook season, more than 200 universities tried to recruit Chamberlain. Among others, UCLA offered Chamberlain the opportunity to become a movie star, the University of Pennsylvania wanted to buy him diamonds, and Cecil Mosenson, Chamberlain's coach at Overbrook, was offered a coaching position if he could persuade Chamberlain to accept an offer.
In his 2004 biography of Chamberlain Wilt: Larger than Life, Robert Allen Cherry said Chamberlain wanted a change, and to distance himself from Philadelphia and New York City because he was not interested in New England; he also rejected the South because of racial segregation; this left the Midwest as Chamberlain's probable choice. After visiting KU and talking with the school's coach Phog Allen, Chamberlain announced he was going to play college basketball at Kansas.
### University of Kansas (1956–1958)
In 1955, Chamberlain entered the University of Kansas (KU); he was a member of Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity and was president of his pledge class. As he had at Overbrook, Chamberlain displayed his diverse athletic talent at KU. He ran the 100-yard dash in 10.9 seconds, shot-putted fifty-six feet (17 m), triple jumped more than fifty feet (15 m), and won the high jump in the Big Eight Conference track-and-field championships in three consecutive years. Chamberlain allegedly dunked on an experimental 12-foot basket set up by Phog Allen.
Chamberlain's freshman team debut was highly anticipated; the freshman team played against the varsity, who were favored to win their conference that year. Chamberlain dominated his older college teammates by scoring 42 points (16–35 from the field, 10–12 on free throws), grabbing 29 rebounds, and registering 4 blocks.
Chamberlain was the catalyst for several 1956 NCAA basketball rule changes, including the requirement for a shooter to keep both feet behind the line during a free-throw attempt. He had a 50-inch (130 cm) vertical leap, and was capable of converting foul shots by dunking without a running start, beginning his movement just steps behind the top of the key. An inbounds pass over the backboard was banned because of Chamberlain. Offensive goaltending, also called basket interference, was introduced as a rule in 1956 after Bill Russell had exploited it at San Francisco and Chamberlain was soon to enter college play.
Chamberlain's prospects of playing under coach Allen ended when Allen turned 70 and shortly after, retired in accordance with KU regulations. According to Cherry, it is doubtful Chamberlain would have chosen KU if he had known Allen was going to retire. Chamberlain had a poor relationship with Allen's successor Dick Harp. For many years following Chamberlain's departure from KU, critics said he wanted to leave the Midwest or was embarrassed by not being able to win a championship. In 1998, Chamberlain returned to Allen Fieldhouse in Lawrence, Kansas, to participate in a jersey-retiring ceremony for his No. 13 jersey. He said, "There's been a lot of conversation ... that I have some dislike for the University of Kansas. That is totally ridiculous."
#### Sophomore season (1957): national runner-up to North Carolina
On December 3, 1956, Chamberlain made his varsity basketball debut as a center for the Kansas Jayhawks. In his first game, he scored 52 points and grabbed 31 rebounds, breaking both all-time Kansas records in an 87–69 win against the Northwestern Wildcats, a team with Chamberlain's future NBA teammate Joe Ruklick playing center. Chamberlain led a talented squad of starters, including Maurice King, Gene Elstun, John Parker, and Ron Lonesky; the Jayhawks went 13–1 until they lost a game 56–54 against the Oklahoma State Cowboys, who held the ball for the last three-and-a -half minutes with no intention of scoring a basket, which was still possible in the days before the shot clock, introduced by the NCAA in 1984.
Kansas finished the regular season 21–2 and were Big Seven conference champions. Chamberlain was named first-team All-American. Teammate Monte Johnson stated Chamberlain had "unbelievable endurance and speed ... and was never tired. When he dunked, he was so fast that a lot of players got their fingers jammed [between Chamberlain's hand and the rim]." By this time, several aspects of Chamberlain's game, such as his finger roll, his fadeaway jump shot—which he could also make as a bank shot—his passing, and his shot-blocking, were already developed.
The Jayhawks were one of twenty-three teams selected to play in the 1957 NCAA basketball tournament. The Midwest Regional was held in Dallas, Texas, which at the time was segregated. In the first game, the Jayhawks played the all-white SMU Mustangs, and KU's John Parker later said: "The crowd was brutal. We were spat on, pelted with debris, and subjected to the vilest racial epithets possible." KU won 73–65 in overtime, and police had to escort the Jayhawks out. The next game against Oklahoma City was equally unpleasant, with KU winning 81–61.
In the semifinals, the Jayhawks defeated the two-time defending national champion San Francisco Dons 80–56; Chamberlain scored 32 points, grabbed 11 rebounds, and had (at least) seven blocked shots. Chamberlain's performance led Kansas to an insurmountable lead and he rested on the bench for the final three-and-three-quarter minutes remaining in the game.
In the NCAA finals, the second-ranked Kansas Jayhawks played the top-ranked, undefeated North Carolina Tar Heels, led by All-American and National Player of the Year Lennie Rosenbluth. Tar Heels coach Frank McGuire used several unorthodox tactics to thwart Chamberlain. For the tip-off, he sent his shortest player Tommy Kearns to upset Chamberlain; and the Tar Heels spent the rest of the night triple-teaming him, one defender in front, one behind, and a third arriving as soon as he got the ball. With the Tar Heels' fixation on Chamberlain, the Jayhawks shot only 27% from the field in contrast with 64% for the Tar Heels, and trailed 22–29 at halftime. With 10 minutes to go, North Carolina led 40–37 and stalled the game as they passed the ball around with no intention of scoring a basket. After several Tar Heel turnovers, the game was tied at 46 at the end of regulation.
Each team scored two points in the first overtime; Kansas froze the ball in return during the second overtime, keeping the game tied at 48. In the third overtime, the Tar Heels scored two consecutive baskets but Chamberlain executed a three-point play, leaving KU trailing 52–51. After King scored a basket, Kansas was ahead by one point. With 10 seconds remaining, Tar Heels' center Joe Quigg pump faked then drove to the basket. Chamberlain blocked Quigg's shot but was also called for the foul. Quigg made his two foul shots to put the Tar Heels up 54–53. For the final play, Harp called for Ron Loneski to pass the ball into Chamberlain in the low post but Quigg tipped the pass and Kearns recovered it, and the Tar Heels won the game.
Despite the loss, Chamberlain, who scored 23 points and 14 rebounds, was elected the Most Outstanding Player of the Final Four. Chamberlain considered it the most painful loss of his life, the first time his team lost despite his impressive individual statistics. It is considered by sportswriters one of the sport's greatest games: North Carolina's first of six NCAA national titles, the first national final to go into overtime and still the only one to go into triple overtime.
#### Junior season (1958)
In Chamberlain's junior season of 1957–58, the Jayhawks' matches were increasingly frustrating for him. Knowing how good he was, opponents resorted to freeze-ball tactics and routinely used three or more players to guard him. Teammate Bob Billings commented, "It was not fun basketball ... we were just out chasing people throwing the basketball back and forth". Chamberlain averaged 30.1 points for the season and led the Jayhawks to an 18–5 record—three of the losses came while he was out with a urinary infection. The Jayhawks' season ended because KU came second in the league and only conference winners were invited to the NCAA tournament. Chaimberlain was again named an All-American, along with future NBA Hall-of-Famers Elgin Baylor of Seattle University, Oscar Robertson of Cincinnati, and Guy Rodgers, who was now playing for Temple University.
Having lost the enjoyment from NCAA basketball and wanting to earn money, Chamberlain left college and sold a story titled "Why I Am Leaving College" to Look magazine for \$10,000, a large sum when NBA players earned \$9,000 in a season. In two seasons at KU, he averaged 29.9 points and 18.3 rebounds per game while totaling 1,433 points and 877 rebounds. By the time Chamberlain was 21 and not yet a professional, he had been featured in Time, Life, Look, and Newsweek.
## Professional career
### Harlem Globetrotters (1958–1959)
After his frustrating junior year, Chamberlain wanted to become a professional player. At that time, the NBA did not accept players until after their college graduating class had been completed; Chamberlain decided to play for the Harlem Globetrotters in 1958 for \$50,000. The team enjoyed a sold-out tour of the Soviet Union in 1959; they were greeted by General Secretary Nikita Khrushchev prior to the start of a game at Moscow's Lenin Central Stadium. One Globetrotter skit involved Captain Meadowlark Lemon collapsing to the ground; instead of helping him up, Chamberlain threw him several feet into the air and caught him like a doll. Lemon, who at that time weighed 210 lb (95 kg), later said Chamberlain was "the strongest athlete who ever lived".
In later years, Chamberlain frequently joined the Globetrotters in the off-season and fondly recalled his time there because he was no longer jeered at or asked to break records, but was one of several artists who loved to entertain audiences. On March 9, 2000, the Globetrotters retired his No. 13 jersey.
### Philadelphia/San Francisco Warriors (1959–1965)
On October 24, 1959, Chamberlain made his NBA debut, starting for the Philadelphia Warriors. He was listed as tall and 258 lb (117 kg). Chamberlain became the NBA's highest-paid player when he signed for \$30,000 in his rookie contract. In comparison, the previous top earner was Bob Cousy of the Celtics with \$25,000, the same sum Eddie Gottlieb used to buy the Warriors franchise in 1952.
#### 1959–60 NBA season: MVP, All-Star Game MVP and Rookie of the Year
In the 1959–60 NBA season, Chamberlain joined a Philadelphia Warriors squad that was coached by Neil Johnston. All five starters were native Philadelphians: Chamberlain, Tom Gola, Guy Rodgers, Hall-of-Fame forward Paul Arizin, and Ernie Beck. In his first NBA game, played against the New York Knicks, Chamberlain scored 43 points and grabbed 28 rebounds. In his third game, Chamberlain recorded 41 points and a then-career-high 40 rebounds in a 124–113 win over the visiting Syracuse Nationals. In his fourth game, Philadelphia played the reigning champion Boston Celtics—who were coached by Auerbach, whose offer Chamberlain had rejected several years before—and Bill Russell, who was lauded as one of the best defensive pivots in the game.
In the first of many match-ups, Chamberlain outscored Russell with 30 points against Russell's 28 points, but Boston won the game and the Chamberlain–Russell rivalry would grow to become one of the NBA's greatest of all time. On November 10, 1959, Chamberlain posted 39 points and a new career-high 43 rebounds in a 126–125 win over the visiting Knicks. He recorded a rock n' roll record in January 1960, singing That's Easy to Say and By the River.
Chamberlain was selected to the Eastern Conference All-Star team, winning the All-Star Game and the All-Star Game MVP award with a 23-point, 25-rebound performance. On January 25, 1960, Chamberlain had 50 points and 40 rebounds in an NBA game, a rare occurrence. During the game against the Detroit Pistons, Chamberlain recorded 58 points, 42 rebounds, and 4 assists in a winning effort. His 58 points were a then-career-high, and he later tied that on February 21, when he recorded 58 points and 24 rebounds in a 131–121 win over the visiting Knicks.
In his first NBA season, Chamberlain averaged 37.6 points and 27 rebounds, breaking the previous regular-season records. He needed only 56 games to score 2,102 points, breaking the all-time regular-season scoring record of Bob Pettit, who needed 72 games to score 2,101 points. Chamberlain broke eight NBA records, and he was named both Rookie of the Year and MVP that season.
The Warriors entered the 1960 NBA playoffs and beat the Syracuse Nationals, setting up a game against the Eastern Division-champion Celtics. According to Cherry, Celtics coach Auerbach ordered his forward Tom Heinsohn to commit personal fouls on Chamberlain; whenever the Warriors took foul shots, Heinsohn grabbed and shoved Chamberlain to prevent him from running back quickly. Auerbach's intention was for the Celtics to throw the ball quickly enough to prevent Chamberlain, a prolific shot-blocker, from returning to his own basket in time, and Boston could score an easy fastbreak basket. The teams split the first two games but Chamberlain became annoyed with Heinsohn and punched him during Game 3. In the scuffle, Chamberlain injured his hand, and Philadelphia lost the next two games. In Game 5, with his hand healthy, Chamberlain recorded 50 points and 35 rebounds in a 128–107 win over the Celtics, extending the series to a Game 6. In Game 6, Heinsohn scored the decisive basket with a last-second tip-in, and the Warriors lost the series 4–2.
Chamberlain then shocked Warriors' fans by saying he was thinking of retiring. He was tired of being double-teamed or triple-teamed, and of teams executing hard personal fouls on him, and he feared he might lose his temper one day. Celtics forward Heinsohn said, "Half the fouls against him were hard fouls ... he took the most brutal pounding of any player ever". Gottlieb coaxed Chamberlain back into the NBA with a salary increase to \$65,000.
#### 1960–61 NBA season: scoring, rebounding, durability, and field goal titles
Chamberlain's 1960–61 NBA season started with a 42-point and 31-rebound performance in a 133–123 road win against the Syracuse Nationals. On November 24, 1960, Chamberlain grabbed an NBA-record 55 rebounds, along with 34 points and 4 assists, in a 132–129 home loss against the Russell-led Boston Celtics. On November 29, Chamberlain recorded 44 points, 38 rebounds, and a then-career-high 7 assists in a 122–121 road win over the Los Angeles Lakers.
Chamberlain exceeded his rookie-season statistics, averaging 38.4 points and 27.2 rebounds per game. He became the first player to score more than 3,000 points, and the first and still the only player to exceed 2,000 rebounds in a single season, grabbing 2,149 boards. Chamberlain won his first field-goal percentage title, scored almost 32% of his team's points, and collected 30.4% of their rebounds. Chamberlain failed to convert his play into team success, this time bowing out against the Nationals in a three-game sweep. According to Cherry, Chamberlain was "difficult" and did not respect coach Johnston, who was unable to handle him. In retrospect, Gottlieb said, "My mistake was not getting a strong-handed coach ... [Johnston] wasn't ready for big time".
#### 1961–62 NBA season: 100-point game and 42-point All-Star Game record
In the 1961–62 NBA season, the Warriors were coached by Frank McGuire, who had masterminded Chamberlain's triple-overtime loss in the NCAA championship against the Tar Heels. In that year, Chamberlain set several all-time records which have never been threatened; he averaged 50.4 points and grabbed 25.7 rebounds per game.
Chamberlain's 4,029 regular-season points made him the only player to score more than 4,000 points. Chamberlain posted 2,052 rebounds and played for an average of 48.53 minutes per game, playing 3,882 of his team's 3,890 minutes. Because Chamberlain played in overtime games, he averaged more minutes per game than the regulation 48 and would have played every minute if he had not been ejected in one game after picking up a second technical foul with eight minutes left to play.
On March 2, 1962, on a neutral court against the New York Knicks in Hershey, Pennsylvania, Chamberlain scored 100 points. He shot 36 of 63 from the field and uncharacteristically made 28 of 32 free throws. Joe Ruklick got the assist for Chamberlain's 100th point. The game was not recorded on video, and only a radio broadcast of the fourth quarter remains. One writer notes the lack of video of the 100-point game "only added to its mystique". For years, former NBA Commissioner David Stern's office phone would play announcer Bill Campbell's call of the 100-point basket to callers on hold: "He made it! He made it! He made it! A Dipper Dunk!"
In addition to Chamberlain's regular-season accomplishments, he scored 42 points in the All-Star Game. In the playoffs, the Warriors again played against the Boston Celtics in the Eastern Division Finals; both Cousy and Russell called this season the greatest Celtics team of all time. Each team won their home games so the series was split at three after six games. In a closely contested Game 7, Chamberlain tied the game at 107 with 16 seconds to go but Celtics' shooting guard Sam Jones hit a clutch shot with two seconds left to win the series for Boston. In later years, Chamberlain was criticized for averaging 50 points but not winning a title; McGuire said "Wilt has been simply super-human" and that the Warriors lacked a consistent second scorer, a playmaker, and a second big man to take pressure off Chamberlain.
#### 1962–63 NBA season: individual success, move to San Francisco, and playoff miss
In the 1962–63 NBA season, Gottlieb sold the Warriors franchise for \$850,000 to a group of businessmen led by Franklin Mieuli from San Francisco and the team relocated and were renamed the San Francisco Warriors under new coach Bob Feerick. This meant the Warriors team dispersed; Arizin chose to retire rather than move away from his family and his job at IBM in Philadelphia, coach McGuire resigned rather than move to the West Coast, and Gola was homesick and requesting a trade to the New York Knicks halfway through the season. With both secondary scorers gone, Chamberlain continued exceeding his own statistics, averaging 44.8 points and 24.3 rebounds per game that year. Despite his individual success, the Warriors lost 49 of their 80 games and missed the playoffs.
#### 1963–64 NBA season: first NBA Finals loss to the Celtics
In the 1963–64 NBA season, Chamberlain got another new coach, former NBA player and ex-soldier Alex Hannum, and was joined by rookie center Nate Thurmond, who later entered the Hall of Fame. Hannum, who later entered the Hall of Fame as a coach, was a crafty psychologist who emphasized defense and passing, and was not afraid to stand up to the dominant Chamberlain, who would not communicate with coaches he did not like. Backed up by Thurmond, Chamberlain recorded 36.9 points and 22.3 rebounds per game, and the Warriors reached the NBA Finals. In that series, they again succumbed to Russell's Boston Celtics, losing 4–1. According to Cherry, Chamberlain and Hannum deserved much credit because Hannum had taken the previous year's 31–49 squad plus Thurmond, and became an NBA Finals contender.
In mid-1964, Chamberlain, a prominent participant at Rucker Park basketball court in New York City, made the acquaintance of Lew Alcindor, a tall, talented, 17-year-old who played there. Alcindor was soon allowed into Chamberlain's inner circle and quickly idolized the ten-year-older Chamberlain. The pair later developed an intense rivalry and personal antipathy.
### Philadelphia 76ers (1965–1968)
#### 1964–65 NBA season: trade to the 76ers, division finals loss to the Celtics
In the 1964–65 NBA season, the NBA widened the lane from 12 to 16 feet (3.7 to 4.9 m), especially because of centers like Chamberlain. The Warriors' season began poorly and they experienced financial trouble. At the 1965 All-Star Weekend, Chamberlain was traded to the Philadelphia 76ers, the renamed former-rival and relocated Syracuse Nationals. Chamberlain did not like Sixers' coach Dolph Schayes, whom he thought had made several disrespectful remarks when they were rival players. The Warriors received \$150,000 and Paul Neumann, Connie Dierking, and Lee Shaffer—who opted to retire rather than report to the Warriors. When Chamberlain left the Warriors, owner Franklin Mieuli said: "Chamberlain is not an easy man to love ... the fans in San Francisco never learned to love him. Wilt is easy to hate ... people came to see him lose."
After the trade, a reluctant Chamberlain found himself on a promising Sixers team that included veteran shooting guard and future Hall-of-Famer Hal Greer and talented role-players such as point guard Larry Costello, small forward Chet Walker, and centers Johnny "Red" Kerr and Lucious Jackson. The team also included All-Rookie forward Billy Cunningham in the new sixth man role. Cherry noted there was tension within the team because Greer was the formerly undisputed leader and was not willing to give up his authority, and Jackson, a talented center, was now forced to play power forward because Chamberlain occupied the center spot. As the season progressed; however, the three began to work together more closely.
Chamberlain posted 34.7 points and 22.9 rebounds per game overall for the season. Future Georgetown coach John Thompson, then a rookie for the Boston Celtics, elbowed Chamberlain in the face and broke his nose, causing him to wear a face mask in several games. After defeating the Cincinnati Royals--a team led by fellow All-American Oscar Robertson--in the playoffs, the Sixers played against Chamberlain's rival Boston Celtics; the press called it an even match in all positions, even at center, where Russell was expected to give Chamberlain a tough battle. The teams split the first six games and the last game was held in the Celtics' Boston Garden because of their better season record. In that Game 7, Chamberlain scored 30 points and 32 rebounds while Russell logged 16 points, 27 rebounds, and eight assists.
In the final minute, Chamberlain hit two clutch free throws and slam dunked on Russell, reducing Boston's lead to 110–109 with five seconds left. Russell's inbounds pass hit a guy-wire supporting the backboard, giving the ball back to the Sixers. Coach Schayes called timeout and decided it would be unwise to pass the ball to Chamberlain, whom he feared the Celtics would intentionally foul. Red Kerr set a pick on Sam Jones to free Chet Walker. When Greer attempted to inbound the ball to Walker, John Havlicek stole the ball to preserve the Celtics' lead. For the fifth time in seven years, Russell's team deprived Chamberlain of the title. According to Chamberlain, it was in this game people started calling him a loser. In an interview in the April 1965 issue of Sports Illustrated, Chamberlain criticized his fellow players, coaches, and NBA administrators. Chamberlain later said he could see in hindsight the interview was instrumental in damaging his public image.
#### 1965–66 NBA season: MVP and second division finals loss to the Celtics
In the 1965–66 NBA season, Ike Richman, the Sixers' co-owner as well as Chamberlain's confidant and lawyer, died of a heart attack while attending a road game in Boston. The Sixers posted a 55–25 regular-season record and Chamberlain won his second MVP award. In that season, Chamberlain again dominated his opposition by recording 33.5 points and 24.6 rebounds a game, leading the league in both categories. In one game, Chamberlain dislocated the shoulder of Baltimore Bullets player Gus Johnson by blocking his dunk attempt.
Off the court, Chamberlain's commitment to the team was doubted because he was a late sleeper and lived in New York City, preferring to commute to Philadelphia rather than live there, and he was only available for training in the afternoon. Because Schayes did not want to risk angering his best player, he scheduled the daily workout at 4 pm. This angered the rest of the team, who preferred an early schedule that allowed them the afternoon off but Schayes dismissed their protests. Irv Kosloff, who owned the Sixers alone after Richman's death, unsuccessfully pleaded with Chamberlain to move to Philadelphia during the season.
In the playoffs, the Sixers again played the Boston Celtics and for the first time had home-court advantage. Boston won the first two games on the road, winning 115–96 and 114–93; while Chamberlain played within his usual range, his fellow team members shot under 40%. This caused sports journalist Joe McGinnis to comment, "The Celtics played like champions and the Sixers just played". In Game 3, Chamberlain scored 31 points and 27 rebounds for the road win. When coach Schayes planned to hold a joint team practice the next day, Chamberlain said he was too tired to attend and refused Schayes' plea to attend and shoot a few foul shots with the team. In Game 4, Boston won 114–108. Prior to Game 5, Chamberlain skipped practice and was non-accessible. Schayes defended Chamberlain as "excused from practice" but his teammates knew the truth and were less forgiving. In Game 5, Chamberlain scored 46 points and grabbed 34 rebounds, but the Celtics won the game 120–112 and the series. According to Cherry, Chamberlain was the only Sixers player who performed in the series but his unprofessional, egotistical behavior set a poor example for his teammates.
#### 1966–67 NBA season: back-to-back MVP and first NBA title
Prior to the 1966–67 NBA season, Schayes was replaced by the more-assertive Alex Hannum. According to Cherry, in a locker room meeting, Hannum addressed several key issues he observed during the last season, several of them putting Chamberlain in an unfavorable light. Sixers forward Walker said on several occasions, players had to pull Chamberlain and Hannum apart to prevent a fistfight. Cunningham commented Hannum "never backed down" and "showed who was the boss", winning Chamberlain's respect. When emotions dissipated, Hannum told Chamberlain he was also trying to win a title but that to achieve this, Chamberlain had to "act like a man" both on and off the court. Hannum persuaded Chamberlain to change his style of play and wanted Chamberlain to concentrate more on defense than on trying to score. Kerr was traded to the Baltimore Bullets for point guard Wali Jones, and shooting guard Matt Guokas was selected in the first round of the 1966 NBA draft.
As a result of his style-of-play change, Chamberlain averaged a career-low 24.1 points and took only 14% of the team's shots, but was extremely efficient with a record-breaking .683 field-goal accuracy. He also led the league in rebounds per game (24.2), was third in assists per game (7.8), and played strong defense. His efficiency that season was reflected by 35 consecutive made field goals over four games in February. For these achievements, Chamberlain earned his third MVP award. The Sixers had a then-record 68–13 season, including a record 46–4 start. The formerly egotistical Chamberlain began to praise his teammates, lauding hardworking Lucious Jackson as the "ultimate power forward"; calling Greer a deadly jump-shooter; and Jones an excellent defender and outside scorer. Off the court, Chamberlain invited the team to restaurants and paid the entire bill, knowing he earned ten times more than the others. Greer, who was considered a consummate professional and often clashed with Chamberlain because of his attitude, spoke positively of him, saying, "You knew in a minute the Big Fella [Chamberlain] was ready to go ... and everybody would follow".
In the playoffs, the Sixers again played the Boston Celtics in the Eastern Division Finals and held home-court advantage. In Game 1, the Sixers beat Boston 127–112, powered by Greer's 39 points and Chamberlain's unofficial quadruple double, with 24 points, 32 rebounds, 13 assists, and 12 unofficially counted blocks. In Game 2, the Sixers won 107–102 in overtime and player-coach Russell grudgingly praised Chamberlain for intimidating the Celtics into taking low-percentage shots from further outside. In Game 3, Chamberlain grabbed 41 rebounds and helped the Sixers win 115–104. The Celtics prevented a sweep by winning Game 4 with a 121–117 victory. Russell, who was coming close to the first real loss of his career, said, "Right now, he [Chamberlain] is playing like me [to win]". In Game 5, the Sixers outscored the Celtics 140–116, ending Boston's historic run of eight consecutive NBA titles. Chamberlain scored 29 points, 36 rebounds, and 13 assists, and was praised by the Celtics' Russell and K. C. Jones. Philadelphia fans chanted "Boston is dead".
In the 1967 NBA Finals, the Sixers played against Chamberlain's old team the San Francisco Warriors, who were led by future Hall-of-Famers: star forward Rick Barry and center Nate Thurmond. The Sixers won the first two games; Chamberlain and Greer took credit for defense and clutch shooting. The Warriors won game 3, the Sixers won game 4 with Chamberlain contributing an official 10 blocked shots, and the Warriors won game 5; so Philadelphia was up 3–2 prior to Game 6. In Game 6, the Warriors were trailing 123–122 with 15 seconds left. For the last play, Thurmond and Barry tried a pick and roll against Chamberlain and Walker, but the Sixers foiled it because Walker held up Thurmond's ability to roll and Barry was defended by Chamberlain, making it impossible to shoot. By the time Barry made his move, Walker recovered back to Barry, who was stuck in the air and botched the shot. Jackson forced a jump ball on the rebound and the Sixers won the championship. Chamberlain, who contributed with 17.7 points and 28.7 rebounds per game against Thurmond, snaring at least 23 rebounds in the six games, said, "It is wonderful to be a part of the greatest team in basketball ... being a champion is like having a big round glow inside of you". This Sixers team has been ranked as one of the best in NBA history.
#### 1967–68 NBA season: third straight MVP and assist champion
In the 1967–68 NBA season, the relationship between Chamberlain and Sixers' owner Kosloff continued to deteriorate. In 1965, Chamberlain said he and Richman had worked out a deal that would give Chamberlain 25% of the franchise once he ended his career. Although there is no written proof of this agreement, Schayes and Sixers' lawyer Alan Levitt assumed Chamberlain was correct. Kosloff declined the request, angering Chamberlain, who was willing to move to the rival American Basketball Association (ABA) once his contract ended in 1967. Kosloff and Chamberlain worked out a truce and later signed a one-year, \$250,000 contract.
On court, Chamberlain continued his focus on team play, and registered 24.3 points and 23.8 rebounds a game for the season. On March 18, 1968, in a 158–128 victory against the Los Angeles Lakers, Chamberlain had a quintuple-double with 53 points, 32 rebounds, 14 assists, 24 blocks, and 11 steals. Chamberlain also recorded then the most points in a triple-double. The 76ers had the best record in the league for the third consecutive season, and Chamberlain became the only center in NBA history to finish the season as the leader in assists, his 702 beating runner-up point guard and future Hall-of-Famer Lenny Wilkens' total by 23. Chamberlain likened his assist title to baseball home-run hitter Babe Ruth leading the league in sacrifice bunts, and felt he dispelled the myth he was incapable or unwilling to pass the ball.
For these achievements, Chamberlain won his fourth and final MVP title. He also scored his 25,000th point, making him the first-ever player to score that many points; he gave the ball to team physician Stan Lorber. The Sixers won 62 games and took the first seed of the playoffs. In the Eastern Division Semifinals, they played against the New York Knicks. In a physically tough matchup, the Sixers lost sixth man Cunningham with a broken hand, and Chamberlain, Greer, and Jackson were struggling with inflamed feet, bad knees, and pulled hamstrings, respectively. Going ahead 3–2, the Sixers defeated the Knicks 115–97 in Game 6 after Chamberlain scored 25 points and 27 rebounds; Chamberlain had a successful series leading both teams in points (153), rebounds (145), and assists (38).
In the Eastern Division Finals, the Sixers played against the Boston Celtics, again with home-court advantage and this time as reigning champions. Despite the Sixers' injury woes, coach Hannum was confident that they could "take the Celtics in less than seven games", and referenced the higher age of the Celtics, a team built around Russell and Jones, both 34. On April 4, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated. With eight of the ten starting players on the Sixers and Celtics being African-American, both teams were in deep shock and there were calls to cancel the series. In a game the following day, called "unreal" and "devoid of emotion", the Sixers lost 127–118. After attending King's funeral, Chamberlain called out to the angry rioters who were setting fires all over the country, stating King would not have approved. In Game 2, Philadelphia evened the series with a 115–106 victory, and won Games 3 and 4, with Chamberlain suspiciously often played by Celtics backup center Wayne Embry, causing the press to speculate Russell was worn down. Prior to Game 5, the Sixers seemed poised to win the series because no NBA team had overcome a 3–1 deficit before. The Celtics; however, rallied, winning the next two games 122–104 and 114–106, respectively, powered by a spirited John Havlicek and helped by the Sixers' poor shooting.
In Game 7, 15,202 Philadelphia fans witnessed a 100–96 defeat for the Sixers, making it the first time in NBA history a team lost a series after leading 3–1. According to Cherry, the Sixers shot poorly—Greer, Jones, Walker, Jackson, and Guokas hit a combined 25 of 74 shots—while Chamberlain grabbed 34 rebounds and shot 4-of-9 for a total of 14 points. In the second half of Game 7, Chamberlain did not attempt a shot from the field. Cherry said there is a strange pattern in that game because in a typical Sixers game, Chamberlain got the ball 60 times in the low post but only 23 times in Game 7, with seven in the third quarter and twice in the fourth quarter. Chamberlain later blamed coach Hannum for the lack of touches, a point Hannum conceded. Cherry comments Chamberlain, who always thought of himself as the best player of all time, should have been outspoken enough to demand the ball.
The loss meant Chamberlain was 1–6 in playoff series against the Celtics. After that season, Hannum wanted to be closer to his family on the West Coast; he left the Sixers to coach the Oakland Oaks in the newly founded ABA. Chamberlain then asked for a trade and Sixers general manager Jack Ramsay traded him to the Los Angeles Lakers for Darrall Imhoff, Archie Clark, and Jerry Chambers. The motivation for this move remains in dispute. According to sportswriter Roland Lazenby, a journalist close to the Lakers, Chamberlain was angry at Kosloff for breaking the purported Chamberlain–Richman deal. According to Ramsay, Chamberlain threatened to move to the ABA after Hannum left and forced the trade. According to Cherry, there are several personal reasons, among them Chamberlain feeling he had grown too big for Philadelphia and sought the presence of fellow celebrities, of which there were plenty in Los Angeles, and that he wanted the opportunity to date white women, which was possible for a black man in Los Angeles but less acceptable elsewhere.
### Los Angeles Lakers (1968–1973)
#### 1968–69 NBA season: second NBA finals loss to the Celtics
On July 9, 1968, the trade between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Sixers was completed, making it the first time a reigning NBA MVP was traded the next season. Lakers owner Jack Kent Cooke gave Chamberlain an unprecedented contract, paying him \$250,000 after taxes—about \$ million in real value; in comparison, previous Lakers top earner Jerry West was paid \$100,000 before taxes—about \$,000 in real value.
For the 1968–69 NBA season, Chamberlain joined a squad that included his fellow former All-American forward Elgin Baylor, Hall-of-Fame guard Jerry West, backup center Mel Counts, forwards Keith Erickson and Tom Hawkins, and 5 ft 11 in (1.80 m) guard Johnny Egan. According to Cherry, Chamberlain was not a natural leader or a loyal follower, which made it difficult to fit in. While he was on cordial terms with West, Chamberlain often argued with team captain Baylor, later saying in regard to Baylor: "We were good friends, but ... [in] black culture ... you never let the other guy one-up you".
The lack of a second guard next to West and the lack of speed concerned coach Butch van Breda Kolff. After losing Clark and Hall-of-Fame guard Gail Goodrich, who joined the Phoenix Suns after the 1968 NBA expansion draft, he said: "Egan gets murdered on defense because of his [lack of] size ... but if I don't play him, we look like a bunch of trucks". The greatest problem was his tense relationship with van Breda Kolff. Pejoratively calling the new recruit "The Load", van Breda Kolff later said Chamberlain was egotistical, never respected him, too often slacked off in practice, and focused too much on his own statistics. Chamberlain described Van Breda Kolff as "the dumbest and worst coach ever". Erickson commented, "Butch catered to Elgin and Jerry ... and that is not a good way to get on Wilt's side ... that relationship was doomed from the start".
Chamberlain experienced an often-frustrating season. Van Breda Kolff benched him several times, which never happened before in his career; in mid-season, Chamberlain, a perennial scoring champion, had two games in which he scored only six and then two points. Playing through his problems, Chamberlain averaged 20.5 points and 21.1 rebounds a game that season. Cooke was pleased because ticket sales went up by 11% since acquiring Chamberlain.
In the playoffs, the Lakers defeated 4–2 Chamberlain's old club the San Francisco Warriors after losing the first two games, then defeated the Atlanta Hawks, and then played Chamberlain's rivals, Russell's Boston Celtics. Going into the NBA Finals as 3-to-1 favorites, the Lakers won the first two games but lost the next two; Chamberlain was criticized as a non-factor in the series, being neutralized by Russell with little effort. In Game 4, Sam Jones again hit a clutch shot, this time off the wrong foot.
In Game 5, Chamberlain scored 13 points and grabbed 31 rebounds, leading Los Angeles to a 117–104 win. In Game 6, Chamberlain recorded 18 rebounds and 4 assists but only 8 points, and the Celtics won 99–90. Cherry criticized his performance, saying if "Chamberlain had come up big and put up a normal 30 point scoring night", the Lakers would have probably won their first championship in Los Angeles.
In Game 7, Cooke put up thousands of balloons in the rafters of the Forum in anticipation of a Lakers win, motivating the Celtics. In Game 7, the Lakers trailed 91–76 after three quarters but later rallied. Chamberlain twisted his knee after a rebound and had to be replaced by Counts. With three minutes to go, the Lakers trailed 103–102 but they committed costly turnovers and lost the game 108–106; this came despite a triple-double from West, who had 42 points, 13 rebounds, and 12 assists, and became the only player in NBA history to be named Finals MVP despite being on the losing team.
After the game, many wondered why Chamberlain sat out the final six minutes. At the time of his final substitution, Chamberlain had scored 18 points – hitting seven of his eight shots – and grabbed 27 rebounds, significantly more than the 10 points of Counts on 4-of-13 shooting. Among others, Russell did not believe Chamberlain's injury was grave and accused him of being a malingerer, stating: "Any injury short of a broken leg or a broken back is not enough". In spite of their earlier quarrels, Van Breda Kolff came to Chamberlain's defense, saying the often-maligned Chamberlain hardly was able to move by the end. Van Breda Kolff was perceived as "pig-headed" for benching Chamberlain and soon resigned as Lakers coach. Cherry commented some journalists reported Game 7 destroyed two careers: "Wilt's because he wouldn't take over and van Breda Kolff because he wouldn't give in".
#### 1969–70 NBA season: first NBA finals loss to the Knicks
Chamberlain began the 1969–70 NBA season under new coach Joe Mullaney strongly, averaging 32.2 points and 20.6 rebounds per game over the first nine games of the season. During the ninth game, he had a serious knee injury, suffering a rupture of the patellar tendon at the base of his right kneecap, and he missed several months before appearing in the final three games of the 82-game regular season, the first season he failed to reach 20 rebounds per game. Owing to his strong start, he still put up a season-average 27.3 points, 18.4 rebounds, and 4.1 assists per game.
The Lakers again made the playoffs. In the first round, the Lakers defeated Goodrich, Connie Hawkins, and the Phoenix Suns in a seven-game series. The Lakers swept the Atlanta Hawks in the second round before ultimately reaching the NBA Finals, where they played against the New York Knicks, which included future Hall-of-Famers Willis Reed, Dave DeBusschere, Bill Bradley, and Walt Frazier. Having lost lateral speed due to his injury, Chamberlain was often too slow to block Reed's preferred high-post jump shots. The Knicks won Game 1 124–112 and Reed scored 37 points. In Game 2, Chamberlain scored 19 points, grabbed 24 rebounds, and blocked Reed's shot in the final seconds, leading the Lakers to a 105–103 win. In Game 3, West hit a 60-foot (18 m) shot at the buzzer to tie the game at 102 but the Knicks won in overtime 111–108. In Game 4, Chamberlain scored 18 points and grabbed 25 rebounds, helping tie the series at 2.
In Game 5, with the Knicks trailing by more than nine points, Reed pulled his thigh muscle and seemed to be out for the series. By convention, Chamberlain should have dominated against little-used Knicks backup centers Nate Bowman and Bill Hosket Jr., or forwards Bradley and DeBusschere, who gave up more than 6 in (150 mm) against him. Instead, the Lakers gave away their 13-point halftime lead, succumbed to the aggressive Knicks defense, and committed 19 second-half turnovers. Chamberlain and West—the Lakers' two main scorers—shot the ball only thrice and twice, respectively, in the entire second half. The Lakers lost 107–100 in what was called one of the greatest comebacks in NBA Finals history.
In Game 6, Chamberlain scored 45 points, grabbed 27 rebounds, and almost single-handedly equalized the series in a 135–113 Lakers win. With Reed out; the Knicks seemed doomed prior to Game 7 in New York City; however, the hero of Game 7 was Reed, who hobbled up court, scored the first four points, and inspired his team to one of the most-famous playoff upsets of all time. The Knicks led by 27 at halftime, and despite Chamberlain scoring 21 points, Lakers had their third consecutive loss in Game 7. Chamberlain was criticized for his inability to dominate his injured counterpart but according to Cherry, Chamberlain's feat, coming back from a career-threatening injury, was too-quickly forgotten.
#### 1970–71 NBA season: conference finals loss and challenge to Muhammad Ali
In the 1970–71 NBA season, the Lakers signed Gail Goodrich, who had returned from the Suns. Chamberlain averaged 20.7 points, 18.2 rebounds, and 4.3 assists; he once again led the NBA in rebounding and the Lakers won the Pacific Division title. When Hall-of-Fame Detroit Pistons center Bob Lanier, who was 6 ft 11 in (2.11 m) and 250 lb (110 kg) as a rookie, was asked about the most memorable moment of his career, Lanier answered: "When Wilt Chamberlain lifted me up and moved me like a coffee cup so he could get a favorable position".
After losing Baylor to an Achilles tendon rupture that effectively ended his career, and especially after losing West after a knee injury, the Lakers were seen as underdogs in the playoffs against the Milwaukee Bucks of Alcindor—freshly crowned MVP—and the veteran Hall-of-Fame guard Robertson, whom they played in the Western Conference Finals. After winning the regular season with 66 wins, the Bucks were seen as favorites against the depleted Lakers; many pundits were looking forward to the matchup between the 34-year-old Chamberlain and the 24-year-old Alcindor. In Game 1, Alcindor outscored Chamberlain 32–22 and the Bucks won 106–85. In Game 2, the Bucks won again despite Chamberlain scoring 26 points—four more than his Milwaukee counterpart. Prior to Game 3, the Lakers' situation worsened when West's stand-in Erickson underwent an appendectomy and was out for the season. With rookie Jim McMillian easing the scoring pressure, Chamberlain scored 24 points and grabbed 24 rebounds in a 118–107 victory but the Bucks defeated the Lakers 117–94 in Game 4 to take a 3–1 series lead. Milwaukee ended the series at home with a 116–98 victory in Game 5. Although Chamberlain lost, he was lauded for holding his own against MVP Alcindor, who was 10 years younger and healthy.
After the playoffs, Chamberlain challenged heavyweight boxing legend Muhammad Ali to a fight. Chamberlain trained with Cus d'Amato for the 15-round bout, set to take place on July 26, 1971, in the Houston Astrodome. Ali refused to be intimidated, issuing his typical public boasts, this time of "Timber!" and "The tree will fall!". In 1965, Chamberlain consulted his father, who had seen Ali fight, and advised Chamberlain against it. Cooke offered Chamberlain a record-setting contract on the condition he agreed to give up what Cooke termed "this boxing foolishness". Chamberlain ultimately used a contractual escape; Joe Frazier gave Ali his first professional loss, enabling Chamberlain to legally withdraw from the bout. Retired NFL player Jim Brown, who acted as Chamberlain's manager since 1967, got Ali's manager Jabir Herbert Muhammad to mutually withdraw from the match set to take place at Madison Square Garden.
#### 1971–72 NBA season: finals MVP and second NBA title
In the 1971–72 NBA season, the Lakers hired former Celtics star guard Bill Sharman as head coach. Sharman introduced morning shoot-arounds, in which the perennial latecomer Chamberlain regularly participated, in contrast to earlier years with Schayes, and transformed him into a defensive-minded, low-scoring post defender in the style of Russell. Sharman told Chamberlain to use his rebounding and passing skills to quickly initiate fastbreaks to his teammates. While no longer being the main scorer, Chamberlain was named the Lakers' new captain. After rupturing his Achilles tendon, perennial captain Baylor retired and was replaced with Chamberlain. Initially, Sharman wanted Chamberlain and West to share this duty but West declined, stating he was injury-prone and wanted to concentrate on the game. Chamberlain accepted his new roles and posted an all-time low 14.8 points per game but also 19.2 rebounds per game, and led the league with a .649 field-goal percentage. Powered by his defensive presence, the Lakers had an unprecedented 33-game winning streak, leading to a then-record 69 wins in the regular season. According to Flynn Robinson, after the record-setting streak, Lakers owner Cooke sought to reward each of his players, who may have been expecting a trip to Hawaii, with a \$5 pen set. In response, Chamberlain had everybody put the pens in the middle of the floor and stepped on them.
In the playoffs, the Lakers defeated the Chicago Bulls then played against the Milwaukee Bucks, who were led by young center and regular-season MVP Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (formerly Lew Alcindor). Life called the matchup between Chamberlain and Abdul-Jabbar the greatest matchup in all sports. Chamberlain helped the Lakers defeat Abdul-Jabbar and the Bucks in six games, and he was lauded for his performance in Game 6, which the Lakers won 104–100 after trailing by 10 points in the fourth quarter. Chamberlain scored 24 points, grabbed 22 rebounds, played all 48 minutes, and outsprinted the younger Bucks center on several late Lakers fast breaks. West called it "the greatest ball-busting performance I have ever seen". Time stated, "In the N.B.A.'s western division title series with Milwaukee, [Chamberlain] decisively outplayed basketball's newest giant superstar, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, eleven years his junior".
In the NBA Finals, the Lakers again met the New York Knicks, who were shorthanded after losing 6-foot-9-inch (2.06 m) Reed to injury, and undersized 6-foot-8-inch (2.03 m) Jerry Lucas had to defend against 7-foot-1-inch (2.16 m) Chamberlain. Prolific outside shooter Lucas helped New York to win Game 1, hitting 9 of his 11 shots in the first half. In Game 2, which the Lakers won 106–92, Chamberlain put Lucas into foul trouble and the Knicks lost defensive power forward Dave DeBusschere to injury. In Game 3, Chamberlain scored 26 points and grabbed 20 rebounds for another Lakers win.
In a fiercely battled Game 4, Chamberlain was playing with five fouls late in the game. Chamberlain had never fouled out in his career, a record for which he was very proud. Despite the risk of fouling out, Chamberlain played aggressive defense, and blocked two of Lucas' shots in overtime, proving wrong those who said he only played for his own statistics. He also scored a game-high 27 points and, at one point, fell on his right hand, and was thought to have sprained it, but it was broken.
For Game 5, Chamberlain's hands were packed into thick pads that were normally used by defensive linemen in football; he was offered a painkilling shot but refused for fear he would lose his shooting touch if his hands became numb. Chamberlain recorded 24 points, 29 rebounds, 8 assists, and 8 blocked shots; announcer Keith Jackson counted the blocks during the broadcast. Chamberlain's all-around performance helped the Lakers win their first championship in Los Angeles with a decisive 114–100 win. Chamberlain was named the Finals MVP, and admired for playing while injured.
#### 1972–73 NBA season: second NBA finals loss to the Knicks
The 1972–73 NBA season was Chamberlain's last; the Lakers lost substance—Happy Hairston was injured, Robinson and LeRoy Ellis had left, and West struggled with injury. Chamberlain averaged 13.2 points and 18.6 rebounds to win the rebounding title for the 11th time in his career. He also shot an NBA record 0.727 for the season, bettering his own mark of 0.683 from the 1966–67 season. It was the ninth time Chamberlain led the league in field-goal percentage. The Lakers won 60 games in the regular season and reached the NBA Finals against the New York Knicks, a franchise that had a healthy team with a rejuvenated Reed whereas the Lakers were handicapped by several injuries. In that series, the Lakers began with a 115–112 win but the Knicks won Games 2 and 3; and West again injured his hamstring. In Game 4, the shorthanded Lakers were defeated by the Knicks. In Game 5, the valiant-but-injured West and Hairston had bad games, and the Lakers lost the game 102–93 and the series 4–1 despite Chamberlain scoring 23 points and grabbing 21 rebounds. After the Knicks finished the game with a late flourish led by Phil Jackson and Earl Monroe, Chamberlain made a dunk with one second left, which was the last play of his NBA career.
## Coaching career
### San Diego Conquistadors (1973–1974)
In 1973, the San Diego Conquistadors, a member of the NBA-rival league ABA signed Chamberlain as a player-coach for a \$600,000 salary. According to Chamberlain, part of the reason for leaving the Lakers was his belief he had the right to renegotiate his contract after winning the 1971-72 NBA championship, and was upset the Lakers did not contact him until September 1972, before which they were trying to acquire UCLA star-center Bill Walton, who ultimately decided to return to school for the 1972-73 season. The Lakers sued Chamberlain and prevented him from playing for the Conquistadors because he still owed the Lakers the option year of his contract. According to the two-year contract Chamberlain had signed prior to the 1971-72 season, if he failed to sign and mail back his next contract, his contract with the Lakers would be deemed to be renewed. The Lakers said they mailed Chamberlain a new contract in July 1973 but Chamberlain did not sign it so the old contract should be deemed to have been renewed for the 1973-74 season. On October 10, 1973, the opening day of the Conquistadors' season, a judge ruled Chamberlain could coach the Conquistadors but could not play for any team other than the Lakers for 1973-74.
While he was barred from playing, Chamberlain mostly left coaching duties to his assistant Stan Albeck, who said Chamberlain "has a great feel for pro basketball ... the day-to-day things that are an important part of basketball ... just bored him. He did not have the patience." The players were split on Chamberlain, who was seen as competent but often indifferent, and was more occupied with promotion of his autobiography Wilt: Just Like Any Other 7-Foot Black Millionaire Who Lives Next Door than with coaching. He once skipped a game to sign autographs for the book. In his single season as a coach, the Conquistadors scored 37–47 in the regular season and lost against the Utah Stars in the division semifinals. After the season, Chamberlain retired from professional basketball; he was displeased by the meager attendance as crowds averaged 1,843, occupying just over half of the team's 3,200-seat Golden Hall sports arena.
## NBA career statistics
### Regular season
### Playoffs
## Post-NBA career
After his stint with the Conquistadors, Chamberlain went into business and entertainment, made money in stocks and real estate, bought a popular Harlem nightclub which he renamed Big Wilt's Smalls Paradise, and invested in broodmares. He appeared in advertisements for TWA, American Express, Volkswagen, Drexel Burnham, Le Tigre Clothing, and Foot Locker.
### Athletics
Chamberlain sponsored his own professional volleyball and track and field teams, and provided high-level teams for girls and women in basketball, track, volleyball, and softball.
Volleyball became Chamberlain's new athletic passion, having been a talented hobby volleyballer during his Lakers days. He became a board member of the newly founded International Volleyball Association (IVA) in 1974 and became its president in 1975. As a testament to his importance, the IVA All-Star game was televised only because Chamberlain also played in it; he was named the game's MVP. Chamberlain played occasional matches for IVA Seattle Smashers before the league folded in 1979. Chamberlain promoted the sport so effectively he was named to the IVA Hall of Fame and became one of the few athletes who were enshrined in multiple sports.
In the 1970s, Chamberlain formed Wilt's Athletic Club, a track-and-field club in southern California that was coached by UCLA assistant coach Bob Kersee in the early part of his career. The team included Florence Griffith before she set the world records in the 100 meters and 200 meters; three-time world champion Greg Foster; and future Olympic Gold medalists Andre Phillips, Alice Brown, and Jeanette Bolden. Chamberlain signed 60 athletes and planned to expand to 100. While actively promoting the sport in 1982, Chamberlain said he was considering a return to athletic competition in masters athletics; he stated he had only once been beaten in the high jump by Olympic champion Charles Dumas, and that he had never been beaten in shot put, beating Olympic shot put champion Al Oerter.
Following his playing days, Chamberlain maintained his high level of fitness. In his mid-forties, he was able to humble rookie Magic Johnson in practice, and he planned a return to the NBA in the 1980s. In the 1980–81 NBA season, coach Larry Brown said the 45-year-old Chamberlain had received an offer from the Cleveland Cavaliers. When Chamberlain was 50, the New Jersey Nets made Chamberlain an offer, which he declined. He continued to maintain his physical fitness for several years, participating in several marathons. When million-dollar contracts became common in the NBA, Chamberlain increasingly felt he had been underpaid during his career. A result of this resentment was the 1997 book Who's Running the Asylum? Inside the Insane World of Sports Today, in which he criticized the NBA for being too disrespectful of former players.
### Film
In 1976, Chamberlain, who was interested in movies, forming a film production and distribution company to make his first film, which was entitled Go For It. Chamberlain played a villainous warrior and counterpart of Arnold Schwarzenegger in the 1984 film Conan the Destroyer. In November 1998, he signed with Ian Ng Cheng Hin, CEO of Northern Cinema House Entertainment, to produce his own bio-pic, wanting to tell his life story his way. He had been working on the screenplay notes for over a year at the time of his death.
## Death
Chamberlain, who had a history of cardiovascular disease, was briefly hospitalized for an irregular heartbeat in 1992. According to those close to him, he began taking medication for his heart problems. His condition rapidly deteriorated in 1999 and he lost fifty pounds (23 kg). After undergoing dental surgery in the week before his death, he was in great pain and seemed unable to recover from the stress. On October 12, 1999, Chamberlain died at age 63 at his home in Bel Air. His longtime attorney Sy Goldberg stated Chamberlain died of congestive heart failure. Goldberg said:
> He was more inquisitive than anybody I ever knew. He was writing a screenplay about his life. He was interested in world affairs, sometimes he'd call me up late at night and discuss philosophy. I think he'll be remembered as a great man. He happened to make a living playing basketball, but he was more than that. He could talk on any subject. He was a Goliath.
Several NBA players and officials were saddened at Chamberlain's death; they remembered him as one of the greatest players in the history of basketball. On-court rival and personal friend Bill Russell stated: "the fierceness of our competition bonded us together for eternity".
## Legacy
### Awards and honors
Chamberlain is regarded as one of the most-extraordinary and dominant basketball players in NBA history, and is often being debated as the greatest NBA player of all time, ahead of Michael Jordan. Contemporaneous colleagues were often terrified of playing against Chamberlain. Russell regularly feared being embarrassed by Chamberlain, and Walt Frazier called his dominance on the court "comical".
Chamberlain holds numerous official NBA all-time records. Former teammate Billy Cunningham said, "The NBA Guide reads like Wilt's personal diary". He was a scoring champion, all-time top rebounder, and accurate field-goal shooter. He led the NBA in scoring seven times, field-goal percentage nine times, minutes played eight times, rebounding eleven times, and assists once. Chamberlain is most remembered for his 100-point game, which is widely considered one of basketball's greatest records. Decades after his record, many NBA teams did not average 100 points.
In high school and college, Chamberlain was Mr. Basketball USA, NCAA Tournament Most Outstanding Player in 1957, and twice consensus first-team All-American in 1957 and 1958. His number 13 jersey was retired by the Kansas Jayhawks, Harlem Globetrotters, Golden State Warriors, Philadelphia 76ers, and Los Angeles Lakers. Chamberlain won two NBA championships, four regular-season Most Valuable Player (MVP) awards, the Rookie of the Year award, one Finals MVP award, and one All-Star Game MVP award, and was selected to 13 All-Star Games and 10 All-NBA Teams—seven First and three Second teams. He also twice made All-Defensive First Team.
During his NBA career, Chamberlain committed few fouls despite his rugged play in the post, and he never fouled out of a regular-season or playoff game in his 14-year NBA career. His career average was two fouls per game despite having averaged 45.8 minutes per game over his career. He had five seasons in which he committed fewer than two fouls per game, and a career-low of 1.5 fouls during the 1962 season, in which he also averaged 50.4 points per game. His fouls per 36 minutes—a statistic that is used to compare players who average vastly different minutes—was 1.6 per game.
Chamberlain's game evolved during his playing career. Chamberlain's Lakers coach Bill Sharman said, "First he was a scorer. Then he was a rebounder and assist man. Then with our great Laker team in 1972, he concentrated on the defensive end." During his two-championship seasons, Chamberlain led the league in rebounding while his scoring decreased. During his first championship season, his assists also increased, recording two consecutive seasons with eight assists per game, and winning one assist title. By 1971–72, at age 35 and running less, his game was averaging only nine shots per game compared to the 40 in his record-setting 1961–62 season. During Chamberlain's time, defensive statistics like blocks and steals had not yet been recorded. According to 1960s Sixers general manager Jack Ramsay, "Harvey [Pollack] said he used to tell one of his statisticians to keep track of Wilt's blocks in big games ... One night, they got up to 25". Reported data for 112 games played by Chamberlain for the Lakers in the 1970s shows he averaged 8.8 blocks per game.
For his feats, Chamberlain was enshrined in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1978, named part of the NBA 35th Anniversary Team in 1980, one of the 50 Greatest Players in NBA History in 1996, and was ranked 13th in ESPN's list "Top North American Athletes of the Century" in 1999. In 2007, ESPN rather Chamberlain the second-best center of all time by behind Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and was ranked second in Slam's "Top 50 NBA Players of All-Time in NBA History" in 2009, and sixth in ESPN's list of the top 74 NBA players of all time in 2020, and the third-best center of all-time behind Abdul-Jabbar and Bill Russell. In 2022, Chamberlain was ranked fifth in ESPN's list of the NBA 75th Anniversary Team, and sixth in a similar list by The Athletic.
### Rule changes
Part of Chamberlain's impact on basketball is his direct responsibility for several rule changes in the NBA, including a widening of the lane to try to keep big men more distant from the basket, the instituting of offensive goaltending, a ban on dunking to convert free throws, and a revision of rules governing inbounding the ball, such as making it illegal to inbound the ball over the backboard. In basketball history, pundits have stated the only other player who forced such a massive change of rules is 6 ft 10 in (2.08 m) Minneapolis Lakers center George Mikan, who played a decade before Chamberlain and also caused many rule changes designed to thwart dominant centers, such as a widening the lane and defensive goaltending.
### Chamberlain–Russell rivalry
The on-court rivalry between Chamberlain and Bill Russell is cited as one of the greatest of all time. Russell won 11 NBA titles in his career while Chamberlain won two. Chamberlain was named All-NBA First Team seven times in comparison to Russell's three but Russell was named the NBA MVP—then selected by players—five times against Chamberlain's four. Russell's Celtics won seven of eight playoff series against Chamberlain's Warriors, 76ers, and Lakers teams, and went 57–37 against them in the regular season and 29–20 in the playoffs. Russell's teams won all four series-deciding seventh games against Chamberlain's by a combined margin of nine points.
The comparison between Chamberlain and Russell is often simplified to one between a great player (Chamberlain) with a player who makes his team great (Russell); an individualist against a team player. Chamberlain would say Boston did not rely on Russell's scoring, and that Russell could concentrate on defense and rebounding. Chamberlain went on: "I've got to hit forty points or so, or this team is in trouble. I must score—understand? After that I play defense and get the ball off the boards. I try to do them all, best I can, but scoring comes first." Chamberlain outscored Russell 30 to 14.2 and out-rebounded him 28.2 to 22.9 in the regular season, and he outscored Russell 25.7 to 14.9, and out-rebounded Russell 28 to 24.7 in the playoffs.
Russell and Chamberlain were friends in private life. Russell never considered Chamberlain his rival and disliked the term, preferring "competitors", and also said they rarely talked about basketball when they were alone. When Chamberlain died in 1999, Chamberlain's nephew stated Russell was the second person whom he was ordered to inform. While previously friends, after Russell criticized Chamberlain for his performance during Game 7 of the 1969 NBA Finals, the two men did not speak for two decades. Russell privately apologized to Chamberlain and later publicly apologized in a 1997 joint interview with Bob Costas. The 1969 NBA Finals is arguably the biggest stain on Chamberlain's career; supporters of Chamberlain said Russell won more games because he had better-skilled teammates; in the finals; however, Chamberlain's team was favored and lost.
### Reputation as a loser
Although Chamberlain accumulated some of the most-impressive statistics in the history of professional sports, he was often called selfish and a loser because he won only two NBA championships and lost seven out of eight playoff series against Bill Russell's Celtics teams. Frank Deford of ESPN said Chamberlain was caught in a no-win situation: "If you win, everybody says, 'Well, look at him, he's that big'. If you lose, everybody says, 'How could he lose, a guy that size?' " Quoting coach Alex Hannum's explanation of his situation, Chamberlain often said: "Nobody roots for Goliath".
Rick Barry wrote:
> I'll say what most players feel, which is that Wilt is a loser ... He is terrible in big games. He knows he is going to lose and be blamed for the loss, so he dreads it, and you can see it in his eyes; and anyone who has ever played with him will agree with me, regardless of whether they would admit it publicly ... When it comes down to the closing minutes of a tough game, an important game, he doesn't want the ball, he doesn't want any part of the pressure. It is at these times that greatness is determined and Wilt doesn't have it. There is no way you can compare him to a pro like a Bill Russell or a Jerry West ... these are clutch competitors.
Chamberlain's main weakness was his poor free-throw shooting, a .511 career average, the third-lowest in NBA history, with a low of .380 over the 1967–68 season. Chamberlain later said he was a "psycho case" in this matter. Much like later center Shaquille O'Neal, Chamberlain would be intentionally fouled and was a target of criticism because of it. Many suggestions were offered; he shot them underhanded, one-handed, two-handed, from the side of the circle, from well behind the line, and banked it in. Coach Hannum once suggested Chamberlain shoot his fadeaway jumper as a free throw but Chamberlain feared drawing more attention to his main failing.
Despite his foul-line problems, Chamberlain set the NBA record, which was later equaled by Adrian Dantley, for the most free throws made (28) using the underhand technique in a regular-season game in his 1962 100-point game. Chamberlain later said he was too embarrassed by the underhand technique to continue using it, although it consistently gave him better results. Chamberlain stated he intentionally missed free throws so a teammate could get the rebound and score two points instead of one.
## Personal life
### Star status
Chamberlain was the first big earner of basketball; upon entering the NBA, he immediately became the highest-paid player. Chamberlain was basketball's first player to earn at least \$100,000 a year; and he earned an unprecedented \$1.5 million during his Lakers years. As a Philadelphia 76er, he could afford to rent a New York apartment and commute to Philadelphia. He would often stay out late into the night and wake up at noon.
Jazz composer Thad Jones named the music composition "Big Dipper" after Chamberlain. When he became a Laker, Chamberlain built a million-dollar mansion in Bel-Air and named it after Ursa Major, a play on his nickname "The Big Dipper". It had a 2,200-pound (1,000 kg) pivot as a front door and contained great displays of luxury. Cherry described Chamberlain's house as a miniature Playboy Mansion, where he regularly held parties and lived his later-notorious sex life. This was also helped by the fact Chamberlain was a near-insomniac who often skipped sleeping. The house was designed according to Chamberlain's preferences; it had no right angles, and had an X-rated room with mirrored walls and a fur-covered waterbed. Chamberlain lived alone, relying on many automated gadgets, with two cats named Zip and Zap, and several Great Dane dogs. Chamberlain drove a Ferrari, a Bentley, and a Le Mans-style car called Searcher One that was designed and built at a cost of \$750,000 in 1996.
Following his death in 1999, Chamberlain's estate was valued at \$25 million.
### Love life
Although Chamberlain was shy and insecure as a teenager, he later became known for his womanizing. According to his lawyer Seymour Goldberg, "Some people collect stamps, Wilt collected women". Swedish Olympic high jumper Annette Tånnander, who met Chamberlain when he was 40 and she was 19, said he was a pick-up artist who was extremely confident yet respectful, saying: "I think Wilt hit on everything that moved ... he never was bad or rude". Los Angeles Times columnist David Shaw said Chamberlain was "rude and sexist toward his own date, as he usually was" during a dinner with Shaw and his wife; he added at one point Chamberlain left the table to get the telephone number of an attractive woman at a nearby table.
In Chamberlain's second book A View from Above, he claimed to have had sex with 20,000 women. According to his contemporary Rod Roddewig, Chamberlain documented his love life using a Day-Timer. Every time Chamberlain had sex with a different woman, he put a check in his day-timer. Over a ten-day period, there were 23 checks in the book; a rate of 2.3 women per day. Chamberlain halved that number to be conservative and to correct for degrees of variation. He then multiplied that number by the number of days he had been alive and subtracted 15 years, giving him the 20,000 number.
In response to public backlash regarding his promiscuity, Chamberlain later said: "the point of using the number was to show that sex was a great part of my life as basketball was a great part of my life. That's the reason why I was single." In a 1999 interview shortly before his death, Chamberlain regretted not having explained the sexual climate at the time of his promiscuity and warned other men who admired him for it, saying: "With all of you men out there who think that having a thousand different ladies is pretty cool, I have learned in my life I've found out that having one woman a thousand different times is much more satisfying". Chamberlain also said he never came close to marrying and had no intention of raising any children.
In 2015, a man named Aaron Levi claimed to be Chamberlain's son based on non-identifying papers from his adoption and information from his biological mother. Chamberlain's sister refused to provide DNA evidence for testing so Levi's claim is not conclusive.
### Relationships
According to Cherry, although Chamberlain was an egotist, he had good relationships with many of his contemporaries and enjoyed a great deal of respect. He was lauded for his good rapport with his fans, often providing tickets and signing autographs. Jack Ramsay said Chamberlain regularly took walks in downtown Philadelphia and acknowledged honking horns with the air of a man enjoying the attention. Jerry West called Chamberlain a "complex ... very nice person", and NBA rival Jack McMahon said: "The best thing that happened to the NBA is that God made Wilt a nice person ... he could have killed us all with his left hand". Celtics contemporary Bob Cousy assumed if Chamberlain had been less fixated on being popular, he would have been meaner and able to win more titles.
During most of his NBA career, Chamberlain was good friends with Bill Russell; he often invited Russell over to Thanksgiving and visited Russell's home, where conversation mostly concerned Russell's electric trains. As the championship count became increasingly lopsided, the relationship deteriorated and became hostile after Russell accused Chamberlain of "copping out" in Game 7 of the 1969 NBA Finals. The two reconciled after two decades but Chamberlain maintained a level of bitterness, regretted he had not been "more physical" with Russell in their games, and privately continued accusing his rival of negatively intellectualizing basketball.
Chamberlain's relationship with fellow center Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, eleven years his junior, was hostile. Although Abdul-Jabbar idolized Chamberlain as a teenager and was once part of his inner circle, the student–mentor bond deteriorated into intense mutual loathing, especially after Chamberlain retired. Chamberlain often criticized Abdul-Jabbar for a perceived lack of scoring, rebounding, and defense. Abdul-Jabbar accused Chamberlain of being a traitor to the black race for his Republican political leanings, support of Richard Nixon, and relationships with white women. When Abdul-Jabbar broke Chamberlain's all-time scoring record in 1984, Chamberlain criticized Abdul-Jabbar's game and called on him to retire. When Abdul-Jabbar published his autobiography in 1990, he wrote a paper titled "To Wilt Chumperlane", in which he stated: "Now that I am done playing, history will remember me as someone who helped teammates to win, while you will be remembered as a crybaby, a loser, and a quitter". Their relationship remained mostly strained until Chamberlain's death.
### Politics
Chamberlain denounced the Black Panthers Party and other black nationalist movements in the late 1960s, and he supported Republican Richard Nixon in the 1968 and 1972 presidential elections. Chamberlain accompanied Nixon to the funeral of Martin Luther King Jr. and considered himself a Republican.
### Sexual assault allegation
In 2021, actor Cassandra Peterson, who is primarily known for her alter ego Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, said in her memoir Yours Cruelly, Elvira: Memoirs of the Mistress of the Dark Chamberlain had sexually assaulted her during a party at his mansion in the 1970s. Chamberlain supposedly forced Peterson to perform oral sex after offering to show her a closet containing his NBA jerseys. Peterson stated she had blamed herself and was almost "convinced that I was a very bad person for letting that happen" until the Me Too movement made her reconsider the experience. Peterson felt the assault was "creepier" because Chamberlain had been a friend.
## See also
- List of basketball players who have scored 100 points in a single game
- List of National Basketball Association annual field goal percentage leaders
- List of National Basketball Association annual minutes leaders
- List of National Basketball Association annual rebounding leaders
- List of National Basketball Association career free throw scoring leaders
- List of National Basketball Association career minutes played leaders
- List of National Basketball Association career triple-double leaders
- List of National Basketball Association career playoff free throw scoring leaders
- List of National Basketball Association career playoff rebounding leaders
- List of National Basketball Association career playoff scoring leaders
- List of National Basketball Association career playoff triple-double leaders
- List of National Basketball Association career rebounding leaders
- List of National Basketball Association career scoring leaders
- List of National Basketball Association franchise career scoring leaders
- List of National Basketball Association longest winning streaks
- List of National Basketball Association rookie single-season rebounding leaders
- List of National Basketball Association rookie single-season scoring leaders
- List of National Basketball Association single-game assists leaders
- List of National Basketball Association single-game playoff scoring leaders
- List of National Basketball Association single-game rebounding leaders
- List of National Basketball Association single-game scoring leaders
- List of National Basketball Association single-season rebounding leaders
- List of National Basketball Association single-season scoring leaders
- List of NCAA Division I men's basketball players with 30 or more rebounds in a game |
63,100,769 | French ironclad Furieux | 1,130,319,035 | Ironclad warship of the French Navy | [
"Ironclad warships of the French Navy",
"Ships built in France"
] | Furieux was an ironclad coastal defense ship built for the French Navy in the late 1870s and 1880s. She was ordered under the fleet plan of 1872 that was intended to strengthen the French fleet after the Franco-Prussian War. Originally intended to be similar to the Tonnerre class, Furieux was re-designed after the German Sachsen-class ironclads had begun construction, as the earlier French coastal defense ships were too weak to defeat the Sachsens. Instead of carrying her main armament of two guns in a single gun turret like Tonnerre and other French coastal defense ships, Furieux mounted a pair of guns in two barbettes that allowed her to fire one ahead or astern at any angle. Her guns were significantly larger than the earlier vessels as well, increasing from the 270 mm (10.6 in) guns of her predecessors to 340 mm (13.4 in) weapons. Her design suffered from several problems, including insufficient freeboard and poor stability, both of which reduced her ability to operate in open water. She was also badly overweight, which submerged her belt armor, greatly reducing her defensive characteristics.
Furieux served in the Northern Division (later Squadron) in the English Channel for the duration of her career, the active period of which was brief. She was initially assigned as a guard ship for the port of Cherbourg in 2nd reserve. In 1890, she was commissioned for service with the Northern Division and in early 1891, she embarked on a cruise to Spanish waters with the rest of the division. Later that year, in July and August, the ships made a longer voyage to Russia in anticipation of the signing of the Franco-Russian Alliance in August. She remained in active service through 1895, but saw little activity of note during this period. Throughout the 1890s, the French Navy considered multiple proposals to rebuild the ship to correct her deficiencies, but no work was done until 1902, when she received new, lighter guns, new engines and water-tube boilers, and increased armor protection for her conning tower.
Work was completed by 1904, but she saw little activity afterward apart from sea trials to evaluate the effectiveness of the modifications. She was ultimately struck from the naval register in November 1913. The Navy intended to dismantle the ship in Brest, but the start of World War I in August 1914 interrupted all non-essential work. Some limited scrapping was carried out in 1917 and 1918, but by 1920, when the French government was prepared to sell the ship, it was discovered she had sunk at her mooring. The Navy deemed it too expensive to raise the wreck and so offered her for sale in situ, but after a series of attempts in the 1920s and early 1930s, no firm bought the salvage rights. The wreck appears to still be on the bottom of Brest's harbor.
## Design
Furieux was designed in the late 1870s as part of a naval construction program that had begun under the post-Franco-Prussian War fleet plan of 1872. Initially, the French built two types of armored capital ships, the first, a series of high-freeboard barbette ships, and the second being smaller coast defense ships descended from the monitors that had been built in the 1860s. Most of the initial series of coastal defense ships built under the 1872 plan featured a single gun turret with two large-caliber guns toward the bow similar to the breastwork monitors being built in the British Royal Navy at the time. The French ships included the four vessels of the Tonnerre and Tempête classes, which being built simultaneously in the early 1870s and were broadly similar. Their turrets were very large, with the guns widely spaced, to theoretically allow them to fire directly astern, one gun on either side of the superstructure. The Minister of the Navy, Louis Raymond de Montaignac de Chauvance, ordered a fifth vessel on 12 February 1875, to be named Furieux, nearly identical to Tonnerre, though with a slightly longer and narrower hull.
Work on the new ships proceeded slowly, which was common in French shipyards at the time. French capital ship design practices were interrupted by the development of the German Sachsen-class ironclads; these were coastal defense vessels that were significantly more powerful than the French coastal defense ships that had already been built under the 1872 plans, making them obsolete. Moreover, the latest French sea-going capital ships, Amiral Duperré and the Amiral Baudin class, were too large to operate in the relatively shallow waters of the Baltic Sea. In 1876, the French reconsidered the last two coastal defense ships—Furieux and Tonnant—that had been ordered but not yet built under the 1872 plan, since more powerful vessels would be needed to combat the Sachsens.
At the same time, the naval engineer Carlet designed a new, significantly smaller turret for the new coastal defense ships in July 1877. The turret carried a pair of 320 mm (12.6 in) guns, a major increase in power over the 270 mm (10.6 in) guns of the earlier vessels, and they were arranged closer together, abandoning the concept of direct astern fire, as the blast effects were far too serious to permit it in practice. In December, the design staff decided to abandon the single turret arrangement, opting instead for a pair of single-gun turrets, one forward, and one aft, to preserve the ability to fire at any angle. This led to further changes: the early gun turrets of the time were very heavy, and doubling the number, even at reduced size, would have prohibitively increased the ships' displacement. Instead, barbette mounts were adopted to save weight. In addition, the transfer of the second gun aft required a two-shaft arrangement for the propulsion system, as the propeller shafts would have to be placed on either side of the magazine for the gun.
By shifting the second gun aft and switching to barbette mounts, enough weight was saved to allow the gun caliber to be increased again to 340 mm (13.4 in) and to thicken the belt armor. The French firm Farcot & Sons, which was responsible for supplying the hydraulic gun handling equipment, conducted a pair of studies in March and April 1878 at the request of the Navy. The Conseil des Travaux (Board of Construction) held a meeting on 25 June to consider the alterations to the original design, deeming it to be a significant improvement over the earlier coastal defense ships, though it noted deficiencies in some aspects of the armor layout, including the deck and the conning tower.
### Characteristics
Furieux was 72.54 m (238 ft) long between perpendiculars, with a beam of 17.83 m (58 ft 6 in) and a draft of 7.09 m (23 ft 3 in). She displaced 5,925 long tons (6,020 t). Since she was intended for coastal operations, the ship had a low freeboard and a short upper deck that supported the main battery guns and conning tower. The ship's construction rendered her prone to severe rolling. Her bow was inverted, with an inward-curving stem. She was fitted with a single pole mast equipped with a spotting top for her main battery guns. The crew consisted of 235 officers and enlisted men.
Her propulsion machinery consisted of two compound steam engines that each drove a single screw propeller. Steam was provided by eight coal-burning fire-tube boilers that were ducted into a single funnel. Her engines were rated to produce 4,600 indicated horsepower (4,700 PS) for a top speed of 13 knots (24 km/h; 15 mph). On sea trials on 21 May 1887, she reached a maximum of 13.95 knots (25.84 km/h; 16.05 mph) from 4,821 ihp (4,888 PS) at forced draft. Coal storage amounted to 285 long tons (290 t).
Her main armament consisted of two 340 mm (13.4 in), 21-caliber guns mounted in individual barbette mounts, one forward and one aft, both on the centerline. Ammunition storage was intended to be eighty rounds per gun, but the need to save weight forced a reduction to forty shots per gun. For defense against torpedo boats, she carried four 47 mm (1.9 in) 3-pounder guns and ten 37 mm (1.5 in) 1-pounder Hotchkiss revolver cannon, all in individual mounts. Her armament was rounded out with two 356 mm (14 in) torpedo tubes in above-water mounts.
The ship was protected with mild steel armor; her belt was 330 to 457 mm (13 to 18 in) thick and extended for the entire length of the hull. She had an armor deck that was 91 mm (3.6 in), connected to the top of the belt armor. The barbettes for the main battery were 457 mm thick and the supporting tubes were 305 mm (12 in). The guns were protected by 15 mm (.6 in) gun shields. As was common to French capital ships of the period, she had little underwater protection, which was revealed during torpedo tests the Navy conducted while Furieux was still under construction; as a result, she was fitted with anti-torpedo nets.
### Modifications
Furieux received a pair of 65 mm (2.6 in) Modèle 1891 guns in individual mounts during a refit in 1892. She also had the forward and aft sections of her anti-torpedo nets removed at that time as part of an effort to reduce her displacement, as she was by that time 410 long tons (420 t) overweight, and most of her belt was submerged under normal conditions.
Like many French capital ships of the period, Furieux was rebuilt in 1902–1904 in an attempt to extend her useful career. Her old slow-firing guns were replaced with a pair of 240 mm (9.4 in) 40-cal. guns in new gun turrets. The turrets had 203 mm (8 in) thick sides and 152 mm (6 in) bases. A new, armored conning tower was installed with 75 mm sides. She received eight water-tube Belleville boilers in place of her old fire-tube models and a pair of vertical triple-expansion steam engines were installed. Her new boilers were ducted into a pair of funnels. Her new propulsion system was rated for 5,145 ihp (3,837 kW) for a top speed of 14.3 knots (26.5 km/h; 16.5 mph). Her original pole mast was replaced with a heavier military mast and a pole fore mast was installed. The changes reduced her displacement to 5,683 long tons (5,774 t) and her draft to 6.94 m (22 ft 9 in).
Furieux received a wireless telegraph set in between April and June 1908, along with a tall mast carry an antenna for it. At some point, late in her career, her funnel caps were extended to reduce smoke interference. The naval historian Luc Feron believes it may have been during the 1908 refit that this work was done.
## Service history
### Construction
The keel for Furieux was laid down on 15 June 1875 in Cherbourg and her completed hull was launched on 21 July 1883. Her belt armor plates were installed over the course of the year and into early 1884. As fitting-out work continued, it became apparent that the ship was becoming overweight; by May 1885, the ship was already 320 long tons (325 t) over her designed displacement. This led the Conseil de Traveaux to make several alterations on 20 October, including reducing the thickness of some armor plates, halving the number of shells carried per main gun, and eliminating spare parts carried aboard the ship, since as a coastal defense vessel, she was not expected to travel far from her home port. The shipyard accordingly issued a revised design, which the Conseil approved on 14 January 1886. Over the next year, additional alterations were made, including the decision to install electric lighting on 2 March 1886 and anti-torpedo nets on 7 February 1887. Furieux was commissioned for sea trials on 10 November 1886, though she did not begin evaluations until 19 March 1887. Trials continued through late May, which revealed significant blast effects from the main gun and problems with the placement of the torpedo tubes, but these could not be corrected.
### Active career
#### 1887–1892
Furieux was placed in 2nd category reserve on 1 July 1887, part of the harbor defenses of Cherbourg along with Tonnant. She saw little activity until 6 June 1888, when she departed for a cruise to Quiberon Bay, returning to Cherbourg on 1 July, where she was again reduced to reserve status. That year, she took part in a mobilization exercise and it took her crew eight days to prepare Furieux for operations. She was placed in unclassified reserve on 3 November to have alterations made to her main battery gun equipment. Work was completed on 25 February 1889 and the ship was returned to 2nd category reserve. She was commissioned on 15 February 1890 and was assigned to the Northern Division days later. At that time, the unit consisted of the ironclads Marengo, Océan, and Suffren and the torpedo cruiser Epervier. The ships embarked on a tour of ports in Brittany over the next several months. They took part in the 1890 fleet maneuvers held in Brest in conjunction with the Mediterranean Squadron. The exercises began on 6 July and concluded on 25 July. Furieux later took part in a fleet review in Quiberon Bay in September. She ended the year with periodic maintenance, being dry docked on 6 December.
She returned to service in early January 1891 and took part in limited training cruises in the area before sailing for Brest, where she joined the rest of the squadron on 23 January. The ships then conducted a longer cruise south, visiting the ports of Lisbon, Portugal, Ferrol, Vigo, Villagarcia, and Cadiz, Spain, and Tangiers, French Algeria. The ships arrived back in Quiberon Bay at the end of February. The squadron was reorganized in June, losing Suffren and Océan but gaining the ironclad Requin and the cruiser Surcouf. On 14 May 1891, Capitaine de vaisseau (Captain) Auguste de Penfentenyo took command of the ship. Furieux embarked on another tour of northern French ports from 26 May to 8 June, this time major cities in the English Channel, including Le Havre, Dieppe, Boulogne, Calais, and Dunkirk. During that period, the ironclad Marceau joined the squadron. The major ships of the squadron embarked on a cruise to visit Russia on 19 June to mark the signing of the Franco-Russian Alliance, which was to occur on 27 August. On the way, the ships visited a number of foreign ports, including Bergen and Larvik, Norway, Copenhagen, Denmark, and Stockholm, Sweden, before arriving in Kronstadt, Russia on 23 July. On the voyage back, which began on 4 August, the ships stopped in Finland and Norway before calling in Portsmouth, where Queen Victoria reviewed the ships. They reached Cherbourg on 27 August.
Furieux then cruised individually to Bénodet, Quiberon Bay, Brest, and Camaret-sur-Mer between 4 September and 1 November. She then sailed to Cherbourg, where she was dry docked on 4 November for maintenance that lasted until 16 December. The Northern Division was reorganized as the Northern Squadron in early 1892, by which time Marceau had been sent to the Mediterranean Squadron. The Northern Squadron received the coastal defense ships Tonnerre and Fulminant and the old armored frigate Victorieuse. The ships of the squadron conducted exercises in January and February, including shooting practice on 12 February. Furieux steamed to Brest for another maintenance period on 12 April, and while entering the port, her port screw was damaged when it struck the base of the Fer à cheval fortification, part of the Château de Brest. Repairs lasted until 2 May and the ship returned to Cherbourg the next day, though her screw was not repaired at that time. She participated in maneuvers with a group of torpedo boats on 28 June. She visited Brest and Quiberon Bay from 3 to 26 September, and in November, she conducted tests with mixed oil and coal fuel for her boilers. The test demonstrated that the mixture was much more efficient and made it easier to get steam pressure up in the boilers. She returned to the dry dock on 18 November to have her screw repaired, along with other modifications.
#### 1893–1901
Furieux emerged from the shipyard on 2 January 1893 and conducted a series of local cruises through February and most of March. On 28 March, she departed Cherbourg and moved to Brest, where she met the rest of the Northern Squadron. The ships got underway on 22 April for another visit to Spanish waters that concluded on 25 May with their return to Brest. Penfentenyo left the ship on 1 June, and at his departure, he wrote a report highlighting defects with the ship and making recommendations to remedy them. These included replacing the 340 mm guns with 270 mm weapons. The Conseil des Traveaux accepted his report and decided that significant alterations should be made, including removing the torpedo tubes, two of the 37 mm guns, and the rest of her torpedo nets to save enough weight to strengthen the armor of the conning tower. But despite reaching this conclusion, no work was actually done. From 20 to 28 July, Furieux participated in squadron exercises in the English Channel. Over the next several years, the Navy considered a series of other options, including removing parts of the armor plate, to save enough weight to make the necessary improvements, but as with Penfentenyo's proposals, they came to nothing.
She remained in the Northern Squadron through 1895, which was kept in commission for four months of the year. By that time, the unit consisted of Furieux, Requin, Victorieuse, and the ironclad Suffren. Later that year, the new coastal defense ship Jemmapes had entered service, taking Furieux's place in the squadron. She remained out of service as part of the reserve fleet through 1897. By that time, the various reconstruction proposals had begun to mature, and in September 1897, plans were drawn up to replace the main battery with 240 mm guns and install new boilers, among other changes. Tenders for the boilers were solicited in June 1898 and Belleville models were selected, to be manufactured by Indret. The contract for the new main gun turrets was awarded to Saint Chamond on 26 April 1899.
### Reconstruction and later career
Work finally began in July 1902 with the installation of the new boilers, which was completed by March 1904, when initial trials were conducted while still in dry dock on the 29th and 30th. She was removed from the dry dock on 2 May, recommissioned, and began sea trials on 24 May. Testing continued into January 1905, and trials of the new guns during that period revealed defects that required corrections from Saint Chamond. She was reduced to the reserve on 1 January 1906, remaining out of service through 20 February 1907, when she was recommissioned briefly for another round of trials that lasted until April. Again placed in normal reserve, she was reduced to special reserve on 10 August 1909. She was reactivated to be transferred from Cherbourg to Brest on 15 and 16 September, before being placed in reserve once again. Furieux was designated the support ship for the 1st Atlantic Torpedo-boat Flotilla on 1 January 1910. She returned to reserve status again on 10 April 1912 and was decommissioned for the final time on 2 March 1913.
Furieux was condemned on 29 July 1913 and was struck from the naval register on 27 November. The ship was slated for disposal when on 31 January 1914, the Navy decided to salvage the boilers, as they had not seen much use, so they could be sold. No work had begun on the project by the time World War I broke out in August, and all work in the shipyard that was not essential for the war effort was halted. The Navy decided on 8 December 1916 to use the ship in explosives tests, but no records of the tests, or whether they were even carried out, have been found in the French naval archives. The government instructed the shipyard in Brest to begin dismantling Furieux on 5 November 1917, but again, no work was carried out at that time. Over the course of the next six months, easily removable equipment, including bronze piping, valves, and bearings were salvaged from the ship, but on 4 April 1918, the government ordered the shipyard to stop work.
The ship breaking firm Jobson & Sons offered to buy Furieux and the old pre-dreadnought battleship Charles Martel on 7 December 1920, but the government deemed their offer of 30,000 francs to be too low. By that time, Furieux had sunk at her moorings, while Charles Martel was leaking; the latter was towed off to be patched and sold, while Furieux remained on the harbor bottom. Plans to raise the wreck were too expensive, so she was offered for sale in situ on 26 April 1921. No bids were received until 26 December 1923, when the ship breakers Muzio-Olivi & Caselli, from Marseilles, offered to buy the wreck with certain requirements, but the government declined. The wreck was finally sold on 3 July 1924 for 1,000 francs to a salvage company that did no work on the vessel. The government once again tried to sell Furieux in an auction on 3 October 1930, which once again failed to solicit a buyer. Feron believes that "the hull therefore seems to have remained where it had sunk...its present condition is unknown." The naval historian Stephen Roberts agrees, noting that Admiralty charts note the location of the wreck, the condition of which also describes as unknown. |
72,772,429 | 1912–1913 Little Falls textile strike | 1,172,406,085 | 1912–1913 textile workers strike in Little Falls, New York | [
"1910s strikes in the United States",
"1912 in New York (state)",
"1912 labor disputes and strikes",
"1913 in New York (state)",
"1913 labor disputes and strikes",
"Herkimer County, New York",
"History of the Socialist Party of America",
"Industrial Workers of the World in New York (state)",
"Labor disputes in New York (state)",
"Labor disputes led by the Industrial Workers of the World",
"Progressive Era in the United States",
"Riots and civil disorder in New York (state)",
"Textile and clothing labor disputes in the United States",
"United Textile Workers of America"
] | The 1912–1913 Little Falls textile strike was a labor strike involving workers at two textile mills in Little Falls, New York, United States. The strike began on October 9, 1912, as a spontaneous walkout of primarily immigrant mill workers at the Phoenix Knitting Mill following a reduction in pay, followed the next week by workers at the Gilbert Knitting Mill for the same reason. The strike, which grew to several hundred participants under the leadership of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), lasted until January the following year, when the mills and the strikers came to an agreement that brought the workers back to the mills on January 6.
Little Falls, a city situated along the Mohawk River, saw substantial growth in its textile industry during the early 1900s. The city's textile mills were primarily operated by immigrant workers from Europe who faced poor and living conditions in the city. In 1912, as part of efforts to improve workplace safety, the state government passed a law that lowered the maximum number of weekly working hours for women and children from 60 to 54. However, the law did not address pay, resulting in many workers throughout the state seeing a decrease in wages relative to their reduced working hours. In many cases, brief labor disputes led to the companies altering pay, but in Little Falls, the Phoenix and Gilbert Knitting Mills resisted, leading to many mill workers receiving less pay than before. As a result, on October 9, 80 workers at the Phoenix Mill performed a walkout, and they were joined on October 18 by 76 workers from the Gilbert Mill. Over the next few days, the number of strikers continued to increase until over 600 workers were on strike.
Shortly after the walkout, Socialist Party members from nearby Schenectady, including that city's Socialist Mayor George R. Lunn, came to Little Falls to help the strikers. Many, including Lunn, were arrested during peaceful rallies at a park near the mills, but after criticism from regional publications and state politicians, the city backed down by late October. Around that same time, the IWW, which had sent organizers to the city near the beginning of the strike, took the lead in organizing the strikers, helping them to form a strike committee, teaching them picketing techniques, and helping to draft a list of demands that included pay wage increases. On October 24, the strikers voted to officially organize a local union of the IWW in Little Falls. Several days later, on October 30, there was a violent confrontation between law enforcement officials and strikers outside the Phoenix Mill, and in the resulting riot, police raided the strikers' headquarters and arrested many. Following this, IWW officials Matilda Rabinowitz and Bill Haywood came to Little Falls to help continue the strike. Around the same time, the IWW faced competition from the United Textile Workers of America (UTW), which organized its own separate local union and signed a labor contract that brought some mill workers back to work on December 2. However, the IWW local, with about 400 members, persisted. On December 24, the New York State Department of Labor initiated an investigation into the strike and helped to negotiate a contract that was approved by both the mills and the union. As a result, the IWW members returned to work on January 6, 1913, bringing the strike to a close.
The terms of the contract resulted in wage increases of between 6 and 15 percent for the workers, depending on their piece work pay, and resulted in the strikers receiving their employment back without discrimination. However, over the next several months, the IWW focused a great deal of time and resources into court cases regarding several of those arrested during the strike, and ultimately, two organizers were found guilty of assault and sentenced to a year in prison. As a result of these developments, the IWW local soon fell into a state of disorder, while nationally, the IWW suffered a serious blow to its size and power following the disastrous 1913 Paterson silk strike, which also concerned mill workers. By the 1920s, the IWW had entered into a period of serious decline, while the UTW ramped up its organizing efforts among immigrants in the area. The Little Falls strike was one in a wave of textile strikes in the Northeastern United States that followed the IWW's successful 1912 Lawrence textile strike, and one of numerous IWW-led strikes throughout the Northeast and the Midwest during the 1910s.
## Background
### Industry in Little Falls, New York
Little Falls is a city in Herkimer County, in the Mohawk Valley region of Upstate New York, near Utica. Situated along the banks of the Mohawk River, the city was one of several in the region to have a developed textile industry with multiple textile mills by the beginning of the 20th century. The city's first mill had been organized in 1872, and by 1912, the city was a sizeable center for the production of knitted fabrics and underwear, home to several mills and other manufacturing facilities, earning it the nickname "the Lowell of the Empire State". These mills employed many immigrants from Europe, including many Austrians, Hungarians, Italians, and Poles. Many were not fluent in English. These immigrants were drawn to Little Falls due to the robust economic growth the city was experiencing during the early 1900s, as the economic output of the city grew by 89 percent between 1904 and 1909, with the total value of goods produced during the latter year equal to about \$8.5 million. The laborers at these mills often faced poor working conditions, with the mills employing children as young as 5 years old in sweatshop conditions, while their squalid living conditions led to a high rate of tuberculosis among the immigrants. The millworkers lived in tenements that an article in The New York Times compared to "rabbit warrens". The latter had prompted the Fortnightly Club, a local charity organization, to hire M. Helen Schloss to serve as a visiting nurse to treat tuberculosis and other sicknesses in the city.
### Organized labor
During this period of growth in Little Falls, business interests worked to prevent worker unionization, and in 1912, there were only 12 local unions in the city, representing only 6 percent of the population. In the mills, only about 75 jack spinners were unionized, constituting about a quarter of the entire union membership in the city. These spinners, who worked 60 hours per week, made about \$2.60 per day, which was higher than the daily pay for spinners in other nearby cities, but the majority of mill workers were not unionized and made substantially less. In a study of the weekly pay of about 800 male workers, almost half made \$9 or less, while less than a quarter made over \$12. Out of 900 female workers' weekly wages, about half made \$7.50 or less, about a fifth made more than \$10, and 30 percent made \$6 or less. Many workers complained of the low wages, saying that they were insufficient to provide for themselves and their family. Nationwide, union membership remained relatively low, with only about 6 percent of the country's workforce in 1905 affiliated with the American Federation of Labor (AFL), a federation of labor unions that primarily focused on organizing skilled tradesmen into craft unions. AFL leaders were relatively unconcerned with unionizing unskilled workers and viewed immigrant laborers, such as the workers at the mills in Little Falls, as a potential danger to the craft union movement. Also in 1905, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, whose members are known as Wobblies), an anarcho-syndicalist union, was established and began to organize unskilled workers in the country into industrial unions. Unionization efforts by the IWW would eventually push the AFL to reconsider their approach to unskilled labor, and the two organizations often engaged in competition to represent workers and lead labor strikes. During the 1910s, the IWW attempted to organize many factories in New York, and they were involved in several labor disputes in the state, such as the 1912 New York City waiters' strike in May of that year. That same year, the union led a strike against the New York Mills Corporation of New York Mills, which involved many Polish immigrants. In the United States during the early 1900s, many Polish workers were receptive to industrial unionism with the IWW and similar militant unions, such as the United Mine Workers of America.
### Changes to hours and wages
In 1911, New York State Assembly member Edward D. Jackson of Buffalo proposed legislation that would reduce the maximum number of weekly hours that women and minors could work in factories from 60 to 54. Additionally, the bill would bar them from working between the hours of 9 p.m. and 6 a.m. and prohibit them from working more than ten hours per day. The Jackson bill was opposed by industry interests, who hired lobbyists to attempt to prevent the bill's passage into law. Mill owners argued that the bill would hurt the state's textile industry, while one company that also operated mills in Georgia stated that the law would lead to more work being performed in those locations, where the cap on hours per week that women could work was 66. Meanwhile, organized labor supported the bill, with textile unionist John Golden speaking in favor of its passage. Additional support came from Frances Perkins, head of the New York branch of the National Consumers League, and the New York Child Labor Committee. The bill was proposed amidst a greater push for workplace safety for women following the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, an industrial disaster in New York City that had killed over 100 women. As part of this movement, the New York State Legislature had also created the Factory Investigating Commission to investigate working conditions in the state, with the commission visiting Little Falls in August 1912. Ultimately, with support from New York Governor John Alden Dix, the bill was approved and signed into law, with an effective date of October 1, 1912.
While the bill had addressed the number of hours that could be worked, the legislation did not address the impact that the change would have on wages. As a result, when the law came into effect, many companies reduced pay in proportion to the decrease in hours worked. This led to numerous and sporadic walkouts throughout the state, with workers objecting to receiving less money. A similar situation had occurred previously in Massachusetts when that state's government had passed a similar law that decreased working hours that similarly led to strikes, including the 1912 Lawrence textile strike. The Lawrence strike, led by the IWW and involving many immigrant workers, such as Poles, had occurred just a few months before the labor disputes in New York. In many cases, the companies were able to quickly resolve these disputes by adjusting wages. In Little Falls, the Phoenix Knitting Mill and the Gilbert Knitting Mill also lowered wages according to the reduced hours, leading to a labor strike at these two mills.
## Course of the strike
### Early strike actions
On October 9, 80 workers at the Phoenix Knitting Mill performed a walkout due to the reduced pay they had received. The walkout was a spontaneous action among the workers, who were primarily immigrants such as Italians and Poles. On October 18, 76 workers at the Gilbert Knitting Mill also performed a walkout to protest their reduced wages. Over the next several days, more workers began to honor the picket line, until the number of workers on strike was roughly equal to the number of workers who remained working, with about 664 workers involved in strike action and a further 659 workers indirectly affected by the strike. Around two-thirds of the strikers were women. However, throughout the strike, many skilled workers and native-born Americans resisted in joining. This was partially due to the fact that, in the past, the mill owners had hired immigrant workers to act as strikebreakers during labor disputes, such as in one that had occurred just two years prior. On October 17, Schloss, who had been involved in organized labor and socialist causes during her career prior to Little Falls while working as a nurse in New York City's Lower East Side, resigned from her position as nurse and became a fervent supporter of the strikers, helping to organize and lead many parades and rallies and opening a soup kitchen to feed the strikers.
### Socialist activists arrive in Little Falls
Soon after the strike began, organized labor advocates and socialists from the surrounding area began to come to Little Falls to help the strikers. In Schenectady, located about 55 miles (89 km) down the Mohawk River from Little Falls, Mayor George R. Lunn, a member of the Socialist Party of America, recruited many to come with him to Little Falls to help organize the strikers and recruit more textile workers to join in picketing. While Mayor Lunn wished to hold a rally at Clinton Park (an area located directly across the street from the Phoenix Mill), city authorities took advantage of local ordinances to bar the socialists from holding the meeting, with one ordinance requiring permits from city officials to hold a rally and another forbidding gatherings of over 20 people in public. These ordinances were often enforced inconsistently, as previous political rallies by Democratic politicians William Sulzer and Martin H. Glynn had been allowed, but were invoked to prevent socialists who attempted to speak at the park. Local law enforcement officials were highly sympathetic to the mill owners, and both Herkimer County Sheriff James W. Moon and Little Falls Police Chief James "Dusty" Long stated that speeches by the socialists could possibly provoke a riot and further civil unrest. Many activists who attempted to speak in favor of the strike were arrested on charges of disturbing the peace or blocking traffic, including Mayor Lunn himself on October 15. Lunn refused to pay a \$50 fine and was sentenced to a 50-day jail sentence. Regarding the strike and involvement of the socialists, Police Chief Long stated, "We have a strike on our hands and a foreign element to deal with. We have in the past kept them in subjugation and we mean to continue to hold them where they belong". In addition to law enforcement, local media institutions were also critical of the strike, with the Little Falls Journal and Courier expressing disapproval of the workers' decision to strike, saying, "The question of whether the wages paid were starvation or not, did not, and cannot enter into the merits of the case. The employer fixed the wages that he was willing to pay, and the men were at liberty to accept the employment or not. ... There were no extraordinary conditions, no disturbances, no suffering, no distress, so far as anyone here knew".
Organizers from Schenectady continued to push for the ability to hold rallies and employed strategies such as overcrowding the local jail and clogging the court system. Mayor Lunn called for 5,000 protestors to come to Little Falls, and following this, hundreds of labor activists, Wobblies, and socialists came to the city to aid the strikers. The action worked, as city officials began releasing many protestors on bail due to the small size of the city jail. Multiple newspapers in the area, such as The Post-Standard in Syracuse, criticized the double standard of preventing socialists from exercising their freedom of speech while allowing other groups, and in a letter to Little Falls Mayor Frank Shall and Sheriff Moon, Governor Dix cautioned them about suppressing New Yorkers' rights, saying:
> "Your attention is invited to the fact that the Constitution of the State of New York guarantees the right of free speech and the right of people peacefully to assemble and discuss public questions. The people of the State of New York wish to see that these rights are not unnecessarily curtailed, but are respected in spirit as well as in letter, within your jurisdiction."
Facing this pressure, on October 21, Socialist candidates in the 1912 New York state election helped organize a pro-strike rally at Clinton Park that ran without interference from law enforcement. During the speech, Mayor Lunn told the strikers, "Let your enemies use violence if they will—which I hope will never be the case—but do not ever use violence yourselves. You have right on your side. You can unite as one mighty army of workers and thus secure the wages to enable you to live peaceably".
### The IWW becomes involved
Following the free speech protests, IWW officials began to take the lead in organizing the strike activities. Wobblies had been involved since the early days of the strike, with organizers Fillippo Bochino of Rochester and Fred Hirsh of Schenectady arriving in Little Falls shortly after the initial walkouts. Other prominent IWW organizers who came to Little Falls included Benjamin Legere and George Lehney. Following the advice of the IWW, the strikers formed a strike committee that included representatives from both plants and from each nationality of the strikers. The strike committee organized subcommittees to handle other aspects of the strike, such as finances, and organized daily parades and picketing. Legere, who had spent the past few months working for the defense of Joseph James Ettor and Arturo Giovannitti in a court case related to their actions in the Lawrence strike, was the primary organizer, teaching the strikers different picketing techniques and helping to assemble the subcommittees. Additionally, the committee formulated some demands that they submitted to the mill owners on October 23:
1. "Same weekly wages for 54 hours' work as had been received for 60 hours.
2. Additional increase of 10 per cent for all workers on day shift.
3. Additional increase of 15 per cent for all workers on night shift.
4. No discrimination against workers for activity in strike."
On October 24, the strikers held a meeting where they voted to officially unionize with the IWW, with IWW General Secretary Vincent Saint John giving them a charter as Local No. 801 — the National Industrial Union of Textile Workers of Little Falls. On October 27, the strikers held a parade through Little Falls that involved over 1,000 people.
### Confrontation between police and strikers
On October 30, a violent confrontation occurred between picketers and law enforcement officials. That morning, Chief Long had several men stationed near the entrance of the Phoenix Mill, where strikers were picketing. Tensions rose as the picketers refused to clear away to allow workers to enter the mill. As a result, a physical confrontation unfolded between the strikers and the officers. Mounted police officers began to attack strikers with their clubs, with several beaten unconscious. The strikers by comparison were almost all unarmed. During the resulting riot, one officer was shot, while a private police officer from the Humphrey Detective Agency of Albany was stabbed. Shortly after this, the strike committee met with strikers at the Slovak Hall, a building located across the Mohawk River from the mills in the immigrant part of town that was used as the headquarters for the strike. Police chased picketers across the river and to the hall, where they beat the doors down and assaulted the building and its occupants. Cases of liquor and beer were confiscated by the police, who also destroyed musical instruments and the framed IWW charter that the union had displayed in the hall. Many people who resisted were beaten, and the police arrested the entire strike committee, as well as several other strikers and sympathizers, including Schloss. Legere had managed to escape arrest and went to Utica, where he sent off several letters before he returned to Little Falls the following day and was promptly arrested. The night after the raid, strikers gathered at the hall and cleaned it before singing "La Marseillaise" and "The Internationale".
Following the attack, the IWW sent more organizers to help with the strike effort, including Bill Haywood, Matilda Rabinowitz, and several people from Schenectady to help with relief efforts. Following the arrests, Rabinowitz helped to reorganize the strike committee with new members, while Mayor Lunn and other socialists from Schenectady operated the soup kitchen. Rabinowitz would serve as the IWW's primary organizer for the remainder of the strike, as Haywood was suffering from diabetes-related illness. Additionally, the IWW brought attorney Jessie Ashley to Little Falls to help prepare for the legal matters that those arrested would be facing. The following day, the strikers published a handbill condemning the action as a police riot, stating, "It was the most brutal, cold blooded act ever done in these parts. Nothing under heaven can ever justify it, and the soul of the degenerate brute who started it will shrivel in hell long, long before the workers will ever forget this day". In response, members of Little Falls' clergy, politicians, and businessmen held a town meeting where they voiced their approval of the actions taken by the police. By November 16, the strike had idled about 800 workers who remained at the mills. On November 19, activist Helen Keller sent a letter to the strikers commending them for their determination and expressing her support for their cause and included about \$87 to help with the strike fund. Keller was an advocate for socialist causes and had joined the IWW after their work in Lawrence earlier that year. Donations were also sent by many supporters of the strike, including the IWW local union in Columbus, Ohio, which raised \$40 for the strike. During this time, Rabinowitz and Schloss traveled throughout the Northeastern United States to gather additional support for the strike.
### Mediation and the United Textile Workers
Almost as soon as the strike began, the New York State Department of Labor's Bureau of Mediation and Arbitration arrive in Little Falls to attempt to broker an agreement between the strikers and the mills. Before the strike had spread to the Gilbert Mill, the bureau interviewed the owner of the Phoenix Mill, who said he would not negotiate any change in pay with the strikers until they returned to work. Meanwhile, after the strike had spread to the Gilbert Mill, representatives of that enterprise agreed to meet with strikers, but refused to have an IWW interpreter present, causing the negotiations to falter. For several weeks thereafter, neither mill would agree to negotiate in any way with IWW representatives. Around this time, the United Textile Workers of America (UTW), an AFL-affiliated union, began to organize some of the strikers into their union and negotiated with the mills on their behalf. The UTW presence in Little Falls, led by AFL organizer Charles A. Miles of Auburn, had arrived after the IWW had established its role in the strike and began to directly compete with the IWW to control the strike. According to reporting from the International Socialist Review, which was sympathetic to the IWW over the UTW, some members of the private police that had been involved in the October 30 confrontation had been members of the UTW. Miles partnered with business interests, clergy members, and law enforcement to portray the IWW as a violent anarchist group that was not able to effectively negotiate on the behalf of their members. Miles and the UTW succeeded in recruiting some strikers to the organization, claiming an initial membership of 52 mill workers, and while the mill owners refused to negotiate with the IWW, Miles managed to negotiate a settlement for his group with the millworkers, announcing an end to the strike on December 2. The settlement included an increase in day wages and piece work pay to make up for the loss of hours. However, the IWW local at this time claimed a membership of 400 workers who remained on strike. Concerning the competition between the two unions during the strike, historian James S. Pula has said, "In the end, the IWW proved more influential, possibly because of the egregious actions of local officials that called forth a stronger response from the workers".
### Later strike action
On December 17, in a move similar to what the IWW had done in Lawrence, the strikers began to send their children to temporarily live in the homes of strike sympathizers in cities such as Amsterdam, Schenectady, and Pittsfield, Massachusetts, with 18 of a planned 50 leaving that day. Strikers were harassed by law enforcement officials during an accompanying march held to the train station, garnering significant media attention and public sympathy for the strike. On December 24, due to the protractedness of the strike, the State Department of Labor ordered an official inquiry into the causes and nature of the strike. The department held hearings in the city on December 27, 28, and 30, in total interviewing 47 witnesses, including numerous strikers and the mill owners. The investigators determined conclusively that the decrease in wages was the primary cause of and continued reason for the strike, though mill owners also contended that the intervention of the IWW had prolonged the strike. Following the hearings, the investigators created a multi-point plan that they submitted to the mill owners, who agreed to it. The terms, as written by the investigators, stated:
1. "There will be no discrimination against individual strikers.
2. The companies to reinstate all former employees as soon as possible.
3. All men and women working 54 hours to receive pay formerly received for 60 hours.
4. Piece work rates to be adjusted to compensate for reduction of time caused by fifty-four hour law.
5. Night lunch to be adjusted by the workers directly involved.
6. Winding schedules: Cop yarn in most sizes is raised 5 cents per 100 pounds. Mule spun yarn is increased from 9 per cent on the largest size to 16 per cent on the smallest size. 10 per cent additional is paid on latch needle knitting. Other piece work prices affected by the fifty-four hour law to be adjusted on the same plan."
On January 2, Rabinowitz called a mass meeting of the strikers where the terms of the proposal were read with the help of interpreters, including Carlo Tresca. The state mediator was also present to answer questions or provide clarifications for the strikers. Also during the meeting, attorney Fred Moore spoke to the crowd, calling on them to continue to fight for better conditions if they approved of the proposal. Ultimately, the strikers unanimously agreed to accept the terms of the contract, with the meeting ending with a playing of "La Marseillaise". The strikers agreed to return to work that Monday, January 6, thus ending the strike. The IWW viewed the settlement as a success.
## Aftermath
Concerning the strike, Pula stated in a 1995 book that the "dispute [was] characterized by physical and emotional bitterness that more than matched the inclement weather of a brutal winter". The strike was the longest to occur as a result of the Jackson bill, and the employees involved lost a cumulative 68,379 work days. It was the largest strike led by the IWW in the state of New York and represented one of several instances during this time of cooperation on the local level between Wobblies and members of the Socialist Party, despite disputes among higher-ups in both organizations. It was one of many in a wave of strikes in the northeastern United States that followed the Lawrence strike, with other textile labor disputes occurring around the same time in New Bedford, Massachusetts, and Passaic, New Jersey, as well as part of a wave of labor disputes led by the IWW in the northeast and Midwest. As a result of the strike, mill workers saw wage increases of between 6 and 15 percent, and the state government launched an investigation into the state of living conditions among the immigrant laborers in Little Falls. Additionally, the city government launched a "clean-up week" in an attempt to improve living conditions in the immigrant part of town, the Phoenix Mill constructed a few new houses for workers, and a loan company was established to aid immigrants.
Following the strike, the IWW focused on the legal issues concerning 14 strikers who remained arrested. Moore served as the attorney for those involved, with trials taking place from March to May 1913. In the end, many were found not guilty or received fines, but Bochino and Legere were found guilty of assault. The two Wobblies were sentenced to a year in Auburn Prison, where they were interred until July 1914. According to historian Robert E. Snyder in a 1979 article in the journal New York History, the court cases drained money and resources from the local union, and with two of the union's organizers in prison, the local struggled and eventually fell into a state of disorder. This time period also coincided with the IWW's 1913 Paterson silk strike, which ended in disaster for the union. According to historian Philip S. Foner, after the Paterson strike, "the bright hopes of the IWW in the textile industry lay shattered", further stating, "The IWW suffered a setback in Paterson from which it never completely recovered. Its prestige in the East, which had been at a high point following the victory at Lawrence, underwent a tremendous decline, and there was no longer talk about the IWW's infallibility in strikes". Coming as it did between the Lawrence and Paterson strike, Snyder states that the Little Falls strike "has been neglected by labor historians".
Following the IWW's decline, the more conservative AFL remained and recruited workers in the area, and over the next few years the labor organization recruited heavily from immigrant laborers in the region. The AFL and IWW would continue to compete to recruit workers for the next several years, such as in the Bayonne refinery strikes of 1915–1916, which also involved many Polish immigrants. However, by the 1920s, the IWW had declined significantly in size and power. Unionization amongst Polish immigrants in the northeast continued to increase over the next several years and is highlighted by a number of strikes, such as a 1916 labor dispute with the New York Mills Corporation in New York Mills. Later labor disputes in Herkimer County include the Remington Rand strike of 1936–1937 and several disputes led by dairy farmers in the 1930s.
The city of Little Falls held events to commemorate the centennial of the strike in 2012. Events were also held elsewhere in the Mohawk Valley: in Ilion, home to Remington Rand, a dramatic play based on the strike was performed, and in Utica the Unitarian Universalist church had a Wobbly give a speech about the strike on Labor Day. |
66,978,390 | Amnesia (Roxen song) | 1,172,085,482 | 2021 song by Roxen | [
"2020s ballads",
"2021 singles",
"2021 songs",
"Eurovision songs of 2021",
"Eurovision songs of Romania",
"Roxen (singer) songs",
"Warner Music Group singles"
] | "Amnesia" is a song recorded by Romanian singer Roxen, digitally released by Warner Music Poland on 4 March 2021. It was written by Adelina Stîngă and Victor Bouroșu, while the production was solely handled by the latter. A dark ballad, the song's lyrics discuss combatting self-neglection in modern society, referring to this phenomenon as "self-love amnesia". Music critics generally applauded the song, with praise concentrated on its catchiness and commercial appeal, as well as on Roxen's vocal delivery. For promotional purposes, a music video was released simultaneously with the digital premiere of the song and was directed by Bogdan Păun. Filmed at an empty National Theatre Bucharest, the visual shows Roxen and several dancers performing contemporary dance to portray the story of a person who manages to gain control over their surrounding fears.
Romanian broadcaster Romanian Television (TVR) internally selected Roxen as Romania's contestant and "Amnesia" as the nation's entry for the Eurovision Song Contest 2021. The singer was previously scheduled to perform "Alcohol You" at the 2020 contest, which was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Presenting a stage show similar to the music video of the song, Roxen failed to progress from the semi-finals, placing 12th in a field of 16 with 85 points, marking Romania's third non-qualification in the contest. Upon the event, "Amnesia" reached numbers 51 and 26 on Lithuania's AGATA and the Netherlands' Single Tip rankings, respectively.
## Background and release
"Amnesia" was written by Adelina Stîngă and Victor Bouroșu, while the production was solely handled by the latter. Bouroșu, better known under the stage name of Vicky Red, had previously collaborated with Roxen on several songs, including on "Alcohol You", which was selected as Romania's entry for the COVID-19-cancelled Eurovision Song Contest 2020. "Amnesia" was released for digital download and streaming in various territories on 4 March 2021 by Warner Music Poland, whom Roxen's label Global Records had partnered with for a promotional campaign for the singer in July 2020. The song was already available to the public prior to its planned premiere at 20:00 CET on the same day via TVR1; this prompted Wiwibloggs's Lucy Percy to speculate that the singer's team had "accidentally set the release [...] to midnight local time, rather than coordinating with the time of the official announcement".
## Composition and reception
Musically, "Amnesia" has been described as a "dark" and "melancholic" ballad that has a similar "vulnerab[le]" and "delicate" nature to "Alcohol You", though marked a departure from Roxen's fellow dance-pop releases. Incorporating what Percy saw as a "modern" and "youthful" sound, "Amnesia" builds into a "thumping finale" after its "soulful" verses and "powerful" mid-tempo beat-driven refrain. Roxen sings in a "raspy" manner on the track, which, alongside its catchy nature and commercial appeal, was praised by multiple music critics. Conversely, however, Boris Meersman of ESCUnited saw "Amnesia" as "poor" and noted its forgettable melody; he further criticized Roxen's diction and the use of "warbled" Auto-Tune on their vocals. In a Wiwibloggs review containing several reviews from individual critics, the song was rated 6.95 out of 10 points, and likened to Pam Rabbit's "Get Up" (2020) by an observer. Commercially, "Amnesia" reached the charts of selected countries after its participation in the Eurovision Song Contest 2021. It peaked at number 51 on Lithuania's AGATA ranking. The song also reached number 26 on the Dutch Single Tip chart, which acts as an extension to the main Single Top 100 ranking.
## Lyrical interpretation
Lyrically, "Amnesia" delves into combatting self-neglection in modern society, with Roxen referring to this phenomenon as "self-love amnesia". The song opens with Roxen lamenting over their younger self, who was "shining like a pearl" and "could push the night so far away", but eventually "lost [them]self tryna have it all". The lyrics, which have been labelled as "brutal at times" and as having a "tone [...] of sadness and confusion", further include lines such as: "[T]he world feels in a rush and they say they know it all", "Giving all they want might make you lose control, [...] people always say 'be careful what you wishin' for'" and "Self love, it's never gone, self love, put it back on". Regarding the track's message, Roxen stated: "The last year was a bit of a rollercoaster [...]. 'Amnesia' somehow manages to give a voice to all repressed feelings and to the people whose voices haven't been heard, in a way that for me is incredibly pure." Inspiration also came from the singer's emotional state after being diagnosed with lyme disease at the age of 14.
## Music video and promotion
An accompanying music video was uploaded to both Roxen's and the Eurovision Song Contest's YouTube channels on 4 March 2021. Filmed at an empty National Theatre Bucharest and directed by Bogdan Păun, the visual portrays Roxen sporting black outfits while performing choreography with contemporary dance artists dressed in white. It ends with the message: "For every shout that went unheard".
Regarding the video's meaning, Romanian broadcaster Romanian Television (TVR) explained that it tells the story "of a single person, who struggles with their inner self, with the states that are controlled by her external environment. Although they is constantly surrounded by fears, which have control over their, [they] manages to get rid of them, regains control and becomes increasingly strong and confident in their strengths”. For further promotion, Roxen performed "Amnesia" during the virtual Concert in the Dark and Wiwi Jam events in April and May 2021, respectively. A video of her singing a stripped-down version of the song on the rooftop of a Rotterdam building was also released on the YouTube channel of the Eurovision Song Contest in the latter month.
## At Eurovision
### Before Rotterdam
Following on from the cancelled Eurovision Song Contest 2020, Roxen was again internally selected to represent Romania at the 2021 contest as part of TVR's collaboration with Global Records. They were announced as the Romanian representative on 31 March 2020, and "Amnesia" was chosen as their entry by an internal jury panel made up of several music industry professionals. It was part of around six other shortlisted English-language songs that Roxen had recorded demos of. The track surfacing on music platforms prior to the scheduled reveal of Romania's entry on TVR1 prompted speculation among observers.
In accordance with the European Broadcasting Union's (EBU) prevention plan against a COVID-19-cancellation of the Eurovision Song Contest 2021, each participant was required to record a live-on-tape performance of their entry in a location of their choice prior to the event; the tape was to be broadcast during Eurovision in case the artist was unable to travel to the contest's venue to perform their song due to pandemic restrictions or related reasons. A large portion of the mostly unused live-on-tape performances, including Roxen's, were unveiled after the contest as part of Eurovision's Celebration YouTube shows. The live-on-tape recording for "Amnesia" was done on 23 March 2021 at TVR's studio in Bucharest.
### In Rotterdam
The Eurovision Song Contest 2021 took place at Rotterdam Ahoy in Rotterdam, Netherlands and consisted of two semi-finals on 18 and 20 May, respectively, and the final on 22 May 2021. According to Eurovision rules, each country, except the host country and the "Big Five" (France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom), was required to qualify from one of two semi-finals to compete for the final; the top ten countries from each semi-final progressed to the final. In March 2021, it was announced that "Amnesia" would be performed 13th in the first semi-final of the contest, following Israel and preceding Azerbaijan.
Romania was scheduled for technical rehearsals at Rotterdam Ahoy on 9 and 12 May 2021, during which Roxen wore an oversized hoodie, joggers and boots; this outfit was ultimately changed in favour of a dress with a floral print for the semi-final performance. The show was designed to resemble the music video of "Amnesia", however with the involvement of only five dancers, and was directed by Păun and Dan Manoliu. Throughout the performance, silhouettes "trying to break free from the screens" are featured on the LED backdrop as Roxen and the barefoot dancers execute an "elaborate" interpretive dance choreography in which, at one point, the singer is dragged across the stage; Roxen is seen fighting with the dancers, which represent their inner demons. As the performance progresses, the singer walks to the B-stage and the show's staging transitions from being smoke-filled and having a dark color scheme to showcasing "radiating warm oranges, yellows and pinks" and a "hopeful" sunrise on the screen. At the end, Roxen prominently belts out a high note and then proceeds to fall down into the dancers as the message "for every shout that went unheard" is displayed.
The reception of the performance was mixed. Multiple observers criticized Roxen's vocal delivery and pronunciation, with Oliver Adams of Wiwibloggs questioning whether their heavy movement as part of the choreography was the reason behind the former. While both an editor of ESCXtra and Meersman praised the dancing, which the latter saw as being "beautiful and symbolic", Meersman further applauded the "gorgeous" backdrops and camera angles. Although criticizing Roxen's lack of eye contact with the viewer, he acknowledged that her performance showcased artistic growth.
#### Points awarded to Romania
Below is a breakdown of points awarded to Romania in the contest's second semi-final, as well as the breakdown of the jury voting and televoting conducted during the show. Romania was placed 12th, with a total of 85 points, thus failing to qualify for the grand final; this is one of the nation's worst results ever and their third non-qualification, consecutive to the previous ones. Romania received 27 televoting points, which included 10 awarded by Italy. The jury points added to 58, including 12 from Malta and 10 from Cyprus.
## Track listing
- Digital download
1. "Amnesia" – 2:54
## Charts
## Release history |
24,495,480 | Tropical Storm Delia (1973) | 1,171,673,321 | Atlantic tropical storm in 1973 | [
"1973 Atlantic hurricane season",
"Atlantic hurricanes in Mexico",
"Atlantic tropical storms",
"Hurricanes in Louisiana",
"Hurricanes in Texas"
] | Tropical Storm Delia was the first tropical cyclone on record to make landfall in the same city twice. Forming out of a tropical wave on September 1, 1973, Delia gradually strengthened into a tropical storm as it moved north by September 3. After reaching this strength, the storm turned more westward and further intensified, nearly attaining hurricane status the next day. The storm peaked with winds of 70 mph (110 km/h) and a barometric pressure of 986 mbar (hPa; 29.11 inHg). Several hours later, Delia made landfall near Freeport, Texas; however, the storm began to execute a counterclockwise loop, causing it to move back over the Gulf of Mexico. On September 5, the storm made another landfall in Freeport before weakening to a depression. The remnants of Delia eventually dissipated early on September 7 over northern Mexico.
Due to the erratic movement of the storm along the Texas coastline, significant rainfall fell in areas near the center and in parts of Louisiana. This led to widespread flooding, especially of farmland, that left \$6 million in damages. Five people were killed during the storm.
## Meteorological history
Tropical Storm Delia originated from a tropical wave that formed over the central Caribbean Sea in late August 1973. Tracking towards the west-northwest, convective activity increased and the overall structure of the system improved. By August 31, a weak area of low pressure formed over the Gulf of Honduras. This system tracked northward and further organized into a tropical depression just off the southeastern coast of the Yucatán Peninsula on September 1. Gradually intensifying, the depression became a tropical storm on September 3 as it turned towards the west. In accordance with its upgrade, it was given the name Delia. This upgrade followed a reconnaissance mission into the system that found sustained winds of 50 mph (85 km/h). A complex steering pattern formed later that day, resulting in a more hostile environment for the cyclone.
As Delia neared the Texas coastline, it managed to intensify into a strong tropical storm with winds of 70 mph (110 km/h) and reconnaissance reported winds well in excess of hurricane-force in numerous squalls associated with the storm. The lowest pressure was recorded at 986 mbar (hPa; 29.11 inHg). However, Delia was not classified a hurricane as it had not developed an eyewall around the center of circulation. Delia subsequently made its first landfall at Freeport, Texas late on September 4. After executing a counterclockwise loop, the storm made its second landfall in Freeport on September 5. After moving inland, the storm quickly weakened, becoming a depression on September 6 before dissipating early the next day over northern Mexico.
## Preparations and impact
On September 3, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) issued gale warnings and hurricane watches for areas between Lake Charles, Louisiana and the mouth of the Mississippi. Later that day, they were extended westward to Palacios, Texas and eventually, warnings for areas east of Morgan City, Louisiana were canceled. Due to the unexpected loop taken by Delia, gale warnings were extended as far south as Baffin Bay, Texas. By September 6, the NHC discontinued all watches and warnings associated with the storm. Around this time, the National Weather Service issued flood warnings, and warned residents about the possibility of tornadoes forming with the weakening tropical cyclone. In Cameron, Louisiana, an estimated 6,000 residents were evacuated with memories of Hurricane Audrey, a storm that killed 575 in the city, still fresh.
Due to the erratic track of the storm along the Texas coastline, widespread heavy rains fell in areas near the storm and in Louisiana. Tides up to 6 ft (1.8 m), in addition to rainfall up to 13.9 in (350 mm), caused significant flooding in the Galveston-Freeport area. Up to \$3 million was reported in damages to homes due to the flooding. In southern Louisiana, numerous areas received more than 10 in (250 mm) of rain and most of the state recorded at least 3 in (76 mm). This rainfall led to widespread flooding, particularly in agricultural areas. Damages to crops amounted to \$3 million. In addition to the flooding rains produced by Delia, eight tornadoes also touched down due to the storm, injuring four people. Five people were killed during Delia, two of which were directly related to the storm. Two of the other deaths resulted from a car crash, triggered by slick roads, with the two occupants of a pickup truck being killed. The fifth death resulted occurred while a man was boarding up his home and suffered a stress-induced heart attack. The outer bands of the storm also produced significant rainfall in Arkansas and Oklahoma, peaking at 9.72 in (247 mm) and 8.22 in (209 mm) respectively.
## See also
- 1973 Atlantic hurricane season |
55,074,816 | German destroyer Z51 | 1,158,289,673 | Destroyer ship | [
"1944 ships",
"Proposed ships of Germany",
"World War II destroyers of Germany"
] | Z51 was the only ship of the Type 1942 destroyer class built for the Kriegsmarine. She was the only destroyer built by the Kriegsmarine to use diesel fuel, which would have given it a longer range and readier access to refueling compared to fuel oil. The Type 1942 destroyer class went through a long period of development, including four total designs. Z51 was ordered on 25 November 1942, and launched on 2 October 1944, far before being finished, likely to clear her slipway for U-boat construction. She was left floating outside Bremen and was sunk in an air raid on 21 March 1945. Germany attempted to communicate the plans for the Type 1942 destroyer to its ally the Empire of Japan using a submarine, U-234, however Germany surrendered before the submarine reached Japan. Z51 was broken up between 1948 and 1949.
## Background
### Interbellum
Following the end of World War I Germany signed the Treaty of Versailles, which put strict limits both on the size and displacement of warships that she could possess. During the Interwar period, the period between the first and second world wars, the average size of Allied ships and their armaments in almost all warship categories grew substantially. As a result of the treaty, Germany felt that her ships could not compete with those of the Allied navies and began to ignore the treaty, at first covertly, and later openly after Adolf Hitler, the Führer (leader) of Nazi Germany, publicly denounced it in March 1935. The displacements of all German ships at the time were purposefully understated to have their official sizes comply with the treaty. At first, changes to German destroyers were made with the goal of being able to contain French and Polish destroyers, effectively making the destroyers double as small cruisers. This was exemplified by the jump in the displacement of the Type 1934 destroyers from 1,100 tonnes (1,200 short tons) as planned in 1932 to 1,625 tonnes (1,791 short tons) when contracted. While these changes were made in order to allow them to overpower their French and Polish counterparts, which displaced 1,378 tonnes (1,519 short tons) and 1,540 tonnes (1,700 short tons) respectively, later it was necessary that these destroyers be able to match British destroyers, a much more difficult goal.
Due to the comparatively small number of German shipyards, compared to the British or French, Germany adopted a policy of heavily arming her destroyers to compensate for their low numbers, so that they bore similar armament to French and Polish light cruisers. Several negative consequences resulted from this, such as making them slower and overweight. Although German heavy destroyers matched British light cruisers in armament, they were much less seaworthy and their fire control was inferior.
### Plan Z
Plan Z was a German naval rearmament plan that started in 1939, and involved building ten battleships, four aircraft carriers, twelve battlecruisers, three pocket battleships, five heavy cruisers, forty-four light cruisers, sixty-eight destroyers, and 249 submarines. These ships were to form two battle fleets: a "Home Fleet" to tie down the British war fleet in the North Sea, and a "Raiding Fleet" to wage war upon British convoys. Erich Raeder, the Grand Admiral of the Kriegsmarine, was assured by Hitler that war would not start until at least 1945. Raeder had wanted the deadline for the completion of Plan Z to be extended to 1948, but Hitler insisted on 1945, although Hitler privately wanted to be at war with the Anglo-French alliance by 1942. World War II began in 1939, meaning that very few of Germany's heavy ships would be finished at that point. Germany's main naval opponents were France and England. Compared to the number of ships Germany had upon entry into the war (in parentheses) the two countries had combined totals of: 22 battleships (two), seven carriers (none), 22 heavy cruisers (four), 61 light cruisers (six), 255 destroyers (34), 135 submarines (57, of which less than half could actually serve in the Atlantic or the North Sea). Due to the clear advantage her enemies had, Raeder remarked that the Kriegsmarine could not hope to win, and thus the only course for them was to "die valiantly".
### Destroyer function
The function of the destroyer was defined by its evolution: around the 1870s, nations that could not directly threaten the British Royal Navy began to invest in torpedo boats, small and agile ships which used their torpedoes to deliver enough damage to pose a tactical issue to enemy fleets. Near the turn of the 20th century, British and German torpedo boats grew in size to the point of creating a separate line of sea-going torpedo craft, "torpedo boat destroyers", or simply destroyers, designed in part to counter torpedo boats themselves. Experience in World War I showed that destroyers very rarely engaged capital ships, but more often fought other destroyers and submarines; because of this, destroyers were partially re-focused towards escort and anti-submarine services. During the war, they were used as "maids of all work", fulfilling virtually every role to some degree, and, unlike capital ships, which rarely left port during the war, served in numerous operations. By the end of the war, destroyers were perceived as one of the most useful classes of ships.
During World War II, destroyers served essentially the three basic functions they had in World War I: to act as screening ships to defend their fleets from those of an enemy, to attack an enemy's screening ships, and to defend their fleet from submarines. There was an increased desire to introduce anti-aircraft measures to the destroyers, although many nations struggled to do so effectively. How destroyers were actually used varied by country. Germany did not use her destroyers to defend against submarines, hence their lack of strong anti-submarine armament. Germany relied on a massive fleet of trawlers that had been requisitioned and refitted as minelayers instead. British destroyers were built for escorting fleets, defending them from enemy aircraft and sinking submarines. German destroyers were built to escort fleets, or act as torpedo boats. The role of the destroyer began to vary more widely as World War II progressed, with five parallel evolutions: the all-purpose destroyer (all countries), the anti-submarine destroyer (the United States and the United Kingdom), the anti-aircraft destroyer (Japan and the United Kingdom), the small destroyer (Germany and Italy), and the super-large destroyer (France).
## Development
The Type 1942 destroyer class marked a major change from previous destroyer concepts produced by the Kriegsmarine, as it was the first design to be given diesel propulsion. This was done because of the longer endurance offered by diesel, and likely also because diesel fuel was more readily obtainable for Nazi Germany. Between 1928 and 1935, MAN Augsburg built a light, double acting, two-stroke diesel motor, which met German navy specifications. The motors were then tested on the German cruiser Leipzig and the training ship Bremse. The motors encountered initial teething problems, which although swiftly overcome, allowed those supportive of steam engines to deny diesel propulsion any research funding in the critical building period from 1935 on. It was not until 1938 that the Kriegsmarine renewed its interest in diesel propulsion. However, the advent of World War II largely led to the suspension of research, except for the Type 1942 destroyer class, which was to use six MAN type 12Z32/34 engines.
### Diesel engines
Six MAN type 12Z32/34 engines were ordered in 1943, but only four were completed by the end of the war in 1945. Test work on the engines was abandoned in February 1945, due to lack of fuel. The type 12Z32/34 engine was 24-cylinder, placed in a 2 × 12 configuration, had a 320-millimeter (13 in) bore, a 440 mm (17 in) stroke motor, and was a 'V' form, fast-running, double-acting, two-stroke, diesel engine made of welded steel. It had a maximum of 600 revs per minute, a piston speed of 8.8 meters per second (29 ft/s), maximum output of 12,000 horsepower (8,900 kW), medium effective pressure of 5.52 kilograms per square centimeter (78.5 psi), and a maximum fuel demand of 185 grams per horsepower per hour (2.43 oz/kW/ks). It had a dry weight of 67 tonnes (66 long tons; 74 short tons), including auxiliary machinery, but not the oil cooler. The six engines combined would give the Type 1942 destroyer class a range to match the pocket battleships and U-boats.
### Sub-designs
The Type 1942 design was expanded to three sub-designs as it was developed: 'A', 'B', and 'C'. The original plan had a six-diesel engine, three-shaft configuration, with an armament of four 12.7-centimeter (5.0 in) guns, with two superfiring on the fore and two superfiring on the aft. The design attracted much criticism, thus a new sketch was drawn, 'A', with a twin 12.7 cm turret on the fore and aft, with a single 12.7 cm turret superfiring over both. This design also drew criticism. By December 1943, the Führer der Zerstörer (FdZ), the commander of destroyer development and deployment, demanded that the fore single superfiring turret be removed, in order to reduce the length, improve speed, and reduce bow weight. They also mandated that the aft single 12.7 cm guns be able to elevate up to 75°. However, on 22 January 1944, after a meeting between the FdZ and Naval Group North, the FdZ dropped their demand for the fore single turret to be removed, after being informed that the speed loss due to it was marginal.
At the same conference, the new 12.7 cm KM/41 naval gun was also discussed, as it was the best quick-firing gun design of the time. It was pointed out that the 12.7 cm KM/41 had a severe lack of anti-aircraft abilities, due to the fact that none of the mountings were tri-axial, and indeed, only the single turret guns were even bi-axial. Additionally, the twin turrets could only elevate to 52°, and the single turrets only to 75°. Because of this, questions on the worth of stabilization for the directors and rangefinders were raised, whereupon it was decided that it would be up to the Shipbuilding Commission to decide if the stabilization would come with too great a weight penalty and to omit if they felt it did. Due to the severe lack of anti-aircraft defense, it was decided to replace the LM/44 2 cm (0.79 in) twin mounted AA guns with 3 cm (1.2 in) twin mount AA guns if possible, although the 2 cm AA guns were considered an acceptable interim measure. Another point of consideration was the matter of the new 5.5 cm (2.2 in) Gerät 58 AA gun, which was designed for U-boats. The idea of mounting these guns on the Type 1942 destroyer class was discussed at length, although it had major issues. One such issue was that the new 5.5 cm guns weighed between 6 tonnes (5.9 long tons; 6.6 short tons) and 7 t (6.9 long tons; 7.7 short tons), inclusive of directors and sights, which meant that the four 3.7 cm (1.5 in) guns could be replaced by only two 5.5 cm guns. Another issue raised was that room would have to be made for the new 5.5 guns. It was decided that the aft single 12.7 cm gun and two twin 2 cm guns would be removed to make room for two 5.5 cm guns, although it was noted that the 12.7 cm guns would likely arrive before the 5.5 cm guns, and thus the 12.7 cm guns would be allowed on a temporary basis. It was also decided that the remaining 3.7 cm AA guns would be replaced by 3 cm guns, in order to simplify ammunition supply.
Another conference was held on 9 February 1944, to discuss the weight and trim of the design. It was decided that the torpedo tube placement would follow that of its predecessors, with one set forward and one abaft the second funnel. Due to this, and the huge number of earlier changes, the design still being worked upon was dubbed the 'B' sub-design. However, yet further modifications were made, by 14 February the Shipbuilding Commission had convinced the other groups to change the design to have three twin main guns. This design dubbed the 'C' sub-design, had two LM/41 twin turrets placed forward, and one aft, all of which were controlled by radar-equipped directors. The number of 5.5 cm guns was increased to three, grouped about the aft funnel. The hull length and displacement were slightly increased, and the engine machinery was moved further back on the boat, to balance out the weight of the added turret. The propulsion system was to be divided into four motor rooms, each containing two diesel motors (although only four were actually placed in Z51).
### Designs
### Z51
Only one ship of the type was ever laid down, Z51. Z51's design was modified heavily from the original ('A') design of the Type 1942 destroyer, and slightly modified from the final ('C') design. The original eight MAN type 12Z32/34 diesel engines, which were to drive two shafts via Vulkan gearing, were replaced by only four such engines, which were coupled to the center shaft, with the wing engines being removed entirely. After 1944, Germany increasingly transmitted schematics and research for advanced science and weaponry to her ally the Empire of Japan using submarines, as they were the only method of transportation available to Germany that could hope to reach Japan. One such transportation was attempted by German submarine U-234, carrying the material and designs for advanced weaponry, involving new torpedoes, two Messerschmitt Me 262 jet fighters with schematics to build them, and the designs for the Type 1942 destroyer class. However, Germany surrendered on 8 May 1945, before U-234 could reach its target, and she therefore surrendered herself to USS Sutton, in the western Atlantic, on 14 May 1945.
## Characteristics
The Type 1942 destroyers were to be 108.0 meters (354.3 ft) long at waterline, and 114.3 m (375 ft) long overall. Their design gave them a breadth of 11 m (36 ft), and a freeboard of 6.5 m (21 ft). They would have a draught of 3.72 m (12.2 ft) at standard load, 3.98 m (13.1 ft) at design load, and 4.37 m (14.3 ft) at full load. They would displace 2,014 tonnes (1,982 long tons; 2,220 short tons) at standard load, 2,330 t (2,290 long tons; 2,570 short tons) at design load, and 2,720 t (2,680 long tons; 3,000 short tons) at full load. They were to have a complement of 12 officers and 335 crewmembers. They were to carry one motor pinnace and one torpedo cutter.
Their armament was to be four 12.7-centimeter (5.0 in) quick firing guns, with 720 rounds of ammunition, and a range of 17.4 km (10.8 mi); eight 3.7 cm (1.5 in) anti-aircraft guns, with 16,000 rounds; twelve 2 cm (0.79 in) anti-aircraft guns, with 24,000 rounds of ammunition; two triple 53.3 cm (21.0 in) torpedo tubes, with 18 rounds of ammunition; and 50 mines.
Their propulsion was made up of six MAN type 12Z32/34, 24-cylinder (in a 2 × 12 configuration), two-stroke, 'V'-form diesel engines, which had a 320-millimeter (13 in) bore, a 440 mm (17 in) stroke motor, and were made of welded steel, which were placed on three shafts of unknown diameter. The two outer shafts were directly connected to one 5,620-shaft-horsepower (4,190 kW) diesel engine. The central shaft connected to four diesel engines, with each central engine producing 11,650 shp (8,690 kW). Their planned electricity plant is unknown. This setup was designed to give a total output of 57,000-electric-horsepower (43,000 kW) or 57,120-brake-horsepower (42,590 kW), giving them a top speed of 36 knots (67 km/h; 41 mph). They were to carry 533 t (525 long tons; 588 short tons) of diesel fuel, to give them a range of 5,500 nautical miles (10,200 km; 6,300 mi) at 19 knots (35 km/h; 22 mph).
## Construction and loss
Z51 was ordered from the German shipyard company Deschimag on 25 November 1942, and launched on 2 October 1944. She was sunk during a major air raid on Bremen, on 21 March 1945. She had just been moved away from a fitting-out quay at the Deschimag yard, although largely incomplete: she had only her forward and after shelter decks, no machinery was installed and her shaft tunnels had been welded up to make them watertight. From this, it has been suggested that her launch was done only to clear the slip for U-boat building. She was lying abandoned, with her portside to the eastern end of Kohlenhafen, alongside Röchling wharf.
During the air raid, she was hit by two bombs, although one may not have hit her directly; one struck the vicinity of the bulkhead between compartments X1 and X11, breaking off the fore-end just behind her No. 2 gun pivot. A later bomb hit her aft, fracturing the stern aft of her No. 4 gun position and causing her quarterdecks to hang at an angle. At this point, numerous holes and cracks had formed in the hull, causing her to flood with water and sink to the bottom. Later on, a crane from the nearby dockyard fell across her deck, above her after motor room. After the war, on 21 January 1948, the Weser Port Salvage Authorities called for tenders to assist in her breaking up. A number of quotations were given, ranging from 130,000 to 200,000 RM (Reichsmark), and from four to 13 months' duration. Eventually, a contract was placed on 17 February 1948, with Deutsches Dampfschiffahrts Hansa, for 132,000 RM and eight months of work. Her breaking up was finished in February 1949. Her four diesel engines were never installed due to the war and were left on MAN's testbeds in Augsburg. Two were later seized by the Allies during the postwar occupation of Germany. One surviving engine was retained by MAN and displayed in its company museum until it was transferred to the Auto & Technik Museum in Sinsheim in 1982. |
200,114 | Penny (British decimal coin) | 1,173,584,907 | Coin, one-hundredth of a pound sterling | [
"Coins of the United Kingdom",
"Currencies introduced in 1971",
"Decimalisation",
"Pennies"
] | The British decimal one penny (1p) coin is a unit of currency and denomination of sterling coinage worth 1⁄100 of one pound. Its obverse featured the profile of Queen Elizabeth II since the coin's introduction on 15 February 1971, the day British currency was decimalised until her death on 8 September 2022. A new portrait featuring King Charles III was introduced on 30 September 2022, designed by Martin Jennings. Four different portraits of the Queen were used on the obverse; the last design by Jody Clark was introduced in 2015. The second and current reverse, designed by Matthew Dent, features a segment of the Royal Shield and was introduced in 2008. The penny is the lowest value coin (in real terms) ever to circulate in the United Kingdom.
The penny was originally minted from bronze, but since 1992 has been minted in copper-plated steel due to increasing copper prices.
There are an estimated 10.5 billion 1p coins in circulation as of 2016, with a total face value of around £105,000,000.
1p coins are legal tender only for amounts up to the sum of 20p when offered in repayment of a debt; however, the coin's legal tender status is not normally relevant for everyday transactions.
## Etymology
The word penny is derived from the Old English word penig, which itself comes from the proto-Germanic panninga. The correct plural form for multiple penny coins is pennies (e.g. fifty pennies). The correct term for monetary amounts of pennies greater than one penny is pence (e.g. one pound and twenty pence).
## History
Prior to 1971, the United Kingdom had been using the pounds, shillings, and pence currency system. Decimalisation was announced by Chancellor James Callaghan on 1 March 1966; one pound would be subdivided into 100 pence, instead of 240 pence as previously was the case.
This required new coins to be minted, to replace the pre-decimal ones. The original specification for the 1p coin was set out in the Decimal Currency Act 1969, which was replaced by the Currency Act 1971. Both mandated the weight of the coin to be 3.564 grams ±0.0750g, and 2.032 cm ±0.125 mm in diameter. Subsequently, the Currency Act 1983 allows for the standards of the 1p coin to be changed by royal proclamation.
The new 1p coins began production in December 1968 in the newly built Royal Mint facility in Llantrisant, South Wales. 1,521,666,250 1p coins were minted between 1968 and the end of 1971. On 15 February 1971, the United Kingdom officially switched to a decimal currency and the new coins entered circulation. The coins continue to be minted at this facility today.
### Metallic composition
The coin was originally minted in bronze (composition 97% copper, 2.5% zinc, 0.5% tin) between 1971 and September 1992. However, increasing world metal prices necessitated a change of composition. Since 1992, the coins are minted in steel and electroplated in copper, making them magnetic. Rising world prices for copper had caused the metal value of the pre-1992 copper 1p coin to exceed 1p (for example, in May 2006, the intrinsic metal value of a pre-1992 1p coin was about 1.5 pence). Melting coins is illegal in the United Kingdom and is punishable by a fine, or up to two years imprisonment.
### Obverse designs
To date, four different obverses have been used, all of which feature a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II. The outer inscription on the coin is ELIZABETH II D.G.REG.F.D. 2013, where 2013 is replaced by the year of minting. In the original design both sides of the coin are encircled by dots, a common feature on coins, known as beading.
Anticipation of a switch to a decimalised currency led to the commissioning of a new Royal Portrait by artist Arnold Machin, which was approved by the Queen in 1964. This featured the Queen wearing the 'Girls of Great Britain and Ireland' Tiara and was used until 1984. A modified form of this portrait has appeared on British Postage stamps since 1967.
Between 1985 and 1997 a portrait by Raphael Maklouf was used. The portrait is couped, and depicts the Queen wearing the George IV State Diadem. Unlike previous portraits, the Queen is wearing jewellery, earrings and a necklace. The initials of Maklouf RDM are shown below the neck of the Queen. His middle name, David, is included so that the mark is not confused with the initials of the Royal Mint.
In 1997, a competition to design the obverse of the 1997 Golden Wedding crown – a coin issued to celebrate the Queen's and Prince Philip's 50th wedding anniversary – was held. The standard of entry was so high that following this competition, the Royal Mint held another to design the new portrait. Ian Rank-Broadley won this competition, and his design was used between 1998 and 2015. His design again featured the tiara, with a signature-mark IRB below the portrait. The depiction of the Queen was seen as more realistic, with Rank Broadley himself saying "There is no need to flatter her. She is a 70-year-old woman with poise and bearing".In 2014, the Royal Mint again held a competition to design a new portrait. Designer Jody Clark won this competition, with a portrait of the Queen wearing the George IV State Diadem and the initials JC feature under the neck of the Queen. The portrait was sketched without an official sitting, only using reference material for inspiration.
### Reverse designs
Despite no official government confirmation of a switch to decimalised currency, the Royal Mint began the design process for decimal coins in 1962. They invited the Royal Academy, the Royal Institute of British Architects, the Faculty of the Royal Designers for Industry and the Royal College of Art to nominate artists to design the hypothetical new coins. British sculptor Christopher Ironside won this competition, and his design was chosen to feature on the potential decimalised currency. His design for the 1p coin featured a Scottish theme, with a coin depicting a thistle above a Scottish flag inside a shield and a Scottish lion inside a shield. However, Chancellor James Callaghan's announcement that the United Kingdom would decimalise its currency included an open competition to find the new designs. Over 80 artists and 900 different designs were submitted. Ironside entered this competition with a further, different style of designs and won.
The reverse of the coin, which was minted from 1971 to 2008, featured a crowned portcullis with chains (an adaptation of the Badge of Henry VII which is now the Badge of the Palace of Westminster), with the numeral "1" written below the portcullis, and either NEW PENNY (1971–1981) or ONE PENNY (1982–2008) above the portcullis.
In August 2005 the Royal Mint launched a competition to find new reverse designs for all circulating coins apart from the £2 coin. The winner, announced in April 2008, was Matthew Dent, whose designs were gradually introduced into circulating British coinage from mid-2008. The designs for the 1p, 2p, 5p, 10p, 20p and 50p coins depict sections of the Royal Shield that form much of the whole shield when placed together. The entire shield was featured on the now-obsolete round £1 coin. The 1p coin depicts the left section between the first and third quarter of the shield, representing England and Northern Ireland. The coin's obverse remains largely unchanged, but the beading (the ring of dots around the coin's circumference), which no longer features on the coin's reverse, has also been removed from the obverse.
## Status
### Legal tender
1p coins are legal tender for amounts up to and including 20 pence. However, in the UK, "legal tender" has a very specific and narrow meaning which relates only to the repayment of debt to a creditor, not to everyday shopping or other transactions. Specifically, coins of particular denominations are said to be "legal tender" when a creditor must by law accept them in redemption of a debt. The term does not mean – as is often thought – that a shopkeeper has to accept a particular type of currency in payment. A shopkeeper is under no obligation to accept any specific type of payment, whether legal tender or not; conversely, they have the discretion to accept any payment type they wish.
### Speculation on withdrawal
The proposed withdrawal of the 1p coins has been subject of media speculation, such as in 2015 when the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, proposed the withdrawal of the 1p coin. This was vetoed by Prime Minister David Cameron, because of the potential unpopularity with the public.
In March 2018, the Government launched a consultation on the future of payments in the British economy. One question focused on the denominational mix of coins, including 'dormant' denominations. This prompted speculation that the 1p and 2p coins could be withdrawn from circulation. Analysis from staff at the Bank of England concluded that fears about the withdrawal were 'unfounded' and that there would be no significant impact on prices if copper coins were scrapped, noting the sharp decline in usage of copper coins. It is estimated that 60% of copper coins are only spent once, before being removed from the cash cycle, as they are saved or binned. Approximately 8% of 1p coins are estimated to be thrown away entirely, requiring the annual minting of new 1p and 2p coins with a face value of £500m to replace coins falling out of circulation. Further, potential inflationary effects from the rounding of prices caused by scrapping the 1p would likely be minimal, given only 3% of payments by value are made in cash and card payments would continue to be made unrounded.
There was concern raised by some charities and businesses over the scrapping of 1p coins. Charities feared that the number of donations made in collection pots would fall and some business models could be severely impacted, for example traditional seaside arcades. However, in May 2019 Chancellor Phillip Hammond announced the outcome of a 2018 consultation, suggesting there were no plans to scrap copper coins and that he wanted the public to "have choice over how they spend their money". No 1p coins were minted in 2018, as the Treasury said that there were already enough in circulation.
### Value
Since around 1990, the penny has had the lowest value in real terms of any coin in the history of the United Kingdom, since at least its formation by the Acts of Union in 1707. All previous low-value coins were withdrawn before their purchasing power fell below the current value of the penny. The purchasing power of previous lowest-value coins is:
## Mintages
Data taken from the Royal Mint mintage statistics. The latest estimate from the Royal Mint of the total number of 1p coins in circulation was in March 2016 and there were an estimated 10.5 billion 1p coins in circulation, with a total face value of around £105,000,000.
## See also
- History of the British penny (1714–1901)
- History of the British penny (1901–1970) |
1,443,859 | Butterfly (Mariah Carey album) | 1,172,143,250 | null | [
"1997 albums",
"Albums produced by Q-Tip (musician)",
"Albums produced by Sean Combs",
"Albums produced by Trackmasters",
"Albums produced by Walter Afanasieff",
"Columbia Records albums",
"Mariah Carey albums"
] | Butterfly is the sixth studio album by American singer-songwriter Mariah Carey, released on September 10, 1997, by Columbia Records. The album contains both hip-hop and urban adult contemporary sounds, as well as some softer and more contemporary melodies. Throughout the project, Carey worked with Walter Afanasieff, with whom she had written and produced most of the material from her previous albums. She also worked with many famed hip-hop producers and rappers, such as Sean "Puffy" Combs, Q-Tip, Missy Elliott and the Trackmasters. With the latter acts producing most of the album, Butterfly deviated from the adult contemporary sound of Carey's previous albums.
With Butterfly, Carey continued the transition that began with previous album, Daydream (1995), which pushed her further into the R&B and hip hop market and away from the pop background of her previous work. Carey was able to reflect her creative maturity and evolution in the album's writing and recording. Carey writes in the booklet of her twelfth studio album, Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel (2009), that she considers Butterfly her magnum opus and a turning point in both her life and career.
Five singles were released from the album; two worldwide commercial singles and three limited-release singles. "Honey", the album's lead single, topped the charts in Canada and the United States, and reached the top-five in New Zealand, Spain and the United Kingdom. The album's fifth and final single, "My All", became a top-ten hit throughout Europe and topped the charts in the United States. To promote the album, Carey embarked on the Butterfly World Tour, which visited Australia, Japan and Taiwan, with one show in the United States. Butterfly was nominated for three Grammy Awards at the 40th Annual Grammy Awards.
Butterfly received acclaim from music critics, many of whom embraced Carey's musical transition. Reviewers complimented the album for its mature sound and production, as well as Carey's musical direction. Though released during Carey's heavily publicized conflict with Sony Music, the album became an international commercial success, topping the albums charts in many countries, including Australia, Canada, Greece, Japan, the Netherlands, as well as the United States. It was certified five-times Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in the United States and received the Million Award in Japan. Globally, Butterfly has sold over ten million copies.
## Background and release
Carey began working on Butterfly in January 1997. During the album's development in mid-1997 Carey separated from her husband, music executive Tommy Mottola, who had guided her career since 1990. Carey's increasing control over her own career had led to speculation in the press over the future of the couple, and they later divorced. Throughout the development of the album, in a departure from her previous style, Carey worked with various rappers and hip hop producers, including Sean "Puffy" Combs, Q-Tip, Missy Elliott and Jean Claude Oliver and Samuel Barnes from Trackmasters. Critics saw Carey's new production team as a form of revenge on Mottola and Sony Music. Carey denied taking a radically new direction, and insisted that the musical style of her new album was of her own choosing. Nevertheless, Carey resented the control that Sony, whose president was Mottola, exercised over her music, preventing her from making music about which she was passionate. In contrast, Sony was concerned Carey, their best-selling act, could jeopardize her future success through her actions.
The pressure of the separation and constant press attention began to take its toll on Carey. Growing creative differences with producer Walter Afanasieff ended their working relationship, after collaborating on most of Carey's previous output. The breaking point came after a heated argument during a long recording session, over the album's musical direction. Carey also faced media criticism over her choice of producers and several newspapers linked Carey romantically to several rappers, suggesting these relationships influenced her decisions. However, Carey denied the allegations, stating she had only slept with her husband.
Butterfly was first released on September 10, 1997, in Japan and Taiwan. It was unconventionally released on Thursday, September 11, in the United Kingdom, and September 12 in the rest of Europe. Columbia released it on September 16 in the United States. It was issued as an LP, cassette, compact disc, and/or MiniDisc depending on the country. In the United States, Columbia also issued a cassette/CD package set, the first such configuration by a record label.
## Writing and composition
Butterfly was described as an R&B, pop and hip hop music album with hip hop soul elements. With a variety of writers and producers and its new musical direction for Carey, the album was always likely to be a commercial success. Carey and Combs wrote the lead single, "Honey." Combs believed this to be a good song but was uncertain how successful it would be as a release owing to its heavy hip hop influence. The remix for "Honey" featured rapping lead vocals from Da Brat, The LOX and Mase, and some verses were rapped by Combs himself. The track was very different from Carey's previous recordings, and was described by author Chris Nickson as "street Hip-Hop music, with a booming bass." The song's melody was driven by Q-Tip's drum programming and Stevie J's keyboard notes. Combs's production gave the song a "light and airy" effect, further distancing it from Carey's contemporary sound. "Honey" featured musical samples from Treacherous Three's "The Body Rock", and "Hey DJ" by The World's Famous Supreme Team. The track used both hip hop and R&B with traces of pop music and was described as a "[song with a] catchy chorus, combining hip hop and pop into something that simply wasn't going to be denied by anyone, and offering a powerful start to a record."
The album's second single, "Butterfly", was one of the ballads Carey wrote with Afanasieff. Carey described the song as the "favorite ballad she had ever written", one that was more personal than her previous work as the emotions conveyed through the song allude at just how meaningful the lyrics are to her. Carey solely wrote the lyrics while Afanasieff, who composed the music with Dan Shea, handled the song's instrumentals, and added a few personal R&B touches. Another ballad Carey wrote with Afanasieff was "My All", written as a contrast to the album's general hip hop flavor. Carey described the song as having "a lush sound and intense styling". It featured guitar arpeggios, which were synthetically created using sampling and keyboard notes. "The Roof", Butterfly's European single, incorporated fragments from Mobb Deep's "Shook Ones (Part II)", and was produced by Carey, Poke & Tone and Cory Rooney.
"Fourth of July", one of the album's slower ballads, was also written solely by Carey and Afanasieff but was not released as a single. The song was perceived to have jazz influences and was compared to some of Carey's older work such as "Vanishing" and "The Wind". The next two tracks on the record, "Breakdown" and "Babydoll", were described as "the album's backbone, its real declaration of independence" by Nickson. "Breakdown" was written by Carey and Puffy and included rap verses from Wish and Krayzie Bone from Bone Thugs-n-Harmony. Author Chris Nickson wrote that "'Breakdown' showed Mariah treading forcefully into territory that was new for her and making it her own." For "Babydoll", Carey teamed up with Elliott. The track was recorded in Atlanta, where Elliott resided, and included background vocals from Carey's long-time friend, Trey Lorenz. "Babydoll" is an R&B ballad with trip hop and drum and bass influences, and was described as "a vocally driven piece", with strong jazz harmony provided by Cory Rooney. Other songs that incorporated R&B influence into ballads were "Whenever You Call" and "Close My Eyes", which were personally important to Carey due to their lyrical content. While both were similar ballads to Carey's previous work, Nickson said:
> While up to the standard of anything Mariah had ever done before, [they] suffered in comparison. But even here you could hear the new Mariah in the spareness of the arrangements and the way it was her voice, rather than any instrument, that controlled the song. She'd grown to the point where having less behind her really proved to be more, for the song and for her. It was notable, too, that like the other ballads on the record, these two leaned very much towards R&B.
Carey wrote the song "Fly Away (Butterfly Reprise)" with famed house music producer David Morales. When imagining the concept for "Butterfly", Carey intended the song to be a house music record, but after writing it, made it into a ballad. Carey expressed a desire to feature her concept both on the house record, in addition to the ballad that would become "Butterfly". Morales took Carey's lyrics, concept and melody and added a house beat to it. For the album, Carey recorded a version of Prince's "The Beautiful Ones", featuring Dru Hill, with Dru Hill lead singer Sisqó sharing much of the lead with her. The song was one of the last recorded tracks and was the only non-original song on Butterfly. The final song on the album was "Outside", a ballad that was written by Carey, Afanasieff and Rooney, about Carey's experience being biracial. Richard Harrington from The Washington Post described the album's subtle inclusion of both pop and R&B genres:
> There are two Mariah Careys on Butterfly. One is the pop-oriented, ballad-leaning traditionalist who works very effectively with her longtime professional partner, composer-producer Walter Afanasieff. The other is a self-styled hip-hop fanatic who worked with Ol' Dirty Bastard on her last album and teams up here with several of that genre's movers and shakers, most notably Sean "Puffy" Combs, the godfather of hip-hop soul and the hottest producer in pop music today.
## Promotion
To promote Butterfly, Carey made many live appearances. On September 12, 1997, Carey was interviewed about her split from Mottola and sang a live rendition of "Butterfly" and "Hero" on The Oprah Winfrey Show. Carey also featured as a musical guest on November 15, 1997, on Saturday Night Live, performing "Butterfly" again, as well as the Spanish-inspired "My All". She made two appearances on The Rosie O'Donnell Show; she performed "My All" and on her return visit, sang "Close My Eyes" live for the first time. Carey also gave performances at awards shows, singing "My All" at the 1998 Blockbuster Entertainment Awards and "Honey" at the 1998 World Music Awards. In Europe, Carey made several promotional television appearances. In the United Kingdom, Carey performed "My All" and "Honey" on the Des O'Connor Show and Top of the Pops. In Germany, she sang "Butterfly" on Wetten, dass..? and performed on Japanese television.
Originally, Carey had not planned to tour, after receiving mixed reviews in the US for her Music Box Tour. However, after the album's release, many fans requested Carey to tour, especially in Asia and Australia. Therefore, Carey embarked on the Butterfly World Tour; her third head-lining tour and most extensive to date. The tour included eleven shows, four in Japan's largest stadium, Tokyo Dome, one in Taiwan, five in Australia and one in the United States. As part of her performance at the 50,000-capacity Aloha Stadium in Hawaii, Carey filmed a concert video, Around the World. The video was a compilation DVD which included parts of Carey's shows in Japan, Australia and Hawaii. The tour was a critical and commercial success. Both fans and critics praised the quality of the show and Carey's vocals.
### Singles
Five singles were released from Butterfly; some featured as airplay-only singles, while others were released only in certain territories. "Honey" was released as the album's first single to mainstream and rhythmic radio on July 29, 1997. The song became Carey's twelfth number-one single on the Billboard Hot 100 and topped the chart in Canada, while reaching the top-five in New Zealand, Spain and the United Kingdom. It was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), for shipments of one million units in the United States, and received a gold certification in Australia. "Honey" was well-received, with critics complimenting its catchy sound and clever fusion of pop and R&B sounds. The title track served as the album's second single, but it was released as an "airplay-only" single due to Carey's conflict with Sony. Though not being released commercially by her label, "Butterfly" reached number sixteen on the Hot 100 Airplay, as well as the top-twenty in New Zealand.
"Breakdown" was the third single released from Butterfly. The song received a limited release throughout certain countries, such as the United States, where it peaked at number four on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs. Aside from the US, "Breakdown" achieved a steady peak of number four on the New Zealand singles chart, in addition to entering the top-forty in Australia. While not one of Carey's best-known hits, "Breakdown" remains one of her most praised songs, receiving acclaim for assisting Carey's transition into the R&B market. In his review for the album, Rich Juzwiak from Slant magazine wrote the following:
> The song of Carey's career, where the lyrical strokes are as broad and obvious as they are naked. Mariah the chanter flawlessly adapts to their singsong style, largely boxing her multi-octave range into a sly, hypnotic melody so that when she really wails at the end, you really feel it. Carey lunges toward musical maturity by embracing, not shunning hip-hop. This is the height of her elegance and maybe hip-hop-soul's, too.
While "Breakdown" served as the album's third single in the United States, New Zealand and Australia, "The Roof" was released in Europe. It performed weakly on the charts, peaking at number 96 in the United Kingdom, and faring only slightly better in the Netherlands, where it peaked at number 63. While not commercially released in the US, the song's music video received heavy rotation on MTV and Vh1, due to the record's popularity. "My All" was chosen as the album's fifth and final single. The song was the most commercially successful song on Butterfly, becoming Carey's thirteenth chart topper in the US, and reaching the top-ten throughout Europe. In France, "My All" peaked at number six, and was certified silver by the Syndicat National de l'Édition Phonographique (SNEP). In the United States, the song finished at number seventeen, on the Billboard Year-End chart, remaining Carey's highest-charting single of 1998.
### \#Butterfly25
In September 2022, for the album's twenty-fifth anniversary, Carey announced a deluxe reissue "with eight new bonus tracks from the Butterfly sessions". This was announced alongside merchandise, new vinyl releases, 4K remasters for music videos, and a documentary for the making of the "Honey" music video.
## Critical reception
Butterfly garnered general acclaim from music critics. In The New Rolling Stone Album Guide, Arion Berger praised the album's producers and Carey's "more controlled" vocals. Berger noticed a connection between much of Carey's lyrics and her separation from Mottola. Jon Pareles, editor of The New York Times called Butterfly "a new turn" in Carey's career. He wrote, "Carey has sold tens of millions of albums by being the girl next door with the startling vocal range... but for most of "Butterfly" Carey turned her voice into an airy whisper, as if she would rather charm listeners" compared to over-powering them. Aside from commenting on its deviance from Carey's previous work, he noted songs in which Carey alludes to her failed marriage to Mottola, such as "Butterfly" and "Close My Eyes" which were both released on the album following the divorce with lyrics about letting love go and life struggles. Additionally he wrote, "Since Carey writes her own lyrics, fans might expect a glimpse of marital discord or pride in her new-found autonomy." David Browne from Entertainment Weekly gave Butterfly a B− in his review. Browne wrote: "In Breakdown, [Carey] demonstrates she can match the staccato, lite-reggae phrasing of her guests, two members of Bone Thugs-N-Harmony." He described an increased intimacy in the music but noted the arrangement made it difficult to hear the lyrics Carey was singing. "Butterfly is undeniably pleasant, with little of the all-conquering bombast usually associated with Carey. But it's also the last thing anyone would have expected from her: blandly self-effacing."
In a retrospective review of the album, Stephen Thomas Erlewine from AllMusic appreciated the new direction of Carey's music, commenting on the increased urban feel of the work. He described the record as "a collection of hit singles surrounded by classy filler" and "while [the songs] are all well-crafted, many of them blend together upon initial listening". However, he noted an increased control in her voice which led him to describe some of the ballads such as 'Butterfly' and 'Breakdown' as among her best work. He said Butterfly was one of Carey's best records and she was "continuing to improve and refine her music, which makes her a rarity among her '90s peers." Erlewine gave the album a score of four out of five stars; but in 2021 the AllMusic website upgraded the rating by a half star. Rich Juzwiak from Slant Magazine awarded the album a score of four and a half out of five stars, calling it "elegant" and praising Carey's mature vocals. Juzwiak particularly praised "Breakdown", which he called one of the album's best tracks. Of Carey's vocals, he wrote, "The relatively high and thin register that she sings in when not belting (and that's often) could be the most important of Butterfly's changes, as it marks the first time that Mariah the vocalist seems consistently real. She's utterly soulful." In his consumer guide for The Village Voice, critic Robert Christgau gave Butterfly a "dud" rating, indicating "a bad record whose details rarely merit further thought".
### Accolades
## Commercial performance
Butterfly debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200 selling 235,500 copies in the first week after its release on the week of October 4, 1997, the highest of her career at the time. It maintained that position for one week and remained in the top twenty for 21 weeks; it stayed in the chart for 55 weeks, including one re-entry. The album achieved its highest weekly sales in its fifteenth week of release, when it was at number eight on the chart with 283,000 copies sold. It also peaked at number three on Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums. In the United States, Butterfly was certified five-times platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), denoting shipments of five million copies. Nielsen SoundScan estimates the album's sales at 3,807,000 copies in the US. In Canada, the album debuted at number one and was certified double-platinum by the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA), denoting shipments of 200,000 copies of the album. Butterfly debuted at number one in Australia, and received a double-platinum certification from the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA), indicating shipments of 140,000 units.
In Europe, Butterfly peaked within the top-five in several European countries. It received a platinum certification by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), denoting shipments of well one million copies throughout Europe. In the United Kingdom, Butterfly peaked at number two, and was certified platinum by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), denoting shipments of 300,000 copies. In France, the album peaked at number six, where it was certified double-gold by the Syndicat National de l'Édition Phonographique (SNEP).
As with many of Carey's previous records, Butterfly became a large success in Asia. In Japan, the record debuted at number one on the album charts. The album was certified the Million Award by the Recording Industry Association of Japan (RIAJ), denoting shipments of one million copies. In Hong Kong, Butterfly finished as one of the twenty best-selling foreign albums of 1997, receiving a platinum certification by IFPI. Globally, Butterfly has sold over 10 million copies.
## Legacy and cultural impact
In the years since its release, Butterfly has been hailed as being an R&B classic. In a retrospective review for The Washington Post, Bethonie Butler focused on the album's impact, stating that it "changed the face of pop music" by paving "the way for other pop stars...to sing alongside their rap contemporaries". Writing for Jezebel, Rich Juzwiak focused on the influence of Carey's vocal stylings in the track "Breakdown", remarking that "in this day and age, when there’s so much genre blending that it’s sometimes impossible to label an artist as merely “singer” or “rapper,” it'd be foolish to understate the prescience of" the song. A profile of the album in Essence by Jessica Littles further stated that the album "catalyzed the pop music trend of collaborating with hip-hop artists", concluding that it "not only showcased her [Carey's] already-established prowess as a vocalist, who could belt out ballads or flirt over the hottest summer jams, but also as one of the most versatile songwriters in contemporary music".
The lead single from the album, "Honey", was notable for pushing Carey further towards hip hop and R&B than before. The music video gained further attention, as Carey, for the first time in her career, was provocatively dressed, giving viewers a "taste of the freer Mariah." The Puerto Rico-filmed video's concept was created by Carey with Paul Hunter filling in as the director. Featuring a James Bond theme, Carey was a "very sexy agent M", in the words of Nickson, who escapes a large mansion in which she has been held captive. Carey said of the video: "I don't really think the video is overtly sexual, but for me—I mean people used to think I was the nineties version of Mary Poppins!" At the time of the video's release, Carey and Mottola were in the midst of their divorce. Tabloids and critics were linking the video's theme to Carey's marriage, writing how Mottola would lock her in their mansion, although she denied this. In an interview, Carey said that "Tommy loves the video, he says it's my best video yet." Carey's writing partner of six years, Afanasieff, felt the video was undeniably about Mottola.
The music video for "The Roof" was ranked 18th on Slant's "100 Greatest Music Videos". Sal Ciquemani, from Slant, gave the video a positive review, complimenting Carey's pairing the sultry song with a "sophisticated tale of a sexy rooftop encounter." The video shows Carey reminiscing on a past love and a night they shared together on a rainy roof-top. The video revolves around the settings of a dark limousine, a decrepit NYC apartment, and a rainy roof-top, where according to Slant, "Carey is featured at her most vulnerable, with runny mascara and drenched in the cold rainy night." In the conclusion of his review of the video, Ciquemani wrote: "When Carey rises through the limo's sunroof and relishes the warm November rain, she's not drunk on the bubbly but on the memory of past delights." The video for "My All" was also one of the more notable videos from Butterfly. The video featured Carey in various places, including a submerged vessel, a lighthouse and a large conch shell floating the shore. In each of the scenes, Carey is shown lamenting her love and yearning to be re-united with him once more. In the video's climax, Carey meets her love in the lighthouse, where they caress and drift into the "nights abyss." According to author Chris Nickson, the scenes of Carey on the overturned vessel showed her vulnerability without her loved one, truly emphasizing the yearning featured in the song.
Butterfly, recognised by critics as one of Carey's best albums at that point in her career, received several awards and was nominated for others. At the Billboard Music Awards, Carey received an honorary award, recognizing her achievement of earning "The Most Number-one Singles Ever by a Female Solo Artist in History". "Honey" was nominated at the 1998 Grammy Awards for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance and Best R&B Song, while "Butterfly" was nominated for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. Butterfly won a Japan Gold Disc Award in the "International Pop Album of the Year" category. For Butterfly, Carey won the American Music Award for Favorite Soul/R&B Female Artist in 1998. Additionally, the album won the BMI Pop Award for Songwriter of the Year and the Songwriter awards for "Honey", "Butterfly" and "My All". At the Soul Train Music Awards in 1998, Carey won the awards for the Aretha Franklin Entertainer of the Year and Soul Train Lady of Soul, which were presented to her by Chris Tucker and Patti LaBelle.
Butterfly was nominated at the 1998 NAACP Image Awards, in the Outstanding Female Artist category. At the Blockbuster Entertainment Awards, Carey was named the Songwriter of the Year and received the Song of the Year award. At the 1998 World Music Awards, Carey won two of night's top awards; the World's Best-selling R&B Artist and the World's Best-selling Recording Artist of the '90s. Carey was unhappy not to win any of the Grammy Awards once again, but this was offset by the success of her tour, which was taking place during the awards. According to author Marc Shapiro, "No amount of awards could replace the popular acceptance of Butterfly and the feeling she was now free to live her own life – creatively and personally." In a recent list compiled by a selection of rock critics, Butterfly was chosen as one of the 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.
The album was released with two different covers and in 2007 one of them was listed on Maxim's Sexiest Album Covers.
## Track listing
Notes
- signifies a co-producer
- signifies an additional producer
- "Honey" contains a sample of The Treacherous Three's "The Body Rock" (1980) and The World's Famous Supreme Team's "Hey DJ" (1984)
- "The Roof" contains a sample of Mobb Deep's "Shook Ones (Part II)" (1994) and Run-DMC's "Rock Box" (1984)
- "Breakdown" contains an interpolation of Bone Thugs-n-Harmony's "Tha Crossroads" (1996)
- "Fly Away (Butterfly Reprise)" contains an interpolation of Elton John's "Someone Saved My Life Tonight" (1975)
- "Honey" (So So Def Remix) contains a sample of The Jackson 5's "It's Great to Be Here" (1971) and an interpolation of The World's Famous Supreme Team's "Hey DJ" (1984)
## Personnel
Adapted from the Butterfly liner notes.
- Mariah Carey – lead vocals, background vocals (1, 2, 4, 6, 7, 10)
- Walter Afanasieff – keyboards, synthesizers, and programming (2, 3, 5, 8, 9, 12)
- Dan Shea – additional keyboards, drum and rhythm programming, sound design, and computer programming (2, 3, 5, 8, 9, 12)
- Stevie J – keyboards, keyboard programming, and drum programming (1, 6)
- Cory Rooney – keyboards and keyboard programming (4, 7)
- Q-Tip – drum programming (1)
- Poke and Tone – drum programming (4)
- Peter "Ski" Schwartz – keyboards (10)
- Nathaniel Townsley – drums (12)
- Artie Reynolds – bass guitar (12)
- Gary Montoute – Hammond B-3 (12)
- Donald Parker – piano and keyboards (12)
- Michael Cirro – guitar (12)
- Michael Phillips – EWI (12)
- Mase – additional vocals (1)
- The Lox – additional vocals (1)
- Krayzie Bone – lead and background vocals (6)
- Wish Bone – lead and background vocals (6)
- Dru Hill – vocals (11)
- Melonie Daniels – background vocals (1, 2, 10)
- Mary Ann Tatum – background vocals (2, 10)
- Kelly Price – background vocals (4)
- Trey Lorenz – background vocals (7)
- Clarence – background vocals (9)
Production
- Mariah Carey – arranger (2, 3, 5, 8, 9, 11, 12)
- Walter Afanasieff – arranger (2, 3, 5, 8, 9, 12)
- Cory Rooney – arranger (11)
- Dru Hill – arranger (11)
- Ron Grant – additional arranging (12)
- David Morales – additional production, arranger, and mixing (10)
- Satoshi Tomiie – additional production, arranger, and mixing (10)
- Dana Jon Chappelle – engineer (1-12)
- Mike Scott – engineer (2-5, 7, 8, 12), assistant engineer (9), mixing (7, 12)
- Glen Marchese – engineer (1, 11)
- Rich Travali – engineer (1)
- David Gleeson – engineer (2)
- Bill Esses – engineer (4)
- Franklin Grant – engineer (4)
- Doug Wilson – engineer (7)
- David "EQ3" Sussman – engineer (10)
- Ian Dalsemer – assistant engineer (1-8, 11, 12)
- Ken Ross – assistant engineer (1, 4, 7)
- Oliver "Wiz" Bone – assistant engineer (2, 4)
- Steve Jones – assistant engineer (7)
- Ann Mincieli – assistant engineer (10)
- Greg Thompson – assistant engineer (11)
- Tony Maserati – mixing (1, 4, 6)
- Mick Guzauski – mixing (2, 3, 5, 7-9, 11, 12)
- Herb Powers Jr. – mastering (1, 4, 6, 7, 10, 11)
- Bob Ludwig – mastering (2, 3, 5, 8, 9, 12)
## Charts
### Weekly charts
### Year-end charts
## Certifications and sales |
2,468,174 | Road to Rhode Island | 1,173,148,878 | null | [
"2000 American television episodes",
"Cultural depictions of Osama bin Laden",
"Family Guy (season 2) episodes",
"Fiction about rail transport",
"Impact of the September 11 attacks on television",
"Road to... (Family Guy)"
] | "Road to Rhode Island" is the 13th episode of the second season and the first episode of the Road to ... series of the American animated television series Family Guy. It originally aired on Fox in the United States on May 30, 2000. In the episode, Brian volunteers to bring Stewie home from his grandparents' house in Palm Springs, but the pair miss their flight and must embark on a cross-country journey home. Meanwhile, Peter becomes addicted to watching a series of marriage counseling videos hosted by an adult film star.
The episode was directed by Dan Povenmire and was written by Gary Janetti. It guest starred Victoria Principal as Dr. Amanda Rebecca, Danny Smith and Wally Wingert as various characters. Series creator Seth MacFarlane conceived the idea for this episode, and was inspired by the 1940s Road to... series of comedy films which starred Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, and Dorothy Lamour. The episode received universal acclaim from television critics. It was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Animated Program (for Programming Less than One Hour)".
## Plot
In a flashback set seven years earlier, Brian is born in a puppy mill near Austin, Texas and taken from his mother. In the present, Brian tells his psychiatrist about the memory. Afterward, Brian volunteers to pick up Stewie from his vacation at his grandparents' summer home in Palm Springs, California, where Stewie frames a maid for stealing to amuse himself at dinner.
At the airport bar, Brian gets drunk and, when Stewie comes to find him, their bags are stolen when left unattended; with the plane tickets inside. They stop at a decrepit motel, where Stewie tries calling home, but fails because he believes his phone number is 867-5309. The next day, they have to escape their room and hotwire a car due to their credit card being rejected. Eventually, they visit the puppy mill after being in a caravan of migrants and discover Brian’s mother had died, her carcass was stuffed and used as a table. A horrified Brian decides to take her remains and bury them in a nearby park. To get home, Stewie and Brian masquerade as crop dusters to steal a plane, which they immediately crash.
When Stewie and Brian return home, Lois asks Stewie about the trip, and Stewie covers up for Brian by saying the trip was "Smooth sailing through calm seas". Lois leaves and Brian tells Stewie that he is thankful to Stewie for covering for him, and asks Stewie if there's anything he can do to repay him. At first, it appears that Stewie wishes to make him his servant by providing an example with an episode of The Brady Bunch, although it turns out that Stewie wants Brian to tape that episode for him.
Meanwhile, Lois urges Peter to watch relationship videos with her, but the videos turn out to be pornography hosted by Dr. Amanda Rebecca, who strips after asking the women to leave the room. Peter becomes addicted to the videos, much to Lois's chagrin. She gets herself on the end of one of the tapes in black lingerie and entices Peter. While kissing, Peter rewinds the tape, playing the part of Lois taking her robe off over and over.
## Production
"Road to Rhode Island" was directed by Dan Povenmire and was written by Gary Janetti. It featured guest appearances from Victoria Principal as Dr. Amanda Rebecca, Danny Smith and Wally Wingert as various characters. This was the first episode directed by Povenmire. Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane granted Povenmire substantial creative freedom for directing episodes. Povenmire said that MacFarlane would tell him, "We've got two minutes to fill. Give me some visual gags. Do whatever you want. I trust you." Povenmire praised MacFarlane's management style for letting him have fun. Several years after the episode was written, in DVD commentary for the eighth and ninth season of the show, Gary Janetti, the writer of the episode, recalled that the original title of the episode was intended to be simply "Brian & Stewie", but was changed by series creator and executive producer Seth MacFarlane, who wanted there to be a "Road to" episode each season. The name of the episode was then changed to "Road to Rhode Island", with the original name later being used for the landmark 150th episode of the show, also entitled "Brian & Stewie", and written by Janetti.
This is the first episode of the "Road to" episodes of the series which air through various seasons of the show. The episodes are a parody of the seven "Road to" comedy films starring Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, and Dorothy Lamour. MacFarlane, a fan of the film series, came up with the idea. The musical number in the episode is sung to the tune of "(We're Off on the) Road to Morocco" from the film Road to Morocco.
### Edits
During the airport section of the episode, there is a scene that has subsequently cut from some editions/airings of the show, involving Osama bin Laden. In the scene, Stewie, when approaching airport security, realizes that his bag is full of weapons. He then breaks into song, singing "On the Good Ship Lollipop" to distract the X-ray scanners. He then says, "Let's hope Osama bin Laden doesn't know show tunes." At that time, Osama is pictured in another line, distracting the scanners by singing "I Hope I Get It" from A Chorus Line. Even though the episode was made a year and a half before 9/11, it was still controversial, and was cut on the Family Guy: Volume 1 DVD in the US. However, the scene was left intact on Hulu from 2018 onwards and the "Freakin' Sweet Collection".
## Reception
In his 2009 review, Ahsan Haque of IGN, rating the episode 10/10, praised the episode, saying: "Great writing, hilarious jokes, a catchy musical, and a story that's both hilarious and touching at the same time – Family Guy doesn't get much better than this." It is one of the only three Family Guy episodes that has ever been given a "Masterpiece" (10/10) rating by IGN, the other being "I Never Met the Dead Man" and "Da Boom". IGN also placed the episode at the top of their list of "Stewie and Brian's Greatest Adventures", and again in the list of "Top 20 Family Guy episodes" to celebrate the show's 20th anniversary.
The episode was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Animated Program (For Programming less than One Hour), but lost to The Simpsons episode "Behind the Laughter".
Tom Eames of entertainment website Digital Spy placed the episode at number thirteen on his listing of the best Family Guy episodes in order of "yukyukyuks" and despite describing the episode as "hilarious", he said that Brian discovering his mother's body was "ultra emotional" and "one of the rare emotionally-charged moments in the show." He added that he "can never get enough" of Brian and Stewie and their bromance. |
25,568,315 | Katherine Johnson | 1,172,449,979 | American NASA mathematician (1918–2020) | [
"1918 births",
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"20th-century American women educators",
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"American women mathematicians",
"American women physicists",
"Congressional Gold Medal recipients",
"Mathematicians from Virginia",
"NASA people",
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"People from White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia",
"Presbyterians from Virginia",
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"Scientists from West Virginia",
"West Area Computers",
"West Virginia State University alumni",
"West Virginia University alumni",
"Women centenarians"
] | Creola Katherine Johnson (; August 26, 1918 – February 24, 2020) was an American mathematician whose calculations of orbital mechanics as a NASA employee were critical to the success of the first and subsequent U.S. crewed spaceflights. During her 33-year career at NASA and its predecessor, she earned a reputation for mastering complex manual calculations and helped pioneer the use of computers to perform the tasks. The space agency noted her "historical role as one of the first African-American women to work as a NASA scientist".
Johnson's work included calculating trajectories, launch windows, and emergency return paths for Project Mercury spaceflights, including those for astronauts Alan Shepard, the first American in space, and John Glenn, the first American in orbit, and rendezvous paths for the Apollo Lunar Module and command module on flights to the Moon. Her calculations were also essential to the beginning of the Space Shuttle program, and she worked on plans for a mission to Mars. She was known as a "human computer" for her tremendous mathematical capability and ability to work with space trajectories with such little technology and recognition at the time.
In 2015, President Barack Obama awarded Johnson the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 2016, she was presented with the Silver Snoopy Award by NASA astronaut Leland D. Melvin and a NASA Group Achievement Award. She was portrayed by Taraji P. Henson as a lead character in the 2016 film Hidden Figures. In 2019, Johnson was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by the United States Congress. In 2021, she was inducted posthumously into the National Women's Hall of Fame.
## Early life
Katherine Johnson was born as Creola Katherine Coleman on August 26, 1918, in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, to Joylette Roberta (née Lowe) and Joshua McKinley Coleman. She was the youngest of four children. Her mother was a teacher and her father was a lumberman, farmer, and handyman. He also worked at the Greenbrier Hotel.
Johnson showed strong mathematical abilities from an early age. Because Greenbrier County did not offer public schooling for African-American students past the eighth grade, the Colemans arranged for their children to attend high school in Institute, West Virginia. This school was on the campus of West Virginia State College (WVSC); Johnson was enrolled when she was ten years old. The family split their time between Institute during the school year and White Sulphur Springs in the summer.
After graduating from high school at the age of 14, Johnson matriculated at WVSC, a historically black college. She took every course in mathematics offered by the College. Several professors mentored her, including the chemist and mathematician Angie Turner King, who had guided Coleman throughout high school, and W. W. Schieffelin Claytor, the third African-American to receive a doctorate in mathematics. Claytor added new mathematics courses just for Johnson. She graduated summa cum laude in 1937, with degrees in mathematics and French, at age 18. Johnson was a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha. She took on a teaching job at a black public school in Marion, Virginia.
In 1939, after marrying her first husband, James Goble, she left her teaching job and enrolled in a graduate math program. She quit at the end of the first session and chose to focus on her family life. She was the first African-American woman to attend graduate school at West Virginia University in Morgantown, West Virginia. Through WVSC's president, Dr. John W. Davis, she became one of three African-American students, and the only woman, selected to integrate the graduate school after the 1938 United States Supreme Court ruling in Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada required States which provided public higher education to white students to provide it to black students as well, either by establishing black colleges and universities or by admitting black students to previously white-only universities.
## Career
Johnson decided on a career as a research mathematician, although this was a difficult field for African Americans and women to enter. The first jobs she found were in teaching. At a family gathering in 1952, a relative mentioned that the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) was hiring mathematicians. At the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory, based in Hampton, Virginia, near Langley Field, NACA hired African-American mathematicians as well as whites for their Guidance and Navigation Department. Johnson accepted a job offer from the agency in June 1953.
According to an oral history archived by the National Visionary Leadership Project:
> At first she [Johnson] worked in a pool of women performing math calculations. Katherine has referred to the women in the pool as virtual "computers who wore skirts". Their main job was to read the data from the plane's black boxes and carry out other precise mathematical tasks. Then one day, Katherine (and a colleague) were temporarily assigned to help the all-male flight research team. Katherine's knowledge of analytic geometry helped make quick allies of male bosses and colleagues to the extent that, "they forgot to return me to the pool". While the racial and gender barriers were always there, Katherine ignored them. Katherine was assertive, asking to be included in editorial meetings (where no women had gone before). She simply told people she had done the work and that she belonged.
From 1953 to 1958, Johnson worked as a computer, analyzing topics such as gust alleviation for aircraft. Originally assigned to the West Area Computers section supervised by mathematician Dorothy Vaughan, Johnson was reassigned to the Guidance and Control Division of Langley's Flight Research Division. It was staffed by white male engineers. In keeping with the State of Virginia's racial segregation laws, and federal workplace segregation introduced under President Woodrow Wilson in the early 20th century, Johnson and the other African-American women in the computing pool were required to work, eat, and use restrooms that were separate from those of their white peers. Their office was labeled as "Colored Computers". In an interview with WHRO-TV, Johnson stated that she "didn't feel the segregation at NASA, because everybody there was doing research. You had a mission and you worked on it, and it was important to you to do your job ... and play bridge at lunch." She added: "I didn't feel any segregation. I knew it was there, but I didn't feel it."
NACA disbanded the colored computing pool in 1958 when the agency was superseded by NASA, which adopted digital computers. Although the installation was desegregated, forms of discrimination were still pervasive. Johnson recalled that era:
> We needed to be assertive as women in that days – assertive and aggressive – and the degree to which we had to be that way depended on where you were. I had to be. In the early days of NASA women were not allowed to put their names on the reports – no woman in my division had had her name on a report. I was working with Ted Skopinski and he wanted to leave and go to Houston ... but Henry Pearson, our supervisor – he was not a fan of women – kept pushing him to finish the report we were working on. Finally, Ted told him, "Katherine should finish the report, she's done most of the work anyway." So Ted left Pearson with no choice; I finished the report and my name went on it, and that was the first time a woman in our division had her name on something.
From 1958 until her retirement in 1986, Johnson worked as an aerospace technologist, moving during her career to the Spacecraft Controls Branch. She calculated the trajectory for the May 5, 1961, space flight of Alan Shepard, the first American in space. She also calculated the launch window for his 1961 Mercury mission. She plotted backup navigation charts for astronauts in case of electronic failures. When NASA used electronic computers for the first time to calculate John Glenn's orbit around Earth, officials called on Johnson to verify the computer's numbers; Glenn had asked for her specifically and had refused to fly unless Johnson verified the calculations. Biography.com states these were "far more difficult calculations, to account for the gravitational pulls of celestial bodies".
Author Margot Lee Shetterly stated, "So the astronaut who became a hero, looked to this black woman in the still-segregated South at the time as one of the key parts of making sure his mission would be a success." She added that, in a time where computing was "women's work" and engineering was left to men, "it really does have to do with us over the course of time sort of not valuing that work that was done by women, however necessary, as much as we might. And it has taken history to get a perspective on that."
Johnson later worked directly with digital computers. Her ability and reputation for accuracy helped to establish confidence in the new technology. In 1961, her work helped to ensure that Alan Shepard's Freedom 7 Mercury capsule would be found quickly after landing, using the accurate trajectory that had been established.
She also helped to calculate the trajectory for the 1969 Apollo 11 flight to the Moon. During the Moon landing, Johnson was at a meeting in the Pocono Mountains. She and a few others crowded around a small television screen watching the first steps on the Moon. In 1970, Johnson worked on the Apollo 13 Moon mission. When the mission was aborted, her work on backup procedures and charts helped set a safe path for the crew's return to Earth, creating a one-star observation system that would allow astronauts to determine their location with accuracy. In a 2010 interview, Johnson recalled, "Everybody was concerned about them getting there. We were concerned about them getting back." Later in her career, Johnson worked on the Space Shuttle program, the Earth Resources Satellite, and on plans for a mission to Mars.
Johnson spent her later years encouraging students to enter the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).
## Personal life and death
Katherine and James Francis Goble had three daughters. The family lived in Newport News, Virginia, from 1953. James died of an inoperable brain tumor in 1956 and, three years later, Katherine married James A. "Jim" Johnson, a United States Army officer and veteran of the Korean War; the pair were married for 60 years until his death in March 2019 at the age of 93. Johnson, who had six grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren, lived in Hampton, Virginia. She encouraged her grandchildren and students to pursue careers in science and technology.
She was a member of Carver Memorial Presbyterian Church for 50 years, where she sang as part of the choir. She was also a member of the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority.
Johnson died at a retirement home in Newport News on February 24, 2020, at age 101. Following her death, Jim Bridenstine, NASA's administrator, described her as "an American hero" and stated that "her pioneering legacy will never be forgotten."
## Legacy and honors
Johnson co-authored 26 scientific papers. Her social influence as a pioneer in space science and computing is demonstrated by the honors she received and her status as a role model for a life in science. Johnson was named West Virginia State College Outstanding Alumnus of the Year in 1999. President Barack Obama presented her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, one of 17 Americans so honored on November 24, 2015. She was cited as a pioneering example of African-American women in STEM. President Obama said at the time, "Katherine G. Johnson refused to be limited by society's expectations of her gender and race while expanding the boundaries of humanity's reach." NASA noted her "historical role as one of the first African-American women to work as a NASA scientist."
Two NASA facilities have been named in her honor. On May 5, 2016, a new 40,000-square-foot (3,700 m<sup>2</sup>) building was named the "Katherine G. Johnson Computational Research Facility" and formally dedicated at the agency's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. The facility officially opened its doors on September 22, 2017. Johnson attended this event, which also marked the 55th anniversary of astronaut Alan Shepard's historic rocket launch and splashdown, a success Johnson helped achieve. At the ceremony, deputy director Lewin said this about Johnson: "Millions of people around the world watched Shepard's flight, but what they didn't know at the time was that the calculations that got him into space and safely home were done by today's guest of honor, Katherine Johnson". During the event, Johnson also received a Silver Snoopy award; often called the astronaut's award, NASA stated it is given to those "who have made outstanding contributions to flight safety and mission success". NASA renamed the Independent Verification and Validation Facility, in Fairmont, West Virginia, to the Katherine Johnson Independent Verification and Validation Facility on February 22, 2019.
Johnson was included on the BBC's list of 100 Women of influence worldwide in 2016. In a 2016 video NASA stated, "Her calculations proved as critical to the success of the Apollo Moon landing program and the start of the Space Shuttle program, as they did to those first steps on the country's journey into space."
Science writer Maia Weinstock developed a prototype Lego for Women of NASA in 2016 and included Johnson; she declined to have her likeness printed on the final product. On May 12, 2018, she was awarded an honorary doctorate by the College of William & Mary. In August 2018, West Virginia State University established a STEM scholarship in honor of Johnson and erected a life-size statue of her on campus. Mattel announced a Barbie doll in Johnson's likeness with a NASA identity badge in 2018. In 2019, Johnson was announced as one of the members of the inaugural class of Government Executive's Government Hall of Fame.
In June 2019, George Mason University named the most prominent building on their SciTech campus, the Katherine G. Johnson Hall.
In 2020, Bethel School District, Washington, named its newest school the Katherine G. Johnson Elementary.
On November 2, 2020, Fairfax County Public Schools—the largest school division in the Commonwealth of Virginia and 12th largest school division in the United States, and the City of Fairfax, Virginia, announced that the latter's school board had voted to rename its middle school, previously named after Confederate soldier, poet, and musician Sidney Lanier to Katherine Johnson Middle School (KJMS), after 85 percent of its residents voiced their support in favor.
On November 6, 2020, a satellite named after her (ÑuSat 15 or "Katherine", COSPAR 2020-079G) was launched into space. In February 2021, Northrop Grumman named its Cygnus NG-15 spacecraft to supply the International Space Station the SS Katherine Johnson in her honor.
In 2021, San Juan Unified School District, in Sacramento, California, named its newest school Katherine Johnson Middle School. That same year the Baltimore County Public Schools named one of its three new schools the Katherine Johnson Global Academy.
## Depiction in media
The film Hidden Figures, released in December 2016, was based on the non-fiction book of the same title by Margot Lee Shetterly, which was published earlier that year. It follows Johnson and other female African-American mathematicians (Mary Jackson and Dorothy Vaughan) who worked at NASA. Taraji P. Henson plays Johnson in the film. Appearing alongside Henson at the 89th Academy Awards, Johnson received a standing ovation from the audience. In an earlier interview, Johnson offered the following comment about the movie: "It was well done. The three leading ladies did an excellent job portraying us." In a 2016 episode of the NBC series Timeless, titled "Space Race", the mathematician is portrayed by Nadine Ellis.
## Awards
- 1971, 1980, 1984, 1985, 1986: NASA Langley Research Center Special Achievement award
- 1977, NASA Group Achievement Award presented to the Lunar Spacecraft and Operations team – for pioneering work in the field of navigation supporting the spacecraft that orbited and mapped the Moon in preparation for the Apollo program
- 1998, Honorary Doctor of Laws, from SUNY Farmingdale
- 1999, West Virginia State College Outstanding Alumnus of the Year
- 2006, Honorary Doctor of Science by the Capitol College, Laurel, Maryland
- 2010, Honorary Doctorate of Science from Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Virginia
- 2014, De Pizan Honor from National Women's History Museum
- 2015, NCWIT Pioneer in Tech Award
- 2015, Presidential Medal of Freedom
- 2016, Silver Snoopy award from Leland Melvin
- 2016, Astronomical Society of the Pacific's Arthur B.C. Walker II Award
- 2016, Presidential Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from West Virginia University, Morgantown, West Virginia
- On December 1, 2016, Johnson received the Langley West Computing Unit NASA Group Achievement Award at a reception at the Virginia Air and Space Center. Other awardees included her colleagues, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson.
- 2017, Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) Medal of Honor
- 2017 Honorary Doctorate from Spelman College
- May 12, 2018, Honorary Doctorate of Science from the College of William & Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia
- On April 29, 2019, the University of Johannesburg and its Faculty of Science conferred Johnson with the degree of Philosophiae Doctor Honoris causa for her pioneering role at NASA.
- November 8, 2019, Congressional Gold Medal
- 2021, Induction into the National Women's Hall of Fame
## See also
- Annie Easley, mathematician
- List of African-American women in STEM fields
- List of West Virginia University alumni
- Mathematical Tables Project, pioneering human computer group
- Timeline of women in science |
456,653 | Ethan Allen Express | 1,160,337,358 | Intercity rail service in the United States | [
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"Passenger rail transportation in New York (state)",
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] | The Ethan Allen Express is a daily passenger train operated by Amtrak in the United States between New York City and Burlington, Vermont, via Albany, New York. One daily round trip is operated on a 310-mile (500 km) north–south route with a 7-hour 35 minute scheduled running time. The train is subsidized by New York and Vermont for the portion north of Albany. It is named for Vermont cofounder and American Revolutionary War hero Ethan Allen.
Ethan Allen Express service began on December 2, 1996, acting as an extended Empire Service train. It was the first passenger service to Rutland since 1953 and the first to use the line between Rutland and Whitehall since 1934. The train's schedule has been adjusted a number of times, particularly in the early years of its operation, in an attempt to serve both tourists to Vermont and Vermonters traveling to New York City. From February 1998 to April 2002, a second northbound trip was operated – at some times only a shuttle service from Albany.
An infill station in Fair Haven, Vermont, was added in November 1997; it was replaced with a stop in nearby Castleton in January 2010. Service north of Albany was suspended from March 2020 to July 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. An extension to Burlington, Vermont, with new stations in Middlebury and Vergennes began service on July 29, 2022. Further proposed expansions include a second daily train running via North Bennington, Vermont; an extension to Essex Junction, Vermont, to connect with the Vermonter; and additional infill stations and higher speeds in Vermont.
## Operation
### Route
The Ethan Allen Express operates approximately north–south between New York Penn Station and Burlington, save for an approximately east–west section between Whitehall, New York, and Rutland, Vermont. All of the route south of Whitehall is also used by the Adirondack. The stretch between Schenectady and New York City is also used by Empire Service, Lake Shore Limited, and Maple Leaf trains; the Ethan Allen Express acts as an additional Empire Service trip on this portion. The train is scheduled for 7 hours 35 minutes between New York City and Burlington. Northbound trips depart in the early afternoon; southbound trips depart in the late morning.
The train operates over the following trackage:
- Vermont Railway: Burlington, Vermont–Whitehall
- Canadian Pacific Railway: Canadian Subdivision (Whitehall–Glenville, New York) and Freight Subdivision (Glenville–Schenectady, New York)
- CSX Transportation/Amtrak Hudson Subdivision: Schenectady–Poughkeepsie, New York
- Metro-North Railroad Hudson Line: Poughkeepsie–Spuyten Duyvil, Bronx, New York City
- Amtrak Empire Connection: Spuyten Duyvil–New York Penn Station
The Ethan Allen Express operates as higher-speed rail on the Hudson Subdivision, with speeds up to 110 mph (180 km/h). Maximum speeds are 80 mph (130 km/h) on the Hudson Line, 60 mph (97 km/h) on the Empire Connection, 50 mph (80 km/h) on the Freight Subdivision, 60 mph (97 km/h) on the Canadian Subdivision, and 59 mph (95 km/h) on the Vermont Railway.
### Equipment
Ethan Allen Express trains typically have five Amfleet passenger cars: four coaches plus a club car with 2x1 business class seating and a cafe area. Trains operate with two GE P32AC-DM dual-mode locomotives, one at each end, which operate on third rail electric power in Penn Station and the Empire Connection tunnel and on diesel power for the rest of the route.
In the late 2020s and early 2030s, all equipment will be replaced with Amtrak Airo trainsets, the railroad's branding of its combination of Siemens Venture passenger cars and a Siemens Charger diesel-electric locomotive. The trainsets for the Ethan Allen Express will have six passenger cars, which will include a cab control car food service area and a mix of 2x2 coach and 2x1 business class seating. The car closest to the locomotive will have batteries to supply electricity to traction motors in the locomotive when operating in Penn Station and the Empire Connection tunnel, eliminating the need for third rail propulsion.
### Ridership and funding
Ridership in Fiscal Year 2021 (which included only 3 months of service north of Albany) was 12,456. Ridership in Fiscal Year 2019 – the last full pre-pandemic fiscal year of operations – was 50,515. The train is subsidized by New York and Vermont for the portion north of Albany, in proportion to mileage on that section in each state. In FY 2019, the Vermont portion of the subsidy (44%) was \$1.57 million, while the New York portion was about \$2 million.
The Vermont Agency of Transportation subsidizes discounted fares for most intra-Vermont travel on the route. The route is supplemented by two daily bus round trips operated by Vermont Translines between Albany and Burlington which act as Amtrak Thruway connections to Empire Corridor trains at Albany–Rensselaer. These bus routes also provide Amtrak connections for several Vermont towns presently without direct Amtrak service, such as Bennington and Manchester.
## History
### Planning and service start
Prior passenger service between Rutland and points south was operated by the Delaware and Hudson Railroad over the Whitehall Branch (Rutland–Whitehall) and Washington Branch (–Eagle Bridge) and by the Rutland Railroad over its mainline (–Rutland–) and Chatham Branch (Rutland–Chatham). Washington Branch and Whitehall Branch passenger service ended on June 24, 1934. The Rutland Railroad continued to operate passenger service to Rutland, including the New York City–Montreal Green Mountain Flyer and Mount Royal, until 1953. After the Rutland filed to abandoned its entire system in 1963, the state-owned Vermont Railway took over freight service on most of the lines in 1964. The Central Vermont Railway continued to operate the Montrealer, providing passenger service to the eastern and northern parts of the state, until 1966. Amtrak took over intercity passenger service in the United States in 1971 and resumed the overnight Montrealer in 1972.
Politicians including Curtis McCormack unsuccessfully attempted to obtain funding for Amtrak service to Rutland in the 1980s. Then-governor Howard Dean created the Vermont Rail Council headed by McCormack in 1991, with instruction to study Rutland service, but most attention was focused on the Montrealer. In late 1994, Amtrak announced that the Montrealer would be discontinued due to budget cuts. While state officials worked to retain that service, adding a route to Rutland (and possibly Burlington) was also supported by Dean. In April 1995, the Montrealer was cut back to St. Albans as the state-subsidized Vermonter on a daytime schedule. Later than month, \$3.5 million was included in a federal funding bill. Along with \$1 million from the Vermont Railway and \$743,000 from the state, this funded \$5.24 million in trackwork, which upgraded 21 miles (34 km) of the Whitehall Branch from 25 miles per hour (40 km/h) to 59 miles per hour (95 km/h) maximum speed.
The state originally planned to call the new service the Green Mountain Flyer after the former Rutland Railroad train. However, the Green Mountain Railroad objected, as they already used that name for a tourist train. On August 15, 1996, the state announced it would be called the Ethan Allen Express after Vermont cofounder and American Revolutionary War patriot Ethan Allen. The state agreed to a \$200,000 annual subsidy, which reflected the cost of extending one Empire Service round trip from Albany to Rutland. Service began with the northbound trip on December 2, 1996, with the first southbound trip the following day. The Ethan Allen Express began with stops in , , , , , , , , , and New York City. Because the Adirondack already served the section between New York City and Whitehall, the Ethan Allen Express only added 44 route miles (71 km) and one station (Rutland) to the Amtrak system. A trailer was used as a temporary station at Rutland; the station building, funded by \$700,000 from the federal government, did not open until 1999.
### Early service changes
The Ethan Allen Express was intended to support tourism in the Rutland areas, particularly winter travel to Killington Ski Resort and Pico Mountain. The train's schedule has been adjusted a number of times, particularly in the early years of its operation, in an attempt to serve both tourists to Vermont and Vermonters traveling to New York City. The initial schedule had a running time slightly over five hours, with afternoon departures from both terminals on weekdays. Saturday southbound trains departed Rutland at 7:05am to allow for weekend trips to New York City, while Sunday trains in both directions departed in the later afternoon to accommodate weekend trips.
In October 1997, the southbound Saturday departure moved to the same afternoon time as weekdays, while the Friday and Sunday northbound departures moved to the late-afternoon time. An infill station at Fair Haven was added on November 12, 1997. On February 15, 1998, Amtrak added a morning northbound train from Albany to Rutland, providing a connection from the northbound Maple Leaf; this gave a second northbound trip to Rutland, though still only one southbound trip. The change reduced the state subsidy by eliminating the need for overnight crew accommodations: the morning northbound trip turned around to become the afternoon southbound trip, while the afternoon northbound trip deadheaded from Rutland to Albany in the late evening for servicing.
In October 1998, the Sunday southbound departure was shifted two hours later to allow more time for skiers, while the Saturday southbound departure was moved up to match weekdays. From August 16 to October 31, 1999, the Vermont Railway operated the Ethan Allen Connection between Rutland and Burlington with an intermediate stop at Middlebury. It was discontinued due to low ridership; most passengers only rode between Rutland and Burlington, with just 20–25% connecting to the Ethan Allen Express. On October 31, northbound service was reconfigured. A daily train departed New York at 6:15 am – an hour earlier than the Maple Leaf. The afternoon northbound train continued to run Monday–Thursday; the Saturday northbound shifted to that time, while the Sunday afternoon northbound was canceled. The Friday northbound trip became an express operating nonstop between New York and Schenectady, with a 4+1⁄2 hour schedule – the fastest time ever scheduled for the Ethan Allen Express.
A baggage car was added to the train for bikes and ski equipment in late 1998, but it could not be used for luggage until February 2000 when an attendant was hired for Rutland station. The baggage car was removed in 2002 due to low usage, elimination of station agents due to state budget cuts, and the older baggage cars not being certified for as high speeds as the rest of the train. The schedule was simplified on April 29, 2001: daily afternoon trips in both direction, plus a morning Albany–Rutland northbound trip with no New York connection. The morning trip became a New York–Rutland trip on July 9, while the Sunday trip was again moved to later in the afternoon. The morning trip was cut back to an Albany–Rutland shuttle in January 2002 and discontinued entirely that April. In April 2003, the Friday northbound trip was moved later in the evening, while weekday southbound trips were moved to a 7:15 am departure. Monday and Saturday southbound departures were moved to 10:45 am in November 2004. The Monday southbound trip was moved back to match the other weekdays in October 2007.
### Further changes
In October 2008, the Vermont Agency of Transportation (VTrans) proposed eliminating the Ethan Allen Express and replacing it with a bus, citing budgetary restrictions. The proposal was rejected by a legislative committee. VTrans again proposed ending service in January 2009. Opposition from the Vermont Rail Action Network and local political leaders resulted in the service being kept. On January 2, 2010, the Ethan Allen Express began stopping at Castleton. Service to Fair Haven ended on January 9.
Beginning in the mid-2000s, poor track conditions between Whitehall and Rutland also affected the train's performance. In February 2011, VTrans began an investigation into the Vermont Rail System's handling of the Ethan Allen Express after Amtrak ranked VRS as the worst host railroad in the country. On-time performance of the train was below 70% by that time, with track conditions responsible for 91% of delays. Vermont Rail Systems began track work in April 2011, which reduced travel times by 10 minutes by that October. The project, funded by both the railroad and the state of New York at a cost of \$3.25 million, involved rebuilding about 8 miles (13 km) of track and eight grade crossings. By February 2012, additional trackwork had resulted in a 15-minute southbound and 25-minute northbound reduction in travel time between Rutland and Whitehall.
The Friday northbound trip operated on the same mid-afternoon schedule from July 10 to September 5, 2017, during track work at New York Penn Station. From May 26 to September 3, 2018, the Ethan Allen Express and other Empire Corridor trains were diverted to Grand Central Terminal during further Penn Station track work. On March 26, 2020, the Ethan Allen Express was suspended north of Albany–Rensselaer at the request of Vermont Governor Phil Scott due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Service to Rutland resumed on July 19, 2021, with \$1 promotional fares on that date for travel within Vermont.
### Extension to Burlington
Even before service began, state planners intended to later extend the Ethan Allen Express from Rutland to Burlington. In 2005, Senator Jim Jeffords obtained a \$30 million earmark for upgrades to the Rutland–Burlington rail corridor in preparation for a possible Ethan Allen Express extension. Jeffords had long championed passenger rail in western Vermont, which does not have an interstate highway. His original goal was New York–Burlington service via Bennington. The Vermont Agency of Transportation (VTrans) applied three times for American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 funds to rebuild the tracks between Rutland and Burlington; none of the applications were successful.
The state received \$9 million in Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery funds for the project in 2013, and an additional \$10 million in 2015. This completed funding for the \$26 million project, which included rebuilding 20 miles (32 km) of track to allow speeds of 40 mph (64 km/h) for freight and 60 mph (97 km/h) for passenger trains between Rutland and Burlington. Other work included the construction of stations at and , a new platform at Burlington Union Station, adding crossovers and passing sidings, improving grade crossings, and rebuilding a wye at Rutland. The former New Haven Junction station building was relocated, as it was too close to the tracks. A separately-funded project constructed a rail tunnel in downtown Middlebury to replace aging bridges and increase clearances for freight use.
VTrans originally planned for trains to lay over overnight at Union Station, but nearby residents objected to having the locomotive idle there. In March 2020, VTrans indicated that the Vermont Railway yard to the south would instead be modified to accommodate the train. The two new stations and the new Burlington platform were built in 2020–2022. In October 2021, Amtrak and Vermont Rail System began running qualification trips between Rutland and Burlington to familiarize train crews with the new route. Revenue service to Burlington began on July 29, 2022, with trains departing early afternoon northbound and late morning southbound all days. It was the first direct passenger rail service to Burlington in 69 years. The first day of service was marred by a temporary suspension of all Amtrak service west of Albany caused by a deteriorating trackside structure, the Central Warehouse, in North Albany. Passengers were bussed between Saratoga Springs and Albany–Rensselaer. The extension caused an immediate increase in ridership, with August 2022 ridership about 50% higher than August 2019.
### Future
In 2014, VTrans and the New York State Department of Transportation studied the potential serving southwestern Vermont either with a second daily train or rerouting the Ethan Allen Express. The proposed alternative was to extend an Empire Service train to Rutland, operating on a more southern route than the Ethan Allen Express between Glenville, New York, and Rutland. It would use existing Canadian Pacific Railway, Pan Am Railways (now CSX Transportation) and Vermont Railway freight lines, with new intermediate stops at Mechanicville, New York, North Bennington, Vermont, and Manchester, Vermont. The 2021 Vermont Rail Plan indicated that should it be implemented, this second service would also extend to Burlington.
VTrans listed several other possible improvements to the Ethan Allen Express in the 2021 Vermont Rail Plan. These included potential infill flag stops in Brandon and Shelburne. Positive train control and track upgrades would allow the Ethan Allen Express to reach speeds of 79 mph (127 km/h), up from 59 mph (95 km/h), on sections between Whitehall and Burlington. This would save about 15 minutes per trip, with an estimated increase of 1,400 to 2,600 annual riders by 2040. VTrans also analyzed a possible 7.8 mi (12.6 km) extension of the Ethan Allen Express from Burlington to Essex Junction via the New England Central Railroad Winooski Branch, where transfer could be made with the Vermonter. The branch would first have to be upgraded to increase its current passenger train speed limit of 15 mph (24 km/h). This would attract between 4,900 and 7,800 additional riders per year by 2040 (assuming the Vermonter is extended to Montreal).
## Station stops |
31,364,835 | German destroyer Z9 Wolfgang Zenker | 1,149,935,764 | Type 1934A-class destroyer | [
"1936 ships",
"Maritime incidents in April 1940",
"Scuttled vessels of Germany",
"Ships built in Kiel",
"Type 1934 destroyers",
"World War II shipwrecks in the Norwegian Sea"
] | Z9 Wolfgang Zenker was a Type 1934A-class destroyer built for Nazi Germany's Kriegsmarine in the mid-1930s. Several days after the start of World War II, she unsuccessfully attacked, together with another destroyer, Polish ships anchored at the naval base on the Hel Peninsula. In early 1940 the ship made two successful minelaying sorties off the English coast that claimed six merchant ships. Wolfgang Zenker participated in the early stages of the Norwegian Campaign by transporting troops to the Narvik area in early April 1940. The ship fought in both naval Battles of Narvik several days later and had to be scuttled after she exhausted her ammunition.
## Design and description
Wolfgang Zenker had an overall length of 119 meters (390 ft 5 in) and was 114 meters (374 ft 0 in) long at the waterline. The ship had a beam of 11.30 meters (37 ft 1 in), and a maximum draft of 4.23 meters (13 ft 11 in). She displaced 2,171 metric tons (2,137 long tons) at standard and 3,110 metric tons (3,060 long tons) at deep load. The Wagner geared steam turbines were designed to produce 70,000 metric horsepower (51,000 kW; 69,000 shp) which would propel the ship at 36 knots (67 km/h; 41 mph). Steam was provided to the turbines by six high-pressure Benson boilers with superheaters. Wolfgang Zenker carried a maximum of 752 metric tons (740 long tons) of fuel oil which was intended to give a range of 4,400 nmi (8,100 km; 5,100 mi) at 19 knots (35 km/h; 22 mph), but the ship proved top-heavy in service and 30% of the fuel had to be retained as ballast low in the ship. The effective range proved to be only 1,530 nmi (2,830 km; 1,760 mi) at 19 knots (35 km/h; 22 mph).
Wolfgang Zenker carried five 12.7 cm SK C/34 guns in single mounts with gun shields, two each superimposed, fore and aft. The fifth gun was carried on top of the rear deckhouse. Her anti-aircraft armament consisted of four 3.7 cm SK C/30 guns in two twin mounts abreast the rear funnel and six 2 cm C/30 guns in single mounts. The ship carried eight above-water 53.3-centimeter (21.0 in) torpedo tubes in two power-operated mounts. A pair of reload torpedoes were provided for each mount. Four depth charge throwers were mounted on the sides of the rear deckhouse and they were supplemented by six racks for individual depth charges on the sides of the stern. Enough depth charges were carried for either two or four patterns of 16 charges each. Mine rails could be fitted on the rear deck that had a maximum capacity of 60 mines. 'GHG' (German: Gruppenhorchgerät) passive hydrophones were fitted to detect submarines.
## Career
The ship was ordered on 9 January 1935 and laid down at Germania, Kiel on 22 March 1935 as yard number G535. She was launched on 27 March 1936 and completed on 2 July 1938. Wolfgang Zenker participated in the August 1938 Fleet Review as part of the 6th Destroyer Division and the following fleet exercise. On the morning of 3 September 1939, after the start of World War II, the destroyers Leberecht Maass and Wolfgang Zenker, under the command of Rear Admiral Günther Lütjens, attacked the Polish destroyer Wicher and the minelayer Gryf as they laid anchored in the naval base on the Hel Peninsula. The German ships opened fire at a range of 12,700 meters (13,900 yd). The Polish ships, as well as a coast defense battery of 15-centimeter (5.9 in) replied effectively and forced the German destroyers to make evasive maneuvers and to lay a smoke screen to throw off the aim of the Polish gunners. A 15-centimeter shell struck Leberecht Maass, killing four men and disabling one gun. Admiral Lutjens ordered the action broken off 40 minutes later as the German fire was ineffective.
Although the other destroyers were busy escorting the German heavy ships and laying minefields off the British coast, Wolfgang Zenker played no part of any of these operations until the night of 10/11 January 1940 when she laid a minefield off Cromer with her sisters Bruno Heinemann and Erich Koellner. Three ships totaling 11,155 Gross Register Tons (GRT) were sunk by this minefield. The same three ships made another sortie on the night of 9/10 February into the same area and laid 157 mines that claimed three ships totaling 11,855 GRT. Wolfgang Zenker suffered ice damage in mid-February and was forced to return prematurely when she was escorting the battleships Gneisenau and Scharnhorst when they attempted to intercept British convoys to Scandinavia.
Wolfgang Zenker was allocated to Group 1 for the Norwegian portion of Operation Weserübung. The group's task was to transport the 139th Mountain Infantry Regiment (139. Gebirgsjäger Regiment) and the headquarters of the 3rd Mountain Division (3. Gebirgs-Division) to seize Narvik. The ships began loading troops on 6 April and set sail the next day. When they arrived at the Ofotfjord, west of Narvik, on the early morning of 9 April, the three ships of the 4th Flotilla, under the command of Commander Erich Bey, were ordered to land their troops in the Herjangsfjord (a northern branch of the Ofotfjord) in order to capture a Norwegian Army armory at Elvegårdsmoen. The troops encountered little resistance, but off-loading them was slow because there was only a single wooden pier available. Wolfgang Zenker was able to partially refuel during the following night, but returned to the Herjansfjord well before dawn.
Shortly before dawn on 10 April, the five destroyers of the British 2nd Destroyer Flotilla surprised the German ships in Narvik harbor. They torpedoed two destroyers and badly damaged the other three while suffering only minor damage themselves. As they were beginning to withdraw they encountered the three destroyers of the 4th Flotilla which had been alerted when the British began their attack. The Germans opened fire first, but the gunnery for both sides was not effective due to the mist and the smoke screen laid by the British as they retreated down the Ofotfjord. The German ships had to turn away to avoid a salvo of three torpedoes fired by one of the destroyers in Narvik. Commander Bey's other two ships were very low on fuel and all three were running low on ammunition, so he decided not to continue the pursuit of the British ships since they were being engaged by the last two destroyers of Group 1.
Commander Bey was ordered during the afternoon of 10 April to return to Germany with all seaworthy ships that evening. Only Wolfgang Zenker and her sister Erich Giese were ready for sea and they slipped out of the Ofotfjord and turned south. Visibility was good that evening and they spotted the light cruiser HMS Penelope and her two escorting destroyers and Commander Bey decided to turn back even though his ships had not been spotted by the British. Three other destroyers refuelled and completed their repairs on 11 April, but Bey decided against another breakout attempt despite the fog and poor visibility that night. While at anchor, Wolfgang Zenker briefly grounded during the night and damaged her port propeller, which limited her speed to 20 knots (37 km/h; 23 mph). Bey made no attempt to breakout during the night of 12/13 April.
That night he received word to expect an attack the following day by British capital ships escorted by a large number of destroyers and supported by carrier aircraft. Wolfgang Zenker was still under repair, although her torpedoes had been replenished from the damaged destroyers. The battleship HMS Warspite and nine destroyers duly appeared on 13 April, although earlier than Commander Bey had expected, and caught the Germans out of position. The five operable destroyers, including Wolfgang Zenker, charged out of Narvik harbor and engaged the British ships. Although no hits were scored, they did inflict splinter damage on several of the destroyers. Wolfgang Zenker was able to make a torpedo attack on Warspite before being driven off, but her torpedoes all missed. Lack of ammunition forced the German ships to retreat to the Rombaksfjorden (the easternmost branch of the Ofotfjord), east of Narvik, where they might attempt to ambush pursuing British destroyers. Wolfgang Zenker had exhausted her ammunition and she was beached at the head of the fjord. Her crew placed demolition charges and abandoned the ship. By the time the British reached the ship she had rolled over onto her side. |
45,350,833 | Peyk-i Şevket-class cruiser | 1,149,463,898 | Torpedo cruiser class of the Ottoman Navy | [
"Cruiser classes",
"Peyk-i Şevket-class cruiser"
] | The Peyk-i Şevket class was a pair of torpedo cruisers built for the Ottoman Navy by the German shipyard Germaniawerft in 1906–07. The class comprised two ships: Peyk-i Şevket and Berk-i Satvet. They were ordered as part of a program to modernize the Ottoman fleet at the turn of the century. The ships were small vessels, at only 775 metric tons (763 long tons; 854 short tons); they were nevertheless heavily armed for their size, with three torpedo tubes and a pair of 105 mm (4.1 in) guns along with several smaller weapons.
Neither ship saw action during the Italo-Turkish War of 1911–12, as Peyk-i Şevket had been interned in Suez and Berk-i Satvet spent the war confined to the Sea of Marmara with the main Ottoman fleet. Both ships took a more active role in the Balkan Wars, frequently providing gunfire to support to Ottoman troops in East Thrace. During World War I, both ships served in the Black Sea, where they conducted patrols, escorted convoys, and attacked Russian ports. In January 1915, Berk-i Satvet was mined off the Bosporus, and seven months later, Peyk-i Şevket was torpedoed by the British submarine HMS E11 in the Sea of Marmara. Both ships were repaired and returned to service by 1918.
After the end of the war, both ships were kept in service with the new Turkish Navy, with lengthy overhauls in the mid-1920s. Both ships were extensively modernized in the late 1930s, and they remained in service to 1944, when they were finally decommissioned. Both vessels were ultimately broken up in the early 1950s.
## Design
The Peyk-i Şevket class was classified as a torpedo cruiser by the Ottoman Navy, but was also sometimes referred to as a torpedo gunboat. The two ships were authorized in 1903, and were ordered from the Krupp-owned Germaniawerft shipyard in Germany, as part of a deal to modernize the elderly ironclad Âsâr-ı Tevfik. The two cruisers were part of a naval reconstruction program that began in the late 1890s, following the Greco-Turkish War of 1897, in which the Ottoman fleet had been unable to play an active role.
### Characteristics
The ships were 80.1 m (262 ft 10 in) long, with a beam of 8.4 m (27 ft 7 in) and a draft of 4.6 m (15 ft 1 in). They displaced 775 long tons (787 t) while on sea trials. By 1938, their displacement had increased to 850 long tons (860 t). The ships were fitted with two pole masts, the foremast just aft of the conning tower and the main mast further aft. The forecastle deck extended to the base of the forward funnel, and the quarterdeck was stepped down aft of the mainmast. They were steel-hulled ships and carried no armor protection. Their crew numbered 125 officers and enlisted men as completed, and it had risen to 145 by 1915.
The ships were powered by a pair of vertical triple-expansion engines each driving a screw propeller. Their four coal-fired Schulz water-tube boilers, manufactured by Germaniawerft, were trunked into two funnels. The engines were rated at 5,100 indicated horsepower (3,800 kW) for a top speed of 21 knots (39 km/h; 24 mph), though on trials they reached 22 kn (41 km/h; 25 mph). By 1915, poor maintenance and heavy use had reduced their speed to 18 kn (33 km/h; 21 mph). The Peyk-i Şevket-class ships had storage capacity for 244 t (240 long tons; 269 short tons) of coal, which provided a cruising radius of 3,240 nautical miles (6,000 km; 3,730 mi).
The two Peyk-i Şevket-class cruisers' primary offensive armament was their three 450 mm (17.7 in) torpedo tubes. One was mounted in the bow, above water, and the other two were in deck-mounted swivel launchers amidships. They were armed with a pair of 105 mm (4.1 in) quick-firing 40-caliber guns that were placed in shielded single mounts on the forecastle and quarterdeck. They also carried six 57 mm (2.2 in) 40-caliber guns, four of which were mounted in sponsons, a pair of 37 mm (1.5 in) guns, and two machine guns.
### Modifications
Both ships were rebuilt in the late 1930s and incorporated substantial improvements. Both stem and stern were rebuilt, with a new raked bow. Their superstructure was also reconstructed. The old gun armament was replaced with a pair of 88 mm (3.5 in) 45-caliber guns and four 37 mm 40-caliber guns, and Berk-i Satvet received equipment to handle 25 naval mines.
## Ships
## Service history
Both ships saw extensive service with the Ottoman fleet over the course of the decade following their arrival in November 1907. They took part in the first fleet maneuver conducted by the fleet in over twenty years in 1909. Neither ship saw action during the Italo-Turkish War of 1911–1912, as Peyk-i Şevket had been interned at British-controlled Suez at the outbreak of war, and Berk-i Satvet was stationed with the reserve fleet in the Sea of Marmara, which did not risk confrontation with the significantly stronger Italian fleet. Both ships saw combat during the First Balkan War in 1913, primarily in supporting Ottoman forces ashore in East Thrace. The ships provided gunfire support to the Ottoman army holding the Çatalca line in defense of the capital at Constantinople. Berk-i Satvet also took part in two brief skirmishes with the Greek Navy.
The Ottoman Empire joined World War I in November 1914; Peyk-i Şevket and Berk-i Satvet primarily operated in the Black Sea against the Russian Black Sea Fleet. They frequently patrolled the Ottoman coast, particularly off the Bosporus, and escorted convoys to western Anatolia. On one of these convoy operations in January 1915, Berk-i Satvet struck a mine that wrecked her stern. She was towed back to Constantinople and repaired, returning to service in 1918. Peyk-i Şevket returned to the Sea of Marmara during the Dardanelles Campaign in 1915, where she carried munitions to the defending Ottoman forces. On 6 August, she was torpedoed by the British submarine HMS E11 and was badly damaged, with repairs lasting until 1917. Both ships were used as convoy escorts in the Black Sea in the final year of the war.
The Treaty of Sèvres that ended the war assigned one of the vessels to Portugal as war reparations, but the subsequent Turkish War of Independence nullified that agreement and ended with the Treaty of Lausanne in 1924, which allowed the new Turkish republic to retain its fleet. The two cruisers were retained by the new Turkish Navy and their names were shortened to Peyk and Berk. Lengthy overhauls followed, in 1924–1925 for Berk and 1927–1929 for Peyk. They were modernized a decade later, in 1936–1938 for Peyk and 1937–1939 for Berk. The ships remained in service until 1944, when they were stricken from the naval register and laid up at the Gölcük Naval Shipyard before being scrapped after 1953. |
12,103,428 | Pennsylvania Ministerium | 1,156,169,006 | American Lutheran church body | [
"1748 establishments in Pennsylvania",
"1748 in Christianity",
"18th-century Lutheranism",
"Evangelical Lutheran Church in America predecessor churches",
"Lutheran denominations established in the 18th century",
"Lutheran denominations in North America",
"Religious organizations established in 1748"
] | The Pennsylvania Ministerium was the first Lutheran church body in North America. With the encouragement of Henry Melchior Muhlenberg (1711–1787), the Ministerium was founded at a Church Conference of Lutheran clergy on August 26, 1748. The group was known as the "German Evangelical Lutheran Ministerium of North America" until 1792, when it adopted the name "German Evangelical Lutheran Ministerium of Pennsylvania and Adjacent States".
The Pennsylvania Ministerium, also referred to as the Ministerium of Pennsylvania, was the source of the first Lutheran liturgy in America. Because of its unique place in the history of North American Lutheranism, the Ministerium continued to influence the church politics of Lutherans in America into the 20th century.
## History
### Lutherans in North America
In 1638, Swedish settlers, colonizing north along the Delaware River from the New Sweden colony, established residences in what would become Philadelphia, at a place called Wiccaco by the local Lenape tribe, meaning "pleasant place". These Swedish settlers were Lutherans. The Gloria Dei (Old Swedes') Church was completed in 1700. Colonization extended to present-day Trenton.
German settlers began arriving in North America in the mid-17th century. They were particularly attracted by William Penn's promise of religious freedom in what was then the colonial Province of Pennsylvania and came to the Philadelphia region in significant numbers. By 1683, the German population was large enough to form communities such as Germantown, which is now a neighborhood in Philadelphia.
### Ministerium founding
By the mid-18th century, there was a growing need for well-trained Lutheran clergy in the colonies. A conference was proposed to create a closer union between the area congregations' preachers, elders, and deacons.
The Pietist foundation at the University of Halle in Germany sent 24 clergy members to minister in the colonies in 1742. Among those sent was Henry Melchior Muhlenberg. A tension between pious and orthodox religious interpretations was present in Europe and North American Lutherans. The conference intentionally excluded congregations critical of pious interpretation. A conference was assembled but was disrupted by the orthodox Swedish preacher Rev. Nyburg of the New Sweden colony. Tension around this conference extended beyond Pennsylvania. Open remarks from William C. Berkenmeyer against John C. Hartwick of New York were published in a booklet. His Swedish colleagues in Delaware criticized Carl M. Wrangel for having pietistic leanings.
Five years later, a conference was again assembled. At Muhlenberg's request, Lutheran pastors met in Philadelphia on August 26, 1748, for the first Church Conference. Six pastors and lay representatives from ten congregations attended the meeting, where they agreed to work together as the "ministerium of North America." They successfully adopted a common liturgy to be used in North America. This meeting has become "the most important event in the history of North American Lutheranism". Attendees came from Philadelphia, New Hanover, Providence, Germantown, Tulpehocken, Lancaster, Upper Milford, and Saccum congregations.
The fifteenth Church Conference of 1762, led by Muhlenberg, was held at St Michael's Church, Philadelphia. Four Swedish and ten German preachers represented area congregations.
Muhlenberg's influence went beyond those congregations he served; he organized other Lutheran congregations in Pennsylvania so that they might work in cooperation. Such was his influence that Muhlenberg became regarded to be "the patriarch of the Lutheran church in North America".
The Ministerium remained a relatively informal association until a constitution was drafted and agreed upon in 1781. Along with a formal constitution, it adopted the name of the "German Evangelical Lutheran Ministerium of North America". The churches of the ministerium followed a polity influenced by the Dutch Reformed model and by Muhlenberg's Pietism and did not insist on strict adherence to the Lutheran Confessions. During these early years, there were both German and Swedish pastors in the Ministerium. Members of the Ministerium could be found in Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, and even the Carolinas.
In 1784, Frederick A. Muhlenberg (second son of the earlier patriarch) organized the growing number of Lutheran congregations and clergy in the state of New York into the Ministerium of New York. Mindful of this and other Lutheran church bodies founded in North America, in 1792, the group in Philadelphia renamed itself "The Ministerium of Pennsylvania and Adjacent States".
### General Synod
In 1818, the Pennsylvania Ministerium began talks of organizing the various Lutheran church bodies in America so that they could "stand in some or another in closer connection with one another". At a meeting in Hagerstown, Maryland, in October 1820, the General Synod (formally titled the "Evangelical Lutheran General Synod of the United States of North America") was founded. At the outset, this group consisted of the Pennsylvania Ministerium, along with the New York Ministerium and the Maryland-Virginia Synod.
The General Synod served largely in an advisory function—each church body within the Synod retained its constitution and independence. The primary role of the Synod was to facilitate cooperation among the various church bodies. It was under the auspices of the General Synod, with the leadership of Samuel Simon Schmucker, that a Lutheran seminary and college were founded in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
Despite its role in establishing the General Synod, the Pennsylvania Ministerium withdrew from the inter-Lutheran organization in 1823. There was a close relationship within the Ministerium between Lutheran and Reformed congregations, and many felt that the General Synod might jeopardize that relationship. In addition, many in the Ministerium were wary of a centralized organization and the control that it might exert over individual congregations.
The Pennsylvania Ministerium remained an independent Lutheran church body in the years following. However, the Ministerium sought to maintain a relationship with the General Synod, including continuing to send its ministerial students to the General Synod's seminary in Gettysburg.
In the following decades, the Ministerium became less concerned with its relationship with the Reformed church. It saw a significant increase in Lutheran identity and the importance of the Lutheran Confessions. Thus, in 1853, the Ministerium rejoined other Lutherans in the General Synod. However, this renewed relationship would be short-lived.
### General Council
As with many Protestant churches, the General Synod was split on the issue of the American Civil War in the 1860s. Yet this was not the biggest challenge to Lutheran unity in the middle of the 19th century. As the importance of the Lutheran Confessions grew among American Lutherans, Samuel Schmucker, who was once seen as confessionally conservative, found himself on the outside of the consensus of other Lutherans. In 1855, Schmucker, along with two other theologians from the Gettysburg seminary, penned the Definite Synodical Platform. This document downplayed the importance of the Confessions, suggesting an edited "American Recension" of the Augsburg Confession, and sought to establish a distinctly American Lutheranism that was more at home with other Protestants in the country.
The Definite Synodical Platform was not enough to cause the Pennsylvania Ministerium to leave the General Synod, but it was a foretaste of things to come. When the Frankean Synod, a Lutheran church body noted for its progressive politics and utter disregard for the Lutheran Confessions, was admitted to the General Synod, the leadership of the Ministerium had seen enough. At the 1864 gathering of the General Synod, at which the Frankeans were admitted, the delegates from the Ministerium left in protest. The General Synod later passed a resolution affirming and strengthening their commitment to the Augsburg Confession.
It is unclear whether the Ministerium members intended this to be a permanent break or a temporary protest, but it became permanent when the officials at the next Gathering of the General Synod refused to admit delegates from the Ministerium. The Ministerium then found itself on its own.
In 1864, unhappy with the direction of the General Synod and its seminary at Gettysburg, the Ministerium established a new seminary in Philadelphia, later known as the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia, and asked Charles Porterfield Krauth to head it. This was followed, in 1867, with the Ministerium being joined by 13 other church bodies in a more conservative and confessional organization known as the General Council.
### United Lutheran Church in America
The Pennsylvania Ministerium remained a constituent church of the General Council from 1867 to 1917. In 1918, following the celebration of the 400th anniversary of the Reformation, the three Lutheran church bodies of eastern America (the General Synod, the United Synod of the South, and the General Council) reunited to form the United Lutheran Church in America. This event, while marking a watershed of unity among American Lutherans, also marked the end of the Pennsylvania Ministerium. The ULCA would later join with other American Lutherans to form the Lutheran Church in America in 1962; that body, in turn, helped form the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America in 1988. |
729,367 | Bowling Green station | 1,172,886,819 | New York City Subway station in Manhattan | [
"1905 establishments in New York City",
"Bowling Green (New York City)",
"Broadway (Manhattan)",
"Financial District, Manhattan",
"Heins and LaFarge buildings",
"IRT Lexington Avenue Line stations",
"New York City Designated Landmarks in Manhattan",
"New York City Subway stations in Manhattan",
"New York City Subway terminals",
"Railway and subway stations on the National Register of Historic Places in Manhattan",
"Railway stations in the United States opened in 1905",
"The Battery (Manhattan)"
] | The Bowling Green station is a station on the IRT Lexington Avenue Line of the New York City Subway, located at Broadway and Battery Place (at Bowling Green), in the Financial District of Manhattan. It is served by the 4 train at all times and the 5 train at all times except late nights.
The station opened in 1905 as an extension of the Interborough Rapid Transit (IRT)'s original subway line to South Ferry. At the time, there was a single island platform with one exit at Battery Park and another in Bowling Green. When the Lexington Avenue Line was expanded to Brooklyn in 1908, some trains continued going to South Ferry, resulting in the creation of a short island platform at the Bowling Green station for the Bowling Green–South Ferry shuttle. The shuttle operated until 1977. During the 1970s, the station was completely renovated, a new exit was built, and a third, side platform was created for northbound trains.
The Bowling Green station contains two island platforms and one side platform. The westernmost island platform, formerly used by the shuttle, has been closed since 1977. The station retains its original head house in Battery Park, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and a New York City designated landmark. There are two other exits to Bowling Green, one of which contains an elevator that makes the station compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.
## History
### Construction and opening
Planning for a subway line in New York City dates to 1864. However, development of what would become the city's first subway line did not start until 1894, when the New York State Legislature passed the Rapid Transit Act. The subway plans were drawn up by a team of engineers led by William Barclay Parsons, the Rapid Transit Commission's chief engineer. The Rapid Transit Construction Company, organized by John B. McDonald and funded by August Belmont Jr., signed the initial Contract 1 with the Rapid Transit Commission in February 1900, in which it would construct the subway and maintain a 50-year operating lease from the opening of the line. In 1901, the firm of Heins & LaFarge was hired to design the underground stations. Belmont incorporated the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT) in April 1902 to operate the subway.
Several days after Contract 1 was signed, the Board of Rapid Transit Railroad Commissioners instructed Parsons to evaluate the feasibility of extending the subway south to South Ferry, and then to Brooklyn. On January 24, 1901, the Board adopted a route that would extend the subway from City Hall to the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR)'s Flatbush Avenue terminal station (now known as Atlantic Terminal) in Brooklyn, via the Joralemon Street Tunnel under the East River. Contract 2, which gave the IRT a 35-year lease,was executed between the commission and the Rapid Transit Construction Company on September 11, 1902. Construction of the Joralemon Street Tunnel began at State Street in Manhattan on November 8, 1902. There was to be a station at Bowling Green. South of the station, the main line would slope down to the Joralemon Street Tunnel, while a loop underneath Battery Park would allow southbound trains to serve the South Ferry station and rejoin the northbound track. The New York Times wrote that the installation of the switches between the loop and the main line presented "an engineering problem of great difficulty".
Work on the section of line from Ann Street (just south of City Hall) to Bowling Green had not started by September 1903, and McDonald blamed Parsons for the delays. The dispute was quickly resolved, as neither man had realized that the other did not want the project to disturb daytime traffic along Broadway; work started shortly thereafter. During the Bowling Green station's construction, workers uncovered and removed some of the original lampposts that had illuminated Bowling Green Park. The tunnel between Ann Street and Bowling Green was nearly complete by July 1904. The Bowling Green station opened on July 10, 1905. The station was originally built with a single island platform; a station head house at the south end, in Battery Park; and a secondary entrance at the northern end of the platform, adjacent to Bowling Green Park. There was as yet no IRT service to Brooklyn, and all Lexington Avenue trains terminated at South Ferry's outer-loop platform.
### Early modifications
After the Joralemon Street Tunnel opened in 1908, ticket sales increased at Bowling Green and the IRT's other subway stations in Lower Manhattan. Some trains continued to terminate at South Ferry, even during rush hours, while others went to Brooklyn. This service pattern was soon found to be inadequate for the high volume of Brooklyn riders. As a result, in 1908, the New York State Public Service Commission applied for authority to build a second, shorter platform and a third track to the west of the existing island platform. Three months after the Joralemon Street Tunnel opened, construction began on the third track and the western island platform at Bowling Green. Once they were completed in 1909, all rush-hour trains were sent to Brooklyn, with a two-car Bowling Green–South Ferry shuttle train providing service to South Ferry during those times. Even after the IRT Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line local service () began to South Ferry in 1918, the shuttle remained in operation until it was discontinued in 1977 due to budget cuts.
To address overcrowding, in 1909, the New York Public Service Commission proposed lengthening the platforms at stations along the original IRT subway. As part of a modification to the IRT's construction contracts made on January 18, 1910, the company was to lengthen station platforms to accommodate ten-car express and six-car local trains. In addition to \$1.5 million (equivalent to \$ million in ) spent on platform lengthening, \$500,000 (equivalent to \$ million in ) was spent on building additional entrances and exits. It was anticipated that these improvements would increase capacity by 25 percent. The main island platform at the Bowling Green station was extended 110 feet (34 m) to the north. On January 23, 1911, ten-car express trains began running on the East Side Line, and the next day, ten-car express trains began running on the West Side Line. The Lexington Avenue Line north of Grand Central–42nd Street opened on August 1, 1918, and all Joralemon Street Tunnel services were sent via the Lexington Avenue Line.
In Fiscal Year 1937, the platform was extended 102 feet (31 m) to the north. This avoided the need to install gap fillers on the curve at the south end of the platform. The city government took over the IRT's operations on June 12, 1940. On September 8, 1952, the New York City Board of Transportation made the entrance kiosk at Battery Place and State Street entrance-only instead of exit-only in order to relieve congestion at the station during the evening rush hour. A fare box was installed at the top of the stairway to accommodate the change. The New York City Transit Authority (NYCTA) announced plans in 1956 to add fluorescent lights above the edges of the station's platforms. The lights were installed the next year.
NYCTA architect Harold Sandifer prepared plans in the late 1950s for a modern-style station house within Bowling Green Park, which would contain a brick-and-aluminum facade, along with planters containing dwarf Japanese yew trees. The NYCTA approved the project in February 1958, awarding the construction contract to the Lenmar Construction Company at a cost of \$87,200. The next year, the new station house in Bowling Green Park was completed, with new stairways to the platform. Later in 1959, contracts were awarded to extend the platforms at Bowling Green, Wall Street, Fulton Street, Canal Street, Spring Street, Bleecker Street, Astor Place, Grand Central, 86th Street and 125th Street to 525 feet (160 m) to accommodate ten-car trains. The NYCTA approved a proposal in September 1960 to install an experimental token-vending machine, which would dispense advertisements along with tokens, at the Bowling Green station. Work on the platform extension was still underway in 1962, and the project was substantially completed by November 1965.
### 1970s renovation
As early as the mid-1960s, local civic group Downtown-Local Manhattan Association had raised concerns that the Bowling Green station was severely overcrowded during rush hours. The association commissioned a study of the neighborhood, which recommended that the station's platform be extended and that its entrances be widened. In 1970, the New York City Planning Commission considered transferring the Custom House's unused air rights to 1 Broadway, where the Walter Kidde Company planned to build a 50-story skyscraper. In exchange, the Walter Kidde Company would have been required to pay for numerous improvements to the surrounding area. Local civic groups also proposed connecting the station to the basements of skyscrapers in the area, as well as to the then-separate South Ferry and Whitehall Street stations and a planned terminal for the Second Avenue Subway. By the early 1970s, the station had 14 million passengers per year.
On March 5, 1972, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) announced that the station would be renovated and expanded, doubling the capacity of the station. The work was done in conjunction with the renovation of Bowling Green Park, which was rebuilt to conform with its appearance in the late 18th century. A new northbound side platform was built to alleviate congestion on the narrow island platform, which would then only be used by downtown trains. Stairs and a new mezzanine were built below track level, and a new exit with modern escalators was installed just south of Bowling Green. The street at the southern end of Bowling Green, in front of the Custom House, was converted into a pedestrian plaza. The new mezzanine, excavated under Bowling Green Park using a cut-and-cover method, was connected to the platform and street levels with ten new escalators. The existing subway entrance at the west gate of the park was removed, providing more open space in the park. These capacity improvements were made to accommodate increased ridership resulting from the construction of additional office buildings in Lower Manhattan, including the World Trade Center. The station lost its original mosaic tiles, which were replaced with bright red tiles, similar to those at 49th Street and the under-construction stations on the 63rd Street lines and Archer Avenue lines. In addition, the station's token booths were renovated.
Work was initially set to be finished in 1974. In July 1975, it was announced that the project's completion had been delayed to March 1976. The southern headhouse entrance was closed for six months beginning in April 1978 as it was being rehabilitated. The renovation was completed in 1978 at a cost of \$16.8 million. Funding for the project was provided from the New York City Transit Authority (NYCTA)'s capital budget. The Bowling Green station's renovation was supposed to be the first of numerous large-scale station reconstructions in the New York City Subway system.
At midnight on February 13, 1977, service on the Bowling Green–South Ferry shuttle was discontinued, and the platform and the track used by the shuttle were abandoned. The service was discontinued as part of a three-phase cut in service that the NYCTA had begun in 1975 to reduce its operating deficits. Despite the discontinuation of the service, the shuttle platform was renovated, receiving new tiling, signage, and refinished flooring. Some time after 1983, a fence was installed on the eastern edge of the island platform, which had been used to board trains prior to the opening of the side platform in 1978.
### Subsequent changes
In June 1999, MetroCard vending machines were installed in this station as part of the second batch of the fare-payment technology's installation. Following the September 11 attacks in 2001, members of the public expressed concerns that the station could be difficult to evacuate in emergencies due to its convoluted layout.
In early 2006, work began to make the station fully compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. The cobblestones around the station entrance near Bowling Green were replaced with granite pavers, an ADA-compliant path was constructed to Bowling Green Park, and a new glass canopy was installed over this entrance. The canopy, which was designed by Dattner Architects in 2003, consists of a curved steel and glass with stainless steel ribs, and is supported by a granite base. The unused shuttle platform was also walled off between 2001 and 2002. Work to install the canopy was scheduled to begin in late October 2006. In May 2007, the replacement of the cobblestones and installation of the glass canopy were completed. The elevators opened to the public on July 9, 2007, and a formal opening ceremony was hosted the following day.
The MTA added a hearing induction loop for passengers on the northbound platform, the first such installation in the subway system, during a pilot program in 2020. The MTA announced in December 2021 that it would install wide-aisle fare gates for disabled passengers at five subway stations, including Bowling Green, by mid-2022. The implementation of these fare gates was delayed; none of the wide-aisle fare gates had been installed by early 2023.
## Station layout
The station, located at Broadway and Battery Place, is served by the 4 train at all times and by the 5 at all times except late nights. The station is between Wall Street to the north and Borough Hall in Brooklyn to the south; it is the southern terminus for trains during weekends and weekday evenings. The Bowling Green station has three tracks and three platforms, of which two tracks and two platforms are in service. The center island platform serves southbound and terminating trains, and a slightly offset side platform to the east serves northbound trains. A fence is located along the eastern edge of the island platform, preventing northbound trains from releasing passengers onto the island platform. The side platform and the wall facing the downtown track have orange brick tiles. Both platforms have circular platform columns painted in beige.
An abandoned and walled-off island platform and track on the west side of the station were formerly used by the Bowling Green–South Ferry shuttle, which traveled to the inner platform at South Ferry. This platform was connected to the island platform with an underpass at its northern end.
Escalators and stairs connect both platforms to the mezzanine below track level, where free transfers can be made between the two platforms. On the uptown platform, pairs of escalators and staircases lead to the mezzanine, while on the downtown platform, alternating staircases and escalators descend to the mezzanine. The Bowling Green station is fully wheelchair-accessible under the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 and contains two elevators. One connects street level, the main northbound fare control, and the southbound fare control area below the platforms and tracks. The other connects the Brooklyn-bound platform with the fare control area below the tracks.
There are two banks of turnstiles on the north and south sides of the mezzanine, which is outside fare control. A pair of escalators and a staircase leads from the eastern end of the mezzanine to an upper mezzanine, which contains the token booth, and a bank of turnstiles, which leads directly onto the uptown side platform.
### Track layout
South of the station, the tracks diverge into two sets. One set (the inner tracks) enters the Joralemon Street Tunnel to travel to Brooklyn, sloping down at a gradient of just over three percent. This route is used by the 4 train at all times and the 5 train on weekdays until 8:45 pm. The outer tracks continue to the closed South Ferry inner loop station, which is used by the 5 train when it short turns at this station during weekends and late weekday evenings.
## Exits
The station has three street stairs, an elevator, a set of escalators, and an original control house (also known as the head house). These exits are clustered in three separate locations.
The eastern end of the upper mezzanine, toward the center of the station, leads to a pair of staircases and an up escalator that leads to Bowling Green plaza. There is a glass-canopied stairs-and-escalator entrance in front of the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House, just around the corner from two entrances to the Whitehall Street–South Ferry station on the BMT Broadway Line (which are set into the building's eastern elevation).
At the eastern end of the lower mezzanine, a pair of escalators and a staircase lead to an intermediate level. This, in turn, leads to a pair of staircases on the north side of Battery Place between Greenwich Street and Broadway, outside 1 Broadway.
A staircase, at the southern end of the island platform, leads to a fare control area in the restored control house. which consists of a pair of low turnstiles at the south end, and two high entry/exit turnstiles flanking the staircase down to the platform.
### Control house
At the south end of the station is the original head house, known as the Bowling Green IRT Control House or Battery Park Control House, on the west side of State Street south of Broadway. This subway entrance was designed by Heins & LaFarge and built in 1905 on the west side of State Street, across from the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House. It was built as one of several station houses on the original IRT; similar station houses were built at 72nd, 96th, 103rd, and 116th Streets. The control house is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is a New York City designated landmark. Although most of the original subway's entry points had steel and glass kiosks (such as at Astor Place), important stations like Bowling Green were marked with a brick and stone control house, so called because they helped control the passenger flow.
The facade is made of yellow brick, with limestone banding and triglyphs at its tops, a base of granite, and a gable roof. The doorways to the control house are located on the north and south of the structure; the northern doorway has an elaborate pediment above it, and the southern doorway has been extended with three exit doors. Inside, the control house has turnstiles at street level and a single stair down to the extreme southern end of the island platform.
## Artwork
The Bowling Green station has lightboxes with rotating content. Since 2018, the exhibition has been "Daily Voyage", featuring pictures taken by Glen DiCrocco of regular commuters on the Staten Island Ferry. Some of these photos can be seen on the MTA's Flickr account as well.
## Nearby points of interest
There are numerous skyscrapers and other structures immediately surrounding the Bowling Green station (listed clockwise):
- Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House to the south; a New York City designated landmark on the National Register of Historic Places
- 1 Broadway, the International Mercantile Marine Company Building; a New York City designated landmark on the National Register of Historic Places
- Bowling Green Offices Building, 11 Broadway; a New York City designated landmark
- Cunard Building, 25 Broadway; a New York City designated landmark
- 26 Broadway, the Standard Oil Company Building, on the east side of Broadway, facing the Cunard Building; a New York City designated landmark
- 2 Broadway, a Modernist glass structure that replaced the New York Produce Exchange Building
Another park, the Battery, is located right outside the southern entrance. Charging Bull, a 7,100-pound (3,200 kg) bronze sculpture, is at the north end of Bowling Green Park, immediately north of the station. |
60,590,503 | Austen Deans | 1,158,650,323 | New Zealand painter | [
"1915 births",
"2011 deaths",
"20th-century New Zealand male artists",
"20th-century New Zealand painters",
"Artists from Christchurch",
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"Moorhouse–Rhodes family",
"New Zealand Officers of the Order of the British Empire",
"New Zealand military personnel of World War II",
"New Zealand prisoners of war in World War II",
"New Zealand war artists",
"New Zealand writers",
"World War II artists",
"World War II prisoners of war held by Germany"
] | Alister Austen Deans OBE (2 December 1915 – 18 October 2011) was a New Zealand painter, known for his landscapes and for his work as a war artist in the Second World War.
Born in Christchurch to a well-known farming family, Deans became interested in art in his teenage years. He studied fine arts at the Canterbury College School of Art before returning to the family farm for work. He volunteered for the 2nd New Zealand Expeditionary Force on the outbreak of the Second World War, and was posted to the 20th Battalion. In 1941 he was appointed an assistant war artist, serving under Peter McIntyre. However, he was wounded during the Battle of Crete and became a prisoner of war (POW). Allowed to paint during his captivity, his work was a useful record of life as a POW. After the war, he studied painting at the Sir John Cass Technical Institute in England before settling down on a lifestyle block in Canterbury. He was a prolific painter of the Canterbury hill country. Made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1995, he died in October 2011.
## Early life
Deans was born on 2 December 1915 in Christchurch, New Zealand, one of two sons of Alister and Norma Deans. His father, Alister, was a scion of the Deans family, notable in Christchurch for being one of the earliest European settlers in the region, and was later killed at the Battle of Passchendaele. His mother was the daughter of the farmer Harry Knight. Austen Deans' early years were spent on the family farm near Malvern before, when he was 10, his mother moved to the Riccarton suburb in Christchurch. He was educated at Medbury School and at Christ's College.
His interest in art developed when he was 12 years old, while on holidays at the family farm. He tramped into the hills taking painting and sketching materials with him. Family friends encouraged him in his art and when he finished his education, he decided to go to art school. Studying at the University of Canterbury towards a Bachelor of Arts concurrently with learning fine arts at the Canterbury College School of Art, he made the acquaintance of Bill Sutton. Despite being more interested in landscape work, he received much training in life drawing. Colin Lovell-Smith, Evelyn Page and Archibald Nicoll were influences.
Deans graduated in 1937 and returned to the family farm to work. This financed his tramping trips to the Southern Alps where he would make several sketches and watercolours of the hill country. He received favourable reviews of his work at exhibitions at the School of Art's Sketch Club and the Canterbury Arts Society. Dame Ngaio Marsh was an early supporter and soon he was making a number of sales of his work.
## Second World War
The outbreak of the Second World War disrupted Deans' plans to study at the Slade School of Fine Art in London. Instead, he volunteered for war service abroad with the 2nd New Zealand Expeditionary Force (2NZEF). Posted to the 20th Battalion of the 2nd New Zealand Division, he was assigned to its intelligence section on account of his skills as an artist. His duties involved making and looking after maps but while off duty he continued to paint.
By 1940, Deans was in the Middle East, where the 2NZEF had been transported for war service. He continued with his painting, doing landscapes of the Egypt countryside. His battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Howard Kippenberger, was supportive of his work. Deans later completed a portrait of Kippenberger which was used to illustrate his biography. In March 1941, the 2nd New Zealand Division was sent to Greece. The British Government anticipated an invasion of Greece by the Germans and decided to send troops to support the Greeks, who were already engaged against the Italians in Albania. The 2nd New Zealand Division was one of a number of Allied units dispatched to Greece. The campaign was little more than a series of withdrawals but Deans still found time to make depictions of life in the Greek villages he saw. At the end of the fighting in Greece, Deans was among those evacuated to Crete.
In the meantime, the New Zealand Government was considering appointing an official war artist to record the exploits of New Zealanders serving with the military. Deans had already been interviewed for the position the previous year and his application was supported by many in New Zealand, particularly from the Canterbury region. His mother even wrote to the Prime Minister Peter Fraser advocating for her son. Deans had been interviewed by the commander of 2NZEF, Major General Bernard Freyberg, the previous year but the position would eventually go to Peter McIntyre. However, shortly after Deans' arrival on Crete, he was told that he had been appointed assistant war artist. His first task was to paint depictions of New Zealanders serving in Greece, as McIntyre had not been present for that campaign. Although he was offered the opportunity to return to Egypt to start his work there, he preferred to remain on Crete. He was therefore caught up in the invasion that commenced on 20 May 1941. Paintings already worked up by that stage were in transit to Egypt and would duly arrive in New Zealand. In the meantime, Deans was badly wounded; he had inadvertently set off a land mine and had to be hospitalised with his legs full of shrapnel. A few days later, and unable to be evacuated, he was one of 520 wounded New Zealanders to be captured by the Germans.
### Prisoner of War
Flown to Athens by his captors, Deans received medical treatment for several months at a hospital at Kokkinia, near Piraeus. While there, he was provided with pad and pencil by a fellow prisoner of war (POW) who wanted a portrait sketch to send to his family. This led onto further commissions from other POWs, as well as doctors and even guards. Paid a few pennies a time, he soon built up enough cash to organise, through a friendly Greek hospital worker, the purchase of painting supplies. He then set to work painting depictions of life at the hospital and surrounding landscapes which he would sell for money. While recuperating at Kokkinia, he met Australian modernist artists Justin O'Brien and Jesse Martin, both of whom were also POWs and who would influence Deans with their styles.
When he recovered from his wounds, Deans was transferred to a POW camp at Toruń, in occupied Poland. The trip there was arduous, travelling on cattle rail trucks, in a journey that took over two weeks. On arrival at the camp, Stalag XX-A, the POWs were put to work. Deans struggled initially, not accustomed to labouring after his prolonged period of medical treatment. He soon injured himself and consequently would be placed on light duties. As he had at Kokkinia, Deans soon found opportunities to express himself artistically at Stalag XX-A. Sourcing artist's materials through the Red Cross, he resumed doing portraits of POWs and as well as scenes of camp life. He was joined by O'Brien and Martin, once they had been transferred to the camp from Kokkinia.
As an artist, his skills were in demand for forging documents to help with escape attempts. Deans himself had the opportunity to get away from his captors but refrained from doing so; while on a work party outside of the camp, he slipped away from his guards but realised he was too attached to his painting portfolio back at Stalag XX-A to leave them behind. He made his way back to the work party without his absence being noticed. Towards the end of 1943, Deans was transferred to a special POW camp in Germany, just outside of Berlin. Before his move, with the help of the Red Cross, he was able to arrange the shipping of half of his paintings to England.
Conditions at the new POW camp, at Genshagen, were much better. Nominally, the POWs were selected for the camp based on their good behaviour but Deans soon discovered that its actual purpose encourage the prisoners to enlist in the British Free Corps. He stayed only a month before requesting a transfer to a camp in Austria that housed Australian and New Zealand POWs. A couple of his paintings from his time in Genshagen were given to another POW; these were sold to an art gallery in Christchurch in 1987 and are notable for their modernist traits.
Deans was held in Austria at Stalag XVIII-A, near Wolfsberg for well over a year. By this time, the war in Europe was drawing to a close and conditions in the POW camp grew steadily harsher. Despite this, Deans still painted and sketched and by early 1945 had accumulated a portfolio of nearly 300 works. When the camp's POWS were ordered to force march towards Germany, he packaged them up for the Red Cross to collect. The collection of art works were never retrieved and were lost. While on the march, the guards' attention to their charges declined and security became lax with the war all but over. With a group of others, Deans was able to make contact with American forces and made his way back to England. Before he could leave for New Zealand, he had to appear at the trial of Roy Courlander, a New Zealander who had joined the British Free Corps. Once this was complete, he departed England aboard the SS Mooltan on 2 December 1945, arriving back in New Zealand by the end of the year.
## Later life
Soon after his return to New Zealand, Deans married Liz née Hutton, the daughter of a farmer. She was a family friend, and Deans had known her since she was an infant. She helped him settle back into civilian life, which he had been struggling with since coming back to New Zealand. In early 1948, the couple's first son was born and later that year the family went to England, Deans having accepted a scholarship to study at the Sir John Cass Technical Institute in Aldgate. He benefited from a higher standard of teaching than he had received to date; his tutors at the institute included Bernard Rice and Nicholas Egon, the latter being known for abstract art and landscapes. The institute instilled in him the confidence to pursue his traditional style of painting, rather than the modernist influences that he had dabbled with while a POW.
The couple settled at Peel Forest, in Canterbury, after finishing their studies in England. To the southwest of Christchurch, Austen saw the area as being similar to the West Coast but with a better climate. While in England, a second son had been born and the couple would add five more boys to their family by 1958. While Liz set up and ran a horse stud, Deans continued to work in landscapes. In 1962, he won first prize in the Kelliher Art Awards with a landscape of the Southern Alps. He won again the following year with a depiction of the Rakaia headwaters. He wrote an autobiography, Pictures by Austen Deans, and in 1970 this was published by A.H. & A.W. Reed. Sales did not justify further printings after the first run was complete. For a number of years, until his resignation in 1970, he was on the management committee of the National Art Gallery, which selected works for its collection.
Despite his age, in his later years Deans made several painting expeditions to the Southern Alps, including an ascent of Aoraki/Mount Cook in 1974, as well as a trip to Antarctica in late 1981, sponsored by the New Zealand Government. He considered the work produced from his Antarctica visit to be some of the best of his career. By this stage of his life, the majority of his income was from commissioned works which he continued to accept even as he approached his late eighties. He received an appointment as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 1995 Queen's Birthday Honours, for services to art.
He died on 18 October 2011 at Princess Margaret's Hospital in Christchurch, having suffered a stroke several days previously. He was survived by his second wife, Margaret née Alpers, who he had married in 2009. His first wife, Liz, had died in May 2004. In November 2018, a sculpture of Deans was unveiled at Peel Forest.
## Legacy
Over the course of his painting career, Deans was a prolific producer of landscapes, often from the Canterbury region which meant his work was particularly popular amongst Cantabrians. However, some felt his paintings to be formulaic and clichéd although technically accomplished. The work he produced as a POW was particularly well received by art critics although they have not aged well; many were completed with paints of poor quality or on acid cardboard and have deteriorated. |
51,252,854 | Too Old for This Shift | 1,157,830,673 | null | [
"2016 British television episodes",
"Casualty (TV series) episodes",
"Crossover television",
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] | "Too Old for This Shift" is a special feature-length episode of the British medical drama television series Casualty. It was broadcast as the premiere episode of its thirty-first series on 27 August 2016, on BBC One, to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the show. The special, which is 99 minutes long, was co-written by Matthew Barry and Andy Bayliss, directed by Steve Hughes, and produced by Lucy Raffety.
"Too Old for This Shift" explores the outcome of the cliffhanger broadcast at the end of the thirtieth series, by focusing on the events surrounding the aftermath of the collision involving established characters Connie Beauchamp (Amanda Mealing) and her daughter Grace Beauchamp (Emily Carey). The episode centres around the celebrations of Charlie Fairhead's (Derek Thompson) thirtieth anniversary of working in the fictitious Holby City Hospital's emergency department, where the show is set. It also features a helicopter crash outside the emergency department, which causes damage to the hospital.
Several actors who have previously appeared on Casualty during its thirty years on air made a cameo appearance during the special, while Ian Bleasdale reprised his role as Josh Griffiths for the entirety of the episode. The episode also marked the return of Cathy Shipton in her role of Lisa "Duffy" Duffin, following her guest appearances in the thirtieth series. The special also featured character crossovers from sister show Holby City, with Jac Naylor (Rosie Marcel), Henrik Hanssen (Guy Henry) and Adrian "Fletch" Fletcher (Alex Walkinshaw) appearing in the episode. The episode was watched by 7.20 million viewers and received mixed reviews. Fans of the show praised the episode and demanded it receive an award. Sharon Marshall of The Daily Mirror enjoyed the episode and believed it "showcased what Casualty does best", while Midlands Air Ambulance Charity branded the episode as "insensitive". On 6 November 2017, the helicopter crash won the "Best Drama Storyline" accolade at the Inside Soap Awards.
## Plot
Connie Beauchamp (Amanda Mealing) lies unconscious, having been thrown from her car after it plunged over a ravine. Steph Sims (Tonicha Lawrence) watches down from the top of the cliff before driving off. A few minutes later she calls for an ambulance, but is hit by a car before she can. As Connie regains consciousness, she notices Grace Beauchamp's (Emily Carey) shoe in the car. Flames begin erupting from the vehicle. Connie moves towards the car but before she can get to Grace it explodes.
Meanwhile, the emergency department prepares to celebrate Charlie Fairhead's (Derek Thompson) thirtieth year at Holby City with a surprise party. The surprise is soon spoilt when Charlie finds former paramedic Josh Griffiths (Ian Bleasdale) in cubicles. Charlie then works to treat patient Sally Hodge (Pam St. Clement). Sally is revealed to have lithopedia after miscarrying her baby during her teenage years. Charlie then visits the pub where a party is held in his honour, with video footage from former colleagues shown to him.
Jacob Masters (Charles Venn) becomes concerned for Connie and Grace when they fail to answer their phones; when Steph is admitted to the emergency department, he goes in the ambulance with paramedics Iain Dean (Michael Stevenson) and Jez Andrews (Lloyd Everitt) to the location where she was found. The trio find Connie's burnt out car at the bottom of the cliff. They reach Connie and learn that Grace was inside the vehicle as it exploded, but when Jez searches the vehicle, she is not there. As Iain and Jez search for Grace they find her in a critical condition and call for an air ambulance to escort her to hospital.
As the air ambulance prepares to land outside the emergency department a rotor blade is struck by a drone, causing the helicopter to crash land in the parking lot outside the hospital and into the back of an ambulance, causing the ambulance to knock scaffolding down over Alicia Munroe (Chelsea Halfpenny) and Ethan Hardy (George Rainsford). The tail of the helicopter smashes into the entrance of the emergency department causing brutal injuries. The department is shut down following the incident, with Connie and Grace’s lives prioritised. Grace is freed from the helicopter and taken into the department for treatment. Connie learns Grace has life-threatening injuries and may not survive surgery. The staff at Holby City come together to treat casualties of the accident. Grace survives surgery, but remains in a critical condition.
## Cast
- Charlie Fairhead – Derek Thompson
- Connie Beauchamp – Amanda Mealing
- Jacob Masters – Charles Venn
- Elle Gardner − Jaye Griffiths
- Ethan Hardy − George Rainsford
- Alicia Munroe − Chelsea Halfpenny
- Lisa "Duffy" Duffin – Cathy Shipton
- Iain Dean – Michael Stevenson
- Lily Chao − Crystal Yu
- Caleb "Cal" Knight − Richard Winsor
- Dylan Keogh − William Beck
- Louise Tyler − Azuka Oforka
- David Hide – Jason Durr
- Noel Garcia − Tony Marshall
- Jez Andrews − Lloyd Everitt
- Robyn Miller – Amanda Henderson
- Max Walker – Jamie Davis
- Amira Zafar − Poppy Jhakra
- Sally Hodge − Pam St. Clement
- Josh Griffiths − Ian Bleasdale
- Jac Naylor − Rosie Marcel
- Henrik Hanssen − Guy Henry
- Adrian "Fletch" Fletcher − Alex Walkinshaw
- Grace Beauchamp − Emily Carey
- Kai Swift − Raif Clark
- Charlotte Swift − Daisy Douglas
- Steve Swift − Adam Foster
- Steph Sims − Tonicha Lawrence
- Harry Price − John Hogg
- Jay Faldren − Ben Turner
- Comfort Jones − Martina Laird
- Tess Bateman − Suzanne Packer
- Lenny Lyons − Steven Miller
- Alice Chantrey − Sam Grey
- John "Abs" Denham − James Redmond
- Mackenzie "Big Mac" Chalker − Charles Dale
- Mike Barratt − Clive Mantle
- Debbie Phillips − Holli Hoffman
The official cast list for the episode was released by BBC Online on 19 August 2016; prior to this, the BBC and various media outlets revealed throughout late June and much of August, the various actors and their characters who would appear in the 30th anniversary special. The episode marked the permanent return of Cathy Shipton to the show, reprising her role as original nurse Lisa "Duffy" Duffin, following her guest appearances in the previous series, while Ian Bleasdale made a guest appearance throughout the episode, reprising his role as former paramedic Josh Griffiths. Three Holby City actors also performed as their characters for the special, their appearances announced on 28 June 2016 – these were Rosie Marcel as consultant cardiothoracic surgeon, Jac Naylor, Guy Henry as chief executive officer Holby City NHS Trust and consultant general surgeon, Henrik Hanssen, and Alex Walkinshaw as ward manager and former Casualty character, Adrian Fletcher.
Alongside Shipton and Bleasdale, a number of former actors from the show returned for the episode, each making a cameo appearance in the role of their respective former character and their scenes filmed in the style of giving a short video tribute to Charlie; these scenes are spaced out throughout the episode. Joining alongside Guy Henry, Amanda Mealing, Emily Carey and Jason Durr, all of whom did the same in the role of their own respective characters, these included: Charles Dale as Mackenzie "Big Mac" Chalker, Ben Turner as Jay Faldren, Suzanne Packer as Tess Bateman, Sam Grey as Alice Chantrey, James Redmond as John "Abs" Denham, Clive Mantle as Mike Barratt, Martina Laird as Comfort Jones, and Steven Miller as Lenny Lyons. In addition, former EastEnders actor, Pam St. Clement, made a guest appearance in the story as "very grumpy patient" Sally Hodge.
## Production
The show's executive producer Oliver Kent and series producer Erika Hossington began planning the thirtieth anniversary episode in 2014. Hossington said in an interview with Digital Spy that they wanted to do "something only Casualty could do", and that there would be "an absolutely massive stunt" which would see the hospital itself in jeopardy too. The episode itself was to originally last for 110-minutes, however this was later shortened to 99-minutes. In addition to this, it was also reported that the events which took take place in the thirtieth anniversary episode would set up to two years of new storylines. Kent stated that "a lot of storylines kicked off in this episode will deliver in the next year or two, and probably beyond." A special soundtrack was recorded by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales for the episode at BBC Hoddinott Hall in Cardiff Bay.
Director Steve Hughes stated he "couldn't believe" that the show was going to attempt a stunt so big. The stunt itself was shot over two days using "various stunts, visual effects and rigging teams" as opposed to shooting the stunt scene using computer-generated imagery. Although computer-generated imagery was used to add to the practical effects, the team decided to shoot the stunt practically so that the sequence felt "terrifyingly real". Hughes said the team shot about sixteen stunts over the two days of filming alone.
It was announced on 22 August 2016 that the stunt which would air as part of the thirtieth anniversary would be a helicopter crash into the emergency department after an air ambulance collides with a drone. Hossington revealed in an interview with Radio Times that the show had been working with the Association of Air Ambulances for over half a year on the storyline. The storyline was also created by the Association of Air Ambulances, who suggested the idea of an air ambulance colliding with a drone. Commenting on the storyline, Hossington said: "What you see in this episode is such a complex and unfortunate series of events."
## Promotion and broadcast
Promotion of the anniversary episode began immediately after the closure of the thirtieth series, with a 40-second teaser following the final episode. The trailer featured a party for Charlie Fairhead being interrupted by a serious event, followed by the tagline: "On the happiest day, their darkest hour". A second trailer, 30-seconds long, was released on 15 August 2016, while in the final five day build-up to the anniversary episode, Casualty released daily short trailers on their Facebook and Twitter pages, counting down to the episode.
Between the two series, Digital Spy also mentioned Casualty's thirtieth anniversary stunt, placing it as the number one moment to watch in their list of the "10 big moments that you have to see this week", before releasing a teaser article about the episode on the night of its airing, adding that it was "an episode you really do have to watch live." The episode was broadcast on BBC One on 27 August 2016 and was available to watch for thirty days afterwards on BBC iPlayer. In addition to this, "Too Old for This Shift" was made available for digital download via BBC Store on 27 August 2016 in standard definition, with higher definition later made available for purchase.
## Reception
### Ratings
The episode received an overnight rating of 5.10 million viewers, a 26% share of the total audience. After seven days, the ratings rose to 6.53 million. Twenty-eight days later, the episode's rating continued to rise to a new total of 6.90 million viewers. BBC Media Centre later revealed the episode was watched by an audience of 7.20 million viewers. "Too Old for This Shift" saw a two million viewer increase in overall rating figures from the previous episode. The following episode decreased to 6.45 million viewers.
### Critical reception
In August 2017, the helicopter crash was longlisted for Best Drama Storyline at the Inside Soap Awards. The nomination made the viewer-voted shortlist. On 6 November 2017, the helicopter crash won the "Best Drama Storyline" accolade. Radio Times reported that viewers were left "stunned" by the episode, while Digital Spy stated that fans were left in "shock and awe" over the episode. The Daily Mirror reporter Sharon Marshall praised the episode, branding it as a "pitch-perfect episode mixing gore, heartache, drama and nostalgia". Marshall added that the episode "showcased what Casualty does best – beautiful writing and a stellar cast who grab your heartstrings," before concluding her review by praising the episode as being able to make the show "look as fresh and exciting as the day it was born." However, the show also received criticism, with the episode being branded "insensitive" by the Midlands Air Ambulance Charity. |
7,267,035 | Puffadder shyshark | 1,141,875,683 | Species of shark | [
"Endemic fish of South Africa",
"Fish described in 1822",
"Haploblepharus",
"Marine fish of South Africa"
] | The puffadder shyshark (Haploblepharus edwardsii), also known as the Happy Eddie, is a species of catshark, belonging to the family Scyliorhinidae, endemic to the temperate waters off the coast of South Africa. This common shark is found on or near the bottom in sandy or rocky habitats, from the intertidal zone to a depth of 130 m (430 ft). Typically reaching 60 cm (24 in) in length, the puffadder shyshark has a slender, flattened body and head. It is strikingly patterned with a series of dark-edged, bright orange "saddles" and numerous small white spots over its back. The Natal shyshark (H. kistnasamyi), formally described in 2006, was once considered to be an alternate form of the puffadder shyshark.
When threatened, the puffadder shyshark (and other members of its genus) curls into a circle with its tail covering its eyes, giving rise to the local names "shyshark" and "doughnut". It is a predator that feeds mainly on crustaceans, polychaete worms, and small bony fishes. This shark is oviparous and females deposit egg capsules singly or in pairs onto underwater structures. Harmless to humans, the puffadder shyshark is usually discarded by commercial and recreational fishers alike for its small size. It has been assessed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), as its entire population is located within a limited area and could be affected by a local increase in fishing pressure or habitat degradation.
## Taxonomy and phylogeny
The first known reference to the puffadder shyshark in literature was by prominent English naturalist George Edwards in 1760, by the name Catulus major vulgaris, of three individuals caught off the Cape of Good Hope that have since been lost. In 1817, French zoologist Georges Cuvier described this species as "Scyllium D'Edwards", based on Edwards' account, though he was not considered to be proposing a true scientific name. In 1832, German zoologist Friedrich Siegmund Voigt translated Cuvier's description under the name Scyllium edwardsii, thus receiving attribution for the species. However, in 2001 M.J.P. van Oijen discovered that Swiss naturalist Heinrich Rudolf Schinz had provided an earlier translation of Cuvier's text with the proper scientific name in 1822, and subsequently the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN) rendered a decision that this species is properly attributed to Schinz. In 1913, American zoologist Samuel Garman created the new genus Haploblepharus for this and other shyshark species.
Two forms of puffadder shyshark were once recognized: "Cape" and "Natal", which differed in appearance and habitat preferences. In 2006, the "Natal" form was described as a new species, the Natal shyshark. A 2006 phylogenetic analysis, based on three mitochondrial DNA genes, found that the puffadder shyshark is the most basal member of its family, with a sister relationship to the clade containing the dark shyshark (H. pictus) and the brown shyshark (H. fuscus). The Natal shyshark was not included in the study, though it is very close morphologically to this species. The common name "puffadder shyshark" refers to the puff adder (Bitis arietans), a widely distributed African viper with similar coloration. "Happy Eddie" (from the scientific name Haploblepharus edwardsii) is used by academics for this shark, and was recently introduced to the public as an easily remembered alternative to the ambiguous vernaculars "shyshark" and "doughnut", which can apply to several different species and have confounded research efforts.
## Description
The puffadder shyshark is more slender than other shysharks, with a short, broad, dorsally flattened head and a narrowly rounded snout. The large, oval-shaped eyes have cat-like slit pupils, a simple nictitating membrane (a protective third eyelid), and a prominent ridge underneath. The nostrils are very large, with a pair of greatly expanded, triangular flaps of skin in front that are fused together and reach the mouth. There is a deep groove connecting the excurrent (outflow) opening of each nostril to the mouth, obscured by the nasal flaps. The mouth is short with furrows at the corners on both jaws. There are 26–30 tooth rows in the upper jaw and 27–33 tooth rows in the lower jaw. Tooth shape is sexually dimorphic: those of males are longer and three-pointed, while those of females are shorter and five-pointed. Unusually, the two halves of the lower jaw are connected by a special cartilage, which allows a more even distribution of teeth and may increase bite strength.
The five pairs of gill slits are positioned somewhat on the upper surface of the body. The dorsal, pelvic, and anal fins are all of similar size. The dorsal fins are located far back on the body, the first originating behind the pelvic fin origins and the second behind the anal fin origin. The pectoral fins are broad and of moderate size. The short, broad caudal fin comprises about one-fifth of the body length and has a deep ventral notch near the tip of the upper lobe and a barely developed lower lobe. The skin is thick and covered by well-calcified, leaf-shaped dermal denticles. The dorsal coloration consists of a light to dark brown background with a series of 8–10 striking yellowish to reddish brown "saddles" with darker margins, all covered by a profusion of small white spots. The underside is white. This species attains a length of 60 cm (24 in), with a maximum record of 69 cm (27 in). Sharks found west of Cape Agulhas are smaller than those found east, reaching only 48 cm (19 in) long.
## Distribution and habitat
The range of the puffadder shyshark is limited to the continental shelf along the coast of South Africa, from Langebaan Lagoon in Western Cape Province to the western shore of Algoa Bay. Previous records of it being found as far north as Durban are now thought to be misidentifications of other species. This bottom-dwelling shark is most common over sandy or rocky bottoms. It is found in progressively deeper water towards the northeastern portion of its range, from 0–15 m (0–49 ft) off Cape Town to 40–130 m (130–430 ft) off KwaZulu-Natal; this distribution pattern may reflect this shark's preference for cooler waters.
## Biology and ecology
Quite common within its small range, the sluggish and reclusive puffadder shyshark is often seen lying still on the sea floor. It is gregarious and several individuals may rest together. A generalist predator with grasping dentition, the puffadder shyshark is known to take a variety of small benthic prey: crustaceans (including crabs, shrimp, crayfish, mantis shrimp, and hermit crabs), annelid worms (including polychaetes), bony fishes (including anchovies, jack mackerels, and gobies), cephalopods (including squid), and fish offal. Overall, the most important component of this shark's diet is crustaceans, followed by polychaetes and then fishes. Males seem to prefer polychaetes, while females prefer crustaceans. It has been observed attacking a common octopus (Octopus vulgaris) by tearing off an arm with a twisting motion.
The puffadder shyshark is preyed upon by larger fishes, such as the broadnose sevengill shark (Notorynchus cepedianus). The Cape fur seal (Arctocephalus pusillus pusillus) has been documented capturing and playing with puffadder shysharks, tossing them into the air or gnawing on them. The shark is often injured or killed during these encounters; the seal may eat torn-off pieces of flesh, but seldom consumes the entire shark. On occasion, black-backed kelp gulls (Larus dominicanus vetula) take advantage of this behavior and steal the sharks from the seals. When threatened or disturbed, the puffadder shyshark adopts a characteristic posture in which it curls into a ring and covers its eyes with its tail; this reaction is the basis for the common names "shyshark" and "doughnut", and is likely meant to make the shark harder for a predator to swallow.
The eggs of the puffadder shyshark are fed upon by the whelks Burnupena papyracea and B. lagenaria, at least in captivity. Known parasites of this species include the trypanosome Trypanosoma haploblephari, which infests the blood, the nematode Proleptus obtusus, which infests the intestine, and the copepods Charopinus dalmanni and Perissopus oblongatus, which infest the skin. Another parasite is the praniza larval stage of the isopod Gnathia pantherina, which infests the nares, mouth, and gills. The deep-penetrating mouthparts of these larvae significantly damage local tissue, causing bleeding and inflammation.
### Life history
The puffadder shyshark is oviparous; there is no distinct breeding season and reproduction occurs year-round. Females deposit egg capsules one or two at a time, attaching them to vertical structures such as sea fans. The thin-walled egg cases are brown with distinctive pale transverse bands; and have a slightly furry texture and long adhesive tendrils at the corners. They are smaller than those of other shyshark species, measuring 3.5–5 cm (1.4–2.0 in) long and 1.5–3 cm (0.59–1.18 in) across. The young shark hatches after three months, and measures around 9 cm (3.5 in) long. The length at maturation for both sexes has been reported as anywhere from 35 to 55 cm (14 to 22 in) by various sources; this high degree of variation may reflect regional differences as sharks from deeper waters in the eastern part of its range seem to mature at a larger size than those from the west. The age at maturation is estimated to be around 7 years, and the maximum lifespan is at least 22 years.
## Human interactions
Harmless to humans, the puffadder shyshark can be easily caught by hand. Not targeted by commercial fisheries because of its small size, it is taken incidentally and discarded by bottom trawlers operating between Mossel Bay and East London, and by fishing boats in False Bay. Many are hooked by recreational anglers casting from the shore, who also generally discard or kill them as minor pests. Some local exploitation of this species does occur for lobster bait and the aquarium trade. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has assessed the puffadder shyshark as endangered. The small range of this shark lies entirely within a heavily fished region, and any increase in fishing activities or habitat degradation could potentially impact the entire population. |
36,577,073 | The Complete Studio Albums (1983–2008) | 1,165,067,933 | null | [
"2012 compilation albums",
"Madonna compilation albums",
"Warner Records compilation albums"
] | The Complete Studio Albums (1983–2008) is a box set by American singer-songwriter Madonna. It was released by Warner Bros. Records on March 26, 2012, to coincide with the release of her twelfth studio album, MDNA. The eleven-disc box set was released in Europe and Japan, and included all of Madonna's studio albums from the years 1983 to 2008. The album artwork consisted of a collage of the album covers, housed in a gold box. It also included a Parental Advisory sticker due to the original version of the albums Erotica (1992) and American Life (2003). On the same date, Warner Bros. released and reprinted another box set titled Madonna: Original Album Series which included five discs.
After its release, The Complete Studio Albums (1983–2008) received mixed reception from reviewers, who complimented the overall packaging of the box set, but hoped that the record label would have included Madonna's other popular songs that had not been on the original studio albums. The box set charted in multiple nations including Croatia, Finland, France, Italy, Korea, Mexico, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and United Kingdom. It entered the top-ten of the Japanese Oricon album chart. The same week, MDNA was also present in the top-ten, making Madonna the first female artist from a Western country to have two albums in the chart's top-ten.
## Background
On March 6, 2012, Madonna's official website announced that her former record company, Warner Bros. Records (1982–2009), was to release and reprint the eleven-disc box set. It was released to coincide and on the same date as the 2012 studio album MDNA in the United States. The set includes every previous studio album Madonna had released; the remastered versions of Madonna (1983), Like a Virgin (1984) and True Blue (1986), plus the original versions of Like a Prayer (1989), Erotica (1992), Bedtime Stories (1994), Ray of Light (1998), Music (2000), American Life (2003), Confessions on a Dance Floor (2005) and Hard Candy (2008) with each disc housed in a cardboard sleeve. To complement the release of the box set, iTunes sold every Madonna studio album digitally for £3.95 for a limited time in the UK. On the same day as its release, Warner Bros. released another box set Madonna: Original Album Series which included five discs; the remastered version of True Blue, Like a Prayer, Ray of Light, Music and Confessions on a Dance Floor.
The box set also carries the logos for her other former record companies; Sire Records (1982–1995) and Maverick Records (1992–2004). It is her third greatest hits box set to be released after The Royal Box (1991) which was a limited edition of The Immaculate Collection (1990) and CD Single Collection (1996) which was released exclusively in Japan and included forty 3" CD singles, from "Burning Up" (1983) to "One More Chance" (1996), housed in a deluxe black glossy box.
## Critical reception
Mike Diver from the BBC News gave the box set a positive review, commenting that "this is pop history, a document of the most powerful female force in the music industry as she began her ascent, achieved superstar status, overcame a couple of hiccups, and ultimately landed in the '00s as every fledgling pop idol's ultimate mother figure." He also mentioned the absence of tracks "Into the Groove" (only available on the 1985 reissue of Like a Virgin), "Vogue" (from 1990's I'm Breathless) and "Justify My Love" (from 1990's The Immaculate Collection) may disappoint some fans. Robin Murray from Clash noted that while it traced "the evolution of a pop phenomenon", he felt it needed bonus materials. Andy Kellman from AllMusic was more ambivalent in his reception of the box set, stating that the release is more suitable for "voracious newcomers than longtime followers".
Describing the packaging, Kellman noted that it "was sharp but not elaborate – a clamshell box with each disc packaged in a paper LP-replica sleeve. While the box is a convenient and reasonably priced way to obtain most of Madonna's releases, an investment of that scope should entail all the stray hits from the same era. This really could have used a 12th disc", for adding all the other songs released by Madonna. The BBC described the packaging as a "no-frills affair—CDs are housed in cardboard sleeves that won't stand up to house-party punishment" Clash commented on the packaging more favorably, describing it as "fairly lavish".
## Commercial performance
In the United Kingdom, the box set debuted at number 70 on the UK Albums Chart with sales of 2,055 copies. Madonna's total album sales for the 21st century in the United Kingdom stood at 7,279,423, as of April 2012, making her one of the biggest selling acts of this period. It was certified gold in Poland by the Polish Society of the Phonographic Industry (ZPAV) for shipment of 10,000 copies of the box set. In France, the box set debuted at number 26 with 2,838 units.
In Japan it sold 13,000 copies and debuted at number nine (and MDNA at number four) making Madonna the first international female artist in Japanese chart history to have two albums in the top ten simultaneously and the first international artist in 20 years to achieve such feat, after Bruce Springsteen, who occupied two simultaneous top-ten albums in 1992 with Human Touch and Lucky Town. With this feat, Madonna has accumulated 22 top-ten albums in Japan, more than any other international artist. On the South Korean International chart, it debuted and peaked at number 81, selling around 200 copies.
## Track listing
The box set consists of Madonna's first eleven studio albums, from her career with Warner Bros. Records (1982–2009) and its divisions Sire Records (1982–1995) and Maverick Records (1992–2003).
Notes
- signifies a co-producer
- signifies an additional producer
- signifies an additional producer and remixer
## Charts
### Weekly charts
### Year-end charts
## Sales and certification
## Release history |
2,826,892 | Darkwatch | 1,171,412,636 | 2005 video game | [
"2000s horror video games",
"2005 video games",
"Capcom games",
"Fictional organizations",
"Fictional vampire hunters",
"First-person shooters",
"High Moon Studios games",
"Horror Westerns",
"Multiplayer and single-player video games",
"PlayStation 2 games",
"RenderWare games",
"Steampunk video games",
"Third-person shooters",
"Ubisoft games",
"Video games about ghosts",
"Video games about vampires",
"Video games adapted into comics",
"Video games developed in the United States",
"Video games scored by Mike Reagan",
"Video games set in Arizona",
"Video games set in the 19th century",
"Video games using Havok",
"Western (genre) video games",
"Xbox games"
] | Darkwatch: Curse of the West is a 2005 first-person shooter video game for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox. It was developed by High Moon Studios (formerly Sammy Studios) and published by Capcom in the United States and by Ubisoft in Europe and Australia.
The game mixes the Western, horror and steampunk genres, telling the story of Jericho Cross, an outlaw gunfighter in the late 19th-century American Frontier who has been turned into a vampire and forcibly recruited by the titular monster-hunting secret organization to fight against supernatural forces.
Darkwatch was met with a generally positive critical reception, acclaimed in particular for its relatively unique horror Western setting and artistic merits. The game was accompanied by an extensive promotional campaign and was planned to be the first installment of a new media franchise, but its sequel got canceled in 2007 and the film adaptation remains in development hell.
## Gameplay
Darkwatch features a reputation system that affects player's abilities in addition to the player character Jericho's starting, neutral vampiric powers of "Blood Shield" (a regenerating force field), "Vampire Jump" (a double jump that can be aborted at any moment) and "Blood Vision" (a system of heat vision highlighting enemies and objects that also acts as a zoom). Through the game, Jericho is met with multiple choices of a good or evil variety, allowing the player to select morality awarding Jericho new powers, called "Brands", based on the choices he made. The good path powers are "Silver Bullet" (making the player's weapons cause more damage), "Fear" (confusing minor enemies), "Mystic Armor" (an extra shield system) and "Vindicator" (bolts of lightning destroying all nearby enemies). The evil powers are "Blood Frenzy" (granting an immunity to damage and extremely powerful melee attacks), "Turn" (turning undead enemies into allies), "Black Shroud" (stealing life force from nearby enemies) and "Soul Stealer" (destroying nearby enemies and stealing their souls). The powers can be activated for a limited time when the HUD's blood bar, which is fueled through collecting souls of the slain enemies, is completely full. Jericho's health is also restored through collecting the souls.
During the daylight hours, Jericho's powers are gone, so he has to fight as a normal human, using a wide variety of weaponry, from a Darkwatch's standard-issue 24-shot Redeemer handgun to a crossbow firing explosive arrows and a rocket launcher, as well as melee combat. In some missions, Jericho can drive a Gatling gun-equipped Coyote Steamwagon vehicle; using it or a horse changes perspective to the third-person view. During horse-riding rail shooter sequences, Jericho is granted unlimited ammunition and high attack speed, at the cost of only being able to use the Redeemer.
### Multiplayer
The Xbox version has competitive multiplayer for up to 16 players online, although system link is not possible. The PlayStation 2 version does not offer any online connectivity and competitive multiplayer is limited to two players (or four players while using an optional multitap device) via split screen gameplay. In multiplayer matches, the players can pick up the "Silver Bullet", "Mystic Armor and "Blood Frenzy" powers as floating power-ups that activate immediately. The game's story mode is also available for split screen cooperative gameplay on the PlayStation 2, a feature absent from the Xbox version. In the co-op mode, both players play as a rank-and-file Darkwatch Regulators but cutscenes designed for the single-player mode and featuring Jericho Cross as the main character are left unchanged, causing a number of glaring continuity errors.
## Plot
### Story
The game's story (narrated by Peter Jason) follows the exploits of a wanted outlaw named Jericho Cross and his employment in an ancient vampire-hunting order known as the Darkwatch. After unwittingly releasing the Darkwatch's greatest enemy, a vampire lord named Lazarus Malkoth, Jericho is conscripted into the Darkwatch as an elite operative. Jericho, however, is slowly turning into a vampire himself, as a result of being bitten by Lazarus. The game outlines either Jericho's struggle for humanity or his descent into darkness, depending on the player's actions.
The game begins in the Arizona Territory in 1876 with Jericho attempting to rob a Darkwatch train that is transporting the captured Lazarus Malkoth to the Darkwatch Citadel, a frequently mentioned and often visited location in the game. His actions inadvertently release Lazarus into the West. In a seeming bit of mercy, Lazarus bites Jericho and gives him the curse of the vampire, causing him to slowly turn into one. The game continues with the introduction of Darkwatch agent Cassidy Sharp as well as the appearance of Shadow, Jericho's undead horse whom he fed on and turned in a frenzy after being bitten by Lazarus.
As the game progresses, Jericho finally makes his way to the Darkwatch Citadel, where he meets General Clay Cartwright, the current leader of the order. Cartwright puts him through Torture Maze, the Darkwatch initiation exercise which was designed as a test for Darkwatch Regulators, but Jericho gets a special version specially designed by Cartwright to kill him. When Jericho passes the test anyway, he begins to do missions for the Darkwatch. Missions include tasks ranging from fixing some of the damage he has caused to acquiring Darkwatch equipment, such as the Darklight Prism, a stone that allows vampires within its vicinity to both use their powers and walk in sunlight. On some of his missions Jericho is accompanied by other Darkwatch forces including his new partner, a sultry and vicious temptress named Tala. Eventually, during their night of passion, Tala lures him to bite her and inherits some portion of his power, transforming herself into a half-vampire creature similar to him. She then betrays the Darkwatch from within, allowing hordes of the undead to invade its headquarters.
A final showdown ensues with Lazarus, in which Jericho arises victorious, and a choice is given for him to side with either Cassidy or Tala. Either Jericho rids the West of the Curse of Lazarus, or he becomes the Curse; the player's choice determines how the game ends. If the character were to choose the good option, then the final fight will be against the vampiric Tala; if the player chooses to take Lazarus' curse for himself, then he must fight the ghost of Cassidy. The bad ending shows the now-monstrous Jericho killing Tala and riding into the night, while the good ending shows Cassidy's soul being released.
### Characters
- Jericho Cross (voiced by Christopher Corey Smith): The protagonist of the game, a jaded American Civil War deserter and drifter who became a gunslinger and train robber. During his "one last job", he releases Lazarus Malkoth from his prison in a failed attempt to steal the contents. While dueling with Lazarus, Jericho gets bitten and infected by the vampire curse. His already deadly skills are enhanced by his vampire powers that afford him superhuman strength, increased endurance, enhanced agility, and heightened senses, in the form of the bioluminescent red orb that regenerated from his empty eye socket. Shadow is Jericho's demonic horse that appears at his beckon. According to the developers, they created "deep psychological profiles of every character in the game" with "hope that Jericho's character arc — as this desperate lone wolf that is robbing trains with a subconscious death wish — makes a believable transition into this half-vampire hybrid gunslinger and will ultimately envelop the player in his destiny: which is a guy that can be either a hero or a terror. Basically, we just want people to care about this character and what happens to him — and I can't think of a first-person shooter that's really made us do that yet".
- Cassidy Sharp (voiced by Jennifer Hale): The game's first female protagonist. Cassidy is the agent who attempts to stop Jericho on the train in the game's opening sequence. After the explosion of Lazarus' prison, she joins Jericho but is soon murdered by Lazarus. Cassidy returns as a good ghost and befriends Jericho, aiding him in his mission to stop Lazarus. As a little girl, Cassidy was orphaned in a vampire attack and then raised as a ward of the Darkwatch. Eventually, she became the most serious and dangerous agent in the organisation, yet really she is also deeply insecure about herself. If fought as the final boss, she turns into an angel.
- Tala (meaning "Stalking Wolf") (voiced by Rose McGowan): The game's second female protagonist. Tala is a Native American shaman and a power-hungry Darkwatch agent. When she was young, Tala lost her seer mother and became an outcast from her own tribe, fearful of her mediumship abilities. Her father was then killed by a band of fur traders and she herself was kidnapped and abused by them, until her captors were killed by vampires. Tala was then herself rescued by the Darkwatch troops, who turned her into one of their own. However, her experiences made her extremely bitter, and she began pursuing ever more power at any cost, secretly desiring to get revenge upon the world for the death of her parents. Despite her ruthlessness, Tala quickly rose through the Darkwatch ranks due to her fearless battle efficiency. The developers described her as not evil but "just ambitious". Tala is the only character who uses kicks in the game, due to the artists deciding that "some of the combat moves the actress performed fit the character so well that we changed the combat system she's using". If fought as the final boss, she turns into a demon. According to GameSpy, Tala is "without question, the more difficult boss to battle".
- Lazarus Malkoth (voiced by Keith Szarabajka): A Roman who first founded the Darkwatch society in 66 AD in order to battle the dark forces responsible for the decline of the Roman Empire. He eventually got possessed by a demon and himself became a powerful vampire and turned on the organization he founded, raising an undead army to aid him in his task. The Darkwatch then pursued Lazarus across Europe and later America. During the game's development, the villain's name was Scourge.
- Clay Cartwright (voiced by Michael Bell): The brutal and scheming field commander of the Darkwatch. An American Civil War veteran in the rank of brigadier general, Cartwright snipes Jericho and enslaves him, forcing him to participate in a series of trials before inducting him into the organization.
## Development
### Concept
The development of the game began in the summer of 2002, when Sammy Studios' first internal development team, informally called "Team 1", decided to "bring a refreshing theme to a genre riddled with the stereotypical sci-fi, fantasy, and military themes", an idea soon approved by the Sammy Corporation president Hajime Satomi. The original game concept was not very dark and the vampires "felt more like a cartoon property". In the early derivatives of the project, the game "looked more like something from Pixar" and its protagonist was supposed to be Chaz Bartlett, a "vaguely bumbling sort of comic relief character", described as an "Eastern dude who was a card cheat" similar to Bret Maverick.
The game's lead designer and writer Paul O'Connor said that the original 'high concept' for Darkwatch was "Blade meets Men in Black in the Old West", but "in the two years that the property has been in development, it has grown in other directions and taken on a life of its own. The game is quite a bit darker than Blade, and we’ve completely lost the tongue-in-cheek feeling of Men in Black". He added it "leans toward the Army of Darkness side of things, though without the slapstick", and "with the accessibility of Raiders of the Lost Ark". The turning point for setting a much darker and mature tone was the final iteration of Jericho's character design. Tala was originally intended to also be a player character, but the studio's marketing department "didn’t think that would fly".
### Production
The game was developed for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox side by side, with a PC version initially described as "possible". Creative director Emmanuel Valdez said that "for the longest time we were debating whether or not to bring it out for GameCube", before deciding "there's just not a lot there in the GameCube market right now". There were also plans to port the game for the PlayStation Portable. The game engine for Darkwatch features middleware engines RenderWare, Havok and Quazal, while Autodesk MotionBuilder was used to create character animation and motion capture.
The game was "intentionally designed as a cross between Halo and Silverado". O'Connor said Halo was "of course" an inspiration, comparing Darkwatch to the horror aspects of Halo, and senior designer Brent Disbrow said he expected it to "stand on par with games like Halo 2". Other video game inspirations recounted by O'Connor and Valdez included Half-Life, Medal of Honor, Metroid Prime and TimeSplitters. Lead level designer Matt Tieger said that a creation of one of the game's bosses was "inspired by all the fun" that he had while playing the Metal Slug 2D shooter series with its "crazy bosses". O'Connor said the game's reputation system was inspired by the contrast between the Old West figures such as Billy the Kid and the likes of Wyatt Earp, who "both were feared gunslingers, but one was a psychopathic killer and the other was a good guy/lawman".
The developers licensed Ennio Morricone's main theme from the film The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly which was remixed to fit the horror feel of the game. The remaining music on the soundtrack is completely original, co-composed by Mike Reagan, a veteran film and game music composer, and Asdru Sierra, frontman for the Latin Grammy-winning indie band Ozomatli, who said: "Our goal is to help connect the audience with a conflicted character, one who alternates between moments of providence and misguidance, and accomplish that with a musical score of cinematic proportions". The game's title sequence animation was created by Kyle Cooper using a collage of computer graphics images and live-action footage.
Darkwatch was officially unveiled on January 12, 2004, its announcement accompanied by a showing of its playable multiplayer deathmatch mode, and was originally slated for a Q4 2004 release. At one point, the game remained in limbo for several months until May 2005, when High Moon Studios, by then a fully independent development company, found a publisher in Capcom.
## Release
Darkwatch, described as High Moon's "flagship property", was released by Capcom in North America on August 16, 2005, and by Ubisoft in Europe on October 7. Ubisoft distributed the game in Australia as well.
### Promotion
In 2004, Sammy launched darkwatch.org, an official fan community website allowing fans to win points for prizes through completing various challenges while promoting the game. An interactive game demo of Darkwatch was shown at E3 2005 inside a custom-build Gothic architecture-inspired theatre dubbed "desecrated church". A trailer for the game, created by Brain Zoo Studios, was nominated for the Golden Trailer Awards and won two Aurora Awards in the categories "Best of Show: Use of Animation" and "Best of Show: Entertainment".
In August 2005, Capcom launched a major marketing campaign to support the upcoming release. This included an extensive marketing program in the U.S. television networks, print advertisements in several leading video game and men's magazines, radio promotions broadcasts on alternative rock stations in major markets, and pre-order and point of sale purchase campaigns. A Darkwatch music video to Good Charlotte's song "Predictable" was also featured in MTV2's Video Mods.
A major part of the game's promotional campaign was based on using the sex appeal of its female characters. In October 2004, a picture of Tala "wearing only a feather in her hair" was featured in a spread of the first special edition of Playboy that spotlighted provocative video game characters, also accompanying the article "Gaming Grows Up". Several more naked pictures of her and Cassidy appeared in Playboy's "Girls of Gaming" series in October 2005 and again in December 2007. A few censored topless sketches of Tala were posted alongside a fake interview in an exclusive online gallery by IGN and a pinup picture was featured in IGN's Hotlist magazine in June 2006. She was also featured in exclusive pictures on the cover and the pinup poster of Play issue \#44 in 2005 and in the 2007 calendar The Art of Heavy Metal.
## Other media
### Soundtrack and book
The Art of Darkwatch, a 176-page art book for the game, was published in August 2005 by Design Studio Press. Darkwatch Original Game Music Score, a 30-track original soundtrack, was released in November 2006 by Sierra Entertainment.
### Comic
A comic titled "Innocence", published in the July 2005 issue of Heavy Metal, serves as an immediate prequel and expanded introduction to the game. Set in the Nebraska Territory, the story follows them as former partners reuniting for a mission to capture the tomb of Lazarus, an ancient vampire lord and Darkwatch's original founder. Along the way, they release Jericho when they raid a jail. "Cass" does not hide her current dislike of Tala, but Tala kills Cassidy's father-turned-vampire, saving her life. The comic was written by the game's designers Ulm and O'Connor and illustrated by Philip Tan and Brian Haberlin. The issue's award-winning cover art was created by Aaron Habibipour and Sergio Paez.
## Reception
Upon its release, Darkwatch received generally favorable reviews from most gaming media. According to review aggregation site GameTab, the PlayStation 2 version scored an averaged rating of 82% from the gaming press with the Xbox version scoring 85%. It also won several art direction and visual design awards, including five Davey Awards and a Telly Award.
### Reviews
The game received the score of 7.9 ("Good") from both Bob Colayco of GameSpot ("If you're looking for an intense shooter experience, Darkwatch will not disappoint") and Jeremy Dunham of IGN ("Cowboys, vampires, and sexy dead girls are fun in parties, but not so much alone"). According to the review by Cheat Code Central, "just about every aspect of Darkwatch is cool. The environments are cool, the weapons are cool, the characters are cool and while the gameplay is not unique it's definitely one of the best first-person shooters on the Xbox and PS2. The controls alone are worth the price of admission". John Scalzo of Gaming Target wrote that "for anyone looking for something a little different out of their FPS experience, Darkwatch is that game". The reviewer in GamePro wrote that Darkwatch "mixes its Western Roots with gothic horror and steampunk aesthetics, and the results are uniquely engaging", adding that if some the game's "cooler" concepts "had been explored further, lengthening the game in the process, Darkwatch could've rivaled the best of the genre". Official Xbox Magazine called it "a solid and robust blaster that's tons of fun. Helped no end by the excellent Blood Powers and top multiplayer".
Several reviews praised the game's setting. GameSpy's David Chapman called it "a truly remarkable experience. And, while the game itself may not have broken any new ground, the world it introduces more than makes up for that. It will leave gamers hungry for more". According to Game Informer, "in terms of gameplay quality, this may be another middle-of-the-road shooter, but the unique premise sets it aside from everything else out there". Greg Bemis of G4TV wrote that the biggest draw in Darkwatch is the "different enough" setting that "does fall back on tired video game clichés from time to time like big-breasted, leather-clad babes who speak in aggressive sexually suggestive double entendres, but it's nice to see something—anything—that’s a little off the beaten path". GameShark's Will Jayson Hill wrote that "about the sharpest criticism that can be leveled at Darkwatch is that it really adds nothing original in the gameplay department. Aside from its extremely well executed western/horror environment, Darkwatch is a pretty generic FPS game with a weaker multiplayer mode". On the other hand, some reviews thought that the gameplay was actually the strongest part of the game. Official UK PlayStation 2 Magazine stated that Darkwatch "has a few neat ideas but wins us over by doing solid shooting well. Fast-paced with cool guns, what's not to like?" GameZone's Mike David wrote that only a "weak plot pacing and that feeling that something is missing" kept it from being given a score of 9/10.
However, some of the reviews were more negative. PALGN's Jeremy Jastrzab opined that "Darkwatch gives vampires, undead, cowboys and plenty of bullets to fire. But that's about it. Otherwise, Darkwatch is a fairly standard affair that's worth a rental". According to Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine, "Darkwatch doesn't amount to much more than your run-of-the mill first-person shooter". Eurogamer's Martin Coxall called it "a generic and quickly tiresome shooter, with a contrived premise which, unfortunately, does nothing to elevate it".
### Other reception
The game's characters, especially Tala, received some of the most notable reception. The voice-acting of Rose McGowan in particular was critically acclaimed by numerous gaming outlets. Featured her in the GameDaily gallery Outrageous Boobs, Tala was a runner-up in ActionTrip's 2007 lists of Top 10 Video Game Chicks, both by staff and by readers' choice. She was ranked as the 14th "hottest woman" in video games by Complex in 2012 and as the fourth by in Index.hr 2013. GamesRadar included her in the 2008 list of top seven Native American stereotypes, chosen to represent "the sex object" stereotype, but nevertheless stated that the portrayal of "an empowered female who’s not afraid to be sexy and go after what she wants" is "a vast improvement over the appalling depiction of Indian women in Custer's Revenge". Michael Sheyahshe, author of Native Americans in Comic Books, listed "the continued objectification of the Indigenous female character, Tala, in Darkwatch" among "cultural ‘ouchies’ in video games". She was also discussed in the book Sex in Video Games by Brenda Brathwaite and in Fantasy Women by Amanda Greenslade. Jericho Cross was included among the top five vampires in games by Laurie-Anne Vazquez of 2D-X in 2012, and on the 2013 list of ten most notable vampire characters in video games by Kotaku's Gergo Vas, who wrote that "the weird western-steampunk hybrid style, mixed with classic vampire lore made this character (and the game!) really exciting".
According to a retrospective article by GamesRadar in 2009, "while it didn’t innovate much in the gameplay department, Darkwatch was a solid shooter with proficient controls. Its real strength was its unique horror/western setting and bizarre selection of gothy undead characters and enemies". In 2010, GamesRadar's Mikel Raparaz ranked Darkwatch as sixth on the list of the top seven weirdest westerns, commenting that "the gothy trappings overlay a pretty awesome, Halo-inspired shooter". In a 2012 article about the history of steampunk video games, Mike Mahardy of Game Informer wrote that "although not a widely known shooter, Darkwatch garnered a cult following with its unique story and unusual setting". That same year, Robert Workman of Comic Book Resources called Darkwatch "in particular [...] a fantastic effort, a first-person shooter with beautiful, spooky atmosphere and excellent gameplay". In 2013, Metro included it among the "games that didn't get the love they deserved". Mark L. Bussler of Classic Game Room said in a retro video review that among many shooters on the PlayStation 2, "few are as fun as this", adding that Darkwatch should be "in your collection" alongside Red Faction and TimeSplitters. FEARNET included it among their five favorite vampire games in 2014.
## Legacy
### Cancelled sequel
Darkwatch was supposed to be first of a series of games that would be set in different time periods, including Ancient Rome, the Crusades era and World War II. O'Connor said they wanted "to tell not only the story of Jericho Cross but of the Darkwatch as an organization, from its origins in Roman times to its ultimate fate in Earth’s future". Darkwatch 2 was in development by High Moon Studios for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 between 2005 and 2007, and its technical demo gameplay footage (based on the original game) was shown at the Game Developers Conference 2006. After the game was canceled, the studio abandoned further attempts to create their own IP and instead concentrated on developing licensed games, such as Transformers and Deadpool.
In 2009, GamesRadar ranked Darkwatch as the 22nd top "game with untapped franchise potential", adding that a sequel could have improved the original game's supernatural powers and its "anemic" multiplayer mode and "make it shine". Classic Game Room's Mark Bussler expressed regret that so many bad games did receive sequels, while Darkwatch did not.
### Film project
In 2006, Roger Avary, who wrote the script for the film adaptation of the Silent Hill video game series, "recently was asked to work on the Darkwatch movie script based on the Capcom vampire Western game of which he is a fan, but his schedule interfered". In 2011, Glen Morgan and James Wong, the writers/directors/producers behind The X-Files and the Final Destination film series, "have developed a pitch based on the game's plot and action sequences, and are currently writing a screenplay". Morgan and Wong's involvement with the project has been first reported already in 2004.
## See also
- Deadlands
- High Moon
- Hunt: Showdown
- Jonah Hex
- Vampire Hunter D
- Blood |
2,275,990 | Benedict Cumberbatch | 1,172,028,498 | English actor (born 1976) | [
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] | Benedict Timothy Carlton Cumberbatch CBE (born 19 July 1976) is an English actor. Known for his work on screen and stage, he has received various accolades, including a BAFTA TV Award, a Primetime Emmy Award and a Laurence Olivier Award, in addition to nominations for two Academy Awards, two BAFTA Film Awards and four Golden Globes. In 2014, Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world, and in 2015, he was appointed a CBE at Buckingham Palace for services to the performing arts and to charity.
Cumberbatch studied drama at the Victoria University of Manchester and obtained a Master of Arts in classical acting at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. He began acting in Shakespearean theatre productions before making his West End debut in Richard Eyre's revival of Hedda Gabler in 2005. Since then, he has starred in Royal National Theatre productions of After the Dance (2010) and Frankenstein (2011), winning the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor for the latter. In 2015, he played the title role in Hamlet at the Barbican Theatre.
Cumberbatch's television work includes his performance as Stephen Hawking in the film Hawking (2004). He gained wide recognition for portraying Sherlock Holmes in the series Sherlock from 2010 to 2017, for which he won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie. For playing the title role in the miniseries Patrick Melrose (2018), he won the BAFTA TV Award for Best Actor.
In films, he received Academy Award for Best Actor nominations for his performances as Alan Turing in The Imitation Game (2014) and as a volatile rancher in The Power of the Dog (2021). He also acted in the dramas Amazing Grace (2006), Atonement (2007), Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011), 12 Years a Slave (2013), The Current War (2017), 1917 (2019) and The Courier (2020). He has starred in numerous blockbuster films portraying Khan in Star Trek Into Darkness (2013), and Smaug and Sauron in The Hobbit film series. Since 2016, he has played Dr. Stephen Strange in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, including the films Doctor Strange (2016) and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022).
## Early life and education
### Antecedents and family tree
In 1728, Benedict Cumberbatch's 7th-great-grandfather, Abraham Cumberbatch of Saint Andrew, Barbados (died 1753), acquired properties on the island of Barbados in the West Indies, which used enslaved people for labour. St Nicholas Abbey was owned by Cumberbatch's ancestors for at least two hundred years.
These properties were passed down through the generations to Benedict's great-great-great-grandfather, Abraham Parry Cumberbatch (died 1840 in Hellingly, Sussex). He was an absentee landlord of two estates, Cleland and Lammings, for which he received £5388 as slave compensation (via the Slave Compensation Act 1837, four years after the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 had abolished slavery). The Cleland plantation enslaved 250 people, and was the main source of the Cumberbatch family's considerable wealth at the time; they were one of the richest families in Britain.
There has been media speculation that the Barbados National Task Force on Reparations, which, as part of the wider Caribbean's CARICOM Reparations Commission, is as of January 2023 seeking reparations from wealthy British MP Richard Drax for his ancestors' involvement in slavery, might also consider seeking reparations from families such as the Cumberbatches. Benedict Cumberbatch has said that by the time of his birth, most of the money had run out, and he grew up "definitely middle class", or upper middle class. The Drax family still owns a large estate in Barbados, and Richard Drax is said to be worth at least £150 million. Barbados′ officials have since rebuked those speculations and called them a "Campaign of deceptive and misleading British ′yellow journalism′".
Abraham Parry Cumberbatch's son (Benedict's great-great-grandfather) Robert William Cumberbatch, was a British consul in Turkey and the Russian Empire. His great-grandfather, Henry Alfred Cumberbatch, was also a diplomat who served as consul in Turkey and Lebanon, and his grandfather, Henry Carlton Cumberbatch, was a submarine officer of both World Wars, and a prominent figure of London high society.
Cumberbatch is third cousin 16 times removed of King Richard III, whom he portrayed in The Hollow Crown. He attended Richard III's 2015 reburial and read a poem.
### Birth, family and schooling
Benedict Timothy Carlton Cumberbatch was born on 19 July 1976 at Queen Charlotte's and Chelsea Hospital in the London district of Hammersmith, to actors Timothy Carlton (born Timothy Carlton Congdon Cumberbatch) and Wanda Ventham. He grew up in the borough of Kensington and Chelsea. He has a half-sister, Tracy Peacock, from his mother's first marriage.
Cumberbatch attended boarding schools from the age of eight, attending Brambletye, a prep school near East Grinstead, West Sussex. He undertook secondary schooling as an arts scholar at Harrow School. He was a member of the Rattigan Society, Harrow's principal club for the dramatic arts, which was named after Old Harrovian and playwright Sir Terence Rattigan. He was involved in numerous Shakespearean works at school and made his acting debut as Titania, Queen of the Fairies, in A Midsummer Night's Dream when he was 12. His first leading role was as Eliza Doolittle in Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, in a production by the Head of Classics, James Morwood, who observed that Cumberbatch "acted everyone else off the stage". Cumberbatch's drama teacher, Martin Tyrell, called him "the best schoolboy actor" he had ever worked with. Despite his abilities, Cumberbatch's drama teacher at Harrow warned him against a career in acting, calling it a "tough business".
### Tertiary education
After leaving Harrow, Cumberbatch took a gap year to volunteer as an English teacher at a Tibetan monastery in Darjeeling, India. He then attended the Victoria University of Manchester, where he studied drama. He continued his training as an actor at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA), graduating with an MA in classical acting. In January 2018, Cumberbatch succeeded Timothy West as president of LAMDA.
## Performing arts career
### Theatre
Since 2001, Cumberbatch has had major roles in a dozen classic plays at the Regent's Park Open Air, Almeida, Royal Court and Royal National Theatres. He was nominated for an Olivier Award for Best Performance in a Supporting Role for his role as George Tesman in Hedda Gabler, which he performed at the Almeida Theatre on 16 March 2005 and at the Duke of York's Theatre when it transferred to the West End on 19 May 2005. This transfer marked his first West End appearance.
In June 2010, Cumberbatch led the revival of Sir Terence Rattigan's After the Dance directed by Thea Sharrock at the Royal National Theatre. He played 1920s aristocrat David Scott-Fowler to commercial and critical success. The play won four Olivier Awards including Best Revival. He acted in Danny Boyle's The Children's Monologues, a theatrical charity event at London's Old Vic Theatre on 14 November 2010 which was produced by Dramatic Need.
In February 2011, Cumberbatch began playing, on alternate nights, both Victor Frankenstein and his creature, opposite Jonny Lee Miller, in Boyle's stage production of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein at the Royal National Theatre. Frankenstein was broadcast to cinemas as a part of National Theatre Live in March 2011. He achieved the "Triple Crown of London Theatre" in 2011 when he received the Olivier Award, Evening Standard Award and Critics' Circle Theatre Award for his performance in Frankenstein.
Cumberbatch was a part of a cast featuring members of the Royal National Theatre Company in 50 Years on Stage, the Royal National Theatre's landmark event for its 50th anniversary on 2 November 2013. He played Rosencrantz in a selected scene from Sir Tom Stoppard's play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. The show was directed by Sir Nicholas Hytner and was broadcast on BBC Two and in cinemas worldwide as a part of National Theatre Live.
Cumberbatch returned to theatre to play Shakespeare's Hamlet at London's Barbican Theatre. The production was directed by Lyndsey Turner and produced by Sonia Friedman, which started its 12-week run in August 2015. The performance, co-starring Sian Brooke, was broadcast by the National Theatre Company by satellite internationally as Hamlet in Rehearsal. He earned his third Laurence Olivier Awards nomination for the role.
### Television
Cumberbatch's early television roles include two separate guest roles in Heartbeat (2000, 2004), Freddy in Tipping the Velvet (2002), Edward Hand in Cambridge Spies (2003) and Rory in the ITV comedy drama series Fortysomething (2003). He also featured in Spooks and Silent Witness. In 2004, he landed his first main part in television as Stephen Hawking in Hawking. He was nominated for the BAFTA TV Award for Best Actor and won the Golden Nymph for Television Films – Best Performance by an Actor. He later provided Hawking's voice in the first episode of the television series Curiosity. He also appeared in the BBC miniseries Dunkirk as Lieutenant Jimmy Langley.
In 2005, Cumberbatch portrayed protagonist Edmund Talbot in the miniseries To the Ends of the Earth, based on Sir William Golding's trilogy; during filming he said he experienced a terrifying carjacking in South Africa, managing to escape. He made brief appearances in the comedy sketch show Broken News and the Channel 4 sitcom Nathan Barley in 2005 and featured alongside Tom Hardy in the television adaptation of Stuart: A Life Backwards, which aired on the BBC in September 2007.
In 2008, Cumberbatch played the lead character in the BBC miniseries drama The Last Enemy, earning a Satellite Award nomination for Best Actor in a Miniseries or TV Film. In 2009, he appeared in Agatha Christie's Miss Marple: Murder Is Easy as Luke Fitzwilliam. He played Bernard in the TV adaptation of Small Island, earning him a nomination for BAFTA Television Award for Best Supporting Actor. Cumberbatch featured in Michael Dobbs' play, The Turning Point, which aired as one of a series of TV plays broadcast live on Sky Arts. The play depicted an October 1938 meeting between Soviet spy Guy Burgess, then a young man working for the BBC, and Winston Churchill. Cumberbatch portrayed Burgess; Churchill was played by Matthew Marsh, who had played a supporting role in Hawking. He narrated the 6-part series South Pacific (US title: Wild Pacific), which aired from May to June 2009 on BBC 2.
In 2010, Cumberbatch portrayed Vincent van Gogh in Van Gogh: Painted with Words. The Daily Telegraph called his performance "[a] treat ... vividly bringing Van Gogh to impassioned, blue-eyed life." In the same year, Cumberbatch began playing Sherlock Holmes in the joint BBC/PBS television series Sherlock, to critical acclaim. The second series began on New Year's Day 2012 in the United Kingdom and was broadcast on PBS in the United States in May 2012. The third series aired on PBS over a period of three weeks in January to February 2014. Cumberbatch won an Emmy as Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie for the third episode of the third series of the show entitled His Last Vow. Cumberbatch has one of the most aggressive fanbases to date, part of the 'Big Three' fandoms on the social media site Tumblr, called SuperWhoLock. In April 2015, Cumberbatch was nominated for his sixth British Academy Television Award for Best Leading Actor for the third series of the Sherlock. In 2016, he was once again nominated for an Emmy as Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie, this time for Sherlock: The Abominable Bride.
In 2012, he led the BBC and HBO co-produced miniseries Parade's End with Rebecca Hall. An adaptation of the tetralogy of novels of the same name by Ford Madox Ford, it was filmed as five episodes, directed by Susanna White and adapted by Sir Tom Stoppard. His performance earned Cumberbatch his second Emmy Award nomination for Best Actor in Miniseries or TV Movie. In February 2014, Cumberbatch appeared with Sesame Street characters Murray and Count von Count for PBS. In 2016, Cumberbatch portrayed Richard III in Shakespeare's play of the same name, as part of the second series of films for The Hollow Crown, which aired in both Britain and the United States. Cumberbatch has also been a brand ambassador for Dunlop and Jaguar luxury cars since 2014.
Cumberbatch starred in Patrick Melrose, a miniseries adaptation of the Edward St Aubyn novels, which began airing on Showtime on 12 May 2018. In 2019 Cumberbatch appeared as British political strategist Dominic Cummings (who served as the campaign director of Vote Leave, the official campaign in favour of the UK leaving the European Union) in HBO and Channel 4's television film Brexit: The Uncivil War. In 2023 he was confirmed a executive producer and lead role in the miniseries Eric for streaming service Netflix.
### Film
The 2006 film Starter for 10 has been credited with helping launch Cumberbatch's big-screen career. Also in 2006, Cumberbatch played late 18th/early 19th century British parliamentarian William Pitt the Younger in Amazing Grace, a role that garnered him a nomination for the London Film Critics Circle "British Breakthrough Acting Award". In Atonement (2007), Cumberbatch played what The Guardian called one of his "small parts in big films", and came to the attention of Sue Vertue and Stephen Moffat, who would later cast him in Sherlock. In 2008 he had a supporting role in The Other Boleyn Girl, and the next year he appeared in the Charles Darwin biographical film Creation as Darwin's friend Joseph Hooker. In 2010, he appeared in The Whistleblower as well as Four Lions. He portrayed Peter Guillam, George Smiley's right-hand man, in the 2011 adaptation of the John le Carré novel Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. The film was directed by Tomas Alfredson and featured Gary Oldman and Colin Firth. Cumberbatch played Major Jamie Stewart in Steven Spielberg's War Horse in 2011.
In 2012, Cumberbatch provided the voice and motion-capture for both Smaug the Dragon and the Necromancer in An Unexpected Journey, the first instalment of The Hobbit series based on the novel of the same name by J. R. R. Tolkien. He reprised his roles as Smaug and the Necromancer for The Desolation of Smaug (2013) and The Battle of the Five Armies (2014). For the motion-capture aspect of the films, he used a suit and facial markers to highlight the dragon's expressions and movements. Cumberbatch told Total Film "You just have to lose your shit on a carpeted floor, in a place that looks a little bit like a mundane government building. It was just me as well, with four static cameras and all the sensors."
In 2013, Cumberbatch appeared in J. J. Abrams' sequel, Star Trek Into Darkness, as Khan, the film's antagonist. Three of the four films he featured in during the second half of 2013 premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival: The Fifth Estate, in which he played WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, 12 Years a Slave, in which he played William Prince Ford, a slave owner, and August: Osage County, in which he played Charles Aiken. For the official soundtrack of the latter film, he recorded a song titled "Can't Keep it Inside".
Cumberbatch had a voice role in DreamWorks Animation's feature film Penguins of Madagascar, which was released in November 2014. He then starred in the historical drama The Imitation Game as British cryptographer Alan Turing, also released in November 2014. The role earned him nominations for the Golden Globe, BAFTA, SAG, and Academy Award for Best Actor. In May 2014, he joined the cast of the film Black Mass opposite Johnny Depp which was distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures.
Cumberbatch starred as Doctor Strange in both the eponymous film released in November 2016, in Avengers: Infinity War in April 2018, and in Avengers: Endgame in April 2019. His depiction of Strange also appeared in Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) and in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022). He starred as electricity titan Thomas Edison in the film The Current War in September 2017. In 2018, Cumberbatch voiced the title character in the film The Grinch, and provided the voice and did performance capture for the tiger Shere Khan in Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle, Netflix's film adaptation of Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book, starring alongside Christian Bale and Cate Blanchett. In 2019, he appeared briefly as British Colonel Mackenzie in Sam Mendes' World War I film 1917.
In 2021, Cumberbatch starred in the drama The Power of the Dog, written and directed by Jane Campion. His performance in the film was acclaimed, and he received nominations for the Academy Award, British Academy Film Award, Screen Actors Guild Award, and Golden Globe Award for Best Actor. The same year Cumberbatch played Louis Wain, an eccentric English artist known for drawing anthropomorphized large-eyed cats, in The Electrical Life of Louis Wain.
Cumberbatch will star as the titular character in Wes Anderson's The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar (2023), a film adaptation of a short story by Roald Dahl. He will appear opposite Ralph Fiennes, Dev Patel and Ben Kingsley.
### Radio
Cumberbatch has repeatedly expressed his affection for radio and has done numerous productions for the BBC. Among his best-known radio work is the adaptation of John Mortimer's novel Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders in 2009. He played Young Rumpole, and went on to play the part in nine more adaptations of Mortimer's works. Between 2008 and 2014, he played Captain Martin Crieff in the BBC Radio 4's sitcom Cabin Pressure, alongside Stephanie Cole, John Finnemore, and Roger Allam. He then went on to play the Angel Islington in the 2013 BBC Radio 4 adaptation of Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere. In the same year, he led the BBC Radio 3 adaptation of Michael Frayn's play Copenhagen wherein he played theoretical physicist Werner Heisenberg.
For the 70th anniversary of the Normandy landings, on 6 June 2014 Cumberbatch read the original BBC radio bulletins from June 1944 for BBC Radio 4.
### Narration
Cumberbatch has narrated numerous documentaries for the National Geographic and Discovery channels. He has also read for several audiobooks, including Casanova, The Tempest, The Making of Music, Death in a White Tie, Artists in Crime, Tom and Viv, and Sherlock Holmes: The Rediscovered Railway Mysteries and Other Stories. He has done voice-overs for several commercials, including for major names Jaguar, Sony, Pimms, and Google+, performing the Seven Ages of Man monologue. For the 2012 London Olympics, he appeared in a short film on the history of London, which began the BBC coverage of the opening ceremony. He made appearances for two Cheltenham Festivals, in July 2012 for Music when he read World War I poetry and prose accompanied by piano pieces and in October 2012 for Literature when he discussed Sherlock and Parade's End at The Centaur. In 2012, he lent his voice to a four-part, spoken-word track titled "Flat of Angles" for Late Night Tales based on a story written by author and poet Simon Cleary, the final installment of which was released on 9 May 2014.
In 2012, he provided the voice of Dante Alighieri in the documentary Girlfriend in a Coma. In 2013, Cumberbatch narrated the documentary film Jerusalem about the ancient city. It was distributed by National Geographic Cinema Ventures in IMAX 3D theatres worldwide. The same year, he appeared as a special guest in a recording of Gordon Getty's opera Usher House, where he voiced the role of "the visitor", recorded and released by PENTATONE.
He narrated the documentary Cristiano Ronaldo: The World at His Feet about the Portuguese footballer for Vimeo and Vision Films in 2014. In August 2014, he recorded the first ever unabridged audiobook of William Golding's 1964 novel, The Spire, for Canongate Books.
### Music
On 28 September 2016, Cumberbatch appeared on stage with Pink Floyd member David Gilmour during one of the musician's shows in London held at the Royal Albert Hall. He sang lead vocals on the song "Comfortably Numb", singing the verse sections originally sung by Roger Waters.
### Impressionist
Adept at impersonating others, Cumberbatch was referred to as the "New King of Celebrity Impressionists" by Vulture magazine. He has imitated celebrities on a number of chat shows, such as The Graham Norton Show on the BBC, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on NBC, and in general interviews on channels such as MTV. His impersonations include Alan Rickman, Sean Connery, Jack Nicholson, Tom Hiddleston, Michael Caine, Christopher Walken, Tom Holland, Bane, John Malkovich, Matthew McConaughey, Taylor Swift and Chewbacca.
### Production company
Cumberbatch, Adam Ackland, writer-director Patrick Monroe, action coordinator Ben Dillon, and production manager Adam Selves launched a production company, SunnyMarch Ltd., in late 2013.
Their first project under the company's banner was the £87,000 crowd-funded short film Little Favour, written and directed by Monroe with Cumberbatch in the lead role. The 30-minute action-thriller became internationally available on iTunes on 5 November 2013. In 2022 filming began on The End We Start From, an adaptation of the Megan Hunter novel of the same name, the rights to which the company had acquired in 2017.
## Other activities
### Charity
Cumberbatch is an ambassador for The Prince's Trust. He is a supporter and patron of organisations focused on using the arts to help disadvantaged young people including Odd Arts, Anno's Africa and Dramatic Need. Since portraying Stephen Hawking in 2004, he has been an ambassador, and in 2015 patron, for the Motor Neurone Disease Association and in 2014 did the Ice Bucket Challenge for the organisation. He also set up a recovery fund for the benefit of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Association. Cumberbatch has donated artworks for charities and fundraisers including the Willow Foundation, and Thomas Coram Foundation for Children.
Together with Prince Philip, Cumberbatch presented 85 young people with the Duke of Edinburgh's Award at St James's Palace on 19 March 2014. "Our ambition is to extend this opportunity to hundreds of thousands across the UK", Cumberbatch said on behalf of the youth awards programme.
In May 2014, he joined Prince William and Ralph Lauren at Windsor Castle for a cancer awareness and fundraising gala for the benefit of the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust. Cumberbatch stated, "Cancer isn't a disease that needs much awareness, but it does need continued funding for research." In September 2014, he participated in a video campaign for Stand Up To Cancer. Cumberbatch posed for photographer Jason Bell for an exhibition at Pall Mall, London from 16 to 20 September 2014 to mark 10 years of the "Give Up Clothes For Good" charity campaign, which has raised £17 million for Cancer Research UK. In 2014, Cumberbatch publicly backed "Hacked Off" and its campaign for UK press self-regulation by "safeguarding the press from political interference while also giving vital protection to the vulnerable." In late 2014, Cumberbatch designed a Sherlock Holmes-themed Paddington Bear statue, one of fifty located around London prior to the release of the film Paddington, which was auctioned to raise funds for the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC).
In a November 2014 cover story for Out promoting The Imitation Game, Cumberbatch opened up about sexual experimentation during his time in boarding schools stating, "While there was experimentation, it had never occurred to me as, 'Oh, this is that!' It was just boys and their penises, the same way with girls and vaginas and boobs. It wasn't out of desire." LGBT group Stonewall released a statement praising Cumberbatch's comments, saying, "Seeing someone in the public eye – especially somebody as influential as Benedict – talking positively around gay issues, is powerful for young lesbian, gay and bisexual people. It is often difficult for those growing up to find role models who demonstrate that it is equally okay to be gay or straight."
Cumberbatch is a founding member of the "Save Soho" campaign which aims "to protect and nurture iconic music and performing arts venues in Soho." In an open letter published in The Guardian on 31 January 2015, Cumberbatch, amongst others, asked for pardons of all gay and bisexual men who were convicted under the same now-defunct "indecency" laws as Alan Turing was (whom Cumberbatch portrayed in The Imitation Game).
In September 2015, Cumberbatch condemned the UK government's response to the migrant crisis in a speech to theatregoers during a curtain call at a performance of Hamlet, for which he stars. He also fronted a video campaign to help the charity Save The Children in its mission to aid young Syrian refugees. He was one of the signatories of an open letter, published in The Guardian, criticising the government for its actions regarding the refugee problem. He also gave nightly speeches after his curtain call as Hamlet at the Barbican in London, asking for donations to help Syrian refugees. At the end of the run, the audience contributed more than £150,000 for Save the Children. He faced criticism for not taking in refugees himself, responding "I do have a house, but it's empty, it's gutted, there's no electricity or water, so that wouldn't work, and I have a baby in my flat, there are no spare rooms". In 2017 he told The Big Issue "I understand why some might think I should be housing people instead of complaining about a government not doing it. But I was trying to raise awareness that we can do more as a society [...] But we raised money for children in need. So I don't regret doing it for a second, and I will do it again, even if it does put me in the firing line".
In May 2020, Cumberbatch was among the ten celebrities who read an instalment of Roald Dahl's children's fantasy novel James and the Giant Peach. The audio-visual readings were published by Oscar-winning director Taika Waititi in aid of the global-non profit charity Partners In Health, co-founded by Dahl's daughter Ophelia, which had been fighting COVID-19 in vulnerable areas.
### Politics
In 2003, Cumberbatch joined the Stop the War Coalition protest in London against the Iraq War. He addressed activists in a 2010 protest sponsored by the Trade Union Congress in Westminster on the suggested risks to the arts due to spending cuts expected in the Spending Review. In 2013, he protested against what he perceived were civil liberties violations by the UK government.
Cumberbatch is a supporter of LGBT+ rights and in July 2013 officiated at the same-sex marriage of friends. Through this ordination he officiated the wedding of Robert Rinder, best known as Judge Rinder, and his partner Seth Cummings. For International Women's Day 2014, he was a signatory of Amnesty International's letter to the Prime Minister David Cameron for women's rights in Afghanistan. Cumberbatch identifies as a feminist.
In 2016, Cumberbatch was one of over 280 figures from the arts world who backed a vote for the United Kingdom to stay in the European Union with regard to the June 2016 referendum on that issue.
## Awards and honours
Cumberbatch was appointed a CBE in the 2015 Birthday Honours for services to the performing arts and to charity. He received the honour from the Queen at an investiture ceremony at Buckingham Palace on 10 November 2015.
In February 2016, Cumberbatch was appointed visiting fellow at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford University.
## Public image and other recognition
Cumberbatch achieved international recognition with the first series of Sherlock in 2010. He has since been called "The Thinking Woman's Crumpet" and has been a mainstay in numerous "Sexiest Man Alive" lists including those of Empire and People.
Tatler listed Cumberbatch in the "Most Eligible Bachelors in the United Kingdom" in 2012. In the same year, Cumberbatch described a cyberstalking incident in which he discovered that someone had been live-tweeting his movements in his London home. Coming to terms with it, he said, it is "an ongoing process. To think that somebody knew everything I'd done in a day and told the rest of the world in real time!" His photograph taken at the Garrick Club by Derry Moore, 12th Earl of Drogheda was the cover of Moore's 2012 book An English Room.
In 2013, Cumberbatch was ranked fifth in the Tatler's "Most Fascinating People in Britain" list, higher than the Duchess of Cambridge and just below Queen Elizabeth II. Entertainment Weekly identified Cumberbatch as one of the "50 Coolest and Most Creative Entertainers" in Hollywood. He has also appeared on the covers of GQ, Time and The Hollywood Reporter's "New A-list" issue.
In 2014, Cumberbatch was included in The Sunday Times "100 Makers of the 21st Century", cited as this generation's Laurence Olivier." Film critic Roger Friedman stated that "Cumberbatch may be the closest thing to a real descendant of Sir Laurence Olivier." GQ identified him as one of the "100 Most Connected Men" in the UK in 2014. In the same year, Country Life magazine labelled him as one of its "Gentlemen of the Year".
In April 2014, Cumberbatch was regarded as a British cultural icon, with young adults from abroad naming him among a group of people whom they most associated with UK culture, which included William Shakespeare, Queen Elizabeth II, David Beckham, J. K. Rowling, The Beatles, Charlie Chaplin, Elton John and Adele. The same month, Time magazine included him in its annual Time 100 as one of the Most Influential People in the World. Cumberbatch was the inspiration and focus of Abby Howells's play Benedict Cumberbatch Must Die which, despite its title, was a "love letter" and portrait of the fan obsession surrounding the actor. It premiered in June 2014 at BATS Theatre in New Zealand. The Tennessee Aquarium named one of its otters "Benny" in reference to Cumberbatch's first name after a naming contest on the zoo's website.
A wax figure of Cumberbatch has been on display at Madame Tussauds London since October 2014. In 2015, he was named one of GQ's 50 best dressed British men. In 2018, PETA declared Cumberbatch and director Ava DuVernay to be the Most Beautiful Vegan Celebs of 2018.
## Personal life
While in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, in 2005, Cumberbatch and two friends (Theo and Denise Black) were abducted, after bursting a tyre, and held at gunpoint by a group of locals. Eventually their abductors drove them into unsettled territory and set them free without explanation. Cumberbatch said of the incident: "It taught me that you come into this world as you leave it, on your own. It's made me want to live a life less ordinary." Before the burst tyre, they had been listening to "How to Disappear Completely" by Radiohead. Following this experience, whenever Cumberbatch hears the song it "reminds [him] of a sense of reality ... [and] a reason for hope".
He subscribes to Buddhist philosophy and has expressed affinity for meditation and mindfulness.
Cumberbatch was in a 12-year-long relationship with actress Olivia Poulet, from his time at Manchester University until 2010.
Cumberbatch is married to English theatre and opera director Sophie Hunter. Their engagement was announced in the "Forthcoming Marriages" section of The Times on 5 November 2014, after a 17-year friendship. On 14 February 2015, the couple married at the 12th-century Church of St. Peter and St. Paul in Mottistone on the Isle of Wight followed by a reception at Mottistone Manor. They have three sons. |
67,526,069 | 2021 Dublin Bay South by-election | 1,170,208,420 | 2021 by-election in Dublin Bay South constituency in Ireland | [
"2021 elections in the Republic of Ireland",
"33rd Dáil",
"Dáil by-elections",
"Elections in Dublin (city)",
"July 2021 events in Ireland"
] | A by-election was held in the Dáil Éireann constituency of Dublin Bay South in Ireland on Thursday, 8 July 2021, to fill the vacancy left by the resignation of the Fine Gael TD Eoghan Murphy. The by-election was won by Senator Ivana Bacik of the Labour Party.
Bacik was able to overcome low poll numbers nationally for the Labour Party as well as defy attempts by Fine Gael and Sinn Féin to define the by-election as an ideological showdown solely between the two of them. In stark contrast to Labour's success, the by-election was also noted for the disastrous result suffered by Fianna Fáil, with a number of publications declaring it the single worst election result in the party's tenured history.
Fifteen candidates were nominated, ten from political parties and five independents. The electorate was 72,302.
The polls closed at 22:30 on Thursday 8 July. The Irish Times predicted that the final turnout figure would be no more than 40%, and contrasted that with the 52% turnout in Dublin Bay South at the last general election. The count showed a turnout of 34.7%, which was higher than some predictions, and exceeded the 26% turnout at both the Dublin Fingal and Dublin Mid-West by-elections in 2019.
## Background
Eoghan Murphy was elected as a TD for Dublin South-East in the 2011 general election, a constituency covering most of what became the Dublin Bay South constituency in 2016. Murphy retained his seat at both the 2016 and 2020 general elections. Murphy served as Minister of State at the Department of Finance from 2016 to 2017.
A close ally of Fine Gael leader Leo Varadkar, he was a key figure in Varadkar's successful leadership campaign in 2017. When Varadkar became Taoiseach in June 2017, Murphy was appointed to the cabinet as the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government. After the February 2020 Irish general election, prolonged negotiations led to the formation in June 2020 of a three-party coalition government, to which Murphy was not appointed.
On 27 April 2021 Murphy resigned his seat to pursue a career in international affairs. The Electoral (Amendment) Act 2011 stipulates that a by-election in Ireland must be held within six months of a vacancy occurring. The writ was moved in the Dáil on 16 June 2021, and on the same day the polling order for the by-election was signed by Murphy's successor as Housing Minister, Darragh O'Brien. The order set the polling date as 8 July 2021.
### Constituency profile
Dublin Bay South has been characterised as a "Fine Gael heartland" by some of the Irish national media, noting the area (as Dublin South-East) had been the seat of Fine Gael leaders John A. Costello and Garret FitzGerald and their historical performance in the area. However, it had also been the seat of party leaders Ruairi Quinn of the Labour Party, Michael McDowell of the Progressive Democrats, John Gormley of the Green Party and is the present seat of Eamon Ryan, current leader of the Green Party.
Dublin Bay South has been called "one of the most liberal constituencies in the country" as well as "one of the wealthiest". It had the highest vote in the 2018 referendum to repeal the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution, which prohibited abortion, and its main predecessor constituency Dublin South-East had the highest vote in favour of marriage equality in the 2015 referendum with 74.0% voting 'Yes'. It has been noted that between the Labour Party, the Green Party, the Social Democrats and Democratic Left, centre-left parties have won at least 29% of the vote in every election in the area between 1981 and 2021.
At the 2020 general election, Dublin Bay South was one of twelve constituencies (of a total of 39) which elected no women. Nine of the by-election candidates were women.
Half of adults in the constituency have been described as professionals, 57% of individuals have third-level qualifications, and 44% live in privately rented apartments.
### Procedure
Every Irish and British citizen on the register of electors in the Dublin Bay South constituency could vote, with the electorate being 72,302. The election was held using single transferable vote, with the candidate elected when they either had the highest number of votes after all other candidates had been eliminated, or upon reaching the quota of over half the total valid votes.
The by-election was the first election to the Dáil since the COVID-19 pandemic began. It was conducted in accordance with COVID-19 public health advice, with extended polling hours of 07:00 IST and 22:30 IST on Thursday 8 July. Measures included having hand sanitisers at all polling stations, voters being asked to wear a mask and observe social distancing when voting, and each presiding officers' desk having a perspex screen. Voters were also asked to bring their own pen or pencil to mark the ballot paper, with pencils which did not need to be returned also available if required.
## Candidates
### Candidate selection
On 7 May, Kate O'Connell declared she would not seek to be the Fine Gael candidate for the election. O'Connell had previously been a TD for the constituency between 2016 and 2020, but did not retain her seat in the 2020 general election, placing fifth in the four-seat constituency. O'Connell suggested she would not be able to win a party selection again due to her relationship with the Fine Gael leadership souring in the meantime.
Dublin City Councillor James Geoghegan announced his quest for the Fine Gael nomination on 31 April, noting that in the 2019 Dublin City Council election he had received the highest vote share of any Fine Gael candidate in Dublin. He also stressed that he had backed Leo Varadkar in the 2017 Fine Gael leadership election, whereas O'Connell had backed Varadkar's opponent Simon Coveney. Geoghegan won the support of all 12 party branches in Dublin Bay South. He was the only Fine Gael candidate to be nominated by party members as of the party deadline on 10 May, and was formally selected on 13 May.
The then Lord Mayor of Dublin Hazel Chu and Dublin City Councillor Claire Byrne contested the Green Party nomination. At a selection convention on 4 June, Byrne was chosen as the party candidate.
Fianna Fáil councillors Deirdre Conroy and Claire O'Connor were reported as potential candidates for the party nomination. However, O'Connor declined to run. That left Conroy as the sole nominee as of the party deadline on 20 May, and on 25 May she was formally selected as the Fianna Fáil candidate. Conroy had been first elected as a councillor in the 2019 Dublin City Council election.
Senator Ivana Bacik was selected as the Labour Party candidate on 17 May, and Senator Lynn Boylan was selected as the Sinn Féin candidate on 4 June.
Sarah Durcan, who stood for the Social Democrats in Dublin Bay South in the 2020 general election, was the only nominee as of the party deadline and was named as the Social Democrats candidate on 2 June.
Mairéad Tóibín, a pharmacist, was selected as Aontú's candidate. She is a sister of Peadar Tóibín, the party's founder and its only TD.
Mannix Flynn stood as an independent candidate. He said that he would be "throwing the kitchen sink" at his campaign.
On 27 May, Peter Dooley, the co-founder of the Dublin Renters' Union announced he would be running as an independent candidate. Justin Barrett was the National Party's candidate. On 11 June, Jacqui Gilbourne of Renua announced she would be running for the party. At an anti-lockdown rally on 19 June, Dolores Cahill announced that she would be running as an independent candidate.
Nominations for the by-election closed at noon on 24 June 2021. 15 candidates stood in the by-election, with ten from registered political parties, and five independents.
## Campaign
### Aontú
Mairéad Tóibín campaigned on the platform of the housing crisis. At her campaign launch on 25 June, she called for an end to the tax advantages international property investors receive, stating it is pricing families out of the market. She also called "for a full investigation into the manner in which the government mismanaged" the spread of COVID-19 among residents of nursing homes in 2020, and criticised the Irish government and opposition for "going far beyond any other EU country" to attempt to achieve zero Covid.
### Fianna Fáil
Deirdre Conroy is an architectural heritage consultant who campaigned to reduce pollution within the area, saying "I want to see people of all ages swimming in the bay and that means stopping pollution and getting rid of the untreated sewage". Conroy also campaigned on housing, crime, and transport, asking for "more Gardaí on the streets", providing additional funding for community policing and community groups, extending the MetroLink proposed in Dublin city, making sure "rents are affordable" and "reducing the numbers on our social housing waiting lists".
Jim O'Callaghan was selected as the Director of Elections for Deirdre Conroy's campaign.
In June 2021, Conroy's 2013 blog Diary of a Dublin Landlady was criticised, with posts referring to a Latvian tenant who was lodging in her home, in which Conroy criticised the smell of the tenant's cooking and him sending his child benefit payment back to Latvia, as well as stating she would not permit tenants to turn the heating on at night or have overnight guests. In another post, she considered renting a linen cupboard as housing to students, saying "the linen cupboard which is a perfectly nice single room, I could possibly put a student into". In response to the controversy, Conroy said "I had one bad experience with a tenant who happened to be from Latvia", and described herself as a "very inclusive person". Separately, Conroy is taking legal action over a fall during a skiing trip to Andorra in 2015.
### Fine Gael
James Geoghegan described himself as "liberal and progressive" and described housing among his three main campaign priorities. He stated "I want to speak for a generation stuck in a rent trap or living in their parents' homes", and said he "is not a fan of co-living", a contrast to the Fine Gael incumbent Eoghan Murphy. When asked by journalists about his own circumstances, Geoghegan added that he had a mortgage on his home with his wife. He declined to comment on whether he had drawn on "the bank of mum and dad" for it, saying "we were lucky enough to put a deposit together" for the home. He stated his two other main campaign priorities are to "make Dublin a 15-minute city", and to invest in "childcare, education, and our work environment".
Geoghegan was criticised for being a founding member of Renua, the party which had been formed by Lucinda Creighton in 2015. Creighton had been expelled from the Fine Gael parliamentary party when she voted against the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Bill 2013, which had permitted abortion under certain limited circumstances. Geoghegan said he disagrees with Creighton's "social views on abortion", and "I certainly don't share any of the social views that I suppose that party subsequently became associated with". He said that he voted in favour of the repeal of the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution permitting the Oireachtas to legislate for abortion, and in favour of the Thirty-fourth Amendment of the Constitution which legalised same-sex marriage.
Following an article in The Irish Times by columnist Una Mullally criticising what the author claimed was Geoghegan's privileged family background, Fine Gael requested that people focus on Geoghegan's politics. The Irish Daily Mail subsequently complained that Geoghegan was refusing to answer questions on political issues, especially Fine Gael housing policy. Similarly, two podcasts covering Irish politics, The Echo Chamber Podcast and Una & Andrea's United Ireland podcast, complained that they had reached out to Geoghegan for interviews but he had refused all offers. Both podcasts had featured several other election candidates over the course of the campaign.
Simon Harris was appointed as the Director of Elections for Geoghegan's campaign. Geoghegan asked voters to give their further preferences to the candidates of the other government parties, Claire Byrne and Deirdre Conroy. The concept of a "voting pact" between the government parties was floated by Fine Gael towards the end of the campaign, but was rejected by both Fianna Fáil and the Green party.
On Wednesday 7 July 2021, the day before voting, Kate O'Connell announced she would be contacting the Garda Siochana after a fake message which she had not endorsed began circulating on WhatsApp. The message, coming from a user posing under the guise of an official O'Connell group, played off the perceived rivalry between O’Connell and Geoghegan reported upon during Fine Gael's candidate selection. It asked O'Connell's supporters to give their votes to Ivana Bacik, Claire Byrne, Deirdre Conroy, Sarah Durcan and Lynn Boylan rather than Fine Gael's candidate James Geoghegan.
Throughout the campaign, Fine Gael had sought to define the by-election as a clash between itself and Sinn Féin. The party held to this tactic even after The Irish Times published a poll showing that Ivana Bacik was emerging as the main contender, with Fine Gael sending out a tweet on election day warning their supporters that unless they voted, Sinn Féin would win.
### Green Party
Byrne campaigned on providing more housing with improved standards, improving waste and recycling provisions, providing "multipurpose venues" to create and revitalise a "sustainable night-time economy", as well as being a female representative in a constituency without any female Teachtaí Dála, saying "I really believe only women can represent women effectively".
On 26 May Roderic O'Gorman was announced as the Director of Elections for the Green Party campaign. With the Green Party in a three-way coalition for government alongside Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael as of the 2020 Irish general election, O'Gorman said "This election will send a strong signal on what government priorities must be over the coming years. In Government, the Green Party is delivering climate action, social justice, and more liveable towns and cities." Byrne asked voters to give their second preference to Labour Party candidate Ivana Bacik.
### Labour Party
Senator Ivana Bacik campaigned with an emphasis on providing affordable housing, saying "This Government is failing. It has no common purpose. And never is this more evident than in relation to housing", as well as improving healthcare and childcare, tackling climate change, and achieving "a true republic in which church and state are separated". Bacik described herself as having "more bills passed into law than any other Senator, on issues such as workers' conditions, women's health rights, and LGBT equality".
Bacik also campaigned on increasing the number of sports amenities for children in the area, calling for unused Defence Forces football fields at the Cathal Brugha Barracks to be freed up for local sports, a suggestion rejected by Fine Gael Minister for Defence Simon Coveney. During the campaign, Bacik also called for public investment in housing as a solution to the housing crisis.
Duncan Smith was selected as the Director of Elections for Bacik's campaign on 14 May. Bacik asked voters to give their further preferences to left and centre-left candidates.
### Sinn Féin
Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald declared that the by-election would be fought by her party on the issue of housing; "It will be all about rents, affordable houses and social houses and the ongoing scandal of homelessness". Sinn Féin stated that they hoped to use their controversial Abú voter database to assist in their election campaign. On 1 June 2021, Senator Lynn Boylan was nominated as the Sinn Féin candidate.
During the campaign, Boylan received criticism from Fine Gael's by-election candidate James Geoghegan for her stance on the Special Criminal Court. Boylan asked voters to give their further preferences to left-wing candidates.
### Social Democrats
On 2 June 2021, Sarah Durcan was chosen as the Social Democrats candidate for the by-election. She was the only person nominated at the selection convention.
She had unsuccessfully contested two previous elections for the Social Democrats. She stood in the South East Inner City local electoral area at the 2019 Dublin City Council election, and in Dublin Bay South at the 2020 general election.
Durcan has served on the boards of the Abbey Theatre, Theatre Forum and Gaze Film Festival. Durcan was a lead organiser of the \#wakingthefeminists campaign which to achieve gender equality in Irish theatre, and describes herself as an "activist arts worker".
Following the announcement of her candidacy, Durcan declared that the by-election would be a "referendum" on the Government's housing and healthcare policies, and that it would be an opportunity to send a message to the government that "we should expect more". Durcan opined that the government had "put corporations and profits over communities, and shoddy short-term fixes over long-term benefits" and suggested that everyone should be able to access affordable housing and expect reasonable waiting times for healthcare services. Durcan asked voters to give their further preferences to those on the political left, and to women candidates.
### People Before Profit
Brigid Purcell campaigned on reducing pollution in the area, as well as protesting against the temporary closure of Portobello Plaza, with Dublin City Council stating the area had been closed due to anti-social behaviour and disregard for COVID-19 restrictions. At her official campaign launch on 17 June, Purcell said she would campaign for workers and renters and spoke about her experiences as a worker mentioning her own experience of sexual harassment in Irish hospitality sector.
Purcell held 'open air' public meetings in the constituency with Gino Kenny in relation to cannabis legalisation and with Paul Murphy in support of rent controls.
### National Party
The National Party announced Justin Barrett's candidacy in a YouTube video on 9 June 2021. During the campaign the National Party's GoFundMe was removed for violating its terms of service; it also emerged that Barrett was under criminal investigation by the Garda Síochána for breaching COVID-19 regulations, as well as road traffic offences. When queried about these issues, Barrett reportedly told The Times that it was "none of our business" and "You always lie, you're the lying press."
## Debates and media coverage
On 4 July a debate about the by-election was held on The Week in Politics on RTÉ One, featuring seven candidates from the parties who had placed highest in the 2020 general election. The remaining candidates were given the opportunity to be highlighted briefly midway during the broadcast in short pre-recorded clips. The five highest polling parties from 2020 had their candidates featured in another debate the next day on 5 July on Today with Claire Byrne on RTÉ Radio 1. Similarly to the television broadcast, the other candidates were briefly featured in short pre-recorded clips.
Aontú took legal action against RTÉ over the exclusion of their candidate from both broadcasts. Aontú suggested it was unfair that they were the only political party with a seat in Dáil Eireann not represented in the television broadcast. RTÉ stated that a steering committee had decided that the televised debates would feature the top seven parties based on their share of first preference votes in the 2020 general election while the radio debate would feature the top five, and that this criteria had been previously endorsed by a high court judge deciding on the matter.
On Sunday 3 July, RTÉ aired an episode of "National Treasures" which contained a segment exploring the family background of Labour's candidate Ivana Bacik. Subsequently, Fine Gael complained to RTÉ and suggested this gave undue coverage to her campaign. RTÉ responded by calling the situation an "inadvertent error" and to rectify it, they would air a special "extended report" on the by-election during Prime Time on Tuesday 6 July featuring all the other candidates in the by-election in order to ensure all candidates received "fair coverage". Social Democrats candidate Sarah Durcan dismissed the impact of the "National Treasures" episode.
## Opinion polls
### First preferences
### Second preferences
### Third preferences
## Counting of votes
Counting of ballots got underway at 09:00 IST on Friday 9 July, in the RDS Simmonscourt Pavilion, with a final result predicted to be available between 19:00 and 20:00. One of the candidates, Dolores Cahill, was refused admission to the count centre as she refused to wear a mask. Around 15:00 IST, Lynn Boylan and Mary Lou McDonald on behalf of Sinn Féin conceded, noting that it was "Ivana's day".
### Result
## Aftermath and reactions
Reactions to the by-election were swift. A number of sources declared that the by-election might have been the single worst result in the history of Fianna Fáil and there was immediate speculation from inside and outside the party that the result could threaten the leadership of Micheál Martin. However, blame was also levelled against Fianna Fáil's director of elections Jim O'Callaghan, himself considered a rival and potential ouster of Martin. O'Callaghan called the result "disappointing" and publicly questioned if Martin was suitable to lead Fianna Fáil into the next general election. On 10 July 2021, Fianna Fáil TD Barry Cowen demanded an immediate in-person parliamentary party meeting to discuss Fianna Fáil's "alarming" performance in the by-election. The same day Fianna Fáil TD Cathal Crowe told RTÉ Radio 1 that, in his view, Micheál Martin should not lead the party into the next general election.
Similar discontent was felt in Fine Gael, with questions raised internally and externally of the wisdom of Leo Varadkar in endorsing James Geoghegan as the candidate instead of the potentially more popular Kate O'Connell. Varadkar publicly reaffirmed his support of Geoghegan and dismissed the notion that the defeat, which left the party with no TDs in an area considered its "heartland", was a negative reflection of his leadership.
Responding to the election outcome, Ivana Bacik thanked the voters and activists in the constituency, said that she and other candidates had run a "respectful and corteous campaign", and that she was "deeply honoured and so grateful to have received such a such an overwhelming support from across my home constituency here in Dublin Bay South." She added that Labour had emphasised the message around the issues the party championed, along with its core values. She added that this sends a message to the government that the mood among the electorate is for change.
Labour leader Alan Kelly congratulated Bacik, adding that he believes the Fine Gael versus Sinn Féin narrative has proven to be untrue, that the election had demonstrated Labour as a credible progressive, left-wing alternative. While offering their praise to Bacik for a well-managed campaign, analysts questioned if Labour would be able to replicate their success again in a general election. Bacik's victory was hailed a shot-in-the-arm to an ailing Labour party. Labour leader Alan Kelly declared "We’ll take the good days. We’ve taken enough bad days", speaking of the result. Ivana Bacik commented that she had received much support from people who were not Labour supporters but who share Labour's values, and that she was conscious of the tradition set out by former local Labour TD Ruairí Quinn throughout his career.
Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald praised the effort of their candidate Lynn Boylan while stating her belief that the result of the by-election demonstrated to her the time was right to call a general election. McDonald declared “It is now clear that we have a Government living on borrowed time. It is very clear that Government support in the constituency has collapsed”.
## See also
- List of Dáil by-elections
- Dáil constituencies
- 2022 University of Dublin by-election |
1,998,142 | Elizabeth Dilling | 1,173,562,559 | American writer and political activist (1894–1966) | [
"1894 births",
"1966 deaths",
"20th-century pseudonymous writers",
"Activists from Chicago",
"American Episcopalians",
"American anti-communists",
"American anti–World War II activists",
"American conspiracy theorists",
"American people of British descent",
"American political writers",
"American women civilians in World War II",
"American women non-fiction writers",
"Anti-communist propagandists",
"Antisemitic publications",
"Antisemitism in the United States",
"Far-right politics in the United States",
"History of United States isolationism",
"Old Right (United States)",
"Pseudonymous women writers",
"University of Chicago alumni",
"Writers from Chicago"
] | Elizabeth Eloise Kirkpatrick Dilling (April 19, 1894 – April 30, 1966) was an American writer and political activist. In 1934, she published The Red Network—A Who's Who and Handbook of Radicalism for Patriots, which catalogs over 1,300 suspected communists and their sympathizers. Her books and lecture tours established her as the pre-eminent female right-wing activist of the 1930s, and one of the most outspoken critics of the New Deal.
Dilling was the best-known leader of the World War II women's isolationist movement, a grass-roots campaign that pressured Congress to refrain from helping the Allies. She was among 28 anti-war campaigners charged with sedition in 1942; the charges were dropped in 1946. While academic studies have predominantly ignored both the anti-war "Mothers' movement" and right-wing activist women in general, Dilling's writings secured her a lasting influence among right-wing groups. She organized the Paul Reveres, an anti-communist organization, and was a member of the America First Committee.
## Early life and family
Dilling was born Elizabeth Eloise Kirkpatrick on April 19, 1894, in Chicago, Illinois. Her father, Lafayette Kirkpatrick, was a surgeon of Scotch-Irish ancestry; her mother, Elizabeth Harding, was of English and French ancestry. Her father died when she was six weeks old, after which her mother added to the family income by selling real estate. Dilling's brother, Lafayette Harding Kirkpatrick, who was seven years her senior, became wealthy by the age of 23 after developing properties in Hawaii. Dilling had an Episcopalian upbringing, and attended a Catholic girls' school, Academy of Our Lady. She was highly religious, and was known to send her friends 40-page letters about the Bible. Prone to bouts of depression, she went on vacations in the US, Canada, and Europe with her mother.
In 1912, she enrolled at the University of Chicago, where she studied music and languages, intending to become an orchestral musician. She studied the harp under Walfried Singer, the Chicago Symphony's harpist. She left after three years before graduating, lonely and bitterly disillusioned. In 1918, she married Albert Dilling, an engineer studying law who attended the same Episcopalian church as Elizabeth. The couple were well off financially, thanks to Elizabeth's inherited money and Albert's job as chief engineer for the Chicago Sewerage District. They lived in Wilmette, a Chicago suburb, and had two children, Kirkpatrick in 1920, and Elizabeth Jane in 1925.
The family traveled abroad at least ten times between 1923 and 1939, experiences that focused Dilling's political outlook and served to convince her of American superiority. In 1923, they visited Britain, France and Italy. Offended by the lack of gratitude from the British for American intervention in World War I, Dilling vowed to oppose any future American involvement in European conflict. They spent a month in the Soviet Union in 1931, where local guides, who Dilling claimed were Jews, told her that communism would take over the world and showed her a map of the US in which the cities were renamed after Soviet heroes. She documented her travels in home movies, filming such scenes as bathers swimming nude in a river beneath a Moscow church. She was appalled by communism's "atheism, sex degeneracy, broken homes [and] class hatred."
Dilling visited Germany in 1931 and, when she returned in 1938, noted a "great improvement of conditions". She attended Nazi Party meetings, and the German government paid her expenses. She wrote that "The German people under Hitler are contented and happy. ... don't believe the stories you hear that this man has not done a great good for this country." In 1938, she toured Palestine, where she filmed what she described as Jewish immigrants ruining the country. While touring Spain, then embroiled in the Spanish Civil War, she filmed "Red torture chambers" and burnt-out churches, "ruined by the Reds with the same satanic Jewish glee shown in Russia." She visited Japan, which she viewed as the only Christian nation in Asia, and in 1939, she returned to visit Spain, for a second time.
## Anti-communism
> Our family trip to Red Russia in 1931 started my dedication to anti-Communism. We were taken behind the scenes by friends working for the Soviet Government and saw deplorable conditions, first hand. We were appalled, not only at the forced labor, the squalid crowded living quarters, the breadline ration card workers’ stores, the mothers pushing wheelbarrows and begging children of the State nurseries besieging us. The open virulent anti-Christ campaign, every-where, was a shock. In public places were the tirades by loud speaker, in Russian, (our friends translated). Atheist cartoons representing Christ as a villain, a drunk, and the object of a cannibalistic orgy (Holy Communion): as an oppressor of labor; again as trash being dumped from a wheelbarrow by the Soviet Five-Year-Plan – these lurid cartoons filled the big bulletin boards in the churches our Soviet guides took us to visit.
Dilling's political activism was spurred by the "bitter opposition" she encountered upon her return to Illinois in 1931, "against my telling the truth about Russia ... from suburbanite 'intellectual' friends and from my own Episcopal minister." She began public speaking as a hobby, following her doctor's advice. Iris McCord, a Chicago radio broadcaster who taught at the Moody Bible Institute, arranged for her to address local church groups. Within a year Dilling was touring the Midwest, the Northeast and occasionally the West Coast, accompanied by her husband. She showed her home movies of the Soviet Union and made the same speech several times a week to audiences sometimes as large as several hundred, hosted by organizations such as the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) and the American Legion.
In 1932, Dilling co-founded the Paul Reveres, an anti-communist organization with headquarters in Chicago which eventually had 200 local chapters. She left in 1934, after a dispute with the co-founder Col. Edwin Marshall Hadley, and it folded soon after due to lack of interest. With McCord's encouragement, her lectures were published in a local Wilmette newspaper in 1932, and then collected in a pamphlet entitled Red Revolution: Do We Want It Here? Dilling claimed that the DAR printed and distributed thousands of copies.
Beginning in early 1933, Dilling spent twelve to eighteen hours a day for eighteen months researching and cataloging suspected subversives. Her sources included the 1920 four-volume report of the Joint Legislative Committee to Investigate Seditious Activities, and Representative Hamilton Fish's 1931 report of an anti-communist investigation. The result was The Red Network—A Who's Who and Handbook of Radicalism for Patriots, hailed with irony in The New Republic as a "handy, compact reference work". The first half of the 352-page book was a collection of essays, mostly copied from Red Revolution. The second half contained descriptions of more than 1,300 "Reds" (including international figures such as Albert Einstein and Chiang Kai-shek), and more than 460 organizations described as "Communist, Radical Pacifist, Anarchist, Socialist, [or] I.W.W. controlled".
> Far more than the Spider-Web chart of the 1920s – a chart composed by a member of the DAR that plotted suspected red-affiliated organisations with progressive individuals – The Red Network revealed the power of "guilt by association," a tactic that would be used all too often by future Red baiters with devastating effectiveness.
The book was reprinted eight times and sold more than 16,000 copies by 1941. Thousands more were given away. It was sold in Chicago book stores and by mail order from Dilling's house. It was distributed by the KKK, the Knights of the White Camellia, the German-American Bund, and the Aryan Bookstores. Subscribers to Gerald Winrod's new journal, The Revealer, received a copy; fundamentalist preacher W. B. Riley, president of the Northwest Bible Training School, claimed he had given away hundreds of copies; and it was advertised and sold by the Moody Bible Institute. It was endorsed by officials in the DAR and the American Legion. Copies were bought by the Pinkerton Detective Agency, the New York Police Department, the Chicago Police Department, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. A Los Angeles arms manufacturer bought and distributed 150 copies, and a tear gas manufacturer bought 1,500 copies, which it distributed to the Standard Oil Company, the National Guard, and hundreds of police departments.
In 1935, Dilling returned to her alma mater to accuse such people as university president Robert Maynard Hutchins, educational reformer John Dewey, activist Jane Addams, and Republican Senator William Borah of being communist sympathizers. Retail tycoon Charles R. Walgreen asked for her help to obtain a public hearing after his niece complained that professors at the university were communists. They demanded the closure of the university. The Illinois legislature convened to discuss the matter, ultimately deciding that the claims were unfounded. Dilling delivered a frenetic half-hour speech at the Illinois General Assembly, with calls from the audience to "kill every communist". She declared, "It is certain that the University of Chicago is diseased with Communism and that its contagion is a menace to the community and the Nation."
Dilling's next book, The Roosevelt Red Record and Its Background, published two weeks before the 1936 presidential election, was less successful. Like much of her later writing, it was largely a disjointed series of quotations. President Franklin D. Roosevelt's "Jew Deal" (as Dilling was calling the New Deal) was already a central theme of The Red Network, and it was already being debated elsewhere. Dilling later claimed that the House Un-American Activities Committee was founded largely thanks to her two books. She wrote a pamphlet attacking Borah, entitled Borah: "Borer from Within" the G.O.P., fearing that if he won the presidential nomination voters would be forced to choose between two communists. She distributed 5,000 copies at the Republican National Convention, and claimed credit for his defeat.
In 1938, Dilling founded the Patriotic Research Bureau, a vast archive in Chicago with a staff of "Christian women and girls" from the Moody Bible Institute. She began regular publication of the Patriotic Research Bulletin, a newsletter outlining her political and personal views, which she mailed free of charge to her supporters. Editions were often 25 to 30 pages long, with a youthful photograph of the author on the cover conveying a personal touch. The masthead of early issues reads: "Patriotic Research Bureau. For the defense of Christianity and Americanism".
Dilling was paid \$5,000 in 1939 by industrialist Henry Ford to investigate communism at the University of Michigan. As well as distributing his antisemitic newspaper The Dearborn Independent during the 1920s, Ford was a financial supporter of dozens of antisemitic propagandists. Dilling discovered hundreds of books at the university library written by "radicals". Her 96-page report stated that the university was "typical of those American colleges which have permitted Marxist-bitten, professional theorists to inoculate wholesome American youths with their collectivist propaganda." She reached a similar conclusion when the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce paid her to investigate UCLA, and when she investigated her children's universities, Cornell and Northwestern.
In 1940, hoping to influence the presidential election, Dilling published The Octopus, setting out her theories of Jewish Communism. The book was published under the pseudonym "Rev. Frank Woodruff Johnson". Avedis Derounian reported Dilling claiming that "The Jews can never prove that I'm anti-Semitic, I'm too clever for them." Her husband feared that allegations of antisemitism would damage his law practice. She admitted that she was the author at her divorce trial in 1942. She explained that she wrote the book as a response to B'nai B'rith. She stated: "It airs their dirty lying attempts to shut every Christian mouth and prevent anyone from getting a fair trial in this country" (for which she was cited for contempt).
## Isolationism
> Besides relying on a gendered appeal to patriotic duty, Dilling enjoyed portraying herself as a helpless victim confronted by diabolical evil. One telling example was when a federal subpoena in 1941, issued by the Justice Department, ordered her to Washington DC to explain her alleged affiliations with Nazi sympathizers. She described her experiences at the "New Deal O.G.P.U.," an unsubtle reference to Stalin's secret police, in the format of a play, in which she acted the part of the victim interrogated by an agent of the New Deal. The dramatic scene overflowed with "sinister glower[s]," "sarcastic questions" and "long harangue[s]." The victim, "a bit weary with the endless hectoring," answered unfair questions with righteous indignation. Throughout this little skit, Dilling downplayed her public role and denied the accusation that she was "an important woman" and that her "name carr[ied] weight." A sincere act of humility this was not, but it did reveal Dilling's inclination for martyrdom and self-importance, as well as a talent for propaganda.
Dilling was a central figure in a mass movement of isolationist women's groups, which opposed US involvement in World War II from a "maternalist" perspective. The membership of these groups in 1941 was between one and six million. According to historian Kari Frederickson: "They argued that war was the antithesis of nurturant motherhood, and that as women they had a particular stake in preventing American involvement in the European conflict. ... they intertwined their maternalist arguments with appeals that were right-wing, anti-Roosevelt, anti-British, anti-communist and anti-Semitic."
The movement was strongest in the Midwest, a conservative stronghold with a culture of antisemitism, which had long resented the political dominance of the East Coast. Chicago was the base of far-right activists Charles E. Coughlin, Gerald L. K. Smith and Lyrl Clark Van Hyning, as well as the America First Committee, which had 850,000 members by 1941. Dilling spoke at America First meetings, and was involved in the founding of Van Hyning's "We the Mothers Mobilize for America", a highly active group with 150,000 members who were tasked with infiltrating other organizations. The Chicago Tribune, the newspaper with the highest circulation in the region, was strongly isolationist. It treated Dilling as a trusted expert on anti-communism and continued to support her after she was charged with sedition.
In early 1941, when the movement was at its height, Dilling spoke at rallies in Chicago and other cities in the Midwest, and recruited a group to coordinate her efforts to oppose Lend-Lease, the "Mothers' Crusade to Defeat H. R. 1776". Hundreds of these activists picketed the Capitol for two weeks in February 1941. Dilling was arrested when she led a sit-down strike with at least 25 other protesters in the corridor outside the office of 84-year-old Senator Carter Glass. After a sensational trial lasting six days, she wept as she was found guilty of disorderly conduct and fined \$25. Glass called for the FBI to investigate the women's groups, and stated in The New York Times on March 7 that the women had caused "a noisy disorder of which any self-respecting fishwife would be ashamed. I likewise believe that it would be pertinent to inquire whether they are mothers. For the sake of the race, I devoutly hope not." Isolationist leader Cathrine Curtis believed that the image of the Mothers' movement had been wrecked, and privately criticised Dilling's "hoodlum" tactics as "communistic" and "un-womanly".
Many of the women's groups continued to oppose the war after the attack on Pearl Harbor, unlike their allies, the America First Committee. Dilling campaigned for Thomas E. Dewey in the 1944 presidential election, although she accused him of "fawning at the feet of international Jewry". Her political activity decreased as a result of her highly publicized divorce trial, beginning in February 1942, during which dozens of fist fights broke out, involving both men and women, and Dilling received three citations for contempt. The judge, Rudolph Desort, said that he feared he would suffer "a nervous breakdown" during the four-month trial.
A grand jury, convened in 1941 to investigate fascist propaganda, called several women's leaders to testify, including Dilling, Curtis and Van Hyning. Roosevelt prevailed upon Attorney General Francis Biddle to launch a prosecution, and on July 21, 1942, Dilling and 27 other anti-war activists were indicted on two counts of conspiracy to cause insubordination of the military in peacetime and wartime. The case was the main part of a government campaign against domestic subversion, which historian Leo P. Ribuffo labelled "The Brown Scare". The charges and list of defendants were extended in January 1943. The charges were again extended in January 1944. The judge, Edward C. Eicher, suffered a fatal heart attack on November 29, 1944. Federal judge James M. Proctor declared a mistrial. The charges were dismissed by federal judge Bolitha Laws on November 22, 1946, after the government had failed to present any compelling new evidence of a German conspiracy. Biddle later called the proceedings "a dreary farce".
## Post-war publications
Following the 1946 trial dismissal, Dilling continued to publish the Patriotic Research Bulletin, and in 1964, she published The Plot Against Christianity. The book "reveals the satanic hatred of Christ and Christians responsible for their mass murder, torture and slave labour in all Iron Curtain countries – all of which are ruled by Talmudists". After her death, it was retitled The Jewish Religion: Its Influence Today.
> The UN Charter and treaties are constructed to make way for the "man of sin," the Anti-Christ who will hold supreme power over life or death as he briefly heads this last Red satanic world empire.
Dilling died on April 30, 1966, in Lincoln, Nebraska.
## Media references
- A character based on Dilling named "Adelaide Tarr Gimmitch" appears in the novel It Can't Happen Here (1935) by Sinclair Lewis. The book describes a fascist takeover in the US.
- "Who then, is Mrs Dilling? Upon what strange meat has she been fed that she hath grown so great: And what inspired her, she who might have taken up knitting or petunia-growing, to adopt as her hobby the deliberate and sometimes hasty criticism of men and women she has never seen." — Harry Thornton Moore, "The Lady Patriot's Book", The New Republic, January 8, 1936
- "To see the lady in action, screaming and leaping and ripping along at breakneck speed, is to see certain symptoms of simple hysteria on the loose." — Milton S. Mayer, "Mrs. Dilling: Lady of the Red Network", American Mercury, July 1939
- "I have rarely seen hatred take complete possession of a woman's face as when Elizabeth Dilling stormed around the corridors shouting. She seemed like a woman pursued by the furies. What she did not know was that the furies were not outside her, but in her own mind." — Max Lerner describing an encounter in 1941, PM, 1943/44
## Works
According to the Library of Congress records, Dilling self-published the original printings of her books in Kenilworth, Illinois, then some 20 miles north of downtown Chicago. They were later republished by printing houses throughout the country, such as the Elizabeth Dilling Foundation in the 1960s, Arno Press in the 1970s and Sons of Liberty in the 1980s.
### Books
- The Red Network, A "Who's Who" and Handbook of Radicalism for Patriots (1934, 1935, 1936, 1977)
- "Lady Patriot" Replies (1936)
- The Roosevelt Red Record and Its Background (1936)
- Dare We Oppose Red Treason? (1937). .
- The Red Betrayal of the Churches (1938). .
- The Octopus, by Rev. Frank Woodruff Johnson [pseud.] (Oct. 1940; Sons of Liberty, 1985, 1986)
- The Plot Against Christianity (1964)
- Republished as The Jewish Religion: Its Influence Today.
## See also
- Blair Coan |
474,403 | HMS Hero (H99) | 1,163,359,048 | H-class destroyer, launched 1936 | [
"1936 ships",
"Canadian River-class destroyers",
"Canadian River-class destroyers converted from G and H-class destroyers",
"G and H-class destroyers of the Royal Navy",
"Ships built by Vickers Armstrong",
"Ships built on the River Tyne",
"Ships of the Royal Canadian Navy",
"World War II destroyers of the United Kingdom"
] | HMS Hero was an H-class destroyer built for the Royal Navy in the mid-1930s. During the Spanish Civil War of 1936–1939 the ship enforced the arms blockade imposed by Britain and France on both sides as part of the Mediterranean Fleet. During the first few months of World War II, Hero searched for German commerce raiders in the Atlantic Ocean and took part in the Second Battle of Narvik during the Norwegian Campaign of April–June 1940 before she was transferred to the Mediterranean Fleet in May where she escorted a number of convoys to Malta. The ship took part in the Battle of Cape Spada in July 1940, Operation Abstention in February 1941, and the evacuations of Greece and Crete in April–May 1941.
The ship covered an amphibious landing during the Syria–Lebanon Campaign of June 1941 and began escorting supply convoys in June to Tobruk, Libya shortly afterwards. She was damaged by German dive bombers while rescuing survivors from the minelayer Latona in October 1941 and resumed escorting convoys to Malta. Hero took part in the Second Battle of Sirte in March 1942 and in Operation Vigorous in June. She sank two German submarines whilst stationed in the Mediterranean in 1942, and was transferred back home late in the year to begin converting to an escort destroyer. The ship was transferred to the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) in 1943 and renamed HMCS Chaudière. She became part of the Mid-Ocean Escort Force in early 1944 until her transfer back to British coastal waters in May to protect the build-up for Operation Overlord. Together with other ships, she sank three more German submarines during the year. Chaudière was refitting when the war ended in May 1945 and was in poor shape. The ship was paid off in August and later sold for scrap. The process of breaking her up, however, was not completed until 1950.
## Description and construction
Hero displaced 1,350 long tons (1,370 t) at standard load and 1,883 long tons (1,913 t) at deep load. The ship had an overall length of 323 feet (98.5 m), a beam of 33 feet (10.1 m) and a draught of 12 feet 5 inches (3.8 m). She was powered by Parsons geared steam turbines, driving two shafts, which developed a total of 34,000 shaft horsepower (25,000 kW) and gave a maximum speed of 36 knots (67 km/h; 41 mph). Steam for the turbines was provided by three Admiralty 3-drum water-tube boilers. Hero carried a maximum of 470 long tons (480 t) of fuel oil that gave her a range of 5,530 nautical miles (10,240 km; 6,360 mi) at 15 knots (28 km/h; 17 mph). The ship's complement was 137 officers and men in peacetime, but this increased to 146 in wartime. In Canadian service, the crew numbered 10 officers and 171 men.
The ship mounted four 4.7-inch Mk IX guns in single mounts, designated 'A', 'B', 'X', and 'Y' from front to rear. For anti-aircraft (AA) defence, Hero had two quadruple Mark I mounts for the 0.5 inch Vickers Mk III machine gun. She was fitted with two above-water quadruple torpedo tube mounts for 21-inch torpedoes. One depth charge rail and two throwers were fitted; 20 depth charges were originally carried, but this increased to 35 shortly after the war began. By mid-1940, this had increased to 44 depth charges.
Ordered on 13 December 1934 from Parsons Marine Steam Turbine Company, Hero was subcontracted to Vickers-Armstrongs and laid down by their High Walker Yard at Newcastle-on-Tyne, England, on 28 February 1935. She was launched on 10 March 1936 and completed on 21 October 1936. Excluding government-furnished equipment like the armament, the ship cost £249,858.
### Wartime modifications
Most ships of Hero's class had the rear torpedo tubes replaced by a 12-pounder AA gun after the evacuation of Dunkirk in 1940, but it is not clear if she underwent this refurbishment as she was deployed in the Mediterranean until 1943. Other changes made before her conversion to an escort destroyer in 1943 probably included exchanging her two quadruple .50-calibre Vickers machine guns mounted between her funnels for two Oerlikon 20 mm AA guns, the addition of two Oerlikon guns to her searchlight platform and another pair on the wings of the ship's bridge. The ship's director-control tower and rangefinder above the bridge were most likely removed in exchange for a Type 271 target indication radar during the conversion, as was the replacement of 'B' gun by a Hedgehog anti-submarine spigot mortar, and the addition of a Type 286 short-range surface search radar. Two QF 6-pounder Hotchkiss guns were fitted on the wings of her bridge to deal with U-boats at short ranges. The ship also received a HF/DF radio direction finder mounted on a pole mainmast. 'Y' gun was also removed to allow her depth charge stowage to be increased. Late in the war, her Type 286 was replaced by a Type 291 radar.
## Career
Hero was assigned to the 2nd Destroyer Flotilla of the Mediterranean Fleet upon commissioning. She patrolled Spanish waters during the Spanish Civil War enforcing the policies of the Non-Intervention Committee. Hero received a refit in June–July 1939 in the UK and rejoined the Mediterranean Fleet upon its completion. The ship remained in the Mediterranean until 5 October when she was transferred to Freetown, Sierra Leone to search for German commerce raiders. Hero returned to the UK in January 1940 and received a refit at Portsmouth from 15 February to 16 March. In the meantime, the 2nd Destroyer Flotilla had been assigned to Home Fleet and the ship rejoined them when her refit was finished.
On 5 April Hero escorted the battlecruiser Renown as she covered the minelayers preparing to implement Operation Wilfred, an operation to lay mines in the Vestfjord to prevent the transport of Swedish iron ore from Narvik to Germany. The ship and her sister ship Hyperion pretended to lay a minefield off Bud, Norway on 8 April and reported its location to the Norwegians. Hero and the destroyer Foxhound streamed their TSDS minesweeping gear in advance of the battleship Warspite and her escort as they steamed up the Vestfjord to engage the remaining German destroyers at Narvik on 13 April. The ship and four other British destroyers pursued the remaining German ships into the Rombaksfjorden (the easternmost branch of the Ofotfjord), east of Narvik, where the lack of ammunition had forced the German ships to retreat. Most of the German destroyers had scuttled and beached themselves at the head of the fjord, but the scuttling charges on Z18 Hans Lüdemann had failed to detonate properly and she was boarded by a small party from Hero. They found nothing of any significance as she'd been abandoned by her crew and the destroyer put a torpedo into her to prevent any salvage.
Hero was transferred to the Mediterranean Fleet on 17 May as part of the reconstituted 2nd Destroyer Flotilla. During the Battle of Cape Spada on 19 July, the ship escorted Australian light cruiser and rescued some of the 525 survivors from the Italian cruiser Bartolomeo Colleoni together with the other escorting destroyers. Hero, together with her sister, Hostile, and the destroyers Nubian and Mohawk, were ordered to Gibraltar on 22 August where they were to join Force H. Hostile struck a mine en route on the early morning of 23 August off Cap Bon that broke her back. The explosion killed five men and wounded three others. Mohawk took off the survivors while Hero fired two torpedoes to scuttle her. The ship took part in Operation Hats in September, before refitting in Malta during November. She sortied into the North Atlantic when Convoy WS-5A reported that it had been attacked by the German cruiser Admiral Hipper on 25 December to round up the scattered ships.
On 1 January 1941, Hero was one of the ships that intercepted a Vichy French convoy off Mellila and seized all four merchant ships of the convoy. The ship took part in Operation Excess early in January 1941 and was transferred back to the Mediterranean Fleet. On 27 February, she evacuated a few surviving commandos from the island of Kastelorizo who had attacked the island in Operation Abstention. In mid-April she escorted the fast transport Breconshire and three battleships from Alexandria to Malta before going on to escort the battleships as they bombarded Tripoli on 20 April. After refueling in Alexandria on 23 April, Hero took part in Operation Demon, evacuating British and Australian troops from Greece. On 27 April Hero towed the Dutch troop ship Costa Rica, which had been damaged by a German air attack. When it was clear that the troop ship could not be saved from sinking, Hero, her sister Hereward, the destroyer Defender and cruiser Phoebe rescued all of Costa Rica's crew and all 2,600 troops. During the evacuation of Crete, Hero and the destroyer Decoy evacuated the King of Greece and his entourage on the night of 22/23 May.
Hero escorted the LSI(L) Glengyle as she conducted an amphibious landing in early June 1941 on the Lebanese coast during the opening stages of the Operation Exporter. She spent most of the rest of the year escorting convoys to Tobruk. Together with her sister Hotspur and the destroyer Encounter, the ship escorted Latona on 25 October whilst en route to Tobruk. They were attacked by Junkers Ju 87 Stuka dive bombers of I./StG 1 that hit Latona and set her afire. Hero and Encounter came alongside and rescued the crew and passengers before Latona's magazine exploded, but Hero was damaged by three near misses whilst alongside. The ship returned to Alexandria for repairs and escorted a convoy to Malta in January 1942. She took part in the 2nd Battle of Sirte on 22 March whilst escorting a convoy to Malta. Together with the Hunt-class destroyers Eridge and Hurworth on 29 May, she sank the north-east of Tobruk, at , and rescued 42 survivors.
During Operation Vigorous in June, Hero formed part of the escort for the covering force of the Mediterranean Fleet for the Malta-bound convoy. At time the ship still had not been fitted for radar. After Panzer Army Africa occupied Mersa Matruh in late June, the Admiralty ordered the submarine tenders Medway and the Greek Corinthia transferred to Haifa, but Medway was torpedoed and sunk en route despite the strong escort. Hero and the destroyer Zulu rescued 1105 survivors between them. On 17 August, the ship rescued some 1,100 survivors of the torpedoed troopship Princess Marguerite. In conjunction with four other destroyers and a Wellesley light bomber of the Royal Air Force, Hero sank 60 nautical miles (110 km; 69 mi) north-east of Port Said on 30 October. The ship was ordered back to the United Kingdom, via the Cape of Good Hope, to be converted to an escort destroyer late in the year.
### Transfer to the Royal Canadian Navy
Her conversion at Portsmouth lasted from April to November 1943 and Hero was transferred to the Royal Canadian Navy as a gift on 15 November 1943 and renamed HMCS Chaudière. After working up, the ship was assigned to the Escort Group C2 in February 1944, based in Derry. On 6 March 1944, whilst defending Convoy HX 228 west of Ireland, the escorts forced to the surface where she surrendered after a 32-hour hunt. The submarine could not be towed to port and was torpedoed by the British destroyer Icarus. The ship was reassigned to the 11th Escort Group in May 1944 in preparation for Operation Overlord. The group was tasked to protect Allied shipping in the English Channel and the Bay of Biscay and, together with the destroyers and , the ship sank in the Bay of Biscay near La Rochelle on 18 August. Two days later, the same ships sank in the Bay of Biscay west of Brest. In November, Chaudière was sent to Sydney, Nova Scotia for a refit.
The refit did not begin until late January 1945 and was still in progress when the war ended in May. She was found to be in the worst shape of any Canadian destroyer when inspected and was declared surplus to requirements on 13 June. She was paid off on 17 August 1945 and later sold for scrap to the Dominion Steel Company. Her demolition, however, was not completed until 1950.
## Poetry
The ship's completion on Tyneside in 1936 inspired the poet Michael Roberts to write a poem entitled "H.M.S. Hero". The poem of twelve lines in three stanzas, begins; "Pale grey, her guns hooded, decks clear of all impediment, / Easily, between the swart tugs, she glides in the pale October sunshine...". |
42,423,508 | The Boat Race 2014 | 1,145,351,624 | null | [
"2014 in English sport",
"2014 in rowing",
"2014 sports events in London",
"April 2014 sports events in the United Kingdom",
"The Boat Race"
] | The 160th Boat Race took place on 6 April 2014. Following a clash of oars which broke one of the Cambridge boat's rigger backstays, Oxford won the race by 11 lengths, the largest margin of victory since 1973.
In the reserve race Oxford's Isis beat Cambridge's Goldie, while Oxford won the Women's Boat Race.
## Background
The Boat Race is an annual rowing eight competition between the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge. First held in 1829, the competition is a 4.2-mile (6.8 km) race along The Championship Course on the River Thames in southwest London. The rivalry is a major point of honour between the two universities and followed throughout the United Kingdom and worldwide. Oxford went into the race as reigning champions, having beaten Cambridge by 1+1⁄2 lengths in the previous year's race. However Cambridge held the overall lead, with 81 victories to Oxford's 77 (excluding the "dead heat" of 1877).
The first Women's Boat Race took place in 1927, but did not become an annual fixture until the 1960s. Until 2014, the contest was conducted as part of the Henley Boat Races, but as of the 2015 race, it is held on the River Thames, on the same day as the men's main and reserve races. The reserve race, contested between Oxford's Isis boat and Cambridge's Goldie boat has been held since 1965. It usually takes place on the Tideway, prior to the main Boat Race.
## Crews
The Cambridge crew (known as the "Light Blues") had a 5-kilogram (11 lb) per person advantage, but Oxford (the "Dark Blues") were the pre-race favourites. The Cambridge crew was 24 years old on average, while Oxford averaged 26 years. The Oxford crew featured three British rowers, two Canadians, two New Zealanders, an American, and one member with dual Canadian-American citizenship. The Cambridge crew consisted of three British rowers, four Americans, an Australian, and a German. Three of the Oxford rowers had competed in the Olympics.
## Race description
At race time, conditions were mild with an overcast sky. A crowd of 250,000 people were in attendance. It was sponsored by BNY Mellon and thus officially titled "The BNY Mellon Boat Race". Oxford won the coin toss and elected to start from the southern bank of the Thames. In the first five minutes of the race, the lead changed hands three times. First Oxford, then Cambridge drifted towards the centre of the river and were warned by the umpire. Oxford turned away, but before Cambridge had time to do so, the two boats bumped. The clash caused a rowing error by Cambridge's Luke Juckett, as he was bucked from his seat and nearly thrown overboard. He did not recover until five strokes later. Oxford took advantage, rowing out to a significant lead with two-thirds of the course to go, and steadily increased the gap. Cambridge were unable to respond and in the end Oxford won by 11 lengths, the largest margin of victory since 1973.
Oxford finished with a time of 18 minutes, 36 seconds; this was 32 seconds faster than Cambridge. It was their fifth victory in the last seven years, and tenth in the last fifteen. Stroke Constantine Louloudis was a member of a victorious Oxford crew for the third time (2011, 2013 and 2014 – he competed in the Olympics instead in 2012). Cambridge now lead the overall series 81–78. At the finish, the Oxford crew threw their cox, Laurence Harvey, into the water in celebration. After the race, Cambridge appealed the result but umpire Richard Phelps ruled that the bump occurred on neutral water and that neither crew should be penalised. Oxford's Sam O’Connor called it "very minor, one of the smallest clashes I’ve ever had". Juckett said the clash broke his rigger and made it "really hard to keep rowing", but added that "clashing is part of the race."
In the reserve race, Oxford's Isis beat Cambridge's Goldie. Earlier, Oxford also won the women's race.
## Reaction
O'Connor said he was confident Oxford would have won even without the clash. Oxford Boat Club president Malcolm Howard remarked "You cannot help but feel for the two-seat of Cambridge, it’s tough." Cambridge Boat Club president Steve Dudek called it "a frustrating way to lose ... I would never wish that on anyone." BBC commentator Tom James remarked it was "great for British rowing" that Louloudis won the race for the third time.
An estimated 130 million people worldwide watched the event on television. |
984,233 | Air (video game) | 1,171,162,335 | Japanese adult visual novel | [
"2000 video games",
"2004 manga",
"2005 anime television series debuts",
"ADV Films",
"Air (video game)",
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"Funimation",
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"Kyoto Animation",
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"Nintendo Switch games",
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"Romance video games",
"School life in anime and manga",
"Single-player video games",
"Video games developed in Japan",
"Video games scored by Jun Maeda",
"Video games scored by Magome Togoshi",
"Visual novels",
"Windows games"
] | Air is a Japanese visual novel developed by Key, a brand of Visual Arts. It was released on September 8, 2000 for Windows as an adult game. Key later released versions of Air without the erotic content, and the game was ported to the Dreamcast, PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable, PlayStation Vita and Nintendo Switch. The story follows the life of Yukito Kunisaki, a traveling showman searching for the "girl in the sky". He arrives in a quiet, seaside town where he meets three girls, one of whom is the key to the end of his journey.
The gameplay in Air follows a branching plot line which offers pre-determined scenarios with courses of interaction, and focuses on the appeal of the three female main characters by the player character. The game is divided into three segments—Dream, Summer, and Air—which serve as different phases in the overall story. The title of the game reflects the prominent themes of the air, skies, and use of wings throughout gameplay. The game ranked as the best-selling PC game sold in Japan for the time of its release, and charted in the national top 50 several more times afterwards. Air has sold over 300,000 units across several platforms.
Following the game's release, Air made several transitions into other media. A manga by Yukimaru Katsura was serialized in Kadokawa Shoten's Comptiq, and later published into two volumes. Comic anthologies and art books were also published, as were audio dramas and several albums of music. Kyoto Animation produced a 13-episode anime television series and a two-episode anime mini-series in 2005, and Toei Animation produced an anime film in 2005. The anime adaptations are licensed by Funimation who released them in North America.
## Gameplay
Air is a romance visual novel in which the player assumes the role of three characters. Much of its gameplay is spent on reading the story's narrative and dialogue. Air follows a branching plot line with multiple endings, and depending on the decisions that the player makes during the game, the plot will progress in a specific direction. With the consumer ports, if an undesired choice was selected, there would be an option to rewind the story to correct the mistake. However, if the player reaches a bad end to a storyline, the player does not have this option and must reload the game at the last saved point.
There are five main plot lines that the player will have the chance to experience, three which are initially available and two more which can later become available. Throughout gameplay, the player is given multiple options to choose from, and text progression pauses at these points until a choice is made. To view all plot lines in their entirety, the player will have to replay the game multiple times and choose different choices to further the plot to an alternate direction.
When first playing the game, the player assumes the role of Yukito Kunisaki and the scenarios for the three heroines are available in what is called the Dream story arc. After the plot lines for these three heroines have been completed, an additional scenario called Summer is made available where the player assumes the role of Ryūya. Summer is a linear novel arc in which no choices are presented to the player. Upon the completion of the Summer route, another scenario called Air is made available, which serves as the true ending to the story. In Air, the player assumes the role of a crow named Sora. In the adult versions of the game, there are scenes with sexual CGs depicting Yukito and a given heroine having sex. Later, Key released versions of Air without the erotic content.
## Plot
### Setting and themes
There are important locations featured in Air that are based on places in the city Kami in Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan. Air is set in the Kasumi district of Kami; during the course of the series' creation, Kasumi was an individual town that has since merged with two others to form the city of Kami. Many of the locales in Air, such as the seawall, the train station, the shrine, and the school are based on real places. As Air is set in the middle of summer, the season offers bright, sunny skies for the town during the day. In the manga adaptation, the town is described as a "quiet town with few people...with nothing but beaches and countryside." Scenario assistant Yūichi Suzumoto has commented that his impression of Air is similar to that of a folk song due to the rural setting and heartwarming story progression.
As indicated by the title, air, skies and wings are important themes: Yukito is searching for the "girl in the sky", and Misuzu believes that her other self is flying in the sky above her. Other characters show a similar relationship to the sky, such as Minagi who is a member of the astronomy club, and Michiru who has a fondness for bubbles that float in the air. Kano wants wings to fly, and Kanna already has them. Misuzu names a crow she finds Sora (空)—Japanese for "sky". Another major theme is the maternal bond, as the four heroines' stories, as well as Yukito's, revolve around their mothers, either biological or adoptive. Main scenario writer Jun Maeda commented that he prefers to include mothers in games if given the choice between only including a mother or a father, as is what happened with Air, though he backs this up by noting that in bishōjo games, women are the main focus anyway. Complicated relationships involving family members and friends play a key part throughout the story. One of the sub-themes in the story is magic. Uraha, Yukito's mother, and Yukito himself have the ability to use magic, though Yukito is the least skilled among them. Kano was told by her sister that when she grows up and takes off her yellow ribbon, she will gain the power to do magic. However, the problems of parents leaving their offspring and poverty are displayed realistically.
### Characters
The player assumes the role of Yukito Kunisaki, the protagonist of Air. He lives a poor life going from town to town with little money, trying to make a living off his show with a puppet. As a young adult, Yukito sometimes acts childishly if provoked. Yukito tends to be helpful to those around him while trying to earn any money at the same time, and does his best to look after Misuzu in the Dream arc. Misuzu Kamio, the main heroine of Air, makes Yukito quite mistrustful at first by being too friendly, but eventually earns his affection. She is a cheerful but introverted, slightly clumsy and simplistic high school girl, and often utters the pseudo-dinosauric phrase gao when she feels troubled, a habit she retained from childhood. Misuzu has a great love of dinosaurs, finding the story of their glory and extinction "romantic". As a child, her fascination with dinosaurs stemmed from thinking chicks would grow into them; her adoptive mother Haruko Kamio thinks it is ridiculous.
The second of the three heroines Yukito meets after Misuzu is Kano Kirishima, a girl attending the same school as Misuzu. She is usually energetic, playful, and tells jokes by saying nonsensical things. Kano is friends with a strange stray dog named Potato that follows her around and is able to communicate in his strange manner of speech. Kano still believes in things she was told by her older sister Hijiri as a child as a way of coping with her past. The third and final heroine Yukito meets is a girl in Misuzu's class at school named Minagi Tohno, a top student in the school who is introverted as well. Until she met Yukito, her only friend was Michiru, with whom she often blows bubbles at the abandoned train station in town.
### Story
Air's story begins on Monday, July 17, 2000, when traveling street performer Yukito Kunisaki arrives at a small seaside town. As a young adult, he has been traveling around Japan in continuation of his late mother's search for the "girl in the sky" who, according to a family legend, has been cursed to spend eternity all alone. Yukito's sole way of earning money is by performing a puppet show by moving a doll that has been passed down in his family with magic, but he fails to gain anyone's attention by doing so in this town. The next day, he meets Misuzu Kamio—a sincere yet clumsy high school girl who is eager to become friends with him. He accepts her offer to eat lunch at her home, and Misuzu's aunt and foster mother Haruko Kamio is later persuaded to let him stay for the time being. A few days later, Yukito meets two other girls who go to Misuzu's school—Kano Kirishima and Minagi Tohno—who, like Misuzu, have strange personalities connected with mysterious pasts. As Yukito grows closer to Misuzu, he realizes from the dreams she has been telling him about that she is in fact the girl in the sky. Yukito recalls his mother telling him that after the dreams, the girl in the sky would start to first physically weaken, followed by feeling pain from an unknown source, then forgetting about those closest to her, and finally be doomed to die alone. Yukito realizes that his mother had once had her own encounter with the girl in the sky, but she had been unable to save her from her fate. Ultimately, Yukito decides to stay with Misuzu, regretting that he did not play with her more when they first met. Yukito uses all of the accumulated wishes that his ancestors have imputed into the doll to grant his own wish to stay by Misuzu's side, and as a result, Yukito disappears.
In the summer 1,000 years prior during the Heian period, Kanna is one of the last winged beings who has been held prisoner at a Shinto shrine for much of her life. Kanna is set to be executed following a political change in the Imperial Court, but she escapes with the help of Ryūya, a member of her samurai guard, and her loyal retainer Uraha. They decide to go in search of Kanna's mother Yaobikuni, who according to rumor is imprisoned somewhere south of Kanna's shrine. Although they eventually find Yaobikuni and free her, she is killed by a group of archers soon after. In an attempt to save Ryūya and Uraha, Kanna sacrifices herself, leaving herself cursed by Buddhist monks to relive painful memories in the sky for eternity. This eventually weakens but does not go away entirely, allowing Kanna to continuously reincarnate as a human girl, with Misuzu being one such reincarnation.
Yukito's final wish to stay with Misuzu is granted in the form of his memories inhabiting a young crow Misuzu finds on July 16, 2000 and names Sora. The events of the previous timeline with Yukito play out again, but after Yukito disappears after the doll grants his wish, Yukito's memories within Sora surface, allowing him to give Misuzu the necessary encouragement to be strong until the end. Haruko tries to show Misuzu more affection than she has over the past ten years they have been living together, but by this point, Misuzu's condition continues to worsen, eventually mentally reverting to how she was when she and Haruko first met. Haruko continues to care for Misuzu, and Misuzu shows that she truly cares for Haruko by choosing to stay with her instead of leaving with her father. Haruko and Misuzu spend the next three days together as mother and daughter, culminating in Misuzu's death. As a result of Misuzu dying happily with her family, it is implied that she takes her happy memories back to Kanna, effectively breaking the curse. Metaphysically, Yukito's and Misuzu's present incarnations are shown to be a young boy and girl playing on the beach on July 17, 2000 as they are watched by Misuzu with Yukito asleep next to her.
## Development
After the release of Key's debut game Kanon (1999), video game director and Key co-founder Naoki Hisaya resigned from Key. Hisaya had led the planning of Kanon and was its main scenario writer in conjunction with fellow Key co-founder Jun Maeda. Hisaya's resignation resulted in Maeda leading the planning for Key's next work, with Maeda wanting to produce something different from not only Kanon, but also Moon (1997) and One: Kagayaku Kisetsu e (1998) that Maeda and other founding members of Key worked on previously as part of the brand Tactics under video game publisher Nexton. Maeda put pressure on himself to make something structurally different from Kanon, but he also took it upon himself following Hisaya's resignation to continue to produce "crying games" for Key's fan base. As with Kanon, Maeda wanted to write a moving story that would leave a strong impression on the player, but Air was not intentionally written to be soothing to the player despite this being a common impression by fans in October 2000. The concept for Air was one of several types of stories Maeda had wanted to write, and he chose to go with what would later become Air after careful consideration, along with taking into account the responses from people who had played Kanon.
According to writer and critic Shūichirō Sarashina, a common aspect of bishōjo games at the time was to treat the individual heroine routes equally, producing a coherent narrative as a result of a sum of its parts, and he notes that Kanon also followed this pattern. Maeda focused on straying from this pattern because he wanted players to experience the entire story as a whole, but he still wanted its content to be enjoyable as a bishōjo game so that as many people as possible would be satisfied by it. In doing so, Maeda kept the basic structure of having multiple heroine routes, but he realized that he could not give each character the same level of focus. When developing the plot, the basic structure of having multiple points of view and an overarching storyline had already been solidified, which according to Maeda was not something he was aware of having been done in visual novels at the time. Fellow scenario writer Yūichi Suzumoto was apprehensive about this structure when he first heard about the plot from Maeda, but Air executive producer and Visual Arts president Takahiro Baba had already given his approval for the project by then. In addition to Maeda and Suzumoto, Takashi Ishikawa is also listed as one of the main scenario writers. Scenario assistance was provided by Kai, Tōya Okano and Tomotaka Fujii.
In terms of gameplay, Air was designed to emphasize its story compared to its adventure game elements, with the development team opting to include very few choices to diverge the plot, which Maeda later regretted. According to Suzumoto, some players complained that Air did not feel like a game as a result, and that some found it boring because of a lack of these choices. Three heroine routes were developed to show a range of different possibilities the player character Yukito Kunisaki could take in parallel universes. In doing so, Maeda wanted to show that small variations can diverge Yukito's ultimate fate. In the planning stage, Maeda did not specifically include adult content due at least in part to his self-described inability to write detailed sex scenes. Maeda believed that people would have bought the game even without adult content, but he noted that this would have been impossible in the past. Suzumoto pointed out how most of the sex scenes in Kanon could be avoided, and although this is similar to how Air is structured, Suzumoto was one of the writers who made it so that at least two sex scenes in Air would be unavoidable.
Itaru Hinoue is the chief artist and character designer for Air, continuing from her position with Kanon. Further computer graphics were split between three artists—Miracle Mikipon, Na-Ga, and Shinory—and background art was provided by Din and Torino. The game's soundtrack was composed by Maeda, Shinji Orito and Magome Togoshi, who had started working with Key since before Kanon's release.
### Release history
Air was released as an adult game on September 8, 2000, as a limited edition, playable on a Windows PC as a 2-disc CD-ROM set. The limited edition came bundled with the remix album Ornithopter remixing background music tracks featured in the visual novel. The regular edition was released on July 27, 2001. Key released on all ages version on July 27, 2001, for Windows. An updated adult version called the Air Standard Edition was released on April 8, 2005, with added support for Windows 2000/XP as a DVD-ROM. An updated all ages version of Air compatible for Windows Vista PCs was released by Key on July 31, 2009, in a box set containing five other Key visual novels called Key 10th Memorial Box. Another updated all ages version compatible for Windows 7 PCs called Air Memorial Edition was released on May 28, 2010.
The first consumer console port of the game was released for the Dreamcast (DC) on September 20, 2001, by NEC Interchannel. A PlayStation 2 (PS2) version was released on August 8, 2002, also by NEC Interchannel. The PS2 version was re-released as a "Best" version on September 1, 2005. The PS2 version was bundled in a "Key 3-Part Work Premium Box" package together with the PS2 versions of Kanon and Clannad released on July 30, 2009. To compensate for the lack of erotic content in the consumer ports, extra scenes were added. A version playable on SoftBank 3G mobile phones was released by Prototype through VisualArt's Motto on May 1, 2006. Prototype later released a VGA edition produced by NTT DoCoMo playable on FOMA phones on February 5, 2008. The version for the FOMA phones was split into two separate files: the Dream story arc comprised the first file, and the remaining Summer and Air arcs comprised the second file.
A version of the Dream story arc playable on Android devices was released on July 27, 2012. A version containing the Summer and Air arcs for Android devices was released on August 15, 2012. A full version Air on Android devices was released on October 24, 2012, in two editions: one without voice acting, and one with voice acting, including Yukito. Two versions were released on May 2, 2013: an adult version for Android devices and an all ages version playable on iOS devices. A PlayStation Portable (PSP) version of the game was released in Japan on November 22, 2007, by Prototype. A downloadable version of the PSP release via the PlayStation Store was released by Prototype on September 2, 2010. A PlayStation Vita (PSV) version was released by Prototype on September 8, 2016. A Nintendo Switch version was released in Japan on September 9, 2021. Both the PSV and Switch versions contained a visual novel version of Yūichi Suzumoto's short story "Hatsuzora no Shō" (初空の章, New Year's Morning Sky Chapter) as a prequel to the Summer story arc about how Kanna and Uraha met. In the original release, there was no voice acting for the characters, though this was later changed for the DC version, which except for Yukito included full voice acting, and the PS2, PSP, PSV and Switch versions, which had full voice acting.
## Adaptations
### Print
A short story, titled "Hatsuzora no Shō" (初空の章, New Year's Morning Sky Chapter) and written by Yūichi Suzumoto, was published in the Kanowo appendix to Kadokawa Corporation's Comptiq magazine on December 1, 2000. Jive published two volumes of an anthology titled Air Anthology Novel between September 1 and December 1, 2004.
An Air manga was serialized in the Japanese computer game magazine Comptiq between August 10, 2004, and February 10, 2006. The individual chapters were later collected into two separate volumes published by Kadokawa Shoten. The story was adapted from the visual novel version that preceded it, and was illustrated by Japanese artist Yukimaru Katsura. Between the two volumes, there are 15 main chapters (nine in volume one and six in volume two), and two bonus chapters included at the end of each volume. The manga version goes through the Dream and Air arcs in detail while the Summer arc is only touched upon briefly throughout the manga. The main focus is on Misuzu's story with Kano and Minagi serving as minor characters in comparison. However, Minagi's story is explained in the bonus installment at the end of volume two.
There are also five sets of manga anthologies produced by different companies and drawn by a multitude of different artists. The first volume of the earliest anthology series, released by Ichijinsha under the title Air Comic Anthology, was released on January 25, 2001, under their DNA Media Comics label. Volumes for this series continued to be released until December 25, 2001, with the seventh volume. The second anthology, Air Anthology Comic, was released in a single volume by Softgarage on December 20, 2002. On April 17, 2004, Ohzora released an anthology composed of works based on both Kanon and Air titled Haru Urara: Kanon & Air. Ohzora also released three other anthologies under the title Air, the last of which came out on March 24, 2005. The last manga anthology was released as a single volume on April 2, 2005, by Jive titled Comic Anthology Air: Kimi no Iru Basho. Each of the anthology series are written and drawn by an average of 20 people per volume.
### Drama CDs
There were nine drama CDs released based on Air released by Lantis. The first three focused solely on each of the main heroines separately per CD where the cover of the album would depict which of the girls to be presented. These three albums were released on August 24, 2005. The next set of three was done the same way and released on October 21, 2005. The last three were released in one month increments after the second batch of three drama CDs went on sale. The seventh CD focused on the events of the Summer arc in the story while the last two were based on the Air arc. At least the last CD released on January 25, 2006, contained original stories in addition to the story from the visual novel.
### Anime series
On November 17, 2004, a teaser DVD named "Air prelude" was produced containing interviews with the anime's cast, clean opening and ending theme video sequences, and promotional footage of the anime itself; it was a limited edition DVD, with only 20,000 copies produced. The anime television series is produced by Kyoto Animation, directed by Tatsuya Ishihara, written by Fumihiko Shimo, and features character design by Tomoe Aratani who based the designs on Itaru Hinoue's original concept. Thirteen episodes were produced by Kyoto Animation: 12 regular episodes, and a final recap episode which summarizes Misuzu's story arc. The anime also follows the game by splitting the series into three parts; Dream (episodes one through seven), Summer (episodes eight and nine), and Air (episodes 10 through 12), with the recap episode (episode 13) following. The episodes aired between January 6 and March 31, 2005, on the BS-i Japanese television network. The theme songs from the Air visual novel are used for the anime's opening theme, ending theme and soundtrack. After the conclusion of the anime series, a mini-series which added to the Summer arc of the story called Air in Summer aired on August 28 and September 4, 2005, a week later on BS-i. Air in Summer consisted of two episodes and was produced by the same staff as the anime series.
A DVD released on March 31, 2005, called "Air Memories" contained promotional commercials for the series, staff commentaries, and clean ending sequences from the 12th and 13th episodes, lasting 92 minutes. The episodes were released to Region 2 DVD between April 6 and September 7, 2005, by Pony Canyon in limited and regular editions containing two episodes per volume. The DVD for Air in Summer was later released on October 5, 2005, in Japan. Additionally, Air became one of the first anime series to be released in Blu-ray Disc format on December 22, 2006. A new version of the Blu-ray Disc box set was released on November 28, 2008, in Japan.
On April 27, 2007, ADV Films co-founder and executive Matt Greenfield announced the acquisition of both the anime series and the film during a panel at the anime convention Anime Matsuri; it paid \$145,000 for the TV series. The 12 main episodes and two Air in Summer episodes were licensed for North American distribution by ADV Films. The episodes were released on four DVD compilations between August 14 and November 27, 2007. The second DVD volume was sold in two editions, with the difference between the two being a series box all four DVDs could fit inside. In July 2008, the license for the anime series and film was transferred to Funimation, which is now branded as Crunchyroll as of 2022, who continued to produce them in North America in English. Funimation released a three-disc series box set of the Air anime on April 21, 2009, which did not include the recap episode. MVM Entertainment announced a UK DVD release of Air with Air in Summer to be released on April 4, 2022.
### Film
An Air animated film directed by Osamu Dezaki premiered in Japanese theaters on February 5, 2005. The film, animated by Toei Animation, is a reinterpretation of the original Air storyline which centers on the story arc of the female lead Misuzu Kamio. Yukito Kunisaki arrives in the town of Kami for a chance to earn money at the summer festival and meets Misuzu on his first day in town. They soon become friends and a story one thousand years old begins to unfold. The film was later sold on DVD and released in three editions: the Collector's Edition, the Special Edition, and the Regular Edition on August 5, 2005. The Air film was originally released on DVD by ADV Films in North America on December 11, 2007. Funimation continued the release of the film as of July 2008 when the license was transferred from ADV to Funimation; Funimation re-released the film on April 21, 2009.
## Music
The visual novel has three main theme songs: the opening theme "Tori no Uta" (鳥の詩, Bird's Poem), the ending theme "Farewell song", and "Aozora" (青空, Blue Skies) as an insert song. Each song is sung by Lia of I've Sound and the lyrics were written by Jun Maeda. Five of the characters have leitmotifs, or background music theme songs—the three heroines, Kanna, and Michiru. Misuzu's theme is "Natsukage" (夏影, Summer Lights); Kano's theme is "Mizutamari" (水たまり, Puddle); Minagi's theme is "Niji" (虹, Rainbows); Kanna's theme is "Tsukiwarawa" (月童, Moon Child); lastly, Michiru's theme is "Tentōmushi" (てんとう虫, Ladybug). Of the six music tracks not used in the visual novel, but of which were included on the game's original soundtrack, the first two were failed attempts at creating a theme for Minagi.
The first album, Ornithopter, came bundled with the original release of Air in September 2000. The next album was released in August 2001 as a maxi single titled "Natsukage / Nostalgia" containing a vocal version of "Natsukage", and a B-side track; both songs were sung by Lia and the rest of the single was produced by Jun Maeda. The game's original soundtrack was released in September 2002 containing two discs with 31 different tracks along with remix and instrumental versions of the opening and ending themes. A piano arrange album was released in December 2003 called Re-feel which contained five tracks from Air and five from Kanon. An EP containing original versions of the three theme songs and remixed versions of the opening and ending themes was released in May 2006 called Air Analog Collector's Edition: Tori no Uta / Farewell song. Each of the albums released for the visual novel version were released on Key's record label Key Sounds Label. The film's original soundtrack was released in March 2005 by Frontier Works. A bonus symphony CD titled Shinwa e no Izanai was released with the special edition Air film DVD on August 5, 2005. Overall, Air's music has been well received, and the original soundtrack for the visual novel has met with high sales. The opening theme was involved in copyright infringement in 2005.
## Reception and sales
According to a national ranking of how well bishōjo games sold nationally in Japan, the original Air PC release premiered at number one in the rankings. The game ranked twice at 42 in November and December 2000, at 20 in January 2001, and twice more at 42 through February 2001. The original release appeared on the charts twice more: the first in late September to early October 2001 at 26, and again in the last two weeks of May 2002, ranking in at 43. The regular edition of the Air PC release premiered at number 13, ranked in at number 41 in the following ranking, and 42 in the ranking after that. The PC all ages version premiered at number seven in the rankings and had a final ranking at 30 in the next ranking. The Air Standard Edition premiered at number one in the rankings. The Air Standard Edition ranked in twice more, at 34 and at 28 in the next two rankings. Air was the highest selling game of 2000 selling 102,080 units, which was about 25,000 more units than the second highest game, Inagawa de Ikō!. The Dreamcast version sold 42,445 units in its first week, and was the fourth highest selling console game in Japan that week. The video game magazine Famitsu scored this version a 30 out of 40, and it ultimately sold 50,406 units to rank as the 53rd highest selling Japanese Dreamcast game ever, as of 2007. NTT Publishing reported that over 300,000 units of Air have been sold.
Air was described as a game that stands out, much like Key's first title Kanon, due to an intricate plot that keeps the player interested, and has a good replay value as well. In an interview of Jun Maeda and Yūichi Suzumoto, they were both surprised to find out that the Japanese public (in March 2001) felt Air to be a soothing game, but Maeda and Suzumoto made it clear that this impression is completely at odds with their impression of the game, and they remark that there was not one person who worked on Air who thought that. Characters from Air have appeared in dōjin works not directly based on the Air series. Games such as Eternal Fighter Zero -Blue Sky Edition- by Twilight Frontier where most of the playable characters either came from Air or from the earlier Key games Kanon or One. In the October 2007 issue of Dengeki G's Magazine, poll results for the 50 best bishōjo games were released. Out of 249 titles, Air ranked eighth with 43 votes. |
67,760,933 | 11 West 54th Street | 1,154,799,065 | Building in Manhattan, New York | [
"1898 establishments in New York City",
"Commercial buildings completed in 1898",
"Commercial buildings in Manhattan",
"Georgian Revival architecture in New York City",
"Historic district contributing properties in Manhattan",
"McKim, Mead & White buildings",
"Midtown Manhattan",
"New York City Designated Landmarks in Manhattan",
"Residential buildings completed in 1898"
] | 11 West 54th Street (also 9 West 54th Street and the James J. Goodwin Residence) is a commercial building in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. It is along 54th Street's northern sidewalk between Fifth Avenue and Sixth Avenue. The four-and-a-half-story building was designed by McKim, Mead & White in the Georgian Revival style and was constructed between 1896 and 1898 as a private residence. It is one of five consecutive townhouses erected along the same city block during the 1890s, the others being 5, 7, 13 and 15 West 54th Street.
The building is designed as a double house, with a larger unit at 11 West 54th Street to the west, as well as a smaller unit at 9 West 54th Street to the east. The facade is made of rusticated blocks of limestone on the first story, as well as Flemish bond brick on the upper stories. Businessman James Junius Goodwin and his wife Josephine lived at the main unit at number 11 with his family and rented number 9.
The house initially served as the second residence for James Goodwin, who lived primarily in Connecticut. James Goodwin died in 1915, and Josephine continued to live in the house until 1939, after which it was used briefly by the Inter-America House and the Museum of Modern Art The house was sold to Parsonage Point Realty Company in 1944 and leased to the Rhodes Preparatory School, which bought the building in 1949. The house was then sold in 1979 to the United States Trust Company, which renovated the structure. The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the house as an official landmark in 1981, and it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1990 as part of the 5–15 West 54th Street Residences historic district.
## Site
11 West 54th Street is in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. It is along the northern sidewalk of 54th Street between Fifth Avenue and Sixth Avenue, with an alternate address of 9 West 54th Street. The land lot is rectangular and covers 5,000 square feet (460 m<sup>2</sup>), with a frontage of 50 feet (15 m) on 54th Street and a depth of 100.42 feet (30.61 m). The building is the center of five consecutive townhouses erected along the same city block, with 5 West 54th Street and 7 West 54th Street to its east, as well as 13 and 15 West 54th Street to its west. The five townhouses are adjoined by the Rockefeller Apartments to the west, The Peninsula New York and the St. Regis New York hotels to the northeast, the University Club of New York and 689 Fifth Avenue to the east, the William H. Moore House and Saint Thomas Church to the southeast, and the Museum of Modern Art to the south.
Fifth Avenue between 42nd Street and Central Park South (59th Street) was relatively undeveloped through the late 19th century. The surrounding area was once part of the common lands of the city of New York. The Commissioners' Plan of 1811 established Manhattan's street grid with lots measuring 100 feet (30 m) deep and 25 feet (7.6 m) wide. Upscale residences were constructed around Fifth Avenue following the American Civil War. The two-block stretch of West and East 54th Street from Madison Avenue to Sixth Avenue, bisected by Fifth Avenue, was developed with the houses of prominent figures such as William Henry Moore, John R. Platt, and John D. Rockefeller Sr. The sites of the five houses at 5–15 West 54th Street, along with the University Club, were formerly occupied by St. Luke's Hospital, which moved out during 1896.
## Architecture
The houses at 5–15 West 54th Street, all developed in the late 1890s for wealthy clients, were designed as a cohesive grouping, unlike other residences in the neighborhood. According to The New York Times, the houses form the sole remaining "real strip of mansions" in Midtown Manhattan. The houses at 5, 7, 9–11, and 13 and 15 West 54th Street all had different architects. The double unit at 9 and 11 West 54th Street was designed by McKim, Mead & White in the Georgian Revival style. 11 West 54th Street was partly modeled on the third Harrison Gray Otis House in Boston. The ornamental steelwork was manufactured by the Prince & Kinkel Iron Works. Russell Sturgis, writing for Architectural Record in 1900, described the house as two structures with their "facades forced into one". Sturgis considered the facade of number 9 as being "subordinate" to number 11, even though the details of both units otherwise harmonized with each other.
### Facade
The building is four and a half stories tall and five bays wide. The basement and first floor are clad with rusticated blocks of limestone, while the three upper floors are clad with brick. The building was designed with number 11 as the main residence, taking up the westernmost three bays, and number 9 as a secondary residence, taking up the easternmost two bays. Nevertheless, the entire facade was designed to be largely symmetrical. Along the street facade, the house is set behind an iron railing and a depressed areaway.
From the ground level, a low stoop with four steps leads to the entrance to number 11, at the center of the facade. In front of the main entrance is a portico supported by two fluted columns designed in the Ionic style. The columns are topped by Scamozzi-style capitals, which support a carved panel with a cartouche at its center. A cornice with modillions runs above the portico. Under the portico is a pair of wood-and-glass doors inside a stone doorway frame topped by a keystone. The rightmost bay also has an entrance, which leads to number 9 and is simpler in design than the main entrance. The rightmost entrance lacks a portico and has fluted pilasters rather than a simple doorway frame, but it contains similar modillioned cornice and double wood-and-glass doors to the main entrance. The other three ground-story bays consist of recessed six-over-six windows with stone voussoirs and paneled keystones. Above the first floor is a band course with fret designs.
The second story has five windows with six-over-nine panes. Above each second-story window is a lintel and modillioned stone cornice supported by foliated brackets. In front of each second-story window is a balcony with an iron railing. The center window (corresponding to the portico) and the rightmost window (corresponding to the secondary entrance) have larger balconies than the three other bays. These balconies are designed as oblong rhombuses with rosettes in their centers. The third and fourth floors each have five windows with six-over-six panes, above which are splayed stone lintels. On the third floor, the center window has a balcony similar to those on the second floor, while the other windows have simple limestone sills. Below the fourth floor is a stone string course that doubles as the sill for the fourth-story windows. Above the fourth floor is a modillioned cornice, above which is a stone balustrade. The attic has a slate mansard roof with five dormer windows that contain hip roofs. The mansard roof also has three brick chimneys.
### Interior
The building contains about 22,500 square feet (2,090 m<sup>2</sup>) spread across two units. According to a real estate listing, the house had 11 master bedrooms, 11 staff bedrooms, 12 fireplaces, skylighted staircases, and a wood-paneled entrance foyer. The stairs had carved acorns, the entrance and stair landings had decorative pillars, and the ceiling had plaster moldings. When the house was built, number 9 was designed in what was then considered a Federal Revival or Classical Revival design. Number 9 had a variety of furniture, ranging from 19th century designs to contemporary Herter Brothers furniture, as well as an Oriental rug and potted plants.
Originally, the first floor of number 9 had the reception hall in the front and a dining room in the rear. The first floor of number 11 had a vestibule and a study in the front, a stair hall in the center, and a kitchen and servants' dining room in the rear. The second floor of number 9 had a living room in the front and a library in the rear, while the second floor of number 11 had a living room in the front, a hall and reception room in the center, and an octagonal dining room in the rear. Number 11 had a walk-in safe for silver next to the dining room, with a wood-paneled closet door concealing the steel entrance into the safe. Number 11's second floor had a high ceiling and a fireplace, as well as large mirrors and fireplace mantels. In both units, the second floor's large windows were designed to face MoMA's rear garden. In both residential units, the third floor contained numerous bedrooms.
Both units were internally connected on the second floor in 1943. After an early 1980s renovation, the reception hall was clad in wood paneling while the second floor dining room was restored. The United States Trust Company, the occupant at the time of the 1980s renovation, reproduced many of the original decorations and added a rear annex. After the US Trust renovation, the house's interior had marble fireplace mantels, gilded bronze lights, and walls with red paper or green silk damask. At the rear of the house, a tellers' station was installed in a former servants' area. A 17-foot-deep (5.2 m) bank vault with a security booth and bulletproof windows was constructed.
## History
### Residence
In 1896, with the relocation of St. Luke's Hospital from Midtown to Morningside Heights, Manhattan, the hospital's former site on the northern side of 54th Street west of Fifth Avenue became available for development. The University Club, whose construction commenced the same year, was the first structure to be built on the former hospital plot. In February 1896, Josephine Goodwin, wife of James Junius Goodwin, acquired a plot on 54th Street about 225 feet (69 m) west of Fifth Avenue. James J. Goodwin was a prominent Connecticut businessman and railroad director who had a business partnership with his cousin, financier J. P. Morgan. McKim, Mead & White was commissioned to design a house on the site. The architects filed plans for the house with the New York City Department of Buildings in July 1896, with the house projected to cost \$90,000, although the building was classified in blueprints as being a pair of residences. The Goodwin house was the first of the five structures at 5–15 West 54th Street to be developed.
The house was completed in 1898. Initially, James and Josephine Goodwin occupied the main unit at number 11 and leased out the secondary unit at number 9. The Goodwins maintained a house in Hartford, Connecticut, where James spent most of his time. James was also a member of several clubs in New York, including the Union Club, Century Association, and Metropolitan Club. James died in 1915 and left all of his estate to Josephine and their three sons. After James's death, Josephine continued to live at 11 West 54th Street. The surrounding neighborhood rapidly became a commercial zone after World War I, and many neighboring townhouses were converted to commercial use, but the Goodwin family retained the house. Their son Walter lived at the house briefly from 1921 to 1922. The Goodwin residence was used for events as well. In 1924, the dean of Lincoln Cathedral in England hosted a lecture to raise money to repair the damaged church, and in 1932, the house hosted a lecture on the importance of Christian missionary work in Japan.
Number 9 was leased to a variety of residents. One of the families that occupied the house was Mr. and Mrs. Elijah P. Smith. By 1915, it was the home of William S. Bryant, who oversaw the execution of Charles Becker, a policeman found guilty of murdering gambler Herman Rosenthal. In 1921, Josephine Goodwin leased the house to Francis de Ruyter Wissman and his wife. Bulletins of New York City social life indicated that the Wissmans were active in social life and that they were still residents of 9 West 54th Street in 1930. Josephine Goodwin died in 1939 and left most of the estate to her three sons. The windows had been boarded up by 1940.
### Later use
The house was acquired in 1941 by the Inter-America House, a Latin American cultural organization. The organization used the house for events such as a reception for the Mexican consul general, an event honoring Latin American Red Cross workers, and an event honoring Latin American women on a goodwill tour of the United States. In November 1943, MoMA opened a photography annex on the first floor of number 9 and the second floor of both units. A hole was cut in the second-floor wall to connect the units. At the time, Philip Goodwin was still recorded as the owner. The next year, the Parsonage Point Realty Company bought the house. The Rhodes Preparatory School leased both units for ten years in November 1944 and moved into the house. The school outright purchased the building in 1949. Many of the original decorative details were removed by the school.
The Rhodes School sold the house in 1979 to the United States Trust Company, a bank, for use as its own headquarters. The bank had considered moving its headquarters into several other structures, including buildings on wide avenues as well as new structures, before deciding upon the Goodwin mansion for its architecture. The bank hired Haines Lundberg Waehler to restore 9–11 West 54th Street largely to its original design. US Trust spent \$5 million to ensure as much of the original detail as possible would be preserved or adapted to the bank's use. Materials were refurbished or replaced largely to the original specifications, and the bank invited James Goodwin's grandson Sage Goodwin to ask him about his childhood recollections of the house's design. Bank consultant David G. De Long said that original drawings were also used to restore the space. The architects even used scraps of original wallpaper to recreate the original wall designs and textures. A small annex in the rear was built for bank tellers.
The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the five houses at 5–15 West 54th Street as city landmarks, including the Goodwin residence, on February 3, 1981. The Committee for the Preservation of West 54th and West 55th Streets had pushed for the landmark designation. At the time, the five houses were in various states of preservation: although 9–11 West 54th Street was being restored, the twin houses at 13 and 15 West 54th Street had been proposed for demolition. The New York Landmarks Conservancy granted the US Trust Company its 1981 Chairman's Award for preserving the house in the renovation. On January 4, 1990, the building was added to the National Register of Historic Places as part of the Residences at 5–15 West 54th Street historic district. US Trust expanded its space into 13 and 15 West 54th Street, demolishing a wall separating the two pairs of residences, in the late 20th century.
During the 2000s, US Trust became part of Charles Schwab and subsequently Bank of America. In 2009, Bank of America sold the building for \$29.4 million. The buyers, DLJ Real Estate Capital Partners and J.D. Carlisle, left it vacant, as they wanted to assemble other land lots nearby. The owners placed the property for sale in 2015. 11 West 54th Street and an adjacent office building at 10 West 55th Street was sold for \$75 million in 2019 to the Wilf family, whose offices were at the adjacent 13 and 15 West 54th Street. Family member Orin Wilf, who led Skyline Partners, said at the time that he was unsure what he planned to do with the building. The Wilf family obtained a \$91 million mortgage on the houses soon afterward.
## See also
- List of New York City Designated Landmarks in Manhattan from 14th to 59th Streets
- National Register of Historic Places listings in Manhattan from 14th to 59th Streets |
43,858,443 | Setirostris | 1,140,052,615 | Genus of bats | [
"Bat genera",
"Bats of Australia",
"Mammals of New South Wales",
"Mammals of South Australia",
"Mammals of the Northern Territory",
"Molossidae",
"Monotypic bat genera"
] | Setirostris eleryi is a species of small insectivorous bat found in inland eastern Australia. It is the sole species of the molossid genus Setirostris, a name that refers to the coarse bristles on their faces. Earlier common names have referred to this unique feature, and the 'free-tail' that is a common feature of its microchiropteran family, the Molossidae; no single common name emerged during the taxonomic revisions that identified what was referred to as the bristle-faced freetail.
Setirostris eleryi differs from all other bats in the family by possessing unique dentition and genital morphology, a distinctive echolocation call structure, and notably smaller body size of around 5 grams (0.18 ounces). The presence of stout bristles on the thin muzzle and face of S. eleryi distinguishes them from similar genus Ozimops, once regarded as "Mormopterus species", that previously included parts of the population. The description, first published in 2008, emerged from a comparison of morphological features with an earlier phylogenetic analysis that had indicated cryptic species amongst this poorly-known group of bats.
Setirostris eleryi may be widely distributed across inland Australia, ranging from very arid to moister subtropical regions. However, it is locally uncommon across its range, and only known to inhabit riparian zones and floodplains. During the day these bats roost in tree hollows of mature eucalypts, but are noted as squeezing themselves into other tiny crevices. They form colonies of up to twenty individuals, which often include bats of other species.
## Taxonomy
A 1988 genetic study of species boundaries in Australian free-tailed bats (family Molossidae) indicated that species Setirostris eleryi, referred to as 'form sp 6' (later Mormopterus sp. 6), was one of eight distinct and unresolved genetic groups in the Australian population of Mormopterus. Mormopterus sp 6 was genetically distinct from all other types; however, only a single specimen from central Australia was included in the study. The acquisition of twenty-four additional specimens, from museum collections and by targeted trapping, facilitated a working description of Mormopterus sp. 6 in 2008 using a multi-locus analysis of morphology, the results of allozyme electrophoresis and investigation of echolocation call signatures. Referenced as an undescribed taxon, Mormopterus sp. 6 was cited by authors until its recognition as species Mormopterus (Setirostris) eleryi in publications after 2011.
Resolution of Australian Molossidae systematics showed that this species, and the east-coast Micronomus norfolkensis, are only distantly related to other Australian mollosid taxa. The differences between these two species and remaining taxa in the 'Mormopterus planiceps group', or 'planiceps–beccarii–loriae complex', previously published as an interim arrangement, led to the erection of four new subgenera in 2014. Prior to 2014, two subgenera were recognized within Mormopterus: subgenus Mormopterus and subgenus Micronomus. The two new subgenera included Setirostris, isolating this species as a monotypic taxon, and Ozimops, a subgenus containing seven other Australian taxa, as well as several Indo-Papuan taxa, all formerly in the planiceps group. Other mollosid populations were separated to the monotypic genus Micronomus and those outside of the same austral region remained within the subgenus Mormopterus. Subsequently, the rank of subgenus Mormopterus was itself revised, excluding the Australasian species, and elevated to the rank of genus.
The type specimen was collected at an elevation of 240 metres (790 ft) near Eringa, a cattle pastoralist lease (station) close to the northern state border of South Australia.
The name Setirostris is derived from a combination of the Latin seta, meaning bristle, and rostrum, beak or snout, and refers to the characteristic bristles on the face; the gender is feminine. The specific name eleryi is for Elery Hamilton-Smith in recognition of contributions to bat research and conservation.
Common names for the species include hairy-nosed—or hairy-rostrum—free-tailed bat, bristle-faced freetail bat and Mormopterus sp. 6.
## Description
Setirostris eleryi is a very small microchiropteran, with a light build, and was regarded as tiny when compared to species of Mormopterus, the genus of smaller bats in which they were variously placed. They have a mean weight of 5.2 g (0.18 oz), a maximum weight of 8 g (0.28 oz) and a forearm length from 31.5 to 36 mm (1.24 to 1.42 in). The face and muzzle are relatively long and narrow. The muzzle and face are sparsely covered in fine hair, with the exception of a unique series of 26 to 30 conspicuous bristles on each side and a fringe of fur on the upper lip. The ears are triangular and are not joined across the forehead and the tragus is rounded. The dorsal colour ranges from sandy-brown to grey-brown with lighter coloration on the ventral surface.
A prominent long and slender genital projection is present in both the male and female of the species. The function of the projection is unknown and these features are not shared by any other Australian Chiroptera with the exception of Micronomus norfolkensis. Males of the species also possess unique serrated lateral flanges on the acutely pointed glans penis. Features of the dentition are also unique to this species.
As the type and currently sole species of genus Setirostris, S. eleryi was distinguished from other species of the genus Mormopterus by the absence of a developed gular sac, possessing two (rather than three) lower incisors and two (not one) upper premolars.
## Range and distribution
Setirostris eleryi is uncommon and widely dispersed across broad areas of inland Australia, with specimens and records from central Australia and the remote southwestern corner of the Northern Territory, northern South Australia, western and central Queensland and north western New South Wales (NSW). The distribution of S. eleryi is unusual in that it ranges from extremely arid areas of the central Australian interior, where average annual rainfall is less than 200 mm (8 in), to areas of the northeastern Queensland dry tropics where average annual rainfall can exceed 1,000 mm (40 in). The eastern component of its distribution range occurs to the west of the Great Dividing Range within the Brigalow Belt (north and south), Mulga Lands, Darling Riverine Plains and Nandewar Biogeographic Regions. In the western component it occurs within the Finke, MacDonnell Ranges, Simpson Strzelecki Dunefields and Central Ranges Bioregions.
The presence of outlying records for S. eleryi at Kaltukatjara (southwestern Northern Territory), Mount Isa (northwestern Queensland) and the area south of Bourke (northwestern New South Wales) indicate that the species may have a greater distribution in the arid and semi-arid regions of NSW, Queensland, the Northern Territory and Western Australia than available records indicate. However its range and status remain relatively poorly known. In 2008 it had been recorded at 26 localities and few additional locations have been recorded in subsequent years.
## Habitat
Records of S. eleryi are of individuals captured in mist nets or harp traps in riparian habitats on ephemeral streams, floodways, pools or dams, usually at sites supporting a large fringe of eucalypt trees. Capture sites are consistently associated with riparian and floodplain habitats that support a canopy of eucalypts, including Eucalyptus camaldulensis, E. coolabah, E. microtheca, E. populnea, E. polyanthemos and E. citriodora. At Gundabooka National Park in western NSW the species was only trapped along drainage lines with eucalypts E. camaldulensis and E. populnea. During radio tracking studies at the Gundabooka site the species was observed to preferentially forage along drainage lines and open channels, rarely moving into adjacent mulga vegetation dominated by Acacia aneura. All the roost sites identified were in tall eucalypts within, or adjacent to, riparian zones.
The preference of this species for riparian habitats is consistent across its known range. At the type locality in northern South Australia S. eleryi was captured on a floodway in Acacia cambagei low woodland with emergent Eucalyptus coolabah. At Idalia National Park in western Queensland two specimens were captured in riparian woodland near open water, with a canopy of Eucalyptus camaldulensis and Eucalyptus populnea. At a site in northeastern NSW (Kwiambal National Park) the bat was captured on a riparian terrace adjacent to a river, with trees at the location including Eucalyptus camaldulensis, Eucalyptus blakelyi and rough-barked apple, species Angophora floribunda.
## Behaviour and ecology
The species is amongst the least known of Australian Chiroptera (bats), with little research and few records, especially in the capital territory and New South Wales. Information on the behaviour and ecology of S. eleryi is mainly derived from a short study conducted at Gundabooka National Park in western NSW in 2005. The species has been captured in arid woodlands at Warialda in the Goondawindi area and at Cobar in the Bourke region.
### Roost sites
Based on the limited observations, S. eleryi are known to maintain daytime roosts in tree hollows at a living or dead trunk or branch. All three roost known sites were in tall Eucalyptus populnea or Eucalyptus intertexta at a height of 3 to 6 m (10 to 20 ft) above the ground and displayed very small 13 to 20 mm (0.5 to 0.8 in) entrance holes leading to a larger chamber. The roosts were shared with between four and twenty other bats (including bats of other species) and in some cases roosts were used on consecutive nights. The roosts were located an average distance of 3.2 to 4 km (2.0 to 2.5 mi) from capture sites and females were found to occupy separate maternity roosts.
### Foraging and diet
Presumably, as is typical for similar species, S. eleryi emerge from their roosting sites and forage at night. The observations are along drainage lines and open channels, flying with slow fluttering movements below the canopy at a low altitude of 3 to 4 metres (9.8 to 13.1 feet). Prey items are noted as flying invertebrates, captured in the air close to the ground or adjacent vegetation by the chiropteran strategy that is similar to gleaning by birds. The specific composition of the invertebrate diet of S. eleryi is unknown. The flight patterns are distinguishable from similar species, as the slow flutter is closer to the foliage and ground.
### Echolocation
The echolocation call of S. eleryi contrasts with all other Australian molossid bats in that it displays a strongly frequency-modulated search phase pulse. The bat also has the highest mean characteristic frequency (36 kHz) of any Australian Mormopterus.
### Reproduction
Information on the reproduction of the S. eleryi is limited. A maternity roost located in December at Gundabooka National Park in western NSW contained a colony of fifteen lactating females. A female captured during October in the Northern Territory was in an advanced stage of pregnancy.
## Conservation status and threats
### Assessment and legislative status
As of 2020, S. eleryi is listed as a near-threatened species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. It is listed as endangered in New South Wales and vulnerable in South Australia. The regional status is a least concern species in the Northern Territory and Queensland, and 'not listed' in Australian Commonwealth conservation lists. The separation of the species to a monotypic taxon Setirostris, a subgenus or perhaps genus, indicates it is phylogenetically unique and this increases the conservation value of the population.
### Population status
Setirostris eleryi appears to be extremely rare across its range. It has been detected at a limited number of localities and at these sites it appears to be uncommon, often comprising less than two percent of the bats captured during surveys. In NSW it has only been recorded at a small number of locations, despite recent extensive surveys at over three hundred sites in suitable habitat. Its preferred mode of foraging by flying at low levels along stream corridors suggests that the low numbers captured in surveys using mist nets and harp traps are an indication of rarity and are not an artifact of the survey methodology.
### Threats
Identified and potential threats to populations of S. eleryi are related to the direct and indirect actions of humans, including: land clearing, timber harvesting, manipulation of water resources, altered fire regimes, use of pesticides, stocking with exotic ruminants, spread of feral animals and weeds, and atmospheric pollution leading to global warming.
The most significant threat to S. eleryi is likely to be ongoing land clearing in semi-arid bioregions of Queensland and NSW. The eastern Australian bioregions that comprise the core range of the species, particularly the Brigalow Belt (north and south), have been subjected to broad-scale clearing and habitat modification since European settlement. Clearing of vegetation for agriculture and removal of hollow bearing trees for firewood collection and forestry are likely to reduce the availability of roosting sites for S. eleryi. Clearing of native vegetation and removal of dead wood and dead trees have been recognised as key threatening processes for the species in NSW.
Additional key threatening processes that are considered likely to impact S. eleryi include: the alteration to natural flow regimes, competition from introduced western honey bees (Apis mellifera) for tree hollows, inappropriate fire regimes, reduction of invertebrate prey related to pesticide drift and lack of tree regeneration due to overgrazing and weeds.
Climate can influence bat distribution, movements and biogeography, access to food resources, timing of reproduction, and emergence and rate of energy expenditure. In combination with other factors, including ongoing loss and degradation of habitat, global climate change or global warming presents a serious and increasing threat to bats and other fauna. The affinity of S. eleryi for riparian zones in arid and semi-arid environments renders it potentially vulnerable to the effects of water stress and extreme weather events. Ecological factors that qualify the population as being at increased risk of the potential impacts of global climate change include: habitat (species that rely on riparian habitats in water stress prone environments), foraging type (aerial hawking insectivore), roost type (tree hollow specialist), biogeography (species with limited dispersal ability, limited ranging behaviour) and extreme weather (species that occur in regions where there is an increasing risk of extreme temperature events or changes in rainfall patterns).
### Conservation reserves
Setirostris eleryi has been recorded in a number of conservation reserves, including Gundabooka National Park (NSW), Kwiambal National Park (NSW), Dthinna Dthinnawan National Park (NSW), Idalia National Park (QLD), Mariala National Park (QLD) and Witjira National Park (SA). The bioregions that are known to support S. eleryi populations in the eastern component of its range, as well as a subset of bioregions where it occurs in central Australia, display very low rates of land area reserved for conservation (less than five percent). Based on locality data only 25% of sites known to support populations of S. eleryi are protected within conservation reserves. |
27,930,618 | Art pop | 1,167,792,655 | Pop music genre that emphasizes artistic styles over personal expressions | [
"20th-century music genres",
"American styles of music",
"Art pop",
"British styles of music",
"Pop art",
"Pop music genres",
"Progressive music"
] | Art pop (also typeset art-pop or artpop) is a loosely defined style of pop music influenced by art theories as well as ideas from other art mediums, such as fashion, fine art, cinema, and avant-garde literature. The genre draws on pop art's integration of high and low culture, and emphasizes signs, style, and gesture over personal expression. Art pop musicians may deviate from traditional pop audiences and rock music conventions, instead exploring postmodern approaches and ideas such as pop's status as commercial art, notions of artifice and the self, and questions of historical authenticity.
Starting in the mid-1960s, British and American pop musicians such as Brian Wilson, Phil Spector, and the Beatles began incorporating the ideas of the pop art movement into their recordings. English art pop musicians drew from their art school studies, while in America the style drew on the influence of pop artist Andy Warhol and the affiliated band the Velvet Underground. The style would experience its "golden age" in the 1970s among glam rock artists such as David Bowie and Roxy Music, who embraced theatricality and throwaway pop culture.
Art pop's tradition continued in the late 1970s and 1980s through styles such as post-punk and synthpop as well as the British New Romantic scene, developing further with artists who rejected conventional rock instrumentation and structure in favor of dance styles and the synthesizer. The 2010s saw new art pop trends develop, such as hip hop artists drawing on visual art and vaporwave artists exploring the sensibilities of contemporary capitalism and the Internet.
## Characteristics
Art pop draws on postmodernism's breakdown of the high/low cultural boundary and explores concepts of artifice and commerce. The style emphasizes the manipulation of signs over personal expression, drawing on an aesthetic of the everyday and the disposable, in distinction to the Romantic and autonomous tradition embodied by art rock or progressive rock. Sociomusicologist Simon Frith has distinguished the appropriation of art into pop music as having a particular concern with style, gesture, and the ironic use of historical eras and genres. Central to particular purveyors of the style were notions of the self as a work of construction and artifice, as well as a preoccupation with the invention of terms, imagery, process, and affect. The Independent's Nick Coleman wrote: "Art-pop is partly about attitude and style; but it's essentially about art. It is, if you like, a way of making pure formalism socially acceptable in a pop context.
Cultural theorist Mark Fisher wrote that the development of art pop evolved out of the triangulation of pop, art, and fashion. Frith states that it was "more or less" directly inspired by Pop art. According to critic Stephen Holden, art pop often refers to any pop style which deliberately aspires to the formal values of classical music and poetry, though these works are often marketed by commercial interests rather than respected cultural institutions. Writers for The Independent and the Financial Times have noted the attempts of art pop music to distance its audiences from the public at large. Robert Christgau wrote in The Village Voice in 1987 that art-pop results "when a fascination with craft spirals up and in until it turns into an aestheticist obsession."
## Cultural background
The boundaries between art and pop music became increasingly blurred throughout the second half of the 20th century. In the 1960s, pop musicians such as John Lennon, Syd Barrett, Pete Townshend, Brian Eno, and Bryan Ferry began to take inspiration from their previous art school studies. Frith states that in Britain, art school represented "a traditional escape route for the bright working class kids, and a breeding ground for young bands like the Beatles and beyond". In North America, art pop was influenced by Bob Dylan and the Beat Generation, and became more literary through folk music's singer-songwriter movement. Before progressive/art rock became the most commercially successful British sound of the early 1970s, the 1960s psychedelic movement brought together art and commercialism, broaching the question of what it meant to be an "artist" in a mass medium. Progressive musicians thought that artistic status depended on personal autonomy, and so the strategy of "progressive" rock groups was to present themselves as performers and composers "above" normal pop practice.
Another chief influence on the development of art pop was the Pop art movement. The term "pop art", first coined to describe the aesthetic value of mass-produced goods, was directly applicable to the contemporary phenomenon of rock and roll (including Elvis Presley, an early Pop art icon). According to Frith: "[Pop art] turned out to signal the end of Romanticism, to be an art without artists. Progressive rock was the bohemians' last bet [...] In this context the key Pop art theorist was not [Richard] Hamilton or any of the other British artists who, for all their interest in the mass market, remained its academic admirers only, but Andy Warhol. For Warhol the significant issue wasn't the relative merits of 'high' and 'low' art but the relationship between all art and 'commerce'." Warhol's Factory house band the Velvet Underground was an American group who emulated Warhol's art/pop synthesis, echoing his emphasis on simplicity, and pioneering a modernist avant-garde approach to art rock that ignored the conventional hierarchies of artistic representation.
## 1960s: Origins
Holden traces art pop's origins to the mid 1960s, when producers such as Phil Spector and musicians such as Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys began incorporating pseudo-symphonic textures to their pop recordings, as well as the Beatles' first recordings with a string quartet. In the words of author Matthew Bannister, Wilson and Spector were both known as "eremitic studio obsessives [...] [who] habitually absented themselves from their own work", and like Warhol, Spector existed "not as presence, but as a controlling or organising principle behind and beneath the surfaces of media. Both vastly successful commercial artists, and both simultaneously absent and present in their own creations."
Writer Erik Davis called Wilson's art pop "unique in music history", while collaborator Van Dyke Parks compared it to the contemporaneous work of Warhol and artist Roy Lichtenstein, citing his ability to elevate common or hackneyed material to the level of "high art". In his 2004 book Sonic Alchemy: Visionary Music Producers and Their Maverick Recordings, David Howard credits the Beach Boys' 1966 single "Good Vibrations" with launching the "brief, shining moment [when] pop and art came together as unlikely commercial bedfellows."
In a move that was indicated by the Beatles, the Beach Boys, Phil Spector, and Frank Zappa, the dominant format of pop music transitioned from singles to albums, and many rock bands created works that aspired to make grand artistic statements, where art rock would flourish. Musicologist Ian Inglis writes that the cover art for the Beatles' 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was "perceived as largely responsible for the connections between art and pop to be made explicit". Although Sgt. Pepper's was preceded by several albums that had begun to bridge the line between "disposable" pop and "serious" rock, it successfully gave an established "commercial" voice to an alternative youth culture. Author Michael Johnson wrote that art pop music would continue to exist subsequent to the Beatles, but without ever achieving their level of popular success.
The Who was labelled "the first pop art band" by their manager, while member Pete Townshend explains: "We stand for pop art clothes, pop art music and pop art behaviour [...] we don't change offstage; we live pop art." Frith considers their album The Who Sell Out (December 1967) "perhaps the Pop art pop masterpiece", the Who using the "vitality" of commerce itself, a tactic echoed by Roy Wood's the Move and, later, Kevin Godley and Lol Creme of 10cc. Townshend's ideas were notable for their emphasis on commercialism: "[His] use of Pop art rhetoric [...] referred not to music-making as such – to the issue of self-expression – but to commercial music-making, to issues of packaging, selling and publicizing, to the problems of popularity and stardom." In a May 1967 interview, Townshend coined the term "power pop" to describe the music of the Who, the Small Faces, and the Beach Boys. Power pop later developed as a genre known for its reconfiguration of 1960s tropes. Music journalist Paul Lester argued that this component could ratify power pop as one of the first postmodern music genres.
## 1970s: New York scene and glam
Music journalist Paul Lester locates "the golden age of adroit, intelligent art-pop" to when the bands 10cc, Roxy Music and Sparks "were mixing and matching from different genres and eras, well before the term 'postmodern' existed in the pop realm." The effect of the Velvet Underground gave rock musicians like Iggy Pop of the Stooges a self-consciousness about their work. Iggy was inspired to transform his personality into an art object, which would in turn influence singer David Bowie, and led to the Stooges' role as the group linking 1960s hard rock to 1970s punk. In the 1970s, a similarly self-conscious art/pop community (which Frith calls "the most significant" of the period) began to coalesce in the Mercer Arts Center in New York. The school encouraged the continuation of the kinds of collaboration between high and low art once exemplified by the Factory, as drummer Jerry Harrison (later of Talking Heads) explained: "it started with the Velvet Underground and all of the things that were identified with Andy Warhol."
The glam rock scene of the early 1970s would again draw widely on art school sensibilities. Inspired partly by the Beatles' use of alter egos on Sgt. Pepper's, glam emphasized outlandish costumes, theatrical performances, and allusions to throwaway pop culture phenomena, becoming one of the most deliberately visual phenomena to emerge in rock music. Some of its artists, like Bowie, Roxy Music, and ex-Velvet Underground member Lou Reed, would continue the practices associated with the modernist avant-garde branch of art rock.
Bowie, a former art-school student and painter, made visual presentation a central aspect of his work, deriving his concept of art pop from the work and attitudes of Warhol and the Velvet Underground. Roxy Music is described by Frith as the "archetypical art pop band." Frontman Bryan Ferry incorporated the influence of his mentor, pop art pioneer Richard Hamilton while synthesizer player Brian Eno drew on his study of cybernetics and art under theorist Roy Ascott. Frith posits that Ferry and Bowie remain "the most significant influences in British pop", writing they were both concerned with "pop as commercial art", and together made glam rock into an art form to be taken seriously, unlike other "camp" acts such as Gary Glitter. This redefined progressive rock and revitalized the idea of the Romantic artist in terms of media fame. According to Armond White, Roxy Music's engagement with pop art practices effectively "showed that pop's surface frivolity and deep pleasure were legitimate and commanding pursuits." After leaving Roxy Music in 1973, Eno would further explore art pop styles on a series of experimental solo albums. For the rest of the decade, he developed Warhol's arguments in a different direction from his contemporaries, and collaborated with a wide range of popular musicians of the era.
## 1970s–80s: Post-punk developments
Cultural theorist Mark Fisher characterized a variety of musical developments in the late 1970s, including post-punk, synthpop, and particularly the work of German electronic band Kraftwerk, as situated within art pop traditions. He states that Bowie and Roxy Music's English style of art pop "culminated" with the music of the British group Japan. The Quietus characterized Japan's 1979 album Quiet Life as defining "a very European form of detached, sexually-ambiguous and thoughtful art-pop" similar to that explored by Bowie on 1977's Low. Brian Eno and John Cale would serve a crucial part in the careers of Bowie, Talking Heads, and many key punk and post-punk records. Following the amateurism of the punk movement, post-punk era saw a return to the art school tradition previously embodied by the work of Bowie and Roxy Music, with artists drawing ideas from literature, art, cinema, and critical theory into musical and pop cultural contexts while refusing the common distinction between high art and low culture. An emphasis on multimedia performance and visual art became common.
Fisher characterized subsequent artists such as Grace Jones, the New Romantic groups of the 1980s, and Róisín Murphy as a part of an art pop lineage. He noted that the development of art pop involved the rejection of conventional rock instrumentation and structure in favor of dance styles and the synthesizer. The Quietus names English New Romantic act Duran Duran, who were formatively influenced by the work of Japan, Kraftwerk and David Bowie, as "pioneering art pop up to arena-packing level", developing the style into "a baroque, romantic escape." Critic Simon Reynolds dubbed English singer Kate Bush "the queen of art-pop", citing her merging of glamour, conceptualism, and innovation without forsaking commercial pop success during the late 1970s and 1980s.
## 1990s–present: Online and beyond
Icelandic singer Björk was a prominent purveyor of art pop for her wide-ranging integration of disparate forms of art and popular culture. During the 1990s, she became art pop's most commercially successful artist. Discussing Björk in 2015, Jason Farago of The Guardian wrote: "The last 30 years in art history are in large part a story of collaborative enterprises, of collapsed boundaries between high art and low, and of the end of divisions between media. Few cultural figures have made the distinctions seem as meaningless as the Icelandic singer who combined trip hop with 12-tone, and who brought the avant garde to MTV just before both those things disappeared."
According to Barry Walters of NPR, 1990s rap group P.M. Dawn developed a style of "kaleidoscopic art-pop" that was initially dismissed by hip hop fans as "too soft, ruminative and far-ranging" but would eventually pave the way for the work of artists like Drake and Kanye West. In 2013, Spin noted a "new art-pop era" in contemporary music, led by West, in which musicians draw on visual art as a signifier of wealth and extravagance as well as creative exploration. Fact labels West's 2008 album 808s & Heartbreak as an "art-pop masterpiece" which would have a substantive influence on subsequent hip hop music, broadening the style beyond its contemporary emphasis on self-aggrandizement and bravado. The New York Times' Jon Caramanica described West's "thought-provoking and grand-scaled" works as having "widened [hip hop]'s gates, whether for middle-class values or high-fashion and high-art dreams."
Contemporary female artists who "merge glamour, conceptualism, innovation and autonomy," such as Grimes, Julia Holter, Lana Del Rey and FKA twigs, are frequently described as working in the tradition of Kate Bush. Grimes is described by the Montreal Gazette as "an art-pop phenomenon" and part of "a long tradition of fascination with the pop star as artwork in progress", with particular attention drawn to role of the Internet and digital platforms in her success.
In a 2012 piece for Dummy, critic Adam Harper described an accelerationist zeitgeist in contemporary art-pop characterized by an ambiguous engagement with elements of contemporary capitalism. He mentions the Internet-based genre vaporwave as consisting of underground art-pop musicians like James Ferraro and Daniel Lopatin "exploring the technological and commercial frontiers of 21st century hyper-capitalism's grimmest artistic sensibilities". Artists associated with the scene may release music via online pseudonyms while drawing on ideas of virtuality and synthetic 1990s sources such as corporate mood music, lounge music, and muzak.
## List of artists |
57,397,907 | Dazzled and Deceived | 1,133,361,903 | Camouflage book by Peter Forbes | [
"2009 non-fiction books",
"Camouflage",
"Yale University Press books"
] | Dazzled and Deceived: Mimicry and Camouflage is a 2009 book on camouflage and mimicry, in nature and military usage, by the science writer and journalist Peter Forbes. It covers the history of these topics from the 19th century onwards, describing the discoveries of Henry Walter Bates, Alfred Russel Wallace and Fritz Müller, especially their studies of butterflies in the Amazon. The narrative also covers 20th-century military camouflage, begun by the painter Abbot Thayer who advocated disruptive coloration and countershading and continued in the First World War by the zoologist John Graham Kerr and the marine artist Norman Wilkinson, who developed dazzle camouflage. In the Second World War, the leading expert was Hugh Cott, who advised the British army on camouflage in the Western Desert.
The book was well received by critics, both military historians and biologists, and won the 2011 Warwick Prize for Writing.
## Book
### Publication
Dazzled and Deceived was published by Yale University Press in 2009 in English and also translated into Korean.
The book contains 34 colour plates and six monochrome maps and drawings.
### Contents
The book looks at the history of camouflage and mimicry, starting with the travels of Henry Walter Bates and Alfred Russel Wallace in the Amazon, looking at butterflies and, like Charles Darwin, reasoning about the struggle for existence implied by such a profusion of life. Bates noticed that many butterflies closely resembled each other, and proposed that some were harmless mimics of others which were distasteful: their coloration was a disguise, a deception aimed at their predators. An extreme case that Forbes celebrates is the bird-dropping spider, which wonderfully if not precisely attractively mimics bird excrement on a leaf, using its body and a film of cobweb. Fritz Müller made a further step, showing that pairs of distasteful butterfly species - or more than two - could with benefit resemble each other.
Forbes describes how an American artist, Abbot Thayer, became fascinated by camouflage, proposing that all animal coloration, no matter how conspicuous, served this purpose. He described disruptive coloration and countershading in detail; his wilder claims such as for the supposed camouflage of the roseate spoonbill at sunset were roundly criticised by Teddy Roosevelt and the mid-20th-century camouflage expert, Hugh Cott. Thayer's attempts to convince the Royal Navy to adopt his camouflage ideas during the First World War were entirely unsuccessful; the zoologist John Graham Kerr did little better; but the marine artist Norman Wilkinson's ideas on dazzle camouflage were widely adopted, first for merchantmen, later for warships, in a desperate attempt to reduce shipping losses from submarine-launched torpedoes. Whether it worked is a moot point, as the experiment was uncontrolled and the paint schemes were varied continuously. Cott wrote "the only compendious zoology tract ever to be packed in a soldier's kitbag", his 1940 Adaptive Coloration in Animals. Forbes tells how the book got Cott the job of camouflage instructor to the British Eighth Army in Egypt, in a unit which created large-scale decoys including a dummy railhead and which successfully concealed a whole armoured division in the open desert in a deception operation for the battle of El Alamein. Art and nature had come together in the service of warfare.
Forbes rounds off the book by looking at the genetic basis of camouflage in butterflies, which has been studied extensively, from the early work (starting in 1954) of P. M. Sheppard and Cyril Clarke on the multiple mimicry of female Papilio dardanus of various other species of Papilio, controlled by alleles of a single gene. He describes how Miriam Rothschild took time away from her major study of fleas to investigate the toxic chemicals that underlie aposematism (warning coloration) and hence mimicry, showing that monarch butterflies contained cardenolides similar to the heart drug digoxin. She predicted that mimetic butterfly coloration would be shown to be caused by a combination of selection by bird predators and sexual selection by male butterflies, working on preadaptations involving suitable genes which enabled mimicry to develop. Around the same time, Bernard Kettlewell carried out experiments on industrial melanism in the peppered moth, showing that it was driven by bird predators. A generation later, a pioneer of evolutionary developmental biology, Sean B. Carroll, investigated the way that interacting genes such as distal-less (dll) control the development of butterfly wing patterns. This gene is active at the wing margin of butterflies, and at the centre of their conspicuous eyespots. The gene was known for its effects in the fruit fly; evidently, nature had tinkered with it to give it additional effects. More recent work by Chris Jiggins and others has started to uncover the complex genetics of the wing patterns of the mimetic Heliconius butterflies; it seems likely that they make use of an evo-devo gene toolkit which they have continually tinkered with, passing genes between species by hybridisation.
## Prizes
The book won the 2011 Warwick Prize for Writing.
## Reception
### Military history
The military historian Tim Newark, in The Financial Times, writes that Forbes "does full justice" to the "fascinating combination" of military history, nature, and art. He notes that the book disproves the "myth of stifling military conservatism in the early 20th century." On the contrary, the Royal Navy took advice from zoologists, while the French army employed cubist artists like André Mare on the Western Front. In Newark's view, "Forbes tells brilliantly this exciting and colourful story with good anecdotes, bizarre characters and intriguing evidence.".
Veronica Horwell, in The Guardian, observes that Forbes is "especially shrewd" about the British "institutional infighting that made camouflage suspect with the military." All the same, the principles identified by Hugh Bamford Cott "did become the basis for subsequent military camouflage, starting with successes improvised in the North African desert campaigns with palm fronds and jerry cans." She writes that Forbes was fascinated by nature's improvisations as much as by those of "a rum mix of biologists and artists" in the two World Wars, since he sees "with lovely clarity" that nature is a tinkerer, lacking any grand design but full of chance and "smallscale experiment".
The History of War encyclopedia website commented that their review was of possibly the only book on evolution they would ever publish, for its four useful chapters on the history of military camouflage including First World War dazzle camouflage and, flourishing in the Second World War, everything from inflatable dummy tanks to the deception preparations for El Alamein. They comment that the story of scientific research is fascinating, and that "Forbes does a very good job of explaining some very complicated theories, and has produced a classic work of popular science."
Marek Kohn, in The Independent, writes that the "traffic in ideas, from biology through art to warfare, provides Peter Forbes's Dazzled and Deceived with an intriguing and fluent narrative. It reaches its battlefield climax with the desert battle of El Alamein, where Montgomery's forces orchestrated thousands of dummy and disguised vehicles." Kohn gives as an example of the interchange the introduction by the naturalist Peter Scott of disruptive patterning to the Royal Navy.
### Biology
The ecologist Leena Lindström, in Nature, calls Dazzled and Deceived an "excellent and wide-ranging book", praising Forbes for showing both how developments in the theory of evolution, genetics, and developmental biology influenced research on protective coloration, and in turn the influence of research on coloration on evolutionary theory.
The evolutionary biologist Edmund D. Brodie III, in BioScience, notes that the brilliantly coloured coral snakes, boldly striped in red, yellow, and black, are "among the most beautiful and breathtaking of reptiles", and argues that anyone who has seen one would agree with Hugh Cott that Abbot Thayer's claim that "such a beast is camouflaged borders on the ludicrous." Brodie notes that all the same, he found himself about to grab one during fieldwork in Costa Rica. He observes that the book does not attempt completeness on camouflage or mimicry, nor a linear history of ideas in these fields. Instead, writes Brodie, Forbes describes "some significant moments in the development of the field", both historic and modern. This allows Forbes to look into "the personalities and conflicts that led to our present dogmas, and in doing so reveals some of the biases present in our thinking." He notes that scientific ego combined with government inertia to stymie the use of science in the First World War and that Cott used "the power of data" in the form of photographs of camouflaged guns to convince the British military in the Second World War. Brodie notes that much of the book looks at the genetics and development of mimetic patterns on butterfly wings, starting with E. B. Ford's work on ecological genetics, which ultimately led to an understanding of supergenes, linked gene complexes.
Gail Vines, in New Scientist magazine, quotes Forbes's description of the archetypal camouflaged animal – not the chameleon but the octopus, a "living, breathing, swimming compendium of every camouflage and mimicry technique known." She calls the book authoritative, and the range of natural deceptions it describes "astounding, and the history of research into the phenomenon is just as surprising."
The lepidopterist Peter Eeles, in Dispar, notes that Forbes has a "dazzling cast" of characters to people his book, including "Roosevelt, Picasso, Nabokov, Churchill, and Darwin himself, to name a few." In his view, the book "sheds new light on the greatest quest: to understand the processes of life at its deepest level." He found it an easy read, engagingly told. For a lepidopterist, the highlights were the stories of Bates, Wallace, and Müller exploring the Amazon and noting the Heliconiid butterflies with their complex patterns of mimicry; and the African swallowtail Papilio dardanus with its unique range of morphs controlled by no less than 11 alleles of the engrailed. |
2,105,177 | Do the Bartman | 1,172,037,361 | 1990 single by The Simpsons | [
"1990 debut singles",
"1990 songs",
"American hip hop songs",
"Animated films based on animated series",
"Animated music videos",
"Geffen Records singles",
"Irish Singles Chart number-one singles",
"New jack swing songs",
"Novelty and fad dances",
"Novelty songs",
"Number-one singles in Australia",
"Number-one singles in New Zealand",
"Number-one singles in Norway",
"Songs about dancing",
"Songs written by Bryan Loren",
"The Simpsons songs",
"UK Singles Chart number-one singles"
] | "Do the Bartman" is a song from the 1990 album The Simpsons Sing the Blues, featuring the voice cast of the American animated television series The Simpsons. It was performed by The Simpsons cast member Nancy Cartwright (the voice of Bart Simpson), with backing vocals from American singer Michael Jackson, alongside additional vocals from Dan Castellaneta (voice of Homer Simpson). Jackson also produced the song, which was written by American recording artist Bryan Loren, and Geffen Records released it as a single on November 20, 1990.
Despite receiving much radio airplay in the United States, "Do the Bartman" was never officially released as a single there. It topped the charts in Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, Norway, and the United Kingdom. The song additionally reached the top 10 in Belgium, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Spain, and Sweden. A music video, directed by Brad Bird, was released for the song in 1991. The video became a hit on the American network MTV, and received a nomination at the 1991 MTV Video Music Awards.
## Michael Jackson's involvement
The album The Simpsons Sing the Blues was released in December 1990. The first single from it was the rap song "Do the Bartman", performed by Bart Simpson's voice actor Nancy Cartwright and released on November 20, 1990. Rumors began spreading in the summer of 1990 that Michael Jackson would write a song for Bart on the album.
This song was reported early on to be "Do the Bartman", but executive producer James L. Brooks issued a press release in September 1990 apologizing for the misunderstanding and stating that song was actually written by one of Jackson's friends, Bryan Loren.
However, The Simpsons creator Matt Groening later stated during an appearance at the February 1998 World Animation Celebration convention in Pasadena, California that "Do the Bartman" was actually co-written and co-produced by Jackson, but he could not receive credit for it because he was under contract to Epic Records. Groening told a crowd at the convention that had gathered for a "The Simpsons tribute" that it had "always [been] amazing to me that no one ever found out that Michael Jackson wrote that song. [...] He was a big fan of the show."
Jackson was a fan of The Simpsons, especially Bart, and had called the producers one night offering to write Bart a number one single and do a guest spot on the show, which is how "Do the Bartman" came about. Jackson eventually guest-starred in the episode "Stark Raving Dad" (season three, 1991) under the pseudonym John Jay Smith.
He also wrote the song "Happy Birthday Lisa" for the episode "Stark Raving Dad", which was later included in the album Songs in the Key of Springfield. Bryan Loren has stated that Jackson had provided background vocals for "Do the Bartman".
In July 2015, when Bryan Loren was selling the publishing and songwriting rights for the song, Loren stated that "despite Matt Groening's repeated confessions, I am the sole writer of the song". Loren stated that Jackson's contributions included backup vocals and providing the title "Do the Bartman" and that Jackson insisted his own name be mentioned in the lyrics.
## Critical reception
Critical reviews of "Do the Bartman" were mostly positive. Larry Flick from Billboard said the single "seems like a logical extension of the public's love affair with Fox TV's popular cartoon characters. This cute and amusing pop/new jack novelty doesn't actually teach any new dance steps, but that hasn't kept radio from jumping on it out of the box." Monika Bartyzel of Cinematical, however, thought the song was a "cheesy number." The Daily Vault's Benny Balneg liked that it disengaged itself from the album's "blues tag" and incorporated more "contemporary elements" into its sound. He added that he thought the song had a "catchy beat" and an "infectious chorus." Ken Tucker of Entertainment Weekly described it as "not bad," and commented that Bart's high voice "echoes the beats nicely." The Long Beach Press-Telegrams Patricia Smith called "Do the Bartman" a "surprisingly funky tune." James Hamilton from Music Week named it Pick of the Week in the category of Dance, adding, "Satellite TV cartoon characters' novelty rap jiggler with Turtles-type kids appeal." David Quantick from NME also felt it's "not bad", adding that the song's "natural vivacity may well make it a hit." A reviewer from People Magazine stated, "Yes, of course the first single, 'Do the Bartman', will be a novelty hit. Written by Bryan Loren, it's a white-bread rap featuring Nancy Cartwright's vocals, reeling off tales of Bart's mischievous ways."
## Chart performance
The song topped the charts in Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, Norway, and the United Kingdom. In the latter country, the song spent three weeks at the top of the UK Singles Chart, and became Britain's seventh best selling song of 1991. "Do the Bartman" has shipped at least 400,000 units in the United Kingdom, and was certified gold by the British Phonographic Industry on February 1, 1991. The song's success in the United Kingdom was remarkable, given that at that time The Simpsons was airing only on British satellite television station Sky One. It would be five years before it first aired on terrestrial television in Britain, airing on BBC One and later BBC Two.
In Ireland, "Do the Bartman" spent nine weeks at number one on the Irish Singles Chart from January 24, 1991, to March 24, 1991. Only nine singles have ever managed a longer run at number one in that country. The song also charted at number one on New Zealand's RIANZ Singles Chart on the issue date of January 25, 1991, and peaked at number one on the chart again, for a total of two weeks, from February 8, 1991, to February 15, 1991.
In March 1991, "Do the Bartman" became the first single to reach number one in Australia that was not available on 7-inch vinyl.
## Music video
The accompanying music video for "Do the Bartman" features the typical plot of Bart rebelling against authority when he decides to put his own spin on a rigidly choreographed dance presentation at Springfield Elementary School. The music video for "Do the Bartman" was directed by Brad Bird, with dance choreography by Michael Chambers. Nobody from the staff of The Simpsons wanted to direct it because they were busy doing the show, but Bird finally agreed to do it after having been asked four times. He had a very short amount of time to finish the video because it was supposed to coincide with the release of The Simpsons Sing the Blues.
The entire music video was storyboarded in only two days in the United States. Bird then got on a plane to Budapest, Hungary, where the video was animated by Varga Studio. They thought the video was going to be animated as simply as the original The Simpsons shorts, shown on The Tracey Ullman Show, so when Bird told them that it was going to be done in full animation with no repeated scenes, they "went into deep shock".
The animators added the wraparound at the beginning to set Bart against the crowd and put the video in "some sort of context."
The video was nominated for Best Special Effects at the 1991 MTV Video Music Awards. It originally premiered on Fox after the episode "Bart the Daredevil" on December 6, 1990, and was the number one music video on rotation on MTV between January and March 1991. Along with the music video for "Deep, Deep Trouble", the video was included on The Simpsons: The Complete Second Season DVD boxset in 2002. Following the death of Michael Jackson on June 25, 2009, the music video was broadcast by Fox on June 28, 2009—ahead of a rerun of the episode "Wedding for Disaster"—and featured a title card paying tribute to Jackson.
There is an alternative version of the music video that removes the references to Michael Jackson's "hair strand" (by not including said hair strand in frame), people dancing to the Bartman on a cruise ship with the Statue of Liberty in the background moving side to side with the rhythm of the song and replaces it with extra frames of the Springfield "cool kids" dancing along. The alternative version also removes the lyric, "She can do it, you can do it, so can I".
## Track listings
- 7-inch single:
1. "Do the Bartman" (7" House Mix/Edit) – 3:54
2. "Do the Bartman" (LP edit) – 3:59
- CD single:
1. "Do the Bartman" (7" House Mix/Edit) – 3:54
2. "Do the Bartman" (LP edit) – 3:59
3. "Do the Bartman" (Bad Bart House Mix) – 4:49
4. "Do the Bartman" (a cappella) – 3:44
- Digital download:'
1. "Do the Bartman" (Diplo's Bartman So So Krispy Remix) – 4:27
## Personnel
- Nancy Cartwright – lead vocals
- Michael Jackson – backing vocals
- Dan Castellaneta, Julie Kavner, Yeardley Smith, and Matt Groening – additional voices
- Bryan Loren – backing vocals, instruments
- Paul Jackson Jr. – additional guitar
- Laurie Rox, Bart Stevens, and Richard Voltrop – background shouting
### Production
- Richard Cottrell – recording engineer
- Bryan Loren & Michael Jackson – producers
- Julie Last & Bart Stevens – assistant recording engineers
- Mixed at Larrabee Sound Studios
## Charts
### Weekly charts
### Year-end charts
## Certifications
## Release history
## See also
- List of number-one singles in Australia during the 1990s
- List of number-one singles of 1991 (Ireland)
- List of number-one singles in 1991 (New Zealand)
- List of number-one hits in Norway
- List of UK Singles Chart number ones of the 1990s |
847,515 | William J. Seymour | 1,166,225,143 | African American holiness preacher | [
"1870 births",
"1922 deaths",
"19th-century Christian mystics",
"20th-century African-American people",
"20th-century Christian mystics",
"African-American Christian clergy",
"American Christian clergy",
"American Pentecostals",
"American evangelicals",
"Burials at Evergreen Cemetery, Los Angeles",
"Christians from Louisiana",
"Pentecostals from California",
"People from St. Mary Parish, Louisiana",
"Protestant mystics"
] | William Joseph Seymour (May 2, 1870 – September 28, 1922) was an African-American holiness preacher who initiated the Azusa Street Revival, an influential event in the rise of the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements. He was the second of eight children born to emancipated slaves and raised Catholic in extreme poverty in Louisiana.
Seymour was a student of the early Pentecostal minister Charles Parham, and he adopted Parham's belief that speaking in tongues was the sign of receiving the baptism in the Holy Spirit. In 1906, Seymour moved to Los Angeles, California, where he preached the Pentecostal message and sparked the Azusa Street Revival. The revival drew large crowds of believers as well as media coverage that focused on the controversial religious practices as well as the racially integrated worship services, which violated the racial norms of the time. Seymour's leadership of the revival and publication of The Apostolic Faith newspaper launched him into prominence within the young Pentecostal movement. Seymour broke with Parham in 1906 over theological differences as well as Parham's unhappiness with interracial revival meetings.
As the revival's influence extended beyond Los Angeles through evangelism and missionary work, Seymour was in the process of developing the revival into a larger organization called the Apostolic Faith Movement. This process was ultimately defeated by power struggles with other ministers, such as Florence Crawford and William Howard Durham, which ultimately damaged the unity of the early Pentecostal movement and led to a decrease in Seymour's influence. By 1914, the revival was past its peak, but Seymour continued to pastor the Apostolic Faith Mission he founded until his death. The revival acted as a catalyst for the spread of Pentecostal practices, such as speaking in tongues and integrated worship, throughout the world. It also played an important role in the history of most major Pentecostal denominations.
## Early life
William Joseph Seymour was the second of eight children born to emancipated slaves Simon and Phyllis Salabar Seymour in Centerville, Louisiana. He was baptized as a child at the Church of the Assumption in Franklin, a Catholic parish. In 1884, when Seymour was fourteen years old, his parents built a house about a mile and a half from his birthplace adjacent to the New Providence Baptist Church in Centerville that the family likely attended while remaining Catholics.
While serving in the Union Army during the Civil War, Seymour's father contracted an illness from which he finally died in November 1891. The twenty-one-year-old William then became the primary provider for his family, growing subsistence crops with very limited income from other sources. The family was able to keep their property but lived at the poverty level.
Seymour grew up during a period of heightened racism that likely led to his decision to move north, away from the persecution endured by southern blacks around the turn of the century. In 1895, Seymour moved to Indianapolis, where he attended the Simpson Chapel Methodist Episcopal Church (and possibly other African American churches) and became a born-again Christian.
## Early career
In Indianapolis, Seymour was introduced to the Holiness movement through Daniel S. Warner's "Evening Light Saints", a group whose distinctive beliefs included non-sectarianism, faith healing, foot washing, the imminent Second Coming of Christ, and separation from "the world" in actions, beliefs, and lifestyle, including not wearing jewelry or neckties. In the summer of 1900, Seymour returned to Louisiana and worked briefly as a farm hand.
In 1901, Seymour moved to Cincinnati, where he worked as a waiter and probably attended God's Bible School and Training Home, a school founded by holiness preacher Martin Wells Knapp. At Knapp's school, blacks and whites studied side by side. Knapp taught Premillennialism—that Jesus would return prior to a literal millennium—and also took seriously "special revelation" such as dreams and visions. While in Cincinnati, Seymour contracted smallpox and was blinded in his left eye. Seymour blamed his disability on his reluctance to answer God's call to the ministry.
Seymour moved to Houston in 1903. During the winter of 1904–1905, he was directed by a "special revelation to Jackson, Mississippi, to receive spiritual advice from a well-known colored clergyman". He probably met Charles Price Jones and Charles Harrison Mason, founders of what would become the Church of God in Christ. Between 1895 and 1905, Seymour also met other holiness leaders, including John Graham Lake and Charles Parham, who was leading a growing movement in the Midwest.
Parham's Apostolic Faith Movement emphasized speaking in tongues. Although speaking in tongues had occurred in some isolated religious circles as early as 1897, Parham began to practice it in 1900 and made the doctrine central to his theological system, believing it to be a sign that a Christian had received the baptism with the Holy Spirit. On January 1, 1901, Parham and some of his students were praying over Agnes Ozman when she began to speak in what was interpreted to be Chinese, a language Ozman never learned. Pentecostals identify Ozman as the first person in modern times to receive the gift of speaking in tongues as an answer to prayer for the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Parham also spoke in tongues and went on to open a Bible school in Houston as his base of operations in 1905.
When Houston African American holiness leader Lucy F. Farrow took a position with Charles Parham's evangelistic team as his children's nanny, Farrow asked Seymour to pastor her church. In 1906, with Farrow's encouragement, Seymour joined Parham's newly founded Bible school. Though Seymour's attendance at Parham's school violated Texas Jim Crow laws, with Parham's permission, Seymour simply took a seat just outside the classroom door. Parham and Seymour shared pulpits and street corners on several occasions during the early weeks of 1906, with Parham only permitting Seymour to preach to blacks. During this time, Seymour continued praying that he would receive the baptism with the Holy Spirit. Though unsuccessful at the time, he remained committed to Parham's beliefs about speaking in tongues, but he rejected Parham's belief in the annihilation of the wicked and in the use of tongues in evangelism. Parham understood the gift of tongues to be xenoglossy, unlearned human languages to be used for evangelistic purposes.
Within a month of studying under Parham, Seymour received an invitation to pastor a holiness mission in Los Angeles founded by Julia Hutchins, who intended to become a missionary to Liberia. Although Parham believed Seymour unqualified because he had not yet been baptized in the Holy Spirit, Seymour went to Los Angeles anyway.
## Azusa Street Revival
### Origins of the revival
Seymour arrived in Los Angeles on February 22, 1906, and preached at Julia Hutchins's church two days later. Seymour argued that speaking in tongues was the evidence of having received the Holy Spirit, even though he had not experienced it himself. Hutchins and J. M. Roberts, president of the Southern California Holiness Association, rejected Seymour's position as contrary to accepted holiness views and had the church doors padlocked to keep Seymour out. Hutchins and the local holiness association called a special meeting at which they asked Seymour doctrinal questions. Among other things, the holiness leadership claimed that sanctification and the baptism of the Holy Spirit were the same thing, while Seymour remained unconvinced that the leaders themselves had been baptized in the Spirit. The association president removed Seymour from the pastorate, forbidding him to teach his doctrine of baptism in the Spirit in the holiness church. Nevertheless, he told Seymour that he was pleased Seymour was seeking baptism in the Spirit, adding, "When you receive it, please let me know because I am interested in receiving it too."
### Speaking in tongues
Seymour stayed at the home of a friend, Edward Lee, and started a prayer meeting at Lee's house. When it grew too large for the house, it moved two blocks away to the home of another African American, Richard Asberry. (One attendee, Jennie Evans Moore, later married Seymour.) The prayer group accepted Seymour's teaching and prayed to receive the baptism of the Holy Ghost. To help him minister to these people as they sought the baptism of the Spirit, he contacted two friends in Houston: Lucy Farrow and Joseph Warren, who he invited to join them at the Asberry's home. The core group was made up of about 15 African Americans, including five children. Others joined them, including a former Baptist named Frank Bartleman, who would later publish a detailed account of the Azusa Street Revival. The size of the meetings at the Asberry's house continued to grow as word got out about the new teachings among the Los Angeles holiness sector.
On Friday, April 6, 1906, the members of the meeting decided to add fasting to their discipline of regular prayer. They planned a ten-day fast, during which they would study Acts 2:1–4 and pray each evening until they had the same experience described in that text. On April 9, Edward Lee spoke in tongues after Seymour and the newly arrived Lucy Farrow laid hands on him in Lee's home. Overjoyed, the group walked to the Asberry's house for the evening meeting. Seymour took his text, as was expected, from Acts 2:4: "And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance." He then went on to explain what had just happened to Edward Lee. No sooner had he completed the story, when someone else began to speak in tongues. Before the evening was over, several others, including Jennie Evans Moore, had spoken in tongues. Over the next three days, the Asberry home became the focus of attention among the various networks of Wesleyan holiness people. As Frank Bartleman observed, "The news spread like fire, naturally." The Azusa Street Revival had begun.
### Move to Azusa Street and worldwide influence
Three days later, on April 12, after a long evening spent in prayer, Seymour himself received the baptism in the Holy Spirit and spoke in tongues. By that time, the group was far too large for the Asberry's house; at one point the weight of the overflowing attendees caused the front porch to collapse, forcing Seymour to look for a new location. The group moved to an old African Methodist Episcopal church building at 312 Azusa Street in Los Angeles, and while legally incorporated as the Apostolic Faith Mission, it also became known as the Azusa Street Mission.
The revival quickly grew. Crowds of up to 1,500 packed into the small mission for the better part of three years. During the peak of the revival, meetings ran from mid-morning to midnight, seven days a week. Well-known names in the early Pentecostal movement like Parham, Lake, F. F. Bosworth, Thomas Hezmalhalch, and many others attended the revival and then took what they had received to the mission fields.
From the beginning, the movement was racially egalitarian. Blacks and whites worshiped together at the same altar, against the normal segregation of the day. Seymour claimed that the Holy Spirit was bringing people together across all social lines and boundaries to the revival. He not only rejected the existing racial barriers in favor of "unity in Christ", but he also rejected the then almost-universal barriers to women in any form of church leadership. Latinos soon began attending as well, after a Mexican-American worker received the Holy Spirit baptism on April 13, 1906.
Seymour was clearly the leader of the Azusa revival in the beginning. He delegated authority to twelve overseers, ordained ministers, and commissioned missionaries. He also began publishing a newspaper, The Apostolic Faith, in September 1906. Within one year, the circulation of Seymour's paper reached 40,000 issues. With the notable exception of Parham, who was uncomfortable with the mixing of races at Azusa, many other prominent holiness preachers, like G.B. Cashwell and C.H. Mason, made the pilgrimage to Los Angeles to preach and pray alongside Seymour.
The resulting movement became widely known as Pentecostalism, likening it to the manifestations of the Holy Spirit recorded as occurring in the first two chapters of the book of Acts, from the day of the Feast of Pentecost onwards. By the end of 1909, the movement had achieved geographical ubiquity. Every region of the United States had a Pentecostal presence, with additional missions planted in 50 nations worldwide.
## Decline of the Azusa Street Revival
### Opposition
As with most new religious movements, the Azusa Street Revival was not without controversy. Newspapers published such titles as, "Religious Fanaticism Creates Wild Scene", "Holy Kickers Carry on Mad Orgies", "All Night Meetings in Azusa Street Church, Negroes and Whites Give Themselves Over to Strange Outbursts of Zeal", "Whites And Blacks Mix in a Religious Frenzy", "Wives Say They Left Husbands to Follow Preacher", "Disgusting Scenes at Azusa Street Church", and "Crazed Girls in Arms of Black Men."
In October 1906, Parham arrived at the Azusa Street Mission. After observing some ecstatic practices and racial mixing in worship, he went to the pulpit and began to preach that God was disgusted at the state of the revival. Seymour refused to back down from his doctrines, and Parham then denounced the Azusa revival as false. Parham launched a racially tinged assault on what he deemed fanaticism and religious anarchy and demanded reforms that included the outright dismissal of many of Seymour's key aides. He claimed that Seymour had corrupted the teaching of tongue-speech; Parham believed that the spoken tongues had to be a recognizable human language (xenoglossy), while Seymour's theology allowed for a divine language that could not be understood by human ears (glossolalia). Parham denounced these views as unscriptural. Parham also preached against the racial mixing of the revival. Seymour responded by recanting an earlier acknowledgement of Parham's authority and declaring the Holy Ghost to be the mission's only leader.
Parham became the most far-reaching challenge to Seymour's leadership. Seymour dismissed Parham from the mission, but he stayed in town long enough to establish a small, competing congregation just blocks from the mission. Parham also appealed to the press to recognize him as the leader of the movement. The Seymour-Parham breakup marked the beginning of the end of Parham's prominence in the movement; however, as it turned out, Azusa's days were also numbered. The peak of the revival spanned from 1906 through 1908.
### Apostolic Faith publication
The revival at Azusa continued to grow until 1908. Parham and other evangelists such as Florence Crawford (Seymour's former State Director of the Pacific Coast Apostolic Faith Movement) began discrediting the movement through doctrinal differences. After breaking her relationship with Seymour in 1907, Crawford quickly formed an independent work in Portland, Oregon, under the same name Seymour used, Apostolic Faith Movement. She then began to undermine Seymour's undisputed leadership of the movement on the Pacific Coast. Seymour's marriage to Jennie Evans Moore on May 13, 1908, did not sit well with his secretary, Clara Lum, who had already begun showing allegiance to Crawford. Lum had arguably the most powerful position outside of Seymour in the movement because of her extensive experience and abilities, particularly as editor of the newspaper. Disapproving of Seymour's action, Lum resigned her post, stole the paper's mailing list and joined Crawford in Portland, where they began publishing The Apostolic Faith newspaper without Seymour.
Without possession of the mailing list, Seymour lost control of the newspaper, and his authority over the burgeoning Pentecostal revival began to slip. Lum and Crawford refused to give control of the paper back to Seymour when he and others went to Portland, and with no recourse left to him, he returned empty-handed to Los Angeles. The loss of the newsletter was a crippling blow to the Azusa revival. Seymour remained the pastor of the Apostolic Faith Mission until his death, but his significant contributions to the larger American Pentecostal movement were largely minimized by his contemporaries.
### Seymour's last years
Another blow to Seymour's authority in the later movement was the split between Seymour and William Durham. During one of Seymour's revival tours in 1911, he asked Durham if he would serve as the visiting preacher while he was gone. Durham agreed, but his views on sanctification caused a schism in the church. Seymour was asked to return to Azusa immediately, while his wife Jennie padlocked Durham out of the mission. Durham began to attack Seymour publicly, launching a rhetoric campaign claiming that Seymour was no longer following the will of God and was not fit to be a leader. This did further harm to Seymour's ministry. Even after Durham's sudden death in 1912, the Pentecostal community in Los Angeles remained split.
Although his message had spread around the world, by 1914 Seymour's congregation on Azusa Street had shrunk to a small, local, Black American church. He continued as pastor until his death. On September 28, 1922, Seymour suffered two heart attacks and died in his wife's arms. He was buried in Evergreen Cemetery in East Los Angeles, near influential Pentecostal preacher Francisco Olazábal. Jennie Seymour died on July 2, 1936, and was buried next to her husband.
## Legacy and influence
Under Seymour's leadership, the Azusa Street Mission sent evangelists throughout the United States, spreading the Pentecostal message from Los Angeles all over the United States and resulting in many missions that modeled themselves after Azusa. By 1914, Pentecostalism had spread to almost every major U.S. city. All major American Pentecostal denominations can trace their origins to Azusa Street, including the Assemblies of God, the Church of God in Christ, the Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee), the Pentecostal Assemblies of the World, the United Pentecostal Church, and the Pentecostal Holiness Church.
The mission's doctrines quickly went around the world, with many of the missionaries spreading the new message having themselves been at the Azusa Street revival. By 1907, missionaries from Azusa Street had reached Mexico, Canada, Western Europe, the Middle East, West Africa, and parts of Asia. In the 21st century, estimates of worldwide Pentecostal membership range from 115 million to 400 million. |
293,781 | Calgary International Airport | 1,173,907,431 | Airport in Alberta, Canada | [
"Airports established in 1939",
"Calgary International Airport",
"Canadian airports with United States border preclearance",
"Certified airports in Alberta",
"National Airports System",
"Transport in Calgary"
] | Calgary International Airport , branded as YYC Calgary International Airport, is an international airport that serves the city of Calgary, Alberta, Canada. It is located approximately 17 kilometres (11 mi) northeast of downtown and covers an area of 20.82 square kilometres (8.04 sq mi; 5,144 acres; 2,082 ha). With 14.5 million passengers in 2022 and 124,108 aircraft movements in 2021, Calgary International is the busiest airport in Alberta and the fourth-busiest in Canada by passenger traffic. This airport is served by the Calgary International Airport Emergency Response Service for aircraft rescue and firefighting (ARFF) protection. The region's petroleum and tourism industries (and its proximity to Banff National Park) have helped foster growth at the airport, which has nonstop flights to an array of destinations in North and Central America, Europe, and Asia. Calgary serves as the headquarters and primary hub for WestJet.
Built in the late 1930s, the site has since grown to house four runways and two terminal buildings with six concourses for passengers (Gates A1-6, A12-24, B31-40, C50-65, D70-79 and E80-97), warehouses for cargo handling, and other infrastructure. The Calgary Airport Authority operates the property while paying rent to the federal government. Close to the airport is the Deerfoot Trail freeway for transport into the city, and public transit also serves the airport.
## History
### Early history
The first airport to serve Calgary opened in 1914, in the neighbourhood of Bowness. It occupied one-square kilometre (0.39 sq mi) and consisted of a hut and a grass runway. The site of the first airport () is the location of a community centre (The Landing) as well as Bowness High School and Bowglen Park.
Operations shifted to a new airport southwest of the city in 1928, named Old Banff Coach Road Airport (). However, issues with turbulence in the area prompted another airfield to be built the following year in the neighbourhood of Renfrew known as the Calgary Municipal Airport or Stanley Jones Airport. The local airline Renfew Air Service constructed the Rutledge Hangar at the Renfrew site (6th Street and Regal Crescent) in 1929, a lamella arch structure composed of Douglas Fir planks on a reinforced concrete base. The Renfew Air Service folded in November 1931 as a result of the Great Depression, and ownership of the Rutledge Hangar was taken over by the Edmonton Credit Corporation who subsequently lease the hangar to the City of Calgary. The RCAF used the airport in the 1940s. The Rutledge Hangar remains standing at the original Renfew site by Boys and Girls Club of Calgary and was designated an Alberta Provincial Historic Resource on 5 May 2003.
### Present site and Second World War
As the City of Calgary grew to surround the Renfrew airport site the municipal government decided to relocate the airport to a new location. The city purchased an area of land north of Calgary in 1938 for about \$31,000; and remains the site of Calgary's current airport. The city came to an agreement with Trans-Canada Air Lines to construct and lease a hangar on the site for \$45,000 (), and the federal Department of Transportation financed the construction of three runways and other improvements, the first of which opened on 25 September. The new Calgary airfield was named McCall Field after First World War ace and lifelong Calgarian Fred McCall.
As a result of Canada entering the Second World War, the federal government assumed control of McCall Field in 1940, re-purposing it as a fuel and maintenance stop for aircraft involved in the war effort and later stationing the No. 37 Service Flying Training School at the airfield from 22 October 1941 until its closure on 10 March 1944. McCall Field continued to operate regular passenger flights during the Second World War.
Following the end of the Second World War, the airport had been expanded to include additional hangars, four runways and other infrastructure. The City of Calgary resumed management of McCall Field in 1946, repurposed the a hangar as a passenger terminal, and convinced the federal government to extend the airports 4,125 ft (1,257 m) east–west runway to 6,200 feet (1,900 m) in October 1949 at an estimated cost of \$750,000 the construction required a 5 foot (1.5 m) excavation below grade to prevent frost heaving. At the time of completion, McCall Field's east–west runway was the third-longest runway in Alberta behind the Calgary Airport's north–south runway and the runway at CFB Namao.
### 1950s and 1960s, terminal expansion and jet age
The re-purposed military hangars did not meet the needs of the growing transportation needs of the city, and efforts were made by city officials to secure funding for a new passenger terminal. A new passenger terminal was constructed in 1956; its design originated in the 1950s as a thesis project by Provincial Institute of Technology and Art architecture student Ken Bond, who later formed the architectural firm Clayton, Bond and Mogridge, which was awarded the contract for designing the new terminal. The one-million dollar project featured an open public concourse, and ticketing offices for three airlines was dubbed one of the most modern air terminals in Canada when it opened on 2 June 1956. A lavish opening ceremony was attended by federal Transportation Minister George C. Marler, Lieutenant Governor of Alberta John J. Bowlen, and Mayor Donald Hugh Mackay, and a number of other dignitaries. The festivities included an air show featuring an Avro Canada CF-100 Canuck. Following construction of the new passenger terminal, McCall Field would see 110,984 passenger arrivals, 96,287 departures and nearly 1,000,000 pounds (450,000 kg) of cargo through the airport in 1957.
In the 1960s Calgary City Council began lobbing the federal government to designate McCall Field as an "international airport", a status defined by the Department of Transportation. As a compromise on April 6, 1962, the federal government approved the naming the airport terminal Calgary International Airport from Calgary Municipal Airport. However, Mayor Harry Hays, local Aldermen and residents continued to refer to the airport in general as McCall Field. Calgary International Airport did not receive official "International" status from the federal government until 1969. The first non-stop transatlantic flights were scheduled by Canadian Pacific Airlines in 1961, connecting Calgary with Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, and more flights from Europe commenced the following year.
The jet age arrived shortly after the construction of Calgary's new passenger terminal. The terminal was not designed with jet aircraft in mind, and the airport's runways were not suitable for the larger and faster aircraft. In 1961 the airport replaced the diagonal runway with an 8,000 feet (2,400 m) runway capable of handling modern jet aircraft. In 1963 the airport underwent a \$4-million refurbishment which saw improved electronic landing aids, and the main north–south runway extended by 4,675 feet (1,425 m) to its present length of 12,675 feet (3,863 m).
The City of Calgary was unable to afford the continued upgrades the Calgary Municipal Airport necessary to cope with the rising aircraft traffic. The city proceeded to sell the Calgary Municipal Airport to the federal government in 1966 for \$2 million, and the Department of Transportation proceeded to refurbish the runways shortly afterwards.
### 1970s, terminal and hub status
The new passenger terminal constructed in 1956 proved to only temporarily meet the needs of the city, and was inadequate for expansion or facilitating jet aircraft servicing. Following the sale of the Calgary International Airport by the City of Calgary to the Government of Canada in 1966, plans were put in motion to build a new passenger terminal. The airport's sale came with a promise by Federal Transportation Minister Jack Pickersgill that the federal government would build a \$20-million passenger terminal within five years; however, continued delays pushed completion of the terminal to 1977.
Construction began on the new passenger terminal in 1972, construction would be delayed due to re-designs to meet increased air traffic needs, causing the price of the new terminal to grow well beyond the original \$20-million figure. Finally, on 12 October 1977, the new \$130-million (equivalent to \$-million in ), 600,000 square feet (56,000 m<sup>2</sup>) terminal was opened by Mayor Rod Sykes, Provincial Transportation Minister Hugh Horner, and Federal Transportation Minister Otto Lang two months before construction had completed. Sykes was able to leverage his friendship with Lord Mountbatten to convince British Airways to have one of the newly introduced Concorde land in Calgary on the day, and although the jet showed up a day late due to mechanical issues, it was still quite the coup for a city of less than half a million residents. Among other festivities for the opening event included flyovers by a Boeing 747, Lockheed F-104 Starfighter, and the Canadian Air Force Snowbirds. The 1977 passenger terminal remains the core of Calgary International Airport's domestic terminal to this day.
The Jumbo Jet age arrived in Calgary with the newly introduced Boeing 747 landing for the first time in 1973, with Wardair providing non-stop bi-weekly charter service from Calgary to London. Air Canada was not far behind, and began non-stop service to London using the 747 starting on June 27, 1974. In April 1974, Calgary International Airport hosted CP Air's flight testing for the Boeing 747 after airport firefighters went on strike at both Vancouver International Airport and Toronto Pearson Airport.
In 1974 the Government of Alberta acquired ownership of Pacific Western Airlines, Canada's third largest airline at the time and move the head office and hub to Calgary. The airline continued under provincial government ownership until 1983, and later merged with Canadian Pacific Air Lines to form Canadian Airlines. Canadian Airlines maintained Calgary as the hub and headquarters for the airline until it was acquired by Air Canada in 2001.
### 1990s reorganization and WestJet
In the early 1990s, the Government of Canada introduced the National Airports Policy which moved towards privatization, liberalization and economic deregulation of air transportation, which included the formation of a Local Airport Authority under the name Calgary Airport Authority in 1992 for the management, operation and development of the Calgary International Airport under lease from the federal government. The Calgary Airport Authority, incorporated in July 1990 is a non-share capital, not-for-profit corporation formed under the authority of Alberta's Regional Airports Authorities Act. The Calgary Airport Authority signed a long-term 60-year lease with an additional 20-year option, which was subsequently exercised in 2011.
In 1992, Calgary International Airport opened a new air traffic control tower at the southern end of Aero Drive. The control tower when completed was 44 metres (144 ft) tall with 38 square metres (410 sq ft) of office room, and was designed with the knowledge that it would not provide the necessary line of sight to the expanded east airfield.
In February 1996, WestJet, which began as a low-cost carrier began operations with a base of operations at Calgary International, occupying an expanded area of the terminal. The airline's first flight, a Boeing 737 departed Calgary International on route to Vancouver International Airport on 29 February 1996.
### Operation Yellow Ribbon
During the September 11, 2001 attacks 13 international flights destined for the United States were diverted to Calgary International Airport as part of Operation Yellow Ribbon. The operation was a joint effort between NAV Canada and Transport Canada in communication with the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, which facilitated the grounding of potentially destructive air traffic.
### 2000s, runway and new terminal
The Calgary Airport Authority began analyzing the facility's air capacity in the late 1990s, and found the airport could reach its maximum capacity as early as 2006. The Airport Authority and NAV Canada made a number of changes to airport operations in the 2000s to improve the efficiency and capacity of the facility, but by 2008, with a number of changes made, NAV Canada reported the airfield would begin to exceed its practical capacity. The Calgary Airport Authority planned and under the "Airport Development Program", a major development program aimed at improving the capacity and quality of the airport, which included the construction of a new runway, air traffic control tower and passenger terminal.
On 25 May 2013, the new Air Traffic Control Tower opened at Calgary International Airport. The one-year, \$25-million (equivalent to \$-million) project came in advance of the airport's new runway, and at 91 m (300 ft), the tower was the tallest free-standing control tower in Canada. The airport's previous 50 m (165 ft) control tower was demolished in October 2014.
The Calgary Airport Authority initiated the Parallel Runway Project, a \$620-million (equivalent to \$-million) project to assess and construct a new runway, which led to the construction of the 14,000 feet (4,300 m) runway 17L/35R beginning in April 2011. Upon its completion on June 28, 2014, runway 17L/35R became the longest runway in Canada. During the construction of the runway, a \$295-million (equivalent to \$-million), 620 m (2,030 ft), six-lane roadway tunnel was constructed underneath the runway to connect Barlow Trail to 36th Street N.E. The decision for Calgary City Council on whether to construct the tunnel while the runway was being constructed, or wait until a later date was a major issue during the 2010 Calgary municipal election.
The Airport Authority addressed cargo capacity through the construction of a 30,000 sq ft (2,800 m<sup>2</sup>) cargo facility in 2015 followed by a 100,000 sq ft (9,300 m<sup>2</sup>) facility constructed in 2016.
The final stage of the Calgary Airport Authority's Airport Development Program was the construction of a new \$1.6-billion (equivalent to \$-billion) international terminal. Officially opened on 31 October 2016, the international terminal 186,000 square metres (2,000,000 sq ft) facility added 24 new aircraft gates, North America's first call-to-gate passenger boarding system, CATSA Plus enhanced passenger screening system, moving walkways and dedicated electric passenger vehicle system. The international terminal was designed with several sustainable principles including 581 geothermal wells for heating and cooling, and an annual rainwater capture capacity of 800,000 litres (180,000 imp gal).
In October 2016, Transport Canada officially renamed Calgary International Airport to "YYC Calgary International Airport", affixing the "YYC" IATA code to the airport's name.
In 2020, after several months of travel restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the governments of Alberta and Canada announced a new program to enable certain travellers to enter Canada more easily. Canadian citizens and essential workers entering Canada at Calgary, as well as at the Sweetgrass–Coutts Border Crossing, can be tested for the virus and, if they test negative, will be allowed to quarantine for only 48 hours instead of the usual 14 days.
## Infrastructure
### Passenger terminals
The Calgary International Airport houses two passenger terminals, one for domestic flights and the other for international flights.
The four-storey Domestic Terminal was originally opened in 1977 and has undergone a number of renovations in the decades following. The ground level of the terminal serves as the arrivals area with baggage claim and transportation facilities present. The second level of the terminal serves as the departures level and includes airport check-in, security and access to departure gates. The basement level of the airport contains utilities and tenant storage while the mezzanine level contains a food court, airline offices and the airport authority offices. The Domestic Terminal has four concourses: Concourses A1, A2, B, and C. All A, B and C gates are shared between domestic airlines such as Air Canada and Westjet (and their subsidiaries) predominantly, as well as Flair Airlines, Lynx Air, Air North, Air Transat and Porter Airlines. Westjet primarily uses A gates, Air Canada flights primarily use C gates, and B gates are used by all airlines. Concourse A1 includes departure gates A1-A6 (used for WestJet regional non-jet flights); Concourse A2 includes gates A11-A24; Concourse B includes departure gates B31-B40; and Concourse C includes departure gates C50-C65.
The International Terminal was originally opened on 31 October 2016 and consists of five levels; utilities and baggage processing in the basement. Arrivals meet and greet areas, Canada Customs and relevant infrastructure on the ground level with departure check-in, security, US customs and the international departures concourse being located on the second floor. The third level contains the international departures concourse and finally, the mezzanine level contains the US departure lounges. The International Terminal includes gates 70 through 97 shared across two concourses: Concourse D for all flights to and from foreign countries except the US as well as domestic flights; and Concourse E for flights to and from the United States. For the International Terminal, passengers travelling to the United States clear customs and immigration prior to departure at the preclearance facility.
The Domestic Terminal is connected to the International Terminal by a 620-metre walkway corridor and path for the YYC Link Passengers Shuttles; twenty, ten-seat electric vehicles used to transport connecting passengers.
WestJet, headquartered in Calgary and for which Calgary is the hub, has criticized the design of the international terminal, which opened in 2016. The airline's CEO stated that the distance between the terminals was too long for connecting travellers and that YYC Link was insufficient to solve this problem. As a result, WestJet had to alter its schedules in order to allow additional time for passengers transiting through Calgary. The Calgary Airport Authority responded that it did not see issues with the connections process, although it said passengers would need some time to adjust to the new facilities.
### Runways
Calgary International Airport consists of two north–south parallel runways with two intersecting runways. The parallel runways are 17R/35L (west) which is generally used for aircraft arriving and departing to the west, and 17L/35R (east) which is generally used for aircraft arriving and departing to the east. During the winter months in Calgary, cold arctic air will move in from the north which means aircraft will primarily depart and arrive on north-facing runways (35R and 35L), while the summer months with warm winds from the south, aircraft will primarily take-off and land on south-facing runways (17R and 17L). The diagonal runway 11/29 is generally used when crosswinds are present, which commonly occurs in the summer when westerly Chinooks roll into Calgary, or when extreme wind conditions prohibit the use of the parallel runways. The fourth and smallest runway, 08/26, is almost exclusively used by light aircraft and the general aviation sector.
Calgary International Airport's four runways are as follows. with the following dimensions:
- Runway 08/26 is 6,200 ft × 150 ft (1,890 m × 46 m)
- Runway 11/29 is 8,000 ft × 200 ft (2,438 m × 61 m)
- Runway 17R/35L is 12,675 ft × 200 ft (3,863 m × 61 m)
- Runway 17L/35R is 14,000 ft × 200 ft (4,267 m × 61 m)
The longest runway in Canada at the time of its 2014 opening, Runway 17L/35R was built to reduce congestion and better accommodate larger, heavier aircraft: the weight of such aircraft, combined with the low air density resulting from the airport's high elevation and temperatures during the summer, means that a longer runway is necessary for take-off. Runway 17L/35R is also layered with concrete, a material more durable than the asphalt that composes the airport's other three runways.
### Cargo area
The airport has allotted an extensive amount of area for cargo operations, including over 3,000,000 square feet (280,000 m<sup>2</sup>) of warehouse space. Freight airlines such as Cargolux make regular trips to Europe, Asia, and other destinations. In 2017, the Calgary airport handled a total of 147,000 tonnes (144,678 tons) of cargo.
In 2011, Calgary International Airport received the Air Cargo World Award of Excellence for airports between 100,000 and 199,999 cargo tonnage, having the highest score for Canadian airports, and second highest for North-American airports.
### Hotels
Calgary International Airport has two hotels located on site. The Calgary Airport Marriott In-Terminal Hotel is a 10-storey, 318 room hotel located in the international passenger terminal was opened On 1 September 2016. The Delta Hotels by Marriott Calgary Airport In-Terminal located across Airport Road from the domestic passenger terminal.
### Other facilities
At 91 metres (299 ft), the airport's air traffic control tower was the tallest standalone control tower in Canada upon its opening in 2013; compared to the previous tower, it has space for more air traffic controllers and is situated closer to the centre of the airport, giving controllers better views of the airfield. Meanwhile, the headquarters of WestJet and its subsidiary WestJet Encore are located onsite.
## Airlines and destinations
### Passenger
### Cargo
## Statistics
In 2019, YYC Calgary International Airport was again the fourth-busiest airport in Canada in terms of the total number of passengers served, which was almost 18 million. This was another record year in passenger volume, surpassing the previous record set in 2018 by 3.54%.
Of the total for 2019, travellers bound for domestic destinations constituted 69.7% of all passenger traffic, while people travelling to the United States amounted to 19.6%, remaining 10.7% was traffic to international destinations, excluding United States.YYC's cargo operations grew significantly with 155,820 tonnes of cargo moving through the airport, an increase of 6.7% over the previous year.
### Passenger and cargo traffic
Calgary International Airport passenger and cargo volumes since 2010 are provided in the following table:
### Top domestic routes
## Ground transportation
Deerfoot Trail provides freeway access to the rest of the city. There is also a tunnel beneath Runway 17L/35R that links the east side of the airport site to the terminal buildings. Two parking garages and a rental-car facility are situated across from the terminals. Public transport options are also available at the airport: Buses operated by Calgary Transit link YYC Calgary International to downtown, a nearby station of the local CTrain light-rail network, and other parts of the city.It is in future plans by Calgary Transit's CTrain system to have a Grey Line to go to YYC Calgary International Airport from the expanded Blue line, and further toward the expanded Green Line.
## Notable accidents and incidents
- On 10 May 1945, Royal Air Force No. 105 Squadron de Havilland DH.98 Mosquito B Mk IX (LR503) struck the control tower roof shortly after takeoff, shearing off the planes port wing, and crashed into the ground killing both crew members. The Mosquito, known as "F for Freddie" was a survivor of 213 operations over Europe, and crashed while performing a low level pass for spectators prior to flying to Red Deer and Lethbridge as part of cross country tour to support to garner support for 8th Victory Loan Drive.
- On 24 August 1963, West Coast Airlines Flight 794, a Fairchild F-27 departing from Spokane International Airport to Calgary via Cranbrook made a crash-landing shortly before the runway. The probable cause of the accident was the pilot failed to maintain the approved minimum altitude on approach. There were no fatalities.
- On 22 March 1984, Pacific Western Airlines Flight 501, a Boeing 737-200, aborted a take-off and exited the runway onto a taxiway after a component of the left engine broke off and hit the fuel stores in the wing, resulting in a fire that spread over the left and back portions of the plane. The flight attendants evacuated all passengers, while some suffered severe injuries, all the occupants survived.
- On 17 July 1990, an Ecuadorian Air Force de Havilland Canada DHC-5 Buffalo (Registration HC-BFH) being ferried to Calgary from Quito, via Billings, had the nosegear collapse following touchdown on runway 28, igniting hydraulic fuel and resulting in the aircraft burning out. There were no fatalities.
## See also
- List of the busiest airports in North America |
18,151,024 | Chris Davis (baseball) | 1,172,051,998 | American baseball player (born 1986) | [
"1986 births",
"American League All-Stars",
"American League RBI champions",
"American League home run champions",
"American expatriate baseball players in the Dominican Republic",
"Bakersfield Blaze players",
"Baltimore Orioles players",
"Baseball players from Arlington, Texas",
"Baseball players from Dallas",
"Bowie Baysox players",
"Estrellas Orientales players",
"Frisco RoughRiders players",
"Living people",
"Longview High School alumni",
"Major League Baseball designated hitters",
"Major League Baseball first basemen",
"Major League Baseball players suspended for drug offenses",
"Major League Baseball third basemen",
"Navarro Bulldogs baseball players",
"Oklahoma City RedHawks players",
"Oklahoma RedHawks players",
"Round Rock Express players",
"Silver Slugger Award winners",
"Spokane Indians players",
"Sportspeople from Longview, Texas",
"Surprise Rafters players",
"Texas Rangers players"
] | Christopher Lyn Davis (born March 17, 1986), nicknamed "Crush Davis", is an American former professional baseball first baseman. He played in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the Texas Rangers and Baltimore Orioles. He batted left-handed and threw right-handed. While primarily a first baseman throughout his career, Davis also spent time at designated hitter, third baseman, and outfielder.
Davis attended Navarro Junior College and was selected by the Rangers in the fifth round of the 2006 MLB draft. He ascended quickly through the Rangers' minor league system, getting named their Minor League Player of the Year in 2007. He was called up in the middle of 2008 and had a strong start to his major league career. He was the Rangers' starting first baseman for 92 games in 2009 and hit 21 home runs, but a low batting average and his tendency to strike out left the Rangers dissatisfied with him. Because of this, the Rangers sent Davis back and forth between the minors and the majors over the next two years and left him off their playoff roster in 2010. On July 30, 2011, they traded him to the Orioles.
Davis appeared in 31 games for the Orioles in 2011. In the lineup full-time in 2012, he hit 33 home runs while batting .270 and helping the Orioles reach the playoffs for the first time since 1997. In 2013, his 53 home runs led all MLB players and set a new Orioles single-season franchise record. Davis also had 138 runs batted in (RBIs), was selected to the All-Star Game, and finished third in American League Most Valuable Player Award (MVP) voting. In September 2014, Davis was suspended for 25 games for testing positive for amphetamine; he asserted that he tested positive due to the use of Adderall, for which he previously had a "therapeutic use exemption". Davis missed the Orioles' seven postseason games in 2014 due to his suspension.
From 2015 through 2018, Davis led all major league players in strikeouts-per-at-bat. In 2018, he set the MLB record for the lowest batting average ever for a qualified player when he batted .168. In 2019, he set the MLB record for the most consecutive at bats by a position player without a hit, going 0-for-54, yet he still managed a run batted in on a bases-loaded walk during that span. Davis announced his retirement on August 12, 2021.
## High school and college
Davis was born in Longview, Texas. He has an older sister, Jennifer. While he was in high school, his parents divorced. Davis attended Longview High School, playing shortstop on the school's varsity baseball team and pitching as well before graduating in 2004. He was originally chosen by the New York Yankees as the third-to-last pick of the 2004 Major League Baseball (MLB) Draft (1,496th overall in the 50th round). However, he did not sign and opted to attend Navarro Junior College in Texas instead, beginning in 2005. At Navarro, he was used as a third baseman and first baseman. He was once again drafted, by the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, in the 2005 MLB draft, however he did not sign. He was named a preseason JUCO All-American by Baseball America in 2006, earning Region XIV East Zone Most Valuable Player honors. That year with Navarro, he hit 17 home runs, one of which hit a retail building 100 feet away beyond the 380 sign on the outfield fence. Davis was then drafted again, this time by the Texas Rangers in the fifth round of the 2006 MLB draft. Davis was inducted to the Navarro College athletic hall of fame in 2021.
## Professional career
### Minor league career
Davis began his minor league career in 2006 with the Spokane Indians of the Single-A short season Northwest League, splitting time between the outfield and first base. In 69 games, he batted .277 with 70 hits, 18 doubles, 15 home runs, 42 runs batted in (RBI), and 65 strikeouts (eighth). Early in his minor league career, Davis struggled with his weight. At one point, he weighed 265 pounds, but he later learned to eat healthier and lost weight.
In 2007, Davis began the season with the Bakersfield Blaze of the Single-A advanced California League. He tied a California League record by posting a 35-game hitting streak and was selected to the Single-A advanced All-Star Game. On July 30, he was promoted to the Frisco RoughRiders of the Double-A Texas League, where he spent the rest of the season. Despite his call-up, he tied for fourth in the California League with 24 home runs and ranked fourth in the league with a .573 slugging percentage, leading Bakersfield in home runs, RBI, and doubles. With Frisco, he had 11 home runs and 25 RBI in the month of August and was named the Rangers' Minor League Player of the Month. In 129 games combined, used exclusively as a third baseman, Davis batted .297 with 36 home runs and 118 RBI in 2007. After the season, he was named the Rangers' Tom Grieve Minor League Player of the Year.
Entering 2008, Baseball America ranked Davis the number two prospect in the Rangers' organization, behind Elvis Andrus. Davis began the season playing first base for Frisco. He batted .333 with 62 hits, 13 home runs, and 42 RBI in 46 games before earning a promotion to the Triple-A Oklahoma RedHawks of the Pacific Coast League. In 31 games with Oklahoma, he hit .333 with 37 hits, 10 home runs, and 31 RBI. He was named to the All-Star Futures Game but was unable to play in it because he was promoted to the major leagues by the Texas Rangers. Later, during his breakout 2013 season, Davis referred to his time with Round Rock in 2008: "I know nobody really cares about Triple-A, but I put up these numbers up in Triple-A. That was kind of the question, 'Was he going to be able to do it at the big league level?' The thing about it was, I just couldn't do it consistently. I couldn't put the bat on the ball. I was striking out an astronomical amount, and this year it's just been consistency day in and day out."
### Texas Rangers
#### 2008
On June 26, 2008, the Rangers called up Davis from Oklahoma, and that day he made his major league debut in a 7–2 loss to the Houston Astros, getting a hit in his first Major League at bat, against Óscar Villarreal. Davis started his first Major League game at first base on June 27, 2008, and hit his first Major League home run during the game, against Clay Condrey in an 8–7 win over the Philadelphia Phillies. He also homered the next day, becoming the first Texas Ranger to homer in both of his first two Major League starts. He took over from Frank Catalanotto at first base.
By virtue of his hot start with the Rangers, and his considerable power as a batter, Davis was dubbed "Crush Davis" by local media and fans (a play on "Crash Davis" from the movie Bull Durham). From July 22 through July 26, he had four straight multi-hit games. Davis played well enough that, upon Hank Blalock's return from the disabled list (DL) on August 22, he was moved to third base so he could remain in the lineup. He had four hits on September 26 in a 12–1 victory over the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.
In 80 games (295 at bats), Davis batted .285 with 84 hits, 23 doubles, 17 home runs, and 55 RBI. He struck out 88 times, which was 30% of his at bats. Defensively, he was much better at first base than third, with a .997 fielding percentage at first as opposed to a .962 percentage at third and a higher range factor as well.
#### 2009
Davis slumped a bit in 2009 spring training but still began 2009 as the Rangers' first baseman. Rangers manager Ron Washington said, "I'm not worried about Chris. Chris works hard. He had a little spell where he was trying to get himself together. He's going to have bad times, but what he did tonight is what he's capable of and he'll do that enough to make you love him." On May 14, with the Rangers trailing 2–1 in the ninth inning against the Seattle Mariners, he homered against Brandon Morrow to give the Rangers a 3–2 victory. After a 1-for-29 slump, Davis hit two home runs on May 26 in a 7–3 victory over the New York Yankees. He had four hits on June 25, the fourth a 12th-inning two-run home run against Esmerling Vásquez in a 9–8 victory over the Arizona Diamondbacks.
On July 5, Davis was sent back down to make room for Josh Hamilton who was coming off the disabled list. Although he had 15 home runs in 258 at bats, he was leading the American League with 114 strikeouts and had, on June 21, become the quickest player in Major League history to reach 100 strikeouts, requiring only 219 at bats. His batting average was at .202. While talking about the Rangers' handling of another player, Julio Borbon, in 2010, Washington mentioned the decision to send Davis down in 2009: "We gave Chris a good amount of time last year. With young players, they can look bad for 100 at bats and then turn it around the next 100 and look exactly like you want them to." With the RedHawks, Davis played 44 games, batting .327 with six home runs, 12 doubles, and 30 RBI.
Davis was recalled on August 25 after Andruw Jones went on the DL and Blalock struggled. On September 8, in the second game of a doubleheader, he had three hits and four RBI, including a three-run home run against José Veras in a 10–5 victory over the Cleveland Indians. When Davis returned to the majors, his numbers improved dramatically, as he hit .318 in September and October, with five home runs and 21 RBIs in the two-month span. In 113 games (391 at bats), Davis batted .238 with 93 hits, 15 doubles, 21 home runs, and 59 RBI. However, he ranked seventh in the AL with 150 strikeouts. He did do well defensively; Washington said, when Blalock replaced him at first following his demotion, "We can't expect Hank Blalock to be Chris Davis [defensively], but Hank is a professional. I think he can play first base."
#### 2010
Davis was once again optioned to Triple-A after starting 2010 batting .188 in 15 games (48 at bats). He was recalled on July 9 to play first base for the Rangers. A roster spot, as well as a position in the Rangers starting lineup, became available when Justin Smoak was involved in a trade with the Seattle Mariners for Cliff Lee. On July 29, he was sent back to the RedHawks to make room for Mitch Moreland. In 103 games (398 at bats) with the RedHawks, he had 130 hits, 31 doubles, 14 home runs, and 80 RBI. He finished second in the league in hitting (.327, behind John Lindsey's .353) and fifth in strikeouts (105). He was recalled for the final time on September 11 but this time was used as a backup corner infielder and pinch-hitter, as Moreland was playing first base. In 45 games (120 at bats) with Texas, Davis hit .192 with 23 hits, one home run, and four RBI. He was left off the postseason roster as the Rangers entered the World Series for the first time ever but ended up losing in five games to the San Francisco Giants.
Attempting to aid Davis's offense, the Rangers tried to get Davis to widen his batting stance. However, playing in the Dominican Winter League over the offseason, Davis "felt like I fouled a lot of pitches off that I should have driven." He stood more upright and kept his feet closer together and, in 2013, said that this was a defining moment in his career.
#### 2011
In 2011, Davis began the season in the minors but was called up from Triple-A to play for the Rangers on April 11 when Hamilton suffered a fracture of the humerus bone in his shoulder. However, it was with reluctance that the Rangers recalled Davis; general manager Jon Daniels said, "We talked about another center fielder or a third catcher and think we will address that at some point. But whoever we called up wasn't going to get regular playing time, so we felt Chris was the most deserving." Used in a part-time role, Davis remained with the club until Hamilton came off the DL on May 23. He was also called up for a game on June 8 when Ian Kinsler was placed on paternity leave. His 2011 totals with the Rangers were a .250 batting average with 19 hits, three home runs, and six RBI in 28 games (76 at bats). Davis fared better with the Rangers' Triple-A affiliate, which had become the Round Rock Express in 2011. He had five-RBI games twice and in June batted .361 with 10 home runs and 28 RBI. Despite playing only 48 games with Round Rock in 2011, Davis finished seventh in the Pacific Coast League with 24 home runs.
### Baltimore Orioles
#### 2011
On July 30, 2011, Davis was traded with pitcher Tommy Hunter to the Baltimore Orioles for reliever Koji Uehara. Davis became expendable, because the Rangers felt Moreland was a better option at first base. Rangers general manager Jon Daniels said the day of the trade that he knew there was a possibility Davis could turn into a high-impact offensive player, and "If he does, we'll live with it." Opinions differed as to Davis's inability to hold a consistent starting role with the Rangers. While one popular idea was that it was because of his many strikeouts and low batting average, Orioles manager Buck Showalter believed it was due to the presence of Moreland and Adrián Beltré in Texas. Davis said, "I'm glad to get the opportunity to come here", citing his desire to play every day.
In his second game as an Oriole, on August 2, Davis homered for his first Oriole hit against Everett Teaford in an 8–2 victory over the Kansas City Royals. He received everyday playing time but went on the DL on August 14 with a right shoulder strain, an injury which was initially feared to be season-ending but wound up keeping him out only until September 6. In an 11-inning 5–4 victory over the Yankees on September 7, he struck out five times, the first Oriole to strike out that many times since Phil Bradley did so exactly 22 years before. He had three-hit games on September 8 and 19. On September 14, he had a season-high three RBI with a three-run home run against Wade Davis in a 6–2 victory over the Tampa Bay Rays.
Davis played 31 games for the Orioles, batting .276/.310/.398 with 34 hits, two home runs, 13 RBIs, and 39 strikeouts in 123 at bats. In a combined 59 games with Texas and Baltimore, he batted .266 with 53 hits, 12 doubles, five home runs, 19 RBI, and 63 strikeouts.
#### 2012
Davis received everyday playing time in 2012, starting at first base, at designated hitter, and in the outfield throughout the season. On May 6, in a 17-inning, 9–6 victory over the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park, Davis went hitless in eight at bats, but ended up being the winning pitcher. His feat was the first of its kind since Rube Waddell achieved it on July 4, 1905. Davis was the designated hitter until he was pressed into service as a relief pitcher in the 16th inning after Showalter had depleted the Orioles' bullpen. He struck out two batters and did not allow a run in his two innings of mound work. He was the first position player in the American League (AL) to be the winning pitcher in a game since Rocky Colavito on August 25, 1968, and the first to pitch for the Orioles since Manny Alexander on April 19, 1996. He and losing pitcher Darnell McDonald were the first position players on opposing teams in the same contest to each work in relief since Ty Cobb and George Sisler on October 4, 1925, and the first where both earned pitching decisions since Sam Mertes and Jesse Burkett on September 28, 1902.
On July 31, Davis hit his first career grand slam, off Yankees pitcher Iván Nova in an 11–5 win after the Orioles had faced a five-run deficit. On August 24, Davis had his first career three-homer game in a 6–4 victory over the Toronto Blue Jays. His second home run was his 22nd of the season, setting a new career high, and it marked the first three-homer game by an Oriole since Nick Markakis had one in 2006. After Markakis suffered a season-ending injury on September 8, Davis moved to right field for the remainder of the season and the playoffs.
Due to a late-season stretch in which he homered six times in the final six games, he finished the regular season with 33 home runs, more than any other Oriole. In 139 games (515 at bats), he batted .270/.326/.501 with 139 hits, 20 doubles, and 85 RBI. His 33 home runs also tied Robinson Canó for eighth in the AL while his 169 strikeouts tied B. J. Upton for fourth.
The Orioles reached the playoffs for the first time since 1997, claiming one of the AL Wild Card spots and defeating the Rangers in the 2012 AL Wild Card Game. In Game 2 of the 2012 AL Division Series (ALDS) against the Yankees, Davis had a two-run single against Andy Pettitte in the Orioles' 3–2 victory. Those were his only RBI of the series; he had four hits in 20 at bats as the Yankees defeated the Orioles in five games.
#### 2013
The Orioles decided to put Davis at first base full-time in 2013 and worked on his defense in spring training; later, Oriole coaches and teammates believed this helped Davis succeed at the plate as well. He set a personal home run goal before the season but refused to share it. On April 5, Davis set a new Major League record with 16 RBI in the first four games of a season. He also became the fourth MLB player in history to hit a home run in the first four games of the season (Nelson Cruz, Mark McGwire, Willie Mays), including a grand slam against Tyler Robertson in the fourth game, a 9–5 victory over the Minnesota Twins.
On June 16, he hit the 100th home run of his career, off Red Sox pitcher Jon Lester in a 6–3 victory. On July 11, he hit his 34th home run of the season, eclipsing his previous season high in a 3–1 victory over the Rangers. He earned his 87th and 88th RBIs of the season with a two-run home run against Mark Buehrle on July 12, setting a new Orioles record for most RBIs before the All-Star break; the previous record was 86 by Boog Powell. He ultimately ended up with 93 RBIs before the All-Star break. On July 14, he hit his 37th home run of the season against Josh Johnson in a 7–4 victory over the Toronto Blue Jays, tying Reggie Jackson for the second most home runs before the All-Star break by any MLB player and the most by an American League player. The home run was also his 500th career hit.
Davis received a tweet on June 30 from Michael Tran in Michigan asking him if he had ever used steroids. He responded "No", that same day. Davis said later in an interview, "I have not ever taken any PEDs. I'm not sure fans realize, we have the strictest drug testing in all of sports, even more than the Olympics. If anybody was going to try to cheat in our game, they couldn't. It's impossible to try to beat the system. Anyway, I've never taken PEDs, no. I wouldn't. Half the stuff on the list I can't even pronounce." Later, Davis would say that he believed Roger Maris's 61 home run season was the true single-season home run record, due to the steroid scandal surrounding Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa, and Mark McGwire.
On July 6, Davis was elected to start the 2013 All-Star Game, his first ever appearance. He was the leading vote-getter with 8,272,243 votes. Davis was also chosen to participate in the Home Run Derby for the first time, by American League captain Robinson Canó. Davis advanced to the second round and hit a total of 12 home runs. However, a blister broke on his hand, leaving him unable to hit enough homers to advance to the third and final round. At the All-Star Game the next night, July 16, 2013, Davis went 1–3, with a fly out, a single and a strikeout. Davis's single against Patrick Corbin advanced Miguel Cabrera to third, where he would score the game's first run on José Bautista's sacrifice fly.
Davis's 50th home run of the season, which he hit on September 13, tied him with Brady Anderson for the Orioles record of most home runs in a single season. He also became only the third player in MLB history, after Babe Ruth (New York Yankees, 1921) and Albert Belle (Cleveland Indians, 1995), to hit 50 home runs and 40 doubles in a single season. He hit his 51st home run on September 17, setting a new Orioles single season record. This was also his 92nd extra-base hit of the season, again tying Anderson for a franchise record. He later surpassed that by hitting his first triple of the season against Alex Cobb on September 21 in a 5–1 loss to Tampa Bay. Davis broke another Orioles record on September 27 with his 28th home run of the season hit at his home park of Camden Yards, surpassing Frank Robinson's record of 27 home runs hit at Memorial Stadium in 1966.
In 2013, Davis led all MLB batters in home runs (53), runs batted in (138), extra-base hits (96), and total bases (370). His 53 home runs, 96 extra-base hits, and 199 strikeouts all set new Orioles single-season records. In AL Most Valuable Player Award (MVP) voting, Davis finished third behind Cabrera and Mike Trout, as the Orioles failed to return to the playoffs.
Davis's breakout year led to compliments from his peers. Teammate Adam Jones summarized his style: "Most of his home runs are just line drives that get out. Obviously he hits some moonshots too." Cliff Lee, Davis's teammate in Texas in 2010, said, "Watching his highlights, you can totally tell that he's relaxed and just letting it happen. He's not putting anything extra into it. It's just nice and easy, and it's impressive to watch. ... He and Miguel Cabrera are the two best power hitters in the game, in my opinion."
#### 2014
Davis missed 12 games from April 26, 2014, to May 11, 2014, with a left oblique strain. He hit three home runs and had five RBI on May 20 in a 9–2 victory over the Pittsburgh Pirates. On June 17, facing Érik Bédard with the bases loaded, Davis hit a ball to left field that hit off the left field foul pole at Tropicana Field. Initially ruled a double, the umpires changed it to a grand slam after a review. The Orioles went on to defeat the Rays 7–5. After a 4-for-36 slump, Davis was benched on June 23, but he had a pinch-hit walk off three-run home run against Ronald Belisario, giving the Orioles a 6–4 victory over the Chicago White Sox. It was the Orioles' first game-ending pinch hit home run since Larry Sheets had one on August 24, 1988.
Davis struggled in the first half of 2014, hitting 15 home runs but batting around .200. The slump continued, as he batted .202 in July and saw himself dropped to seventh in the batting order in August. Showalter said, "It's hard to follow that pace. He spoiled us at a very high level. He wants to get back to it." Despite his slump, the Orioles through August 23 had built a seven-game lead in the AL East.
On September 12, Davis was suspended for 25 games for testing positive for amphetamine. Davis claimed he tested positive due to the use of Adderall, for which he previously had a "therapeutic use exemption", although he did not have that exemption for the 2014 season. Davis' suspension covered the final 17 games of the 2014 regular season and the seven games the Orioles played in the 2014 postseason.
For the 2014 season, he batted .196 (the lowest batting average among all qualified MLB batters)/.300/.404 with 26 home runs and 173 strikeouts (3rd in the AL) in 450 at bats.
#### 2015
Davis received a therapeutic use exemption for Vyvanse, a stimulant drug, prior to the 2015 season. He served the final game of his suspension on Opening Day.
Davis led the majors in home runs with 47 in 2015. He struck out a major-league-leading 31.0% of the time, batting .262/.361/.562. He led the league in strikeouts (with 208) and was 2nd in the AL in RBIs (117).
#### 2016
On January 21, 2016, Davis signed a seven-year, \$161 million contract to stay with the Orioles. The contract was the largest in Orioles history. In 159 games of 2016, Davis finished the year with a .221/.332/.459 batting line. He hit 38 home runs (8th in the American League), 84 RBIs, 88 walks (4th in the AL), and struck out an MLB-leading 219 times and a major-league-leading 32.9% of the time.
#### 2017
For the 2017 season, Davis batted .215/.309/.423 overall. He had 195 strikeouts (3rd in the American League), striking out a major-league-leading 37.2% of the time, and batted .208/.293/.326 against left-handers while hitting 26 home runs.
#### 2018
Davis started the 2018 season with a .150 batting average and 86 strikeouts in his first 57 games. On June 15, the Orioles announced that Davis would be benched and that they would call up Corban Joseph. Davis ended his season hitting .168/.243/.296 with 16 home runs with 192 strikeouts (4th in the American League) in 128 games, and struck out in a major-league-leading 36.8% of his at bats. His \$23 million salary was the 10th-highest in the league. His .168 batting average, .243 on base percentage, and .296 slugging percentage were each the lowest of all qualified major league batters, and the .168 batting average was the lowest of all-time for qualified MLB hitters.
#### 2019
At the end of the 2018 season, starting September 14, Davis began a hitless streak that lasted through his last 21 at bats of the season and continued into 2019. On April 8, 2019, Davis's streak set a new Major League record for the most consecutive at bats by a position player without a hit, surpassing Eugenio Vélez who went 0-for-46 in 2010 and 2011, and he ended that game against the Athletics still hitless, at 0-for-49. Davis ended his streak on April 13, after 54 consecutive at bats without a hit, with a two-run single against the Red Sox, and ended the day going 3-for-5 with two doubles, in addition to the single. On August 7, during a loss to the Yankees, Davis had to be physically restrained by players and coaches after attempting to go after manager Brandon Hyde. Davis finished the season with a .179 batting average and 12 home runs in 105 games.
#### 2020
Davis only played in 16 games for the Orioles in 2020 and hit a meager .115 with no home runs and only one RBI before ending his season early with a knee injury.
#### 2021
Before the 2021 season started, on March 26, 2021, Davis was placed on the 60-day injured list with a lower back strain. On May 19, it was announced that Davis would miss the entire 2021 season after undergoing arthroscopic surgery on his left hip.
On August 12, 2021, Davis announced his retirement. Davis's production had declined amidst injury struggles during his last few seasons. During the course of the contract he signed in 2016, Davis batted .196/.291/.379, with 92 home runs. At the time of his retirement, Davis was owed \$17 million in deferred salary for the 2022 season, as well as \$42 million in deferred payments from his 2016 contract. Based on which Davis will be paid by the Orioles \$9.16 million between 2023 to 2025, \$3.5 million between 2026 and 2032 and \$1.4 million between 2033 and 2037.
## Personal life
Davis, his wife, Jill and their three daughters live in Baltimore, Maryland, and Flower Mound, Texas. Before that, they lived in Arlington, Texas. They married in 2011. During the offseason, he enjoys bass fishing.
Davis is a Christian. Growing up, his parents took him to First Baptist Church in Longview, but Davis said it was not until after his difficult 2010 season that he "finally grasped true faith" and began reading the Bible daily.
Davis and his wife are supporters of Compassion International. They have sponsored children and have funded several large projects through the charity. During the COVID-19 pandemic, they pledged to give \$1 million to the charity.
## See also
- 50 home run club
- List of Baltimore Orioles awards
- List of Baltimore Orioles team records
- List of Major League Baseball annual home run leaders
- List of Major League Baseball annual putouts leaders
- List of Major League Baseball annual runs batted in leaders
- List of Major League Baseball career home run leaders
- List of Major League Baseball career strikeouts by batters leaders |
31,952,941 | Move (MercyMe song) | 1,158,378,307 | 2011 song by MercyMe | [
"2010 songs",
"2011 singles",
"Dance-rock songs",
"MercyMe songs",
"Songs written by Bart Millard",
"Songs written by Dan Muckala"
] | "Move" is a song by Christian rock band MercyMe. Written by MercyMe and Dan Muckala, "Move" is a dance-rock song with a sound similar to that of pop rock band Maroon 5. The theme of the song's lyrics is perseverance through adversity. Released on May 23, 2011 as the third single from MercyMe's 2010 album The Generous Mr. Lovewell, "Move" was received with positive critical reviews, especially for the arrangement of the song. "Move" attained success as a single, peaking atop Billboard magazine's Christian Songs, Hot Christian AC, and Christian AC Indicator charts, as well as at No. 6 on the Billboard Christian CHR chart and No. 20 on the Billboard Bubbling Under Hot 100 Singles chart.
## Background and composition
"Move" was written by MercyMe and Dan Muckala. It was produced by Brown Bannister and Muckala, and was recorded by F. Reid Shippen at Sonic Ranch in El Paso, Texas. Overdubs were recorded by Muckala, Bannister, and Billy Whittington at Towsensend Sound and Glomo Studio. The song was mixed by Shippen at Robot Lemon in Nashville, Tennessee and was mastered by Ted Jensen at Sterling Sound in New York.
"Move" is a dance-rock song with a length of two minutes and fifty-eight seconds. It is set in the key of A minor and has a tempo of 100 beats per minute, with a vocal range spanning from G<sub>4</sub>-G<sub>5</sub>. The musical feel of "Move" has been compared to that of Maroon 5, particularly their songs "This Love" and "Makes Me Wonder". Lyrically, the song is about perseverance through adversity, with the narrator singing that he will “move to a different drum no matter what life brings". The song does not directly mention God.
## Reception
### Critical reception
"Move" received generally positive reviews. Allmusic reviewer Jared Johnson called the song "as relevant as anything MercyMe have ever done". Roger Gelwicks of Jesus Freak Hideout described "Move" as "an upbeat rocker complete with an infectious handclap beat". Andy Argyrakis of Today's Christian Music described the song as "foot stomping", and Kevin Davis of Christian Music Review commented that the song "has a fantastic rock-dance arrangement like 'This Love' by Maroon 5". Tris McCall of The Star-Ledger was more negative in his review, commenting that the song "sounds so much like Maroon 5 that it’s almost embarrassing", and that "in a music industry governed by sanity, the two songwriters [Adam Levine of Maroon 5 and Bart Millard of MercyMe] would sing shoulder to shoulder and reach a common audience".
### Chart performance
"Move" debuted at No. 41 on the Hot Christian Songs chart for the chart week of May 28, 2011, and advanced to No. 30 in its second chart week. "Move" advanced to No. 20 in its fourth chart week and to No. 9 in its tenth chart week. The song advanced to No. 5 in its twelfth chart week and spent two more weeks on the chart before advancing to No. 1. "Move" spent a total of nine consecutive weeks atop the Christian Songs chart before dropping to No. 2, supplanted by Casting Crowns' "Courageous". The song spent a total of three consecutive weeks at the No. 2 spot before falling to No. 3. "Move" dropped to No. 6 in its twenty-ninth chart week, and fell to No. 9 in its thirtieth and final week on the chart. In all, "Move" spent a total of thirty weeks on the chart, nine of them at No. 1.
"Move" has also peaked at No. 1 on the Hot Christian AC chart, No. 1 on the Christian AC Indicator chart, No. 6 on the Christian CHR chart, and No. 20 on the Bubbling Under Hot 100 chart, which is equivalent to No. 120 on the Billboard Hot 100.
## Charts
### Weekly charts
### Year-end charts |
168,202 | Bart the Genius | 1,172,396,740 | null | [
"1990 American television episodes",
"Examinations and testing in fiction",
"Television episodes about academic scandals",
"The Simpsons (season 1) episodes"
] | "Bart the Genius" is the second episode of the American animated television series The Simpsons. It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on January 14, 1990. It was the first episode written by Jon Vitti. It is the show's first normal episode as well as the first to use the signature title sequence, though this version is much different from the one used from the second season to the twentieth season. In the episode, Bart cheats on an intelligence test and is declared a genius, so he is sent to a school for gifted children. Though he initially enjoys being treated as a genius, he begins to see the downside of his new life.
It marks the first use of Bart's catchphrase "Eat my shorts". As the second episode produced, directly after James L. Brooks' personal displeasure at the animation of "Some Enchanted Evening", the future of the series depended on how the animation turned out on this episode. The animation proved to be more to his liking and production continued.
## Plot
The Simpsons spend a night playing Scrabble and remind Bart that he should stimulate his brain by improving his vocabulary if he hopes to pass his intelligence test at school. After Bart cheats by inventing a nonsense word, kwyjibo – basing its definition on an insulting description of his father – Homer angrily chases after him.
At Springfield Elementary School, Bart is busted for vandalism by Principal Skinner after the class genius, Martin Prince, snitches on him. To get revenge, Bart surreptitiously switches exams with Martin. When the school psychologist, Dr. Pryor, studies the IQ test results, he labels Bart a genius. Homer and Marge enroll him in a school for academically gifted students. Neither Lisa nor Skinner are fooled by Bart's supposed genius, but Skinner is pleased that Bart no longer attends Springfield Elementary.
At the Enriched Learning Center for Gifted Children, Bart feels out of place among the other students with advanced academic skills and is neglected by his brilliant classmates. Later, Bart confidently tells Homer that his day was so-so, to which Homer unsuccessfully plans to take him to chocolate frosty milkshakes to celebrate the first day of genius school. To their surprise, Marge plans that the whole family should go to an opera concert, but the funny jokes that Homer and Bart tell make Marge embarrassed. Just before the show finishes, Marge asks for the family to leave.
Bart visits his former school, where his old friends reject him because of his perceived intelligence. After Bart's chemistry experiment explodes, filling the school lab with green goo, he confesses to Pryor that he switched tests with Martin. Pryor realizes that he was never a genius and has him readmitted to Springfield Elementary.
Bart returns home and admits to Homer that he cheated on the intelligence test, but he is glad they are closer than before. Angry at Bart for lying to him about the test, he chases him through the house as Lisa declares that Bart is "stupid again". Homer attempts to make Bart come out of his room to "hug him and kiss him and make him all better," but Bart says: "You think I'm dumb enough to fall for that? I'm insulted!" The episode closes with Homer angrily pounding on Bart's door and Bart ignoring Homer's pleas for him to come out during the credits.
## Cast
- Dan Castellaneta as Homer Simpson and Conductor
- Julie Kavner as Marge Simpson
- Nancy Cartwright as Bart Simpson and Skinner's secretary
- Yeardley Smith as Lisa Simpson and Cecile Shapiro
- Harry Shearer as Principal Seymour Skinner, Dr. J. Loren Pryor and Mr. Prince
- Marcia Wallace as Edna Krabappel and Ms. Mellon (credited as Marsha Wallace)
- Jo Ann Harris as Richard and Lewis
- Pamela Hayden as Milhouse Van Houten, Ethan Foley and Boy
- Russi Taylor as Martin Prince, Sidney Swift and Ian
## Production
The concept for the episode developed from writer Jon Vitti coming up with a long list of bad things Bart would do for attention, imagining the potential consequences. The only idea that developed into an interesting episode concept was Bart's cheating on an IQ test. This idea was based on an incident from Vitti's childhood when a number of his classmates did not take an intelligence test seriously and suffered poor academic treatment because of it. Because Bart was already obviously unintelligent, Vitti reversed the problem for his episode. Vitti used all his memories of elementary school behavior to produce a draft script of 71 pages, substantially above the required length of about 45 pages.
It was Vitti's first script for a 30-minute television program. Bart's use of the phrase "Eat my shorts" was intended to reflect his adoption of catchphrases he had heard on TV; the creative team had told Vitti that he should not come up with original taglines for the character. The scene where the family plays Scrabble was inspired by the 1985 cartoon The Big Snit.
Director David Silverman had difficulty devising a legible Scrabble board for the opening scene that would convey the idea that the Simpsons were able to devise only very simple words. The design of Bart's visualization of the math problem was partially inspired by the art of Saul Steinberg. The increasing appearance of numbers in that sequence derived from Silverman's use of a similar tactic when he had to develop a set design for the play The Adding Machine. Each successive scene in the sequence was shorter than the one before it by exactly one frame.
The scene where Bart writes his confession was done as one long take to balance the shorter scenes elsewhere in the episode. It was animated in the United States by Dan Haskett. There were a few problems with the finished animation for the episode. The banana in the opening scene was colored incorrectly, as the Korean animators were unfamiliar with the fruit, and the final bathtub scene was particularly problematic, including issues with lip sync. The version in the broadcast episode was the best of several attempts.
The episode was the first to feature the series' full title sequence. Creator Matt Groening developed the lengthy sequence in order to cut down on the animation necessary for each episode, but devised the two gags as compensation for the repeated material each week. In the first gag, the camera zooms in on Springfield Elementary School, where Bart can be seen writing a message on the chalkboard. This message, which changes from episode to episode, has become known as the "chalkboard gag". The other gag is known as a "couch gag", in which a twist of events occur when the family meets to sit on their couch and watch television. Groening, who had not paid much attention to television since his own childhood, was unaware that title sequences of such length were uncommon by that time. As the finished episodes became longer, the production team were reluctant to cut the stories in order to allow for the long title sequence, so shorter versions of it were developed. The episode also introduced the characters Martin Prince and his parents, Richard, Bart's teacher Edna Krabappel and Dr. J Loren Pryor.
## Cultural references
In the opening scene, Maggie spells EMCSQU with her blocks, a reference to Albert Einstein's mass–energy equivalence equation. A picture of Einstein also appears on the wall of Dr. Pryor's office. At one point, Homer erroneously refers to Einstein as the inventor of the light bulb. Dr. Pryor compares Bart's proposed work among ordinary children to Jane Goodall's study of chimpanzees. Goodall was pleased to be mentioned in the episode, sending the program a letter, and Vitti an autographed copy of her book. In retrospect, Vitti said he should have given the book to Al Jean who came up with the line. The conductor of the opera the family attends is named Boris Csupowski, a reference to animator Gabor Csupo. The opera attended by the family is Carmen, by French composer Georges Bizet; the song that Bart mocks is a famous aria called the Toreador Song. Students at the gifted school have lunchboxes featuring images of the 1945 novel Brideshead Revisited and chess grandmaster Anatoly Karpov.
## Reception and legacy
In its original American broadcast, "Bart the Genius" finished 47th place in the weekly ratings for the week of January 8–14, 1990 with a Nielsen rating of 12.7. It was the second-highest-rated show on Fox that week.
Since airing, the episode has received mostly positive reviews from television critics. Warren Martyn and Adrian Wood, the authors of the book I Can't Believe It's a Bigger and Better Updated Unofficial Simpsons Guide, strongly praised the episode calling it "superbly written and directed, often a literal child's-eye view of education, the first Simpsons episode proper is a classic." They went on to say, "these twenty minutes cemented Bart's position as a cultural icon and a hero to all underachievers, and managed a good few kicks at hothouse schools along the way. Especially worthy of note is the sequence where Bart visualizes his maths problem, the viewing of which should be a required part of teacher training."
In September 2001, in a DVD review of the first season, David B. Grelck rated the episode 2+1⁄2 (of 5) and commented that the episode was "wacky and fun, very Bart-centered, it's easy to see with this episode why Bart became the figurehead for a few years of class clowns".
Colin Jacobson at DVD Movie Guide said in a review that "Bart the Genius" "offered another decent but unspectacular episode" and "its early vintage seems clear both through the awkward animation and [through] the lack of appropriate character development."
In February 1991, in an interview, Jon Vitti described "Bart the Genius" as his favorite amongst the episodes he had written to that point. James L. Brooks also mentioned the episode amongst his favorites, saying, "We did things with animation when that happened that just opened doors for us."
The show received mail from viewers complaining that the throwing away of a comic book was an incident of censorship. The invented word "Kwyjibo" in the episode inspired the creator of the Melissa macro virus and the name of an iron oxide copper-gold deposit in Quebec.
## Home media
The episode was released first on home video in the United Kingdom, as part of a VHS release titled The Simpsons Collection; the episode was paired with season one episode "The Call of the Simpsons". In the United Kingdom, it was once re-released as part of the VHS boxed set of the complete first season, released in November 1999.
In the United States, the episode would finally see the home video release as a part of The Simpsons Season One DVD set, which was released on September 25, 2001. Groening, Brooks, Silverman, and Vitti participated in the DVD's audio commentary. A digital edition of the series' first season was published on December 20, 2010, in the United States containing the episode, through Amazon Video and iTunes. |
2,067,725 | Mitchell Freeway | 1,168,108,227 | Freeway in Perth, Western Australia | [
"Articles containing video clips",
"Highways and freeways in Perth, Western Australia",
"James Mitchell (Australian politician)",
"Recipients of Engineers Australia engineering heritage markers"
] | The Mitchell Freeway is a 41.6-kilometre-long (25.8 mi) freeway in the northern suburbs of Perth, Western Australia, linking central Perth with the city of Joondalup. It is the northern section of State Route 2, which continues south as Kwinana Freeway and Forrest Highway. Along its length are interchanges with several major roads, including the Graham Farmer Freeway and Reid Highway. The southern terminus of the Mitchell Freeway is at the Narrows Bridge, which crosses the Swan River, and the northern terminus is at Romeo Road in Alkimos, a suburb within the City of Wanneroo.
Planning for the route began in the 1950s, and the first segment in central Perth was constructed between 1967 and 1973. Named after Sir James Mitchell, the freeway has been progressively extended north since then. In the 1970s, the first two extensions were completed, up to Hutton Street in Osborne Park. By the end of the 1980s, the freeway had reached Ocean Reef Road in Edgewater. The Joondalup railway line was constructed in the freeway median in the early 1990s. This necessitated the relocation of a section of the southbound carriageway, and the construction of three new bridges. In conjunction with these works, additional lanes were constructed in the realigned section.
Since the 1990s, extensions to the Mitchell Freeway have taken it to Romeo Road in Alkimos, which is the freeway's terminus as of July 2023. Further works are planned, which will eventually take the freeway past Yanchep and Two Rocks to the boundary of the Perth Metropolitan Region.
## Route description
The Mitchell Freeway is the northern section of State Route 2. It commences at the northern end of the Narrows Bridge, Perth, continuing from Kwinana Freeway, and terminates north of the satellite city of Joondalup at Romeo Road, Alkimos. All intersections with the freeway are via grade separated interchanges. The speed limit is 100 kilometres per hour (60 mph) except in central Perth, where the limit is reduced to 80 kilometres per hour (50 mph) as the freeway interchanges with the Graham Farmer Freeway and Mounts Bay Road. South of Hepburn Avenue, the freeway has 3 to 5 lanes in each direction. From that point north, there are mostly two lanes in each direction, expanding to three lanes between Hodges Drive and Shenton Avenue. For almost the entirety of its length the median strip of the freeway also houses the Joondalup railway line, with all but two of the line's current stations and a railway depot also built on the strip. Additionally, a shared pedestrian and bicycle path is built alongside most of the freeway.
### Perth and West Perth
The section near the Perth city centre, within the City of Perth local government area (LGA), features many partial access interchanges. The Narrows Interchange is located just north of the Narrows Bridge, on the eastern edge of Kings Park. This is a hybrid interchange connecting the freeway with Mounts Bay Road and Riverside Drive, over a distance of 800 metres (2,600 ft). There is complete access to and from Mounts Bay Road via a standard northbound exit ramp and looped ramps for the other movements. There is a partial Y-Interchange incorporated for direct access to and from Riverside Drive via a southbound exit ramp and a northbound entrance ramp. All other traffic movements must be made via Mounts Bay Road. The Riverside Drive entrance ramp merges with the Mounts Bay Road northbound entrance ramp. The southbound exit ramp is similarly shared, before diverging for three destinations: Mounts Bay Road, Riverside Drive, and the Perth Convention and Exhibition Centre car park. The main northbound exit to Hay Street is via an access road, which begins on the Mounts Bay Road exit ramp. The access road rejoins the freeway as an outside lane on the shared Riverside Drive and Mounts Bay Road entrance ramp. The Hay Street exit ramp, a short distance later, can be accessed from the two outermost lanes. This allows the traffic entering the freeway from the ramp to continue north or exit at Hay Street without weaving.
The freeway continues north-westerly for 240 metres (790 ft), splitting Mount Street in half, and passing under Malcolm Street. After this, it turns north-easterly for 500 metres (1,600 ft), and lines up with the city blocks between George and Elder streets, a pair of one way frontage roads. The freeway also marks the boundary between Perth and West Perth. Partial access is provided to or from all the roads that the freeway crosses over (or under in the case of Hay Street). North of Roe Street, the freeway turns north-west towards Glendalough over the course of 1.1 kilometres (0.7 mi). In this section the freeway marks the boundary between the City of Perth and City of Vincent LGAs. There is a full Y-Interchange here, the Hamilton Interchange, with the Graham Farmer Freeway, which bypasses the Perth city centre via a tunnel, and provides access to Perth Airport. Combined with this interchange is a partial Y-Interchange with Charles Street. The southbound entrance ramp merges with, and northbound exit ramp diverges from, the Graham Farmer Freeway ramps. There is a traffic light controlled intersection with Newcastle Street at the northern end of these ramps. Charles Street is the start of State Route 60, an alternative route to Perth's northern suburbs and areas north of the Perth Metropolitan Region. Located in the vicinity of these interchanges are the Sutherland Street northbound entrance ramp, from West Perth, and a southbound exit ramp to both Roe Street, and Wellington Street, Perth. The Loftus Street overpass, near the northwestern end of the Graham Farmer Freeway ramps, is the edge of the City of Perth LGA; beyond this point the freeway is the boundary between West Leederville in the Town of Cambridge and Leederville in the City of Vincent.
### Northern suburbs of Perth
In the northern suburbs of Perth, most of the interchanges are standard diamond interchanges, and the rest are modified versions, which have ramps missing or replaced with loop ramps. The first interchange 0.9 kilometres (0.6 mi) north-west of West Perth, is with Vincent Street and Lake Monger Drive. This interchange has a looped southbound entry ramp, so that Leederville Parade can join to the south side of intersection with Vincent Street and the southbound ramps. The northbound exit ramp terminates at Southport Street, 200 metres (660 ft) south of Vincent Street and Lake Monger Drive. The freeway then proceeds northwest for 1.9 kilometres (1.2 mi) alongside Lake Monger's eastern edge, after which there is a half diamond interchange with Powis Street, with only a northbound exit ramp and a southbound entrance ramp. The freeway continues north, now within the City of Stirling LGA, through Osborne Park, until it reaches Hutton Street after 2.4 kilometres (1.5 mi). There are several local roads in Osborne Park that have T-Junction intersections with the freeway ramps south of Hutton Street. These are McDonald Street West and Hector Street West, with the northbound exit ramp; and Cape Street, Hector Street, and McDonald Street with southbound entry ramps. The freeway has an 3.2-kilometre (2.0 mi) S-curve after Hutton Street, moving to an alignment further west that does not bisect any suburbs. The interchanges with Cedric Street on the S-curve, and Karrinyup Road at the end of the S-curve, are diamond interchanges. There are slight modifications to the entrance and exit ramps between these roads, which merge for 500 metres (0.31 mi), requiring traffic to weave. The curved section is the boundary between Stirling to the east of the freeway, and Osborne Park and Innaloo to the west.
The next interchange, after 1.6 kilometres (1.0 mi), is with Erindale Road. It is another half diamond interchange, with only northbound exit and southbound entrance ramps. Beyond Erindale Road, the suburb to the east of the freeway is Balcatta, and 1.3 kilometres (0.8 mi) further north is Reid Highway, with the southbound and westbound-to-northbound entry ramps looped. Balcatta Road joins the intersection of the southbound ramps with Reid Highway. Reid Highway, together with Tonkin Highway, provides a limited-access route to Perth Airport. North of Reid Highway, the Mitchell Freeway divides Carine to west from Hamersley to the east. There is no access to next major road, Beach Road. It forms the border between the City of Stirling and City of Joondalup LGAs; as well as between Carine and Duncraig west of the freeway, and Hamersley and Warwick to the east. However, Warwick Road's interchange is only 2.1 kilometres (1.3 mi) north of Reid Highway. It is a standard diamond interchange, but weaving is required between Reid Highway and Warwick Road due to the short distance between the interchanges. Greenwood is located north of Warwick Road and east of the freeway.
The following two interchanges, after 2.6 kilometres (1.6 mi) and 2.1 kilometres (1.3 mi) respectively, are with Hepburn Avenue and Whitfords Avenue. The Hepburn Avenue interchange is located at the corners of Duncraig, Greenwood, Kingsley, Western Australia, and Padbury; while the Whitfords Avenue interchange is located at the corner of Kingsley, Padbury, Cragie, and Woodvale. Each interchange also provides access for the railway stations in the median (Greenwood and Whitfords respectively) via the southbound entry ramps, which are two-way north of the carparks' entrances. North of here, over a distance of 7 kilometres (4.3 mi), are standard diamond interchanges with Ocean Reef Road, Hodges Drive, and Shenton Avenue, which provide access to Joondalup city centre, and Joondalup Health Campus, east of the freeway. West of the freeway are the suburbs of Heathridge, Connolly and Currambine. The Edgewater railway station lies just to the north of the Ocean Reef Road interchange (road access via Joondalup Drive), with the railway deviating to the east from the median just south of Hodges Drive to stop at Joondalup railway station.
After 350 metres (1,150 ft) north of the Shenton Avenue interchange, the railway line re-enters the freeway median just prior to passing under Moore Drive. Both the freeway and railway line then pass over Burns Beach Road, 1 kilometre (0.6 mi) further north with the Currambine railway station lying 200 metres (660 ft) to the south. The diamond interchange with Burns Beach Road is the northernmost fully signalised interchange on the freeway and lies at the corner of Currambine, Joondalup, Kinross and Neerabup. The next interchange, after 3.5 kilometres (2.2 mi), is with Neerabup Road and is a hybrid interchange where the western side is a teardrop roundabout common to dogbone interchanges while the eastern side is a full roundabout similar to a dumbbell interchange. The latter is due to the southbound entry ramp being built with a second roundabout 100 metres (330 ft) to the south. Although currently unused, it is likely to be used as access to any future parking at Clarkson railway station immediately to the north of the interchange (similar to the setups at the Hepburn and Whitfords Avenue interchanges). The next interchange is reached 2.7 kilometres (1.7 mi) north at Hester Avenue at a partial dogbone interchange.
After Hester Avenue, the northbound and southbound carriageways split and pass around the Nowergup railway depot before reaching the next interchange at Lukin Drive, after which the railway line again deviates from the freeway median, this time to the west to continue on to Butler railway station and future stops on to Yanchep railway station. An interchange at Butler Boulevard then intersects the route before the freeway terminates at Romeo Road. Access to areas further north is provided by Marmion Avenue to the west of the terminus, or via Wanneroo Road to the east.
## History
The Mitchell Freeway began as a highway proposed in the Metropolitan Region Scheme in the mid-1950s. The original plan took the route, then known as Yanchep Highway, inland from what is now known as Karrinyup Road to the intersection of Wanneroo Road and Balcatta Road. However, the first gazetted edition of the Metropolitan Region Scheme, from 1963, shows a controlled-access highway along the current freeway alignment. The later plan only detailed the route up until a point east of Sorrento, at a proposed east-west controlled-access highway on the modern day Hepburn Avenue alignment.
Detailed design on the first stage of the freeway, from the Narrows Bridge to Sutherland Street at the northern edge of the city, began in 1960, and took several years to be completed. The design included a complex interchange at the Narrows Bridge that was to be built on reclaimed land that was mostly soft mud. Ground improvement works, which included the installations of 43,000 sand drains, began in 1964; demolition of buildings in the freeway's path commenced in 1965. The freeway was completed in three sections, under three separate contracts. Construction on the central section from Mount Street to Wellington Street started on 18 November 1966, following a groundbreaking ceremony conducted by Premier David Brand. It was opened to traffic two years later, connected to the Narrows Bridge via a temporary Bailey bridge over Mounts Bay Road. The new road carried up to 1400 vehicles per hour during peak hours.
Work on the section north of Wellington Street, known as the Hamilton Interchange, began in October 1969. It was partially opened on 17 November 1971, but was not completed until 4 October 1972. The final part of the project to be completed was the Narrows Interchange. Construction began in 1970 with the installation of thirteen caissons, which would house foundation columns. Placement of the caissons was difficult; as well as sinking vertically as intended, they also tilted and slid horizontally. Corrections were made by selective excavation, blasting bedrock, and applying tension via guy-wires. Following the foundation works, construction proceeded swiftly; most of the work was completed by 1972. Premier John Tonkin opened the interchange on 30 November 1973. This initial section functioned only as a distributor for Narrows Bridge traffic accessing Perth's central business district or adjacent areas to the north-west. Whilst initially referred to as the "Western Switch Road", it was renamed after the former Western Australia State Premier and Governor Sir James Mitchell, on 5 June 1963. In 2008, Stage 1 was declared a National Engineering Landmark by Engineers Australia as part of its Engineering Heritage Recognition Program.
Several stages were built through the late 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s. The first extension of the freeway was nearly a mile long (1.6 km), taking the freeway to Vincent Street. This stage also included a long, curving bridge, eight-span bridge connecting northbound traffic to Charles Street. The construction of this stage, which began in February 1974, resulted in the suburb of Leederville being split in two. Residential and industrial buildings were demolished, and streets were cut off on both sides of the freeway's path. The extension opened to traffic on 8 March 1976, having cost \$15.15 million. It was opened by the state Minister for Transport, Ray O’Connor. A commemorative plaque was located under the bridge leading to Charles Street.
The design of Stage 3 of the freeway, a 4.8-kilometre (3.0 mi) section extending to Hutton Street, was completed in 1974. The existing soil was not suitable for construction, as the area generally consisted of soft peat and old landfills. In 1975, the ground was consolidated with 720,000 cubic metres (25,000,000 cu ft) of sand. Construction took place between 1976 and 1978, with the section opened by the Minister for Transport, David Wordsworth, on 2 June 1978. A commemorative plaque was unveiled at the Powis Street bridge. This stage cost \$12.5 million, and received the Institution of Engineers Australia's Western Australian Division Engineering Excellence Award in 1978.
After a four-year gap, construction of Stage 4 began, which would take the freeway to Erindale Road. The first half of the stage, up to Karrinyup Road, opened on 12 December 1983, while the project wasn't complete until 21 September 1984. It was opened by the state Minister for Transport, Julian Grill. This section completed 24 kilometres (15 mi) of freeway in Perth, from Bull Creek to Balcatta. The next two stages were constructed together, extending the freeway to Hepburn Avenue. Stage 5 was from Erindale to Warwick Road, and involved excavating a large quantity of material, including 600,000 tonnes (590,000 long tons; 660,000 short tons) of limestone. That stage cost \$22.73 million, while Stage 6 only cost \$8.06 million. Both stages were opened together, on 6 August 1986. The first stage of Reid Highway (then known as the North Perimeter Highway) was built at the same time, and opened on 16 May 1986. A further extension to Ocean Reef Road was opened on 2 July 1988 by the Federal Minister for Transport, Peter Morris, at a cost of \$17.5 million. The state and federal governments provided most of the funds, \$9.7 million and \$5.2 million respectively. The City of Wanneroo contributed \$1.3 million, Joondalup Development Corporation \$1 million, and land developers \$300,000, as they wanted the freeway built ahead of schedule to stimulate local development.
In 1991 and 1992, the median strip of the entire freeway was significantly widened to accommodate the Joondalup railway line, being built under the Northern Suburbs Transit System project. The line was to be located in the middle of the road reserve, between the freeway carriageways. At the time, the northbound and southbound carriageways, between Loftus Street and McDonald Street, were positioned next to each other, with space for future widening located on the eastern side of the road reserve. Initially, three new road bridges were constructed over Vincent Street, Powis Street, and Scarborough Beach Road. Once the road bridges had been completed and surfacing works completed, the southbound carriage was relocated, creating the required space for the railway line construction. Additional lanes were constructed in the realigned section, funded from regular road funding sources, whilst the bridges and some associated works were included as part of the costs for the Northern Suburbs Transit System project.
After a 7-year-hiatus, a 3-kilometre (1.9 mi) extension to Hodges Drive was opened by the Premier Richard Court in December 1999, two months ahead of schedule. The project also included widening the section between Karrinyup Road and Hepburn Avenue to three lanes in each direction.
After another 7-year-hiatus, construction began on a 4-kilometre extension to Burns Beach Road, with a diamond interchange at Shenton Avenue and an overpass for Moore Drive. Local residents were opposed to aspects of the initial plans, such as the design of a section near a primary school and the clearing of native vegetation. The state government therefore established the Community Consultative Working Group and later the Construction Reference Group, composed of members of the local community. The input from these groups resulted in several changes to the design. The project was managed by Main Roads in conjunction with Macmahon Contractors. Construction of the extension was initially planned for May 2006, but began on 14 December 2006. By July 2008, 90% of the works had been completed and the new section was predicted to open in September 2008. However, the official opening was not until 2 November 2008, when the road was opened by Western Australia's Minister for Transport, Simon O'Brien, and the previous Minister for Planning and Infrastructure Alannah MacTiernan. The \$160 million project was completed \$10 million under budget. The opening was celebrated with a procession of vintage cars along the new freeway segment.
In its 2011/12 budget, the State Government committed \$30 million for the widening of the Mitchell Freeway northbound between Hepburn Avenue and Hodges Drive from two to three lanes. Traffic volumes in the preceding years had increased rapidly, almost reaching the previously projected 2016 traffic volume of 40,000 vehicles per day. The resulting congestion in the afternoon traffic peak increases the chances of rear-end crashes as well as driver frustration. Construction of the third lane began in February 2013, the 4.5-kilometre (2.8 mi) section from Hepburn Avenue to Ocean Reef Road opened in August 2013 with the remaining section to Hodges Drive completed in early 2014. As part of the project, the existing lanes were resurfaced during the summer months of 2013–14.
The freeway was also expanded further during 2013 with an extra lane northbound between Perth and Hutton Street, in conjunction with works to increase the capacity of the Graham Farmer Freeway tunnel. Works progressed in two stages, with Vincent Street as the midpoint. As part of the project, the overpasses at Powis Street, Vincent Street and Scarborough Beach Road were widened. An additional slip lane was constructed, from the Graham Farmer Freeway's Loftus Street exit ramp to the Mitchell Freeway northbound, to access Vincent Street without changing lanes to the left lanes of the Mitchell Freeway northbound. The project commenced in February 2013 and was completed in December 2013.
In October 2012 the state government announced that the freeway's interchange with Reid Highway would be upgraded with the installation of extra turning lanes and traffic lights. The project was an interim solution to lower congestion and reduce the volume of traffic using local roads to avoid the interchange. The longer term plan was to upgrade Reid Highway to a dual carriageway near the freeway interchange, including a second overpass bridge, and a second free-flowing loop ramp between Reid Highway westbound to the Mitchell Freeway northbound. The dual carriageway works commenced construction in May 2015 and were completed a year later.
In December 2012, the State Government announced the freeway would be extended between 2014–15 and 2016–17, over a distance of 6 kilometres (3.7 mi) to Hester Avenue in Clarkson. The extension included interchanges at Burns Beach Road and Neerabup Road. Work on the extension began with a ground-breaking ceremony on 20 May 2015. The projected cost was \$261.4 million, with the federal government contributing \$209.1 million and the state government funding the remaining \$52.3 million. The project scope included a six-kilometre (3.7 mi) dual carriageway extension to Hester Avenue, with grade-separated interchanges at Burns Beach Road, Neerabup Road and Hester Avenue. Other roads in the area were upgraded, including widening Hester Avenue and Wanneroo Road, and extending Neerabup Road east to the intersection of Flynn Drive and Wanneroo Road. The project was completed on 3 August 2017, opened by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, Premier Mark McGowan and Transport Minister Rita Saffioti.
In the late-2010s widening works were conducted, with the 7-kilometre-long (4.35 mi) southbound section of the freeway between Cedric and Vincent Streets widened to four lanes. \$40 million was assigned to the freeway widening itself, with a further \$19 million allocated for the upgrade and completion of a Principal Shared Path (PSP) between Scarborough Beach Road and Hutton Street, including a separated pedestrian and cyclist overpass over the former. The bridge for the overpass was notoriously delivered during peak hour on 11 September 2019, causing a 17-kilometre-long (11 mi) traffic jam for southbound commuters. The corresponding northbound section from Hutton to Cedric Street was also widened to four lanes, with the northbound exit lane onto the latter also widened to two lanes. 5.3 kilometres (3.3 mi) of concrete barriers were also installed between Glendalough Station and Erindale Road.
The latest extension, from Hester Avenue to Romeo Road in Alkimos was announced in 2019 and began construction in May 2021. Originally intended to be completed in 2022, delays brought upon by the COVID-19 pandemic pushed the \$232 million extension's opening to 10 July 2023.
## Future works
### Extensions
The Mitchell Freeway is planned to continue north to the Metropolitan Region Scheme's boundary, beyond Yanchep and Two Rocks.
### Widening and upgrades
In May 2021 construction began on the implementation of a smart freeway system on the southbound carriageway between Hester Avenue and Vincent Street, which will see 16 on-ramps upgraded with coordinated ramp signals and the installation of 20 overhead electronic signs providing information to drivers. The works also includes the addition of a third lane to the southbound carriageway of the freeway from Hodges Drive to Hepburn Avenue. The upgrade is expected to be completed in late 2023.
### Interchange upgrades
In November 2020 works began to extend Stephenson Avenue northbound from Scarborough Beach Road to Cedric Street, with the extension crossing over the freeway east of Stirling railway station, as part of the Stirling City Centre development project. The existing Cedric Street interchange will be mostly demolished save for its northbound on-ramp, with traffic redirected to use a new Stephenson Avenue interchange accordingly. The project is expected to be completed by the end of 2024.
## Interchanges
The entire freeway is in the Perth Metropolitan Region.
## See also
- Kwinana Freeway
- Freeways in Australia
- Freeways in Western Australia |
40,482,813 | Ma Chengyuan | 1,154,212,737 | Chinese archaeologist | [
"1927 births",
"2004 deaths",
"20th-century archaeologists",
"Academic staff of Fudan University",
"Academic staff of the East China Normal University",
"Chinese archaeologists",
"Chinese epigraphers",
"Chinese palaeographers",
"Directors of museums in China",
"East China Normal University alumni",
"Educators from Shanghai",
"Recipients of the Legion of Honour",
"Scientists from Shanghai",
"Suicides in the People's Republic of China",
"Victims of the Cultural Revolution",
"Writers from Shanghai"
] | Ma Chengyuan (Chinese: 马承源; 3 November 1927 – 25 September 2004) was a Chinese archaeologist, epigrapher, and president of the Shanghai Museum. He was credited with saving priceless artifacts from destruction during the Cultural Revolution, and was instrumental in raising funds and support for the rebuilding of the Shanghai Museum. He was a recipient of the John D. Rockefeller III Award, and was awarded the Legion of Honour by French President Jacques Chirac.
Ma was an authority on ancient Chinese bronzes and published more than 80 books and academic papers, including a 16-volume encyclopedia of the bronzes. He was responsible for recovering ancient relics including the Jin Hou Su Bianzhong and Warring States period bamboo strips, which are now considered China's national treasures.
## Early life and career
Ma Chengyuan was born in 1927 in Shanghai. In 1946, he joined an underground cell of the Communist Party of China, and graduated from the history department of Daxia University in Shanghai, a predecessor of East China Normal University, in 1951. He worked for the education department of the Shanghai Municipal Government before joining the Shanghai Museum in 1954. Ma was originally assigned to be a manager and Communist Party secretary of the museum, but he resigned from his political positions in 1956 to focus on academic work, and later became director of the bronze research department.
## Cultural Revolution
As the Cultural Revolution erupted in 1966, Chairman Mao Zedong called for the destruction of the Four Olds, and teenage Red Guards rampaged through people's homes to destroy relics of pre-Communist China. Desperate Shanghai collectors sought protection of their antiques at the Shanghai Museum, and Ma slept in his office to take phone calls and to dispatch museum employees around the clock.
Ma initially kept the Red Guards out of the museum by organizing his employees as fake Red Guards, and protected the relics by painting Maoist slogans over the display cases. However, some of his own staff were soon swept by the revolutionary fervour. An extremist faction of museum workers seized Ma along with other senior officials, and imprisoned him in a storage room for nine months. Trying to coerce the officials into confessing that they were "traitors", the extremists repeatedly lifted them up and dropped them onto the marble floor. Several of Ma's colleagues died. Ma survived the torture, and was sent to a labour camp in Hubei province for five years.
In 1972, after American President Richard Nixon's historic visit to China, Ma was brought back to Shanghai to organize an exhibition of archaeological treasures to tour the United States. The Cultural Revolution ended after the death of Mao in 1976.
## Rebuilding the Shanghai Museum
In 1985, Ma was appointed the Director of the Shanghai Museum. When the museum was omitted from Shanghai's five-year reconstruction plan in 1992, Ma lobbied Mayor Huang Ju for its rebuilding. After seeing the dilapidated rooms of the Zhonghui Building where the museum was then housed, Huang agreed to allocate a prime site on the People's Square, but the museum had to raise its own building funds. Ma raised US\$25 million by leasing the old building to a Hong Kong developer. He also made many trips abroad to solicit donations, mainly from the Shanghai diaspora who had fled to Hong Kong after the Communist revolution, raising another US\$10 million. The money still ran short, but he eventually persuaded the city government to allocate another to complete the building.
The museum reopened on 12 October 1996 to wide acclaim, and Ma gained international fame. He won the John D. Rockefeller III Award from the Asian Cultural Council in that year. French President Jacques Chirac awarded Ma the Legion of Honour in 1998, and invited Ma to accompany Chinese President Jiang Zemin to a private dinner with him in France. The South China Morning Post of Hong Kong commented that Ma seemed to have "willed [the Shanghai Museum] into existence."
## Recovering cultural relics
After the opening up of China from the 1980s, tomb robbery was rampant and many artifacts were looted and smuggled across the border to Hong Kong. Ma Chengyuan was active in recovering many of the items from the Hong Kong antique market. In 1992, he purchased the 3,000-year-old Jin Hou Su bianzhong (晉侯穌鐘), which were listed by the Chinese government as one of the first 64 national treasures forbidden to be exhibited abroad in 2002.
In 1994, Ma recovered more than 1,200 Warring States period bamboo slips from the Kingdom of Chu, now known as the Shanghai Museum bamboo slips. Several ancient texts were written on the strips, including the Kongzi Shi Lun, a previously unknown commentary on the Confucian Classic of Poetry attributed to Confucius himself. The discovery caused a sensation in academia, and the texts have been the subject of intense studies by numerous scholars, including Ma himself.
## Academics
Ma was an authority on ancient Chinese bronzes and published more than 80 books and academic papers. His book Ancient Chinese Bronzes, translated into English and published by Oxford University Press (), is highly influential and widely used as a university textbook. His 16-volume encyclopedia, Zhongguo Qingtongqi Quanji (中国青铜器全集, "Complete Compilation of Chinese Bronzes"), is the most comprehensive book on Chinese bronzes ever published. He was also the chief editor of Shanghai Bowuguan cang Zhanguo Chu zhushu (上海博物馆藏战国楚竹书, "Warring States Chu Bamboo Books of the Shanghai Museum"), a groundbreaking research on the Warring States bamboo strips recovered by Ma himself. Other books he published include Zhongguo Qingtongqi Yanjiu (中国青铜器研究, "Research on Chinese Bronzes"), a collection of 40 of his academic papers, Yangshao Wenhua de Caitao (仰韶文化的彩陶, "Painted Ceramics of the Yangshao Culture"), and Shang Zhou Qingtongqi Mingwen Xuan (商周青铜器铭文选, "Selected Bronze Inscriptions of the Shang and Zhou Dynasties").
In addition to his main position as Director of the Shanghai Museum, Ma also taught as a part-time professor at Shanghai's East China Normal University and Fudan University. He was also a council member of the Archaeological Society of China, and vice chairman of the China Museum Society.
## Retirement and suicide
Ma retired in 1999, but still served as an advisor to the Shanghai Museum. However, he had conflicts with the new management which became increasingly bitter. He was accused of misusing US\$250,000 donated by a Chinese-American collector, but an investigation cleared him of wrongdoing. There were also rumours that some of the ancient bamboo strips he purchased for a high sum from public funds were fake.
In his final years, Ma allegedly experienced high blood pressure and kidney problems, yet followed his doctor's advice meticulously. It is also said that he had depression, and committed suicide on 25 September 2004. Official newspapers in China reported his death but did not initially disclose the cause. When President Chirac organized his visit to Shanghai in October, he insisted on meeting with Ma, without realizing that he had died.
## Personal life
Ma Chengyuan was married to Chen Zhiwu. They had a daughter, who lived in Australia. Before Ma's death, he invited his daughter to spend two weeks with him in Shanghai. He committed suicide three days after his daughter returned to Australia. |
55,229,262 | Kirby Star Allies | 1,170,411,285 | 2018 video game | [
"2018 video games",
"HAL Laboratory games",
"Kirby (series) platform games",
"Multiplayer and single-player video games",
"Nintendo Switch games",
"Nintendo Switch-only games",
"Video games about magic",
"Video games developed in Japan",
"Video games scored by Hirokazu Ando",
"Video games scored by Jun Ishikawa",
"Video games that use Amiibo figurines",
"Video games with 2.5D graphics"
] | Kirby Star Allies is a 2018 platform video game developed by HAL Laboratory and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo Switch. It is the twelfth mainline installment in the Kirby series, the player controls Kirby in his quest to prevent a priest named Hyness from reviving a dark force to destroy the universe. Kirby must complete each level by jumping, inhaling enemies, and using his array of abilities to progress.
Development of the game began during the 25th anniversary of the Kirby series. The developers later added additional content for the game for the sake of adding more references from past games in the franchise. The game also features more emphasis on higher definition graphics by making the screen more spread out.
Star Allies initially received mixed reviews, with praise directed towards the game's graphics, mechanics and soundtrack, and criticism directed toward its lack of depth and low level of difficulty. General reception was later re-evaluated as positive after free additional content was later added, being praised for adding a new layer of difficulty. The game has sold 4.38 million copies as of December 31, 2022, making it one of the best-selling games on the Switch.
## Gameplay
Kirby Star Allies is a 2.5D platform game played from a side-on perspective. Players control the series' titular protagonist Kirby who can be accompanied by up to three companions. Kirby can throw hearts at enemies to turn them into allies. The game can be played alone with the game's AI controlling companions or cooperatively with other players controlling companions. When Kirby has companions, new special attacks become available which allow Kirby to combine his abilities with those of his allies', a feature not seen since Kirby: Squeak Squad. The elemental fusions last for as long as the power is held or until a new element is introduced over it, while some of the combinations are single-use moves that bear more of a resemblance to the combinations found in Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards. When Kirby has three allies, they can perform "Friend Actions" on specific stages, like "Friend Train" and "Friend Star." Players start with a certain number of lives and can earn more lives by getting extra lives or by collecting 100 stars. Kirby will lose a life if he falls into a bottomless pit or his health bar is depleted. The game ends when the player runs out of lives, although the player can continue the game from the most recent save point by selecting "Continue".
The game also introduces the "Dream Friend" system, which allows the player to call upon characters from past Kirby games as special allies with expanded movesets. Bandana Waddle Dee, King Dedede, and Meta Knight can all be unlocked as Dream Friends through progression in Story Mode. Additional Dream Friends have been added via software updates.
## Plot
On the Jambandra space station far away from Kirby's home Planet Popstar, a dark crystal heart explodes due to an imperfection in a mysterious ritual, sending its numerous fragments, Jamba Hearts, hurtling into deep space. Many characters, including King Dedede and Meta Knight, are possessed while investigating the dark hearts that land on Popstar. A pink heart hits Kirby, but it instead gives him the ability to befriend enemies by throwing hearts. Kirby notices many Waddle Dees bringing food to Castle Dedede and decides to investigate. After Kirby defeats Meta Knight and King Dedede and frees them from the Jamba Heart's influence, a large fortress known as Jambastion lands on Popstar. After defeating three generals of ice, fire, and electricity, Francisca, Flamberge, and Zan Partizanne, respectively, Kirby and his friends fly to the far reaches of space.
Kirby and his friends connect a path to Jambandra Base and breach its defensive barrier. They battle Zan once again before meeting Hyness, an evil cleric who is planning to restore a dark force, Void Termina, to full power using the Jamba Hearts. After being defeated, Hyness sacrifices the generals and himself to subsequently revive Void Termina. Kirby and his friends use a Friend Pedestal to summon the Friend Star but it transforms into the Star Allies Sparkler via the power of the four Heart Spears that were stuck in the prison of Void Termina. After overcoming its humanoid body, also regurgitating Hyness, Francisca, Flamberge, and Zan Partizanne in the process, and defeating its bird form, it is revealed that its true form is a purplish pink cluster with three dark eye-like spots that can arrange themselves to resemble Kirby's face. Kirby then destroys Void Termina with the Star Allies Sparkler, summoning friends in the process. The Sparkler is destroyed by the resulting explosion, but Kirby uses a Warp Star to return himself and his friends safely home.
Through a series of pause screens in various boss fights, it is explained that Void Termina, Kirby, and various bosses from previous games are likely reincarnations of the godlike being known as Void. When they come in contact with high concentrations of energy, they reincarnate into a new form, with this being's personality determined by whether this energy is positive or negative. During the battle against Void Termina, as well as the non-canon Void Soul fight in the Ultimate Choice on Soul Melter difficulty, several attacks are reused from past Kirby bosses, suggesting that the bosses mimicked are also forms of Void. After the release of the extra content, a new "Soul Melter EX" difficulty of the True Arena was added, which replaced the Void Soul battle with a battle against Void themself. Once Void is defeated, they seem to smile, as they are finally free to reincarnate into a new, happier form.
## Development and release
Kirby Star Allies was developed by HAL Laboratory and published by Nintendo. The game is thought to be based upon the first incarnation of the cancelled Kirby game for the GameCube, the trailer for which shows Kirby making multiple helpers, akin to the fundamental element of Star Allies. Development of the game began during the 25th anniversary of the Kirby franchise. The game was initially teased under the tentative title Kirby during E3 2017. In September 2017, the game's official title was announced during a Nintendo Direct presentation. The game was released for the Nintendo Switch game console on 16 March 2018. On 3 March 2018, a free demo of the game was released on the Nintendo eShop showcasing two of the game's stages.
HAL Laboratory developer Shinya Kumazaki went over the world map concept, and the ability of creating more open, higher resolution imagery with the Nintendo Switch console. They swayed to making the screen more spread out in contrast to Kirby, as they could make Kirby smaller but still retain shape, while being able to present more of the background at one time. The more extended background helped the player from getting lost, as they could see more on screen at one time.
The idea for the downloadable content was to help give attention to past Kirby games, and the series as a whole. The developers, rather than focus on an existing narrative, wanted to create a new experience for the characters. Kumazaki noted how if they were to rather focus on an intricate story, it would ruin the fun of the adventure. When discussing the lack of other popular characters from the franchise, he said that there were certain characters he wanted to appear, such as Galacta Knight from Kirby Super Star Ultra. They created a development rule, where they would only select one character from each game to represent the main series.
After the game released, Super Kirby Clash and Kirby Fighters 2 were released, in 2019 and 2020 respectively, using the same engine.
## Reception
Kirby Star Allies received a "mixed or average" rating according to video game review aggregator Metacritic, based on 83 critic reviews. The game was nominated for "Family Game of the Year" at the D.I.C.E. Awards.
The game was praised for its visual appearance and strategic elements. Mitch Vogel from Nintendo Life called the visuals "top notch", but yearned for a more distinctive design. Destructoid reviewer Chris Carter praised the "gorgeous rendered backgrounds", and stated how recruiting enemies to your team "goes beyond an adorable gimmick." EGM appreciated the friend concept, and said it kept puzzles and game elements fresh throughout gameplay. Brendan Graeber from IGN liked the layer of strategy and the concept of re-arranging the friends for different puzzle solutions. He stated how puzzles were intriguing and unique, as they always had the player re-arranging their team. Critics also appreciated the accompanying soundtrack, calling it catchy and praising its gradual change. Peter Brown from GameSpot praised the visuals, and called the aesthetic "perfectly executed". He liked how the soundtrack would "ample motivation and entertainment", and enjoyed the gimmick of teaming up with enemies.
Critics complained of a lack of difficulty, which they felt induced a sense of being uninvolved. Polygon reviewer Jeremy Parrish called the game predictable and familiar, and wrote how the game "plays things incredibly safe", compared to recent titles such as Kirby: Planet Robobot. Kyle Hilliard from Game Informer summarized his review by noting that the game was forgettable, and how the difficulty made him feel as if he was barely playing the game at all.
### Post-launch
At the release of the game's final post-launch content, some critics reevaluated the game, finding that the additional content resulted in an improved experience. Stephen Totilo of Kotaku commented that, while the main game was "a cakewalk", the additional Heroes in Another Dimension mode was "a head-scratcher and a reflex-tester", stating that Star Allies was "one of the most-improved Nintendo games on the Switch roster." Another review, by Sean Anthony of Gaming Trend, also praised the creative level design and difficulty of the new game mode, and additionally complimented the added "Soul Melter EX" difficulty level, concluding that "Kirby Star Allies is finally a complete game."
### Sales
Upon the game's launch, Kirby Star Allies became the fastest selling Kirby game in the United Kingdom. The game sold 222,031 copies within its first week on sale in Japan, which placed it at number one on the all format sales chart. By the end of March, it had sold over a million copies. As of March 2019, Kirby Star Allies has sold 2.56 million copies. The 2023 CESA Games White Papers revealed that Kirby Star Allies has sold 4.38 million copies, as of December 31, 2022. |
639,391 | Humphrey IV of Toron | 1,162,943,360 | Baron in the Kingdom of Jerusalem | [
"1160s births",
"12th-century deaths",
"Christians of the Crusades",
"Lords of Toron"
] | Humphrey IV of Toron (c. 1166 – 1198) was a leading baron in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. He inherited the Lordship of Toron from his grandfather, Humphrey II, in 1179. He was also heir to the Lordship of Oultrejourdan through his mother, Stephanie of Milly. In 1180, he renounced Toron on his engagement to Isabella, the half-sister of Baldwin IV of Jerusalem. The king, who had suffered from leprosy, allegedly wanted to prevent Humphrey from uniting two large fiefs. Humphrey married Isabella in Kerak Castle in autumn 1183. Saladin, the Ayyubbid sultan of Egypt and Syria, laid siege to Kerak during the wedding, but Baldwin IV and Raymond III of Tripoli relieved the fortress.
Baldwin IV made his young nephew, Baldwin V, his successor before his death, but Baldwin V also died in the summer of 1186. The barons, who did not want to acknowledge the right of Baldwin V's mother, Sybilla, and her husband, Guy of Lusignan, to inherit the kingdom, decided to proclaim Humphrey and his wife king and queen. However, Humphrey, who did not want to reign, deserted them and did homage to Sybilla and Guy. He was captured in 1187 at the Battle of Hattin, where Saladin imposed a crushing defeat on the united army of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. His mother offered the surrender of the fortresses of Oultrejordain to Saladin in exchange for Humphrey's release. Although the garrisons of Kerak and Montréal refused to surrender, Saladin set Humphrey free. Kerak only fell to Saladin's troops in late 1188, Montréal in early 1189.
After Queen Sybilla's death in the autumn of 1190, most barons of the realm (including Isabella's stepfather, Balian of Ibelin) wanted to give Isabella in marriage to Conrad of Montferrat, a successful military leader. The marriage of Humphrey and Isabella was annulled, although they protested the decision. Humphrey joined the retinue of King Richard I of England during his crusade in 1191–1192. Since Humphrey was fluent in Arabic, he conducted negotiations with Saladin's brother, Al-Adil, on Richard's behalf.
## Early life
Humphrey was born in about 1165, the son of Humphrey, heir to Humphrey II of Toron, and Stephanie of Milly. Humphrey was a child when his father died around 1173. His mother soon inherited the Lordship of Oultrejourdan. She married Miles of Plancy, Seneschal of Jerusalem, who was murdered in October 1174. The following year she married Raynald of Châtillon. Humphrey inherited the Lordship of Toron from his grandfather who died of wounds received at the Battle of Banyas on 22 April 1179.
Baldwin IV of Jerusalem's eight-year-old half-sister, Isabella, was betrothed to Humphrey in October 1180. His stepfather, Raynald of Châtillon, and Isabella's stepfather, Balian of Ibelin, were prominent figures of the two groups of barons in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. The two baronial groups had been competing for the control of state administration, because the king who suffered from leprosy could not rule alone. According to the marriage contract, Humphrey renounced his inherited domains (Toron, Banias and Chastel Neuf) in favor of Baldwin IV, in exchange for a money fief of 7,000 bezants. This provision of the marriage contract suggests that the king wanted to prevent Humphrey from uniting two large fiefs, Toron and Oultrejourdan. Baldwin IV granted Toron or its usufruct to his mother, Agnes of Courtenay, around 1183.
Saladin, who had united Egypt and Syria under his rule, invaded the Kingdom of Jerusalem in September 1183. Humphrey commanded the forces of Oultrejourdain, dispatched by Raynald of Châtillon to join the united army of the kingdom. Saladin's soldiers ambushed and almost annihilated his troops at Mount Gilboa. Saladin's campaign ended with his withdrawal on 7 October, because he could not persuade the main army to join battle.
## Marriage
Humphrey married Isabella in Kerak Castle in the autumn of 1183. During the wedding, Saladin laid siege to the fortress to take revenge for Raynald of Châtillon's plundering raid on the Red Sea in February. According to a version of Ernoul's chronicle, Humphrey's mother convinced Saladin not to bombard the tower in which the newly married young couple were lodged, although he continued to besiege the rest of the fortress. Kerak was eventually relieved on 4 December by Baldwin IV and Raymond III of Tripoli.
The dying Baldwin IV, who had disinherited his sister Sybilla and her husband Guy of Lusignan in favor of her six-year-old son, Baldwin V, in March 1183, nominated Raymond of Tripoli regent to his successor. The High Court of Jerusalem also decreed that if Baldwin V died, the pope, the Holy Roman emperor, and the kings of France and England were to decide whether Sybilla or Isabella was entitled to succeed him. Baldwin IV died in March 1185, Baldwin V the next summer.
## Unwilling claimant
Sybilla's maternal uncle, Joscelin III of Courtenay, persuaded Raymond of Tripoli to leave Jerusalem to hold an assembly in Tiberias for the barons of the realm. After the regent departed to Tiberias, Joscelin invited Sybilla and Guy of Lusignan to Jerusalem. As soon as Raymond realized that Joscelin had deceived him, he summoned the High Court to Nablus. All the barons of the realm (including Humphrey) hurried to Nablus, except Humphrey's stepfather, Raynald of Châtillon, who went to Jerusalem. The barons sent messengers to Jerusalem to remind Sybilla, Guy of Lusignan, and their supporters, of the High Court's decision on the matter of the succession of Baldwin V. Ignoring their messages, Heraclius, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, crowned Sybilla queen, and she in turn placed the crown on her husband's head. Before long, acting on Raymond of Tripoli's proposal, the barons at Nablus decided to proclaim Isabella and Humphrey queen and king against Sybilla and Guy.
Raymond and his supporters were willing to march against Jerusalem, but Humphrey had no desire for the crown. He secretly left Nablus during the night and rode to Jerusalem to meet Sybilla. She refused him initially, but after Humphrey told her of his intention, she accompanied him to her husband. Humphrey swore fealty to Guy, putting an end to the conspiracy for Humphrey's and Isabella's coronation. All the barons except Raymond of Tripoli and Baldwin of Ramleh hurried to Jerusalem to do homage to Sybilla and Guy. Guy granted Toron and Chastel Neuf (two domains that Humphrey had abandoned in 1180) to Joscelin of Courtenay in 1186, stipulating that should he restore the two estates to Humphrey, he would receive the compensation that Humphrey had received for them.
## Battle of Hattin
Humphrey's stepfather, Raynald of Châtillon, plundered a caravan moving from Egypt to Syria in early 1187, claiming that the truce between the Kingdom of Jerusalem and Saladin did not cover his Lordship of Oultrejourdan. After Guy of Lusignan failed to persuade Raynald to pay compensation, Saladin proclaimed a jihad (holy war) against the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Saladin's army crushed the united forces of the kingdom in the Battle of Hattin on 4 July 1187.
Humphrey also participated in the battle. He was captured on the battlefield like most of the commanders of the Christian army. With the exception of Raynald (whom he personally beheaded) and the knights of the Military Orders (who were massacred by fanatics), Saladin spared their lives. Saladin sent his prisoners to Damascus and conquered the Christian towns and fortresses one after another.
Two castles in Oultrejordan – Kerak and Montréal – were among the few fortresses that resisted. In October, Humphrey's mother, Stephanie of Milly, promised to persuade the garrisons at the two fortresses to surrender if Saladin released Humphrey. Saladin accepted her offer and allowed Humphrey to join her. However, the defenders refused to surrender and Humphrey returned to Damascus. Before long, Saladin set Humphrey free again without demanding ransom. Saladin's troops were unable to seize Kerak until the end of 1188, and Montréal some months later.
## Annulment of marriage
Humphrey and his wife were present at the camp of the crusaders who besieged Acre when Queen Sybilla and her two daughters died in 1190. Most barons of the realm regarded Humphrey's wife as Sybilla's lawful heir, stating that Guy had lost his claim to rule after his wife and their children died. However, they also felt Humphrey was unsuitable to rule the kingdom, especially because he had refused to claim the throne against Sybilla and Guy in 1186. They preferred Conrad of Montferrat, a crusader leader who had prevented Saladin from occupying Tyre.
Isabella's stepfather, Balian of Ibelin, was one of Conrad's supporters. He and his partisans decided that the marriage of Isabella and Humphrey should be annulled. The marriage was childless. The contemporaneous Itinerarium Regis Ricardi describes Humphrey, around 1190, as "more like a woman than a man, gentle in his dealings and with a bad stammer". Isabella's mother, Maria Comnena, entered Isabella's tent, and forced her to leave her husband.
Maria Comnena swore that Baldwin IV had forced her daughter to marry Humphrey at the age of eight. Ubaldo Lanfranchi, Archbishop of Pisa (who was Papal legate), and Philip of Dreux, Bishop of Beauvais, annulled Humphrey's marriage to Isabella. During an inquiry ordered by Pope Innocent III into the prelates' decision, a group of knights who were present at the proceedings stated that both Isabella and Humphrey had protested the annulment. Before he died, Baldwin of Forde, the archbishop of Canterbury, forbade Isabella to marry Conrad, stating that both Isabella and Conrad would commit adultery if they married. Ignoring the archbishop's ban, Conrad of Montferrat married Isabella on 24 November 1190.
## Last years
Humphrey was among the barons who accompanied Guy of Lusignan, who did not renounce the kingdom, to meet King Richard I of England in Limassol in Cyprus in May 1191. Both men did homage to Richard. Richard dispatched Humphrey, who was fluent in Arabic, to open negotiations with Saladin's brother, Al-Adil, in Lydda (now Lod in Israel). No agreement was reached, although Richard offered the hand of his sister, Joan, to Al-Adil and the Holy Land as her dowry.
Two men murdered Conrad of Montferrat in Tyre on 28 April 1192. Although one of them confessed that Rashid ad-Din Sinan, head of the Assassins, had sent them to kill him, Humphrey was one of the suspects accused by contemporaneous sources of hiring them. Modern historians are unanimous in saying that Humphrey was innocent, pointing out that his "career was not notable for displays of initiative in any case". The widowed Isabella married Count Henry II of Champagne in Acre on 5 May 1192.
Humphrey died in 1198, shortly after Isabella, who had again been widowed, married Aimery of Lusignan, King of Cyprus. In 1229, Humphrey's patrimony, Toron, was restored to the Kingdom of Jerusalem in accordance with the treaty of Al-Kamil, sultan of Egypt, and the Holy Roman emperor, Frederick II. The domain was seized by Maria of Antioch, who was the great-granddaughter of Humphrey's sister, Isabella of Toron.
## Genealogical table
## See also
- War of the Succession of Champagne |
1,443,084 | The Emancipation of Mimi | 1,169,754,999 | 2005 studio album by Mariah Carey | [
"2005 albums",
"Albums produced by Bryan-Michael Cox",
"Albums produced by Jermaine Dupri",
"Albums produced by Kanye West",
"Albums produced by Rodney Jerkins",
"Albums produced by Scott Storch",
"Albums produced by Scram Jones",
"Albums produced by Swizz Beatz",
"Albums produced by The Legendary Traxster",
"Albums produced by the Neptunes",
"Concept albums",
"Grammy Award for Best Contemporary R&B Album",
"Island Records albums",
"Mariah Carey albums"
] | The Emancipation of Mimi is the tenth studio album by American R&B singer Mariah Carey, released through Island Records on April 12, 2005. The album was considered Carey's "comeback album" by critics and became her highest-selling release in the US in a decade. In composing the album, Carey collaborated with many songwriters and producers throughout 2004, including Jermaine Dupri, Snoop Dogg, Kanye West, Twista, Nelly, Pharrell Williams, and James "Big Jim" Wright, many of whom appeared as featured guests on select tracks.
Carey opted to use her personal nickname 'Mimi' in the title, revealing a more intimate side of the singer, as seen in the album's declarative theme of emancipation from her personal and commercial setbacks. Although it has similar vocal production to her previous works and an inclination towards her signature ballads, the album encompasses dance-oriented and uptempo styles in keeping with its celebratory motif. The Emancipation of Mimi garnered critical acclaim, with praise towards its production, Carey's vocal performance, with critics noting the theme of independence and lack of restraint, dubbing the album a "party" record.
The album garnered eight nominations at the 48th Grammy Awards, including for Album of the Year, and won three awards, including Best Contemporary R&B Album. It became Carey's first album since Butterfly (1997) to debut at number one on the US Billboard 200, selling over 404,000 copies in its first week and becoming the country's best-selling album of 2005. Internationally, it topped the charts in Greece, and reached the top-five in Canada, Denmark, France, and Japan, and was the world's second best-selling album of the year. The Emancipation of Mimi has sold over 10 million copies worldwide making it one of the best-selling albums of the 21st century.
"It's Like That" became one of her highest-charting songs in years, reaching the top twenty in several countries. "We Belong Together" accumulated 14 weeks at number one in the US, and was later hailed "song of the decade" by Billboard. It reached number one in Australia, number two in the United Kingdom and New Zealand, and achieved top-five positions in several European countries. To promote the album, Carey embarked on her sixth concert tour, entitled The Adventures of Mimi, starting on July 22, 2006, and ending on October 28, 2006.
## Background
In 2001, Carey had experienced critical, commercial, personal, and professional struggles, following the poor reception to her debut film Glitter (2001). The picture was panned by critics and earned less than eight million dollars at the box office. After posting a personally expressive letter on her official site, Carey checked into a hospital in Connecticut because of an "emotional and physical breakdown". Following the film's and soundtrack's poor performance, Virgin Records America bought out Carey's unprecedented \$100 million recording contract. The company paid her \$28 million to part ways. Carey flew to Capri, Italy, after her two-week hospitalization. During her five-month stay, she began to write a new studio album, using experiences she had gone through in recent months as inspirational themes. After being signed by Island Records and starting her own imprint, MonarC Entertainment, Carey released her intended "comeback" album Charmbracelet. Critics deemed it a strong improvement over Glitter, but not something that would re-establish her popularity as in the early stages of her career.
After enduring three years of "carping" from critics, Carey planned her return to music. On November 18, 2004, she revealed on her website that the name of the album would be The Emancipation of Mimi. While Carey was recording the album, Island Records executive L.A. Reid had learned that close friends referred to the singer as "Mimi". He had told Carey, "I feel your spirit on this record. You should use that name in the title, because that's the fun side of you that people don't get to see – the side that can laugh at the diva jokes, laugh at the breakdown jokes, laugh at whatever they want to say about you and just live life and enjoy it." Carey explained that Mimi is a "very personal nickname" only used by those in her inner circle, and thus the title meant she was letting her guard down and inviting her fans to be that much closer to her. She thought that naming her album The Emancipation of Mariah Carey would be "obnoxious".
## Writing and recording
During a visit to a recording studio, Carey was given a beat by the Legendary Traxster. On a later date, she met with American rapper Twista backstage after a show. When Carey mentioned the track, Twista told her that the beat had been originally intended for him, and that he had already written lyrics for it. They decided to collaborate on the track, which later was titled "One and Only". In the following months, Carey wrote and co-produced several songs including "Say Somethin' (with Snoop Dogg and The Neptunes), "To the Floor" (with Nelly), and "Fly Like a Bird" with James "Big Jim" Wright. By November, she felt that she had composed enough good material for The Emancipation of Mimi. After Reid listened to the album, however, he suggested the singer compose a few more "strong" singles to ensure the project's commercial success. Based on his recommendation, Carey met with Jermaine Dupri in Atlanta for a brief studio session, since Reid felt she had written some of her best work with him. During this two-day trip, Carey and Dupri wrote and produced "Shake It Off" and "Get Your Number", which were released as the album's third and fourth singles. Following this recording session, "Shake It Off" was briefly selected as the album's lead single, replacing the other contenders, "Stay The Night" and "Say Somethin'". Carey later returned to Atlanta for a second meeting with Dupri; they then penned the last two songs for the album: "We Belong Together" and "It's Like That". In an interview for Billboard, Carey described her sentiments regarding "It's Like That" during the production stage:
> I had the chills. I had a great feeling about it when we finished writing the song, and I was flying back from Atlanta at some crazy hour of the morning ... But we were listening to it on the plane ride on the way home, and even from the demo version, I really felt something very special.
Carey and her management then decided to release "It's Like That" as the album's lead single, calling it "the right fire-starter". The singer has praised Dupri for being "focused", and felt that together they had composed some of her favorite songs on the album. She has told MTV, "The album is not about making the older executives happy by making a bring-down-the-house, tearjerker ballad, or [something] steeped in the media dramas of my life. What I tried to do was keep the sessions very sparse, underproduced, like in '70s soul music ... " According to Reid, Carey intended for the album to feature a more unpolished sound than her previous releases. The singer had been frustrated with the overproduction on many of her previous records, due to the inclusion of what she considered unnecessary "bells and whistles". She opted to record the majority of The Emancipation of Mimi live, alongside the band. Reid agreed with this decision and felt that the live vocals made the album sound more authentic.
## Composition
The Emancipation of Mimi was Carey's most expressive album to that point according to Fox News; it signified her creative freedom, as she had been oppressed by the expectations of record executives in the past. They noted the album's motif of professional and cultural emancipation throughout many songs. In an interview with the Hartford Courant, Carey spoke about the album's lack of creative restraint she felt was not featured on Charmbracelet. The latter album harbored on reviving Carey's popularity among the adult contemporary radio audience, following her decline with Glitter, which found the singer sampling 1980s melodies. While featuring ballads similar to those on Charmbracelet, the songs on The Emancipation of Mimi drew influence from R&B and hip hop, and were composed at an elevated tempo. According to Dimitri Ehrlich, an editor from Vibe, the album includes many musical facets:
> Mimi pulls Carey in two opposite directions. Most of the tracks find her paired with the hottest hip hop producers of the day; there, she exercises restraint and settles into a groove. But on the rest, she does what comes most naturally to her—belting to her heart's desire, perhaps to mollify those who don't care much for her detours into raunchier rap territory.
The Emancipation of Mimi explores various genres; Greg Kot of the Chicago Tribune felt that the album effectively combines "elements of hip-hop and rhythm and blues into pop songs that appeal to a broad cross-section of listeners." According to Billboard staff, "Carey's emancipation is drenched in hip-hop and old-school R&B ballads". Alyssa Rashbaum of MTV deemed the record "a predominantly pop and R&B effort [...] tinged with hip-hop inflections. Meanwhile, AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine considered The Emancipation of Mimi "a slick, highly crafted piece of dance-pop". Aside from the ballads and uptempo tracks, The Emancipation of Mimi incorporates elements of soul and 1970s-inspired genres, as evident on the gospel-tinged closing track, "Fly Like a Bird". While most tracks derive instrumentation from live bands and musical instruments, some of the uptempo songs feature computerized arrangements and synthesizers. Stylistically, critics considered the album Carey's most diverse record in years, and one that highlighted many different production choices and techniques.
"It's Like That" was written and produced by Carey and Jermaine Dupri. It features hand claps and whistles, as well as ad-libs and verses from Dupri and Fat Man Scoop. The song's bassline and chord progression are aligned with piano and string notes. Its lyrics are arranged to portray the singer during a celebration: "I came to have a party / Open off that Bacardi ... Purple taking me higher / I'm lifted and I like it." Sal Cinquemani of Slant Magazine praised its lyrics and beat, and felt the song prepares listeners for the album's "party theme". Lyrically, "We Belong Together" was described as a "broken-hearted lament for love"; it features finger-snaps, kick drums, and a piano-driven melody. Carey composed the gospel-influenced ballad "Fly Like a Bird" with James Wright. The lyrics are in the form of a prayer that conveys a message of unconditional love for God. The song features a verbal recording of Carey's pastor, Clarence Keaton, who reads two verses from the Bible. The singer wrote the album's fifth cut "Say Somethin'", which features rap verses from Snoop Dogg and was produced by The Neptunes. Vibe writer Dimitri Ehrlich described it as "a musical oddity", and characterized the production as "strange instrumentation, weird melodic shifts, hectic drum patterns and a bed of synths." Lyrically, the protagonist makes sexual advances to a romantic interest with the line "If it's worth your while, do something good to me." When interpreting the lyrics in the female role, Cummings noted "a shy woman who doesn't need to say anything at all to get a man's attention."
Carey wrote "Mine Again" alongside producer James Poyser. The ballad has electronic keyboard notes, a rhythmic vinyl sound, and melodies from gospel and R&B genres. "Stay the Night" was produced by Carey and Kanye West, and samples a piano loop from Ramsey Lewis's 1971 cover version of "Betcha by Golly, Wow". In the lyrics, the protagonist faces the dilemma of spending the night with an ex-lover, although he is in another relationship. "Get Your Number" samples the hook from British band Imagination's 1982 single "Just an Illusion", and derives its production from "'80s-esque synthesizers" and computerized musical instruments. Lawrence Ferber from the Windy City Times described "Shake It Off" as a "playful approach to bitterness—and, more specifically, a cheatin' bad apple", with lyrics such as "I gotta shake you off / Just like a Calgon commercial". In an interview with Ferber, Carey described the track as her favorite from The Emancipation of Mimi: "'Shake It Off' can apply to anything. Whatever personal dramas we go through, put that song on and you lose the anxiety or intensity of the moment. I'll listen to that song when I've just come out of an annoying meeting. I gotta shake this off." Editor Jon Pareles from The New York Times felt that the album follows a formula that was most apparent on "Shake It Off": "On this album, the verses stay in a narrow range, the choruses glide higher, and at the ends of some songs, Ms. Carey gives herself a few of her old sky-high notes as a background flourish."
## Release and promotion
The Emancipation of Mimi was released by The Island Def Jam Music Group for download and as a CD in Mexico on April 12, 2005. On April 4, 2005, the album was released in Australia and New Zealand. In the United Kingdom, The Emancipation of Mimi was distributed through Mercury Records. The following day, the album was made available in Canada through the Universal Music Group. On April 12, 2005, it became available in France, Japan, and the United States, and was released on May 11, 2005, in China. On British and Japanese versions of the album, "Sprung" and "Secret Love" were included as bonus tracks.
A reissue of The Emancipation of Mimi, subtitled Ultra Platinum Edition, was released on November 15, 2005, accompanied by the reissue's lead single "Don't Forget About Us". The reissue was released in two versions. The first was a CD with four bonus tracks: "Don't Forget About Us" (co-written and co-produced by Carey with Jermaine Dupri), the album's only single; "Makin' It Last All Night (What It Do)", featuring Dupri; the "We Belong Together" remix, featuring American rappers Styles P and Jadakiss; and a new version of the 2006 single "So Lonely" by Twista (which originally featured Carey), in which she sings an additional verse. The second version of the album was a limited-edition set of the CD and a DVD, which includes the videos from The Emancipation of Mimi that had then been released ("It's Like That", "We Belong Together", "Shake It Off", and "Get Your Number"), along with the then-recently filmed video for "Don't Forget About Us". The album became the first domestic release of the video for "Get Your Number", which had previously been released only in Europe."Sprung" and "Secret Love" were later included as bonus tracks in the 2020 digital reissue of Ultra Platinum Edition.
Carey began a promotional tour in support of the album, beginning on April 2, 2005, at the German Echo Awards. Two days later, she performed "It's Like That" on the game show Wetten, dass..?. In the UK, the singer filmed a two-part appearance on the British music program Top of the Pops, performing the album's first three singles. Carey launched the stateside release of the album on Good Morning America with an interview and a five-piece outdoor concert. Taking place in Times Square and attracting the largest crowd to the plaza since the 2004 New Year's Eve celebration, the concert featured the first three singles from the album in addition to "Fly Like a Bird" and "Make It Happen" (1991). During the following week, she performed "We Belong Together" at the 2005 BET Awards, and appeared at the annual VH1 Save the Music special, which was broadcast live on April 17. Throughout May, Carey performed "We Belong Together" on the Late Show with David Letterman (May 5), The Tonight Show with Jay Leno (May 11), The Ellen DeGeneres Show (May 13) and on The Oprah Winfrey Show (May 24).
During the 2005 MTV Video Music Awards, Carey performed at the National Hotel in South Beach. Accompanied by Dupri, she sang "Shake It Off" and the official remix version of "We Belong Together". She was a headlining performer at the 2005 Fashion Rocks, in Monaco. On November 15, 2005, Carey performed "Shake It Off" and her newly released single from the album's re-release, "Don't Forget About Us", during half-time of the Thanksgiving game between the Detroit Lions and the Atlanta Falcons. On November 22, 2005, she opened the 33rd annual American Music Awards with "Don't Forget About Us". Two months later, she placed as the featured performer at the Times Square Ball drop on New Year's Eve in New York. At the 48th Grammy Awards, on February 8, 2006, Carey returned to the Grammy stage for the first time since 1996. Her performance began with a pre-taped video in which she discussed the importance of God and religion in her life. She then came to the stage, and sang a shortened version of "We Belong Together", followed by "Fly like a Bird". The performance induced the only standing ovation that night, and earned praise from critics.
### Singles
"It's Like That" was released as the album's lead single on January 7, 2005. Critics predicted that the song would re-ignite Carey's popularity among MTV viewers. It became her highest-charting song internationally in years, and peaked at number sixteen on the US Billboard Hot 100.
"We Belong Together", the album's second single, became one of the biggest hits of Carey's career. It became her sixteenth chart topping single in the US, spending fourteen weeks on the Hot 100's peak; the longest stay of any song during the 2000s. Aside from breaking several Nielsen BDS records, the song was named "song of the 2000s decade" by Billboard. "We Belong Together" also topped the charts in Australia and attained a top-five peak in New Zealand, the Netherlands, Denmark, Spain, Switzerland, and the UK.
"Shake It Off" was the third single released from The Emancipation of Mimi. It peaked at number two on the Hot 100, being barred from the top position by Carey's previous single, "We Belong Together". It became the first time in Billboard history that a female artist occupied the top two spots on the chart as a lead artist. It was released as a double A-side with "Get Your Number" in the UK and Australia, where it reached the top ten.
"Don't Forget About Us" was released as the lead single from Ultra Platinum Edition, and overall fourth single from the album. The song became Carey's seventeenth chart topper in the US, tying her with Elvis Presley for the most number-one singles by a solo artist (a record she surpassed in 2008 with "Touch My Body"). "Fly Like a Bird" was released as the fifth single from the album in the US, followed by "Say Somethin'". "Mine Again" was not released as a single, but peaked at number 73 on Billboard's Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart due to sales.
### Tour
Sixteen months after the release of the album, Carey announced her first headlining tour in three years, named The Adventures of Mimi: The Voice, The Hits, The Tour after a "Carey-centric fan's" music diary. Beginning on July 22, 2006, and ending on October 28, the tour spanned forty stops, with thirty-two in the US and Canada, two in Africa, and six in Japan. The tour featured the singer's long-time friend Randy Jackson as the musical director. In an interview for the Associated Press, Carey described the tour's direction, as well as the music she would perform:
> With this tour, I'm going to be working on some different arrangements for some of the older songs, to ... give it a little more life to them. That's not to say they're going to sound totally different and to freak anybody out ... I love re-singing songs to different music. I genuinely want to tour with these new songs, as well as older hits. These new songs mean so much to me, this time of my life has been so wonderful for me, and I want to experience that with my fans.
The tour received a generally mixed reception from critics who praised the singer's vocal performances but called the show's excesses, such as the singer's frequent costume changes and pre-filmed clips, distracting. In Tunis, Carey played to 80,000 people during two concerts. Midway through the tour, she booked a two-night concert in Hong Kong, scheduled for after her Japanese shows. The performances were cancelled after tickets went on sale; Carey's then-manager Benny Medina said the cancellation was because the concert promoter refused to pay the agreed compensation. The promoter blamed poor ticket sales (allegedly, only 4,000 tickets had sold) and "Carey's outrageous demands". Medina later disputed the promoter's ticket sales figure, saying that 8,000 tickets had been sold. He said Carey would have performed as long as she was compensated, regardless of attendance. Carey ultimately sued the promoter, claiming one million in damages for the concert's abrupt cancellation.
## Critical reception
The Emancipation of Mimi received a 64 out of 100 (indicating "generally positive reviews") on Metacritic, a website that averages professional reviews from critics into a numerical score. Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic called the album a "highly crafted piece of dance-pop" and "relative comeback" for Carey Michael Paoletta from Billboard was less critical of her vocals, writing that "while her voice has lost some of the power through the years, Mimi deftly showcases her still-considerable pipes with strong lyrics and slick production." Paoletta praised The Emancipation of Mimi as Carey's best album since Butterfly (1997). Michael Dougall Bell from the Calgary Sun called Carey's voice "very impressive". He concluded: "While Emancipation may not send Carey's stock or star back up to where it once was and where that voice deserves to be, at least she's not plummeting – she's merely levelled off." Entertainment Weekly editor Tom Sinclair noted that almost every song "showcases Carey's undeniable vocal strengths". Reviewing "Fly Like a Bird", Sinclair concluded, "It's so moving that we'll resist the temptation to be crass and interpret the song as a plea for heightened record sales. Help from above is always welcome, but Emancipation sounds like it just might do fine all on its own."
Jennifer Vineyard of MTV News considered the album's title to be influenced by Janet Jackson's Damita Jo, which was also based on an alternate persona. According to Jenson Macey from BBC News, The Emancipation of Mimi was Carey's strongest effort from the 2000s; he said that the album "took her straight back to the top of the A-List." Caroline Sullivan from The Guardian gave the album four stars out of five, calling it "cool, focused and urban." The New York Times's Jon Pareles complimented how Carey wrote all of the album's material. He felt the record's sound was fresh and innovative: "on The Emancipation of Mimi, she disciplines herself into coherence, using fewer tricks and sounding more believable. She also finds what lesser singers can take for granted: a certain lightness that eases her constant sense of control." Cummings from PopMatters gave the album seven stars out of ten, claiming it to be Carey's redemption from the manacles of her previous two releases. He praised the album's singles, but called some of its music "corny" and "unnecessarily overproduced". Todd Burns from Stylus Magazine gave the album a B−, admiring its assortment of beats and tempos. Burns, however, called some of The Neptunes and Dupri's production "ill-advised". He called some of Carey's vocals "strained, thin and airy". While considering it as an improvement over her previous releases of the decade, he concluded that it "suffers from the fact that her vocals have deteriorated – a simple fact of the ravages that her voice has undergone in the past fifteen years." Sal Cinquemani of Slant Magazine gave The Emancipation of Mimi three and a half stars out of five, calling it "redemption". He complimented its array of beats and its production. Critic Andre Meyer of CBS News thought the material on the album was "stronger" than on Charmbracelet, and described it as a move in Carey's long-term plan for pop domination, while giving off the "jittery R&B vibe that made Destiny's Child so potent." He added that "Mariah has returned to singing – while still pushing the limits of good taste with her barely there outfits." In the updated edition for The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time published in 2020 by American magazine Rolling Stone, the album ranked at number 389.
### Listicles
## Commercial performance
The Emancipation of Mimi became Carey's highest-selling album in the US since Daydream (1995). In its first week of release, it debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 (ousting 50 Cent's The Massacre from the top position) with 404,000 copies sold, the highest first-week sales in Carey's career, until E=MC2 opened with 463,000 in 2008. On its second week on the chart, the album moved a spot down to number two and moved a further 226,000 units. It became her fifth number-one album in the country and her third album to debut at the top. The album returned to number one in its eighth week after selling 172,000 copies. It remained in the top ten for many months before dropping to number eleven on September 28, 2005. The album remained in the top twenty for thirty-one consecutive weeks, and stayed on for 74 weeks in total. It returned to the top five after the release of the Ultra Platinum Edition, which helped the album rebound to number four, with sales of 185,000 units. The Emancipation of Mimi was the best-selling album in the US in 2005, with nearly five million units sold. By the last full week of the year, the album outsold The Massacre, which had been released more than six weeks earlier. It was the first album by a solo female artist to become the year's best-selling album since Alanis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill in 1996. It reached the six million sales mark in the US in October 2013, and in September 2022, the album was certified seven-times platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America.
The Emancipation of Mimi entered the Australian Albums Chart on April 17, 2005, at number 13. During the following week, it peaked at and spent one week at number six. The album spent a total of forty-six weeks on the chart. It was certified platinum by the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) – denoting shipments of 70,000 unit – and finished at number twenty-seven on the End of Year Chart. In Canada The Emancipation of Mimi debuted and peaked at number two on the Canadian Albums Chart, with first-week sales of 11,000 units. The album was certified triple platinum by the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA) for shipments of 300,000 units. The Emancipation of Mimi debuted at number seven on the UK Albums Chart dated April 6, 2005. On July 23, fourteen weeks after its debut, the album once again reached its peak position of number seven. After one re-entry, the album spent a combined forty-three weeks in the albums chart, being certified double-platinum by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) for shipments of 600,000 copies. By May 2008, the album's British sales stood at 621,352 units.
In France, the album debuted at its peak position of number four on April 9, 2005. The record spent a total of fifty-one weeks in the chart, and was certified gold by the Syndicat National de l'Édition Phonographique (SNEP), signifying shipments of 100,000 copies. Eight months after its release in Europe, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) certified The Emancipation of Mimi platinum, denoting shipments of one million units throughout the continent. In Hong Kong it was awarded a Gold Disc Award, which is issued to the ten best-selling foreign albums each year. The Emancipation of Mimi debuted at number two on the Japanese Albums Chart, and was certified platinum (250,000 units shipped) by the Recording Industry Association of Japan (RIAJ). At the end of 2005, the IFPI reported that The Emancipation of Mimi had sold 7.7 million copies globally, and was the second best-selling album of the year, after Coldplay's X&Y. It was the best-selling album by a solo and female artist. As of October 2011, The Emancipation of Mimi has sold 10 million copies worldwide.
The Emancipation of Mimi was ranked as the 52nd best album of all time on the Billboard Top 200 Albums of All Time.
## Accolades
The Emancipation of Mimi received many awards and nominations. It earned ten Grammy Award nominations in 2006–07: eight in 2006 for the original release (the most received by Carey in a single year), and two in 2007 for Ultra Platinum Edition. In 2006, Carey won Best Contemporary R&B Album for The Emancipation of Mimi, as well as Best Female R&B Vocal Performance and Best R&B Song for "We Belong Together". Carey was nominated for, Album of the Year (The Emancipation of Mimi), Record of the Year ("We Belong Together"), Song of the Year ("We Belong Together"), Best Female Pop Vocal Performance ("It's Like That"), and Best Traditional R&B Vocal Performance ("Mine Again"). In 2007, "Don't Forget About Us" was nominated for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance and Best R&B Song.
The Emancipation of Mimi won the 2005 Soul Train Awards for Best R&B/Soul Album and Best Female R&B/Soul Album, and the 2005 Vibe Award for Album of the Year. Rolling Stone ranked the album at number 43 on its 2005 list of the year's best albums, and Entertainment Weekly ranked it at number 21 on their list of the "Top 100 Best Albums of the past 25 years". "We Belong Together" won a Teen Choice Award, a World Music Award, five Billboard Music Awards, four Radio Music Awards, and three Bambi Awards. "Shake It Off" and "Don't Forget About Us" won two additional Bambis. After Carey received the Bambi, the award drew media attention after it was stolen from the singer's dressing room.
## Track listing
Sample credits
- "It's Like That" samples "Hollis Crew" by Run-DMC and "La Di Da Di" by Doug E. Fresh and MC Ricky D
- "We Belong Together" samples "If You Think You're Lonely Now" by Bobby Womack and "Stares and Whispers" by Renée Geyer
- "Stay the Night" samples "Betcha by Golly Wow!" by Ramsey Lewis and "Who's in the House" by The 45 King
- "Get You Number" samples "Just an Illusion" by Imagination and "Weak at the Knees" by Steve Arrington
- "Your Girl" samples "A Life with You" by Adeaze
- "Sprung" samples "Do it Again" by The New Birth
- "Makin' It Last All Night (What It Do)" samples "Freek'n You" by Jodeci
- "We Belong Together" (Remix) samples "Two Occasions" by The Deele and "If You Think You're Lonely Now" by Bobby Womack
## Personnel
Credits for The Emancipation of Mimi are adapted from the album's liner notes.
- Mariah Carey – producer (tracks 1–4, 6–11, 13–14), executive producer, vocals (all tracks), background vocals (tracks 1–3, 6, 8–11, 13–14)
- Courtney Bradley – background vocals (track 14)
- Calvin Broadus – vocals (track 5)
- Rick Brunermer – flute (tracks 4, 9, 11), tenor saxophone (9, 11)
- Jason Carson – assistant recording engineer (tracks 5, 12)
- Dana Jon Chappelle – recording engineer (tracks 4–6, 8–14)
- Andrew Coleman – recording engineer (tracks 5, 12)
- Bryan-Michael Cox – producer (track 3)
- Jeff Dieterie – trombone (tracks 4, 9, 11), bass trombone (9, 11)
- Darryl Dixon – alto saxophone (tracks 4, 9, 11)
- Charley Drayton – drums (tracks 4, 9, 11)
- Jermaine Dupri – producer (1–3, 7), audio mixing (3, 7), vocals (1, 3, 7)
- Manuel Farolfi – assistant recording engineer (tracks 6, 8–9, 14)
- Jason Finkel – assistant recording engineer (tracks 4, 6, 9, 11, 14)
- Isaac Freeman – additional rap vocals (track 1)
- Brian Frye – recording engineer (track 7)
- Brian Garten – recording engineer (all tracks), audio mixing
- Cornell Haynes – vocals (track 12)
- Loris Holland – additional keyboards (tracks 9, 11, 14)
- John Horesco – recording engineer (tracks 1–3, 7), audio mixing
- Chops Horns – horn (tracks 4, 9, 11)
- Chad Hugo – producer (tracks 5, 12)
- Ken Duro Ifill – mixing
- Randy Jackson – bass (tracks 4, 9, 11)
- Jeffrey Lee Johnson – guitar (tracks 4, 9, 11)
- Rev. Dr. Clarence Keaton – talking voice (track 14)
- Michael Leedy – assistant recording engineer (tracks 4, 6, 9, 11, 14)
- Samuel "Legendary Traxster" Lindley – producer (track 8)
- Trey Lorenz – background vocals (tracks 7, 11, 13–14)
- Manny Marroquin – audio mixing (track 6)
- Carl Mitchell – vocals (track 8)
- Mike Pierce – recording engineer (track 8)
- James Phillips – producer (track 7)
- Jason Phillips – vocals
- Herb Power – mastering
- James Poyser – producer, keyboard (track 4)
- L.A. Reid – executive producer
- Joe Romano – flugelhorn, trumpet (tracks 4, 9, 11)
- Manuel Seal – producer (tracks 1–2)
- Ernesto Shaw – mixing
- Marc Shemer – producer (track 10)
- Dexter Simmons – mixing
- David Styles – vocals
- Phil Tan – audio mixing (tracks 1–5, 7, 9, 11–14)
- Maryann Tatum – background vocals (tracks 1, 9–11, 14)
- Sherry Tatum – background vocals (tracks 1, 9, 11, 14)
- Pat Viala – audio mixing (tracks 8, 10)
- Jeff Villanueva – engineer
- Kanye West – producer (track 6)
- Pharrell Williams – producer, additional vocals (tracks 5, 12)
- James Wright – producer (9, 11, 14), keyboards (9, 11)
## Charts
### Weekly charts
### Monthly charts
### Year-end charts
### Decade-end charts
### All-time charts
## Certifications and sales
## See also
- List of best-selling albums by women
- List of best-selling albums by year in the United States |
1,089,717 | Connie Smith | 1,171,348,233 | American country music artist (born 1941) | [
"1941 births",
"21st-century American composers",
"21st-century American women musicians",
"21st-century women composers",
"American country singer-songwriters",
"American gospel singers",
"American women composers",
"American women country singers",
"Columbia Records artists",
"Country Music Hall of Fame inductees",
"Country musicians from Indiana",
"Country musicians from Ohio",
"Country musicians from West Virginia",
"Epic Records artists",
"Grand Ole Opry members",
"Living people",
"Members of the Country Music Association",
"Monument Records artists",
"Musicians from Cincinnati",
"People from Elkhart, Indiana",
"RCA Records Nashville artists",
"Singer-songwriters from Indiana",
"Singer-songwriters from Ohio",
"Singer-songwriters from West Virginia",
"Warner Records artists"
] | Connie Smith (born Constance June Meador; August 14, 1941) is an American country music singer and songwriter. Her contralto vocals have been described by music writers as significant and influential to the women of country music. A similarity has been noted between her vocal style and the stylings of country vocalist Patsy Cline. Other performers have cited Smith as influence on their own singing styles, which has been reflected in quotes and interviews over the years.
Discovered in 1963, Smith signed with RCA Victor Records the following year and remained with the label until 1973. Her debut single "Once a Day" was nominated at the Grammy Awards for Best Female Country Vocal Performance and reached number one on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart in November 1964 and remained at the top position for eight weeks, the first time a female artist had achieved this feat, with Smith holding the record for over 50 years until it was broken by Trisha Yearwood. The song became Smith's biggest hit. Smith's success continued through 1960s and mid 1970s with 19 more top-10 hits (including "Then and Only Then"; "Ain't Had No Lovin'"; "Cincinnati, Ohio"; "I Never Once Stopped Loving You"; and "Ain't Love a Good Thing") on the country songs chart.
In the early 1970s, Smith began recording Gospel music more frequently as she became more serious in her Christianity. As she focused more heavily on religion, Smith became known for her outspoken religious demeanor at concerts and music venues. At the same time, Smith spent more time raising her five children than focusing on music. She eventually went into semi-retirement in 1979. Smith returned to recording briefly in the mid-1980s with Epic Records. However, it was not until her collaboration with Marty Stuart in the 1990s that she returned permanently. Their musical friendship became romantic, leading to their marriage in 1997. The pairing led to Connie Smith, Smith's first studio album in 20 years. Critically acclaimed, Smith began performing again and has recorded two more studio albums.
Smith has been nominated for 11 Grammy Awards, including eight nominations for Best Female Country Vocal Performance. She has also been nominated for one Academy of Country Music award and three Country Music Association awards. Rolling Stone included her on its list of the 100 greatest country music artists and CMT ranked her among the top 10 in its list of the 40 greatest women of country music. She has been a member of the Grand Ole Opry cast since 1965. In 2012, Smith was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.
## Early life
Connie Smith was born Constance June Meador to parents Wilma and Hobart Meador in Elkhart, Indiana. Her parents were originally from West Virginia, and when Smith was five months old, the family returned there. They later moved to Dungannon, Ohio. Her biological father was an alcoholic, and he was abusive to Smith's family. "There were some tough times that I went through as a young child," she told an interviewer.
Her mother divorced her biological father when she was a child and remarried to Tom Clark. Smith's stepfather brought eight children to the marriage, and Meador brought five (including Smith). The couple later had two more children together, totaling 15 children. Smith was influenced by music in her childhood. Her stepfather played mandolin, while her brother played fiddle, and her other brother played guitar. On Saturday nights, the family tuned into the Grand Ole Opry radio broadcast. She took up the guitar following a lawnmower accident, which nearly cut her leg off. While in the hospital recovering, she was given a guitar and learned how to play different chords. Smith did not perform publicly until high school when a friend invited her to sing Connie Francis's pop hit "My Happiness".
With only one-tenth of a point behind the valedictorian, Smith graduated from Salem-Liberty High School in 1959 as the class salutatorian. Following graduation, she worked as telephone operator in Lowell, Ohio. She also worked as a drugstore clerk, a dental assistant and in a grocery store. At age 19, she married her first husband, Jerry Smith. Smith's husband encouraged her singing, and she began performing with more frequency. Her first professional performance was at the 1962 Washington County Fair. She then briefly joined the cast of Saturday Night Jamboree, a local country music television program. Smith was fired following her first performance, later theorizing it was because she was pregnant. She then successfully auditioned for and landed a spot on a similar program for WSAZ-TV.
Despite performance opportunities, Smith intended to remain a housewife and mother. In August 1963, Smith entered a talent contest at the Frontier Ranch country music park near Columbus, Ohio. Performing Jean Shepard's "I Thought of You", Smith won the talent contest and five silver dollars. Judging the contest was country singer-songwriter Bill Anderson, who was instantly impressed by her voice. "At first I thought they were playing a record and she was lip sync'ing it," he later explained.
In January 1964, Smith ran into Anderson again at a country music package concert in Canton, Ohio. He invited her to perform with him on Ernest Tubb's Midnite Jamboree program in Nashville, Tennessee. When Smith performed on the program in March 1964, she found out that she would not be performing with Anderson, but instead with Ernest Tubb. Impressed by her performance, Loretta Lynn introduced herself after the show and gave her career advice. After performing on the program, Smith returned to Nashville that May to record demos by Anderson that he planned on pitching to other country artists. Anderson's manager Hubert Long brought the demo recording to the RCA Victor label where producer Chet Atkins heard it. Also impressed by her vocals, Atkins offered Smith a recording contract, and she signed on June 24, 1964.
## Career
### 1964–1967: "Once a Day" and peak success
After signing Smith to RCA, Chet Atkins found himself too busy with other artists. Instead he enlisted Bob Ferguson to act as Smith's producer. The pair developed a close professional relationship and Ferguson remained her producer until she departed from RCA. "I couldn't have asked for a better person to work with. He is one of the finest men I've ever know," Smith later said. Smith's first session took place on July 16, 1964, where she recorded four songs. Three of these tracks were written by Bill Anderson, who agreed to write material for Smith. Two days later, Smith made her debut on the Grand Ole Opry. One of the four songs recorded on July 16 was "Once a Day", which was chosen to be Smith's debut single. "Once a Day" was released in August 1964 and reached number one on the Billboard Magazine Hot Country Singles chart on November 28. It remained at the number one position for eight weeks between late 1964 and early 1965. "Once a Day" became the first debut single by a female country artist to reach number one. For nearly 50 years the single held the record for the most weeks spent at number one on the Billboard country chart by a female artist.
Smith started performing more regularly with "Once a Day"'s success. Bill Anderson briefly served as her manager, but was replaced by Charlie Lamb. Smith made her first network television appearance in October 1964 on ABC's The Jimmy Dean Show. In March 1965, RCA Victor released her self-titled debut album It also reached the number one spot, spending a total of seven weeks at the top of the Billboard Top Country Albums chart. Dan Cooper of Allmusic gave the disc a positive reception and described Smith as "a down-home Streisand fronting The Lennon Sisters."
Bill Anderson fulfilled his promise to RCA Victor and continued writing Smith's next single releases. Producer Bob Ferguson and steel guitar player Weldon Myrick created a "high" and "punchy" production that Ferguson thought would sound pleasing on car radios. "I thought it was an awfully thin sound, but it wound up being very popular," Myrick recalled. In 1965, RCA issued Smith's follow-up single written by Anderson titled "Then and Only Then", which reached number four on the Billboard country songs chart. It was followed by another Anderson-written top 10 single titled "I Can't Remember". In October 1965, the latter song appeared on Cute 'n' Country, Smith's second studio album. Although she disliked the name of the LP, it became her second disc to top the Billboard country albums chart. She had additional top five Billboard country singles through early 1966 with Anderson's "Nobody But a Fool (Would Love You)" and Priscilla Mitchell's "If I Talk to Him". In 1965, Smith became a member of the Grand Ole Opry radio show.
In 1966, Ferguson felt pressured from RCA headquarters to market Smith's sound toward "middle-of-the-road" country pop material. Smith was against the pop production but nevertheless agreed to try it. The pair did several sessions featuring a string instrumentation. The style appeared on her next studio releases Born to Sing (1966) and Downtown Country (1967). Both albums featured full orchestras in the background and cover versions of singles by pop artists of the time. Featured on the LPs were the singles "Ain't Had No Lovin'" and "The Hurtin's All Over", which both reached the Billboard country top five. During this time, Smith appeared in several country music vehicle films, where she performed many of her current hit recordings. In 1966, she appeared in the films Second Fiddle to a Steel Guitar and The Las Vegas Hillbillys, the latter of which starred Jayne Mansfield. In 1967, she appeared in The Road to Nashville and Hell on Wheels. Smith's touring schedule also increased. In 1966, she formed her own touring band named the Sundowners and later married the band's guitar player Jack Watkins.
In February 1967, RCA's subsidiary budget label Camden released Smith's next studio LP titled Connie in the Country. The LP included covers of popular country recordings of the era and "Cry, Cry, Cry", a single by Smith that reached the top 20. In May 1967, RCA released an album of songs written solely by Bill Anderson titled Connie Smith Sings Bill Anderson. Smith later commented that "it was an honor, not a favor" to record an album of all Anderson tunes. It included covers of Anderson's hits such as "City Lights" and "That's What It's Like to Be Lonesome". Included on the album was "Cincinnati, Ohio", which Smith released as a single and brought the song to the Billboard country top five. Its success later inspired the city of Cincinnati, Ohio to declare its own Connie Smith Day in June 1967. Smith remained at her commercial zenith through 1967 with a continued series of top 10 recordings. Her further hits included the "I'll Come Runnin'", "Burning a Hole in My Mind", "Baby's Back Again" and "Run Away Little Tears". Three of these recordings were included on Smith's 1967 album I Love Charley Brown, which reached the country LPs top 20.
### 1968–1972: Setbacks, gospel music and continued country music success
By 1968, Smith had reached the height of her career. She was making multiple appearances on film and television while attempting to balance touring with a family life. The pressures of various responsibilities stressed Smith to a point where she nearly left her career. In 1968, she discovered Christianity, which brought solace to her personal and professional life. Ultimately, she chose to continue with her career and recorded for RCA every few months. However, she reduced her touring schedule. She devoted the remainder of her time to family life and made efforts to appear on more Christian music programs. She worked alongside ministers Billy Graham and Rex Humbard. She also appeared on several Christian television shows.
With Smith's commitment to RCA, the label continued releasing new albums and singles with regularity. With her new religious convictions, Smith also made it a priority to include gospel recordings on her secular albums. This remained a theme throughout her career. In 1968 and 1969, RCA Victor released the studio LPs Sunshine and Rain, Back in Baby's Arms and Connie's Country. These recordings yielded a cover of Marty Robbins's "Ribbon of Darkness". Smith's version reached the top 20 of the Billboard country singles chart. In Canada, "Ribbon of Darkness" became her first song to top their RPM Country chart. Entering the 1970s, Smith made the top 10 of the North American country charts with less frequency, but continued having commercial success. The singles "You and Your Sweet Love" and "I Never Once Stopped Loving You" (both written by Bill Anderson) made the Billboard country top 10 in 1970. Her fifteenth studio LP of the same name was released in 1970 and made the top 20 of the Billboard country albums chart.
During this period, Smith also teamed with country singer-songwriter Nat Stuckey to record two duet studio albums. The idea was crafted by Smith's producer (Bob Ferguson) and Stuckey's producer (Felton Jarvis). Both men thought the artists' voices would "blend well". The duo's first duet sessions produced a cover of Sonny James's "Young Love", which reached the top 20 of the Billboard country songs chart. Their first album of the same name featured covers of country and pop songs of the era. In an effort for Smith record more gospel music, the duo cut a spiritual-themed LP in 1970 titled Sunday Morning with Nat Stuckey and Connie Smith. Christian radio programs often opened their shows with the duo's gospel music, which influenced RCA to release "If God Is Dead (Who's That Living in My Soul)" as a single in 1970. The song peaked in the lower reaches of the Billboard country chart.
Journalists and writers took notice of Smith's RCA work following 1968. Biographer and writer Barry Mazor found that Smith's recordings had "a new delicacy of phrasing that shows itself". Mazor also found her albums to have more distinctive qualities, calling 1970s I Never Once Stopped Loving You to be "one of her most consistent and strongest albums". AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine praised Smith's recordings from 1968 to 1972, highlighting the strength of her vocals: "She may have been given some of the best songs, but the thing is, she deserved them: few others could give them grace and soul, as this always entertaining box amply proves." Authors Mary A. Bufwack and Robert K. Oermann commented that her later RCA singles, "stand the test of time as among the most powerful country female vocal performances of the 1970s."
In the early 1970s, Smith started recording more songs penned by Dallas Frazier. The pair had become close friends, which prompted Frazier to write songs for Smith that reflected situations in her personal life. Both Smith and Frazier described her 1970 single "Where Is My Castle" as being autobiographical of her recent marital troubles. "Anybody knows that its cathartic to sing how you feel about things," Smith later said. "Where Is My Castle" reached the top 20 of both the Billboard and RPM country singles charts. In 1971, RCA released Smith's cover of Don Gibson's "Just One Time". Backed by a large rhythm section, the recording reached number two on the Billboard and RPM country charts, becoming her most commercially successful single of the 1970s. Her eighteenth studio LP of the same name reached number 14 on the Billboard country albums chart and featured liner notes written by Loretta Lynn.
With Smith being among RCA's top-selling recording artists, she had enough leverage to coax executives to let her record another gospel album. The result was 1971's Come Along and Walk with Me. The studio album featured gospel tracks written by spiritual writers such as Dottie Rambo. In 1972, Smith had three back-to-back top singles on the Billboard country chart: "Just for What I Am", "If It Ain't Love (Let's Leave It Alone)" and "Love Is the Look You're Looking For". RCA released the singles on three separate LPs: Ain't We Havin' Us a Good Time (1972), If It Ain't Love and Other Great Dallas Frazier Songs (1972) and Love Is the Look You're Looking For (1973). Her most commercially successful album was If It Ain't Love and Other Great Dallas Frazier Songs, which reached number 14 on the Billboard country albums chart. The studio project was recorded as a tribute to Dallas Frazier and featured 10 songs written by him. Frazier also sang several duets with Smith on the project. Before leaving her contract with RCA, the label released more LPs, including the compilation Dream Painter (1973). Its title track charted in the Billboard top 40.
### 1973–1979: Record label switches, pop music incorporation and semi-retirement
In 1973, RCA promised to give Smith a better royalty and more creative control if she renewed her contract. In an updated contract, these terms were not met. Upon hiring a lawyer, she left RCA and was offered a contract by Columbia Records. In 1973, Smith signed a new recording contract with Columbia Records. The label gave her more creative control including the opportunity record one gospel album per year. At Columbia, she met with Clive Davis, who agreed to produce her. However, the label dismissed Davis before they could work together. Instead, producer Billy Sherrill chose to work with Smith. However, a disagreement about religion ended the pairing before it began. She started recording alongside producer George Richey, who recently had success writing material for George Jones and Tammy Wynette.
At Columbia, Smith was pressured into recording with more pop production than before. "From Day One at the new label, even more than before, it was a constant tussle, because I just am who I am," recalled Smith. However, she remained active in song selection and the recording process. Smith's first Columbia LP titled A Lady Named Smith (1973) included pop production such as string instrumentation and overdubbed background vocals. The LP reached number 31 on the Billboard country albums chart. Richey agreed to release "Ain't Love a Good Thing" as her first Columbia single. Instead, the Richey-Smith co-written song "You've Got Me (Right Where You Want Me)" proved to be the first label single. The decision disappointed Smith enough that she chose to end their professional relationship. The last Richey-produced project was Smith's first Columbia gospel LP titled God Is Abundant. The album of religious material climbed to number 20 on the Billboard country albums chart.
Smith chose Ray Baker to serve as her next producer. Baker had operated a publishing company and produced several song demos that prompted Smith to choose him. The pair had a more agreeable relationship and recorded together throughout the decade. Baker produced Smith's next Columbia album titled That's the Way Love Goes (1974). The LP featured several original recordings and cover tunes. The album included "Ain't Love a Good Thing", which was released as a single and became her eighteenth top 10 song on the Billboard country chart. Although she recorded two gospel projects in 1974, the label waited until 1975 to release both LPs. Instead, Columbia released a secular project titled I Never Knew (What That Song Meant Before) (1974). Its title track became a top 20 Billboard country single, peaking at number 13. It was followed in 1975 by the traditional country LP I Got a Lot of Hurtin' Done Today/I've Got My Baby On My Mind. Both "I've Got My Baby on My Mind" and Smith's cover of Hank Williams's "Why Don't You Love Me" reached the country top 20.
Music critics noticed a change in Smith's vocals following her Columbia switch. When reviewing the compilation, Connie Smith Sings Her Hits, Thom Jurek of Allmusic commented that she lost the "grain" in her voice. Jurek went on to write "It could be said, that regardless of the material, she never made a bad record; the tunes were carefully chosen it's true, but she never tried to hide the hardcore twang in her vocal style." Smith's biographer, Barry Mazor, found her voice to "lower in range by this point" and saw evidence of Columbia attempting to "push her recorded vocal into the upper end of her range". Other critics noticed stylistic changes but observed no change in her singing. NPR's Ken Tucker found her recordings in this era to feature more pop instrumentation but did not "obscure the passion and pain she communicated so fearlessly".
In 1975, Columbia released both of her 1974 gospel projects. The first was Connie Smith Sings Hank Williams Gospel. For the album, Smith and Baker went through the Hank Williams catalog where they came across a series of never-before-released gospel songs. The result was the first album of Hank Williams gospel material recorded by another artist. In 1976, the project was nominated by the Grammy Awards for Best Gospel Performance. The second 1975 religious LP was the gospel influenced Christmas album titled Joy to the World. In 1976, Columbia issued two more country albums of Smith's material: The Song We Fell in Love To and I Don't Wanna Talk It Over Anymore. Both LPs peaked in the Billboard country albums top 40. The albums included the number 13 country single "I Don't Wanna Talk It Over Anymore" and her twentieth top 10, a remake of The Everly Brothers's "(Till) I Kissed You". The latter was Smith's second single to top Canada's RPM country chart.
In 1977 Smith moved to Fred Foster's Nashville label Monument Records. She was pressured into recording more country pop material than before and was given singing lessons by a songwriter. "He [Fred Foster] wanted to mold me into something That I wasn't comfortable with," Smith commented. "That's why that never worked." AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine found her Monument music to have "state-of-the-art production that dates instantly, walks the line between crossover pop and country-pop rather clumsly, and lacks good material." Monument released two LPs of Smith's material between 1977 and 1978. Her only commercially successful Monument single was a cover of Andy Gibb's "I Just Want to Be Your Everything". The single climbed to number 14 on the Billboard country chart. Yet, her other Monument releases reached progressively-lower positions on the country chart between 1978 and 1979. Furthermore, Smith had five children by this point and felt pressured to be at home with her family. Ultimately, Smith decided to leave her country music career entirely to focus on raising her children and tending to her religious needs.
### 1983–present: Return to recording and performing
For three years, Smith remained in semi-retirement, committing only to occasional performances at the Grand Ole Opry, where she remained a member. At the Opry, she only performed gospel songs. However, she decided to return to her career in 1983. She re-signed with Monument Records, but left after label filed for bankruptcy. Instead, singer and songwriter Ricky Skaggs helped her secure a new recording contract to Epic Records. The first single, "A Far Cry from You" (1985), was written by Alternative country artist Steve Earle. It reached number 71 on the Hot Country Songs chart.
One day in the mid-1990s, Smith was at her home talking to one of her daughters on the phone. After telling her mother what she was going to do that night, her daughter asked Smith what her plans for that night were. Because she did not have anything fun planned, Smith lied so her daughter wouldn't have to worry about her. After the conversation ended, Smith realized that she didn't need her own children worrying about her at the start of their adult lives and decided that it was time to return to her career. With country artist Marty Stuart (whom she later married in 1997), acting as the album's main producer, Smith signed a recording contract with Warner Bros. Records in 1996. Although the label preferred her to record an album of duets, Smith decided to go by her own terms and record a solo studio album. In October 1998 she released her second self-titled studio album. It consisted of ten tracks, nine of them co-written by both Smith and Stuart.
Smith's 1998 project attracted limited commercial attention, but was given critical praise for its traditional and contemporary style. Kurt Wolff of the book Country Music: The Rough Guide commented that the album sounded "far gutsier than anything in the Reba and Garth mainstream". Thom Jurek of Allmusic gave the release four out of five stars, calling it "a solid effort", also commenting "it stands head and shoulders over most of the stuff that's come out of Nash Vegas in over a decade. Even if it doesn't sell a copy, it's a triumphant return for Smith. She hasn't lost a whit of her gift as a singer or as a writer." Also in 1998, Smith made a second cameo appearance in a film, portraying a "Singer at the Rodeo Dance" in The Hi-Lo Country starring Woody Harrelson and Billy Crudup.
In August 2003, she released a gospel album with country artists Barbara Fairchild and Sharon White titled Love Never Fails on Daywind Records. In an interview with Country Stars Central, Smith said that she was ill with the stomach flu while recording the album, but still enjoyed making the record. Produced by country and bluegrass performer Ricky Skaggs (White's husband), the album received a nomination from the Dove Awards. The website Slipcue.com reviewed the release and stated that Love Never Fails "is probably too rowdy for most Southern gospel fans (who really like tinkly pianos and less-twangy vocals), and while it probably won't wow many country listeners, for folks who are fans any of these three singers, this is kind of a treat.
In November 2008, Smith joined the cast of Marty Stuart's television series The Marty Stuart Show, which aired on the RFD-TV network every Saturday night. The thirty-minute program featured traditional country music performed by both Stuart and Smith, as well as radio personality Eddie Stubbs. The show stopped airing on RFD-TV in 2014. In August 2011 Smith released her first new solo recording in thirteen years, entitled Long Line of Heartaches via Sugar Hill Records. The record was produced by Marty Stuart and included five songs written by the pair. Harlan Howard, Kostas, Johnny Russell, and Dallas Frazier also wrote tracks that were included on the disc. The album was reviewed positively by AllMusic's Steve Leggett, who gave it four stars. "It wouldn't be quite right to call this a throwback album, but it does sound like vintage traditional country given just a bit of a polished edge," he concluded. Andrew Mueller of BBC also gave it a positive response, calling it "classic and classicist country songs".
In August 2021, Smith's next studio album was released on the Fat Possum label titled The Cry of the Heart. It was the third project produced by Stuart and her first album of new material in ten years. The New York Times described The Cry of the Heart to evoke the traditional styles that "recall Smith's '60s era recordings". It was Smith's first album since 1976 to reach a charting position on Billboard, peaking on the Current Album Sales chart following its release. PopMatters gave the album an 8/10 rating and concluded "If you wanted to understand what traditional country is, you could go to the same place today as you could have 50 years ago: a Connie Smith record."
## Personal life
Smith has been married four times. In 1961, she married Jerry Smith, a ferro-analyst at the Inter-Lake Iron Corporation in Beverly, Ohio. They had one child together, born on 9 March 1963, named Darren Justin. (In the late 1970s, Darren went to Europe to become a missionary; he is currently a psychologist.) In the mid-1960s, the couple divorced and Smith married the guitarist in her touring band, Jack Watkins. They had a son before separating nearly a year after marrying. Shortly afterward, Smith married telephone repairman Marshall Haynes. In the early 1970s, Haynes frequently toured with Connie on her road show. The couple had three daughters.
After divorcing Haynes in the early 1990s, Smith stated that she never would marry again. However, on 8 July 1997, she married for the fourth time, this time to her producer, country artist Marty Stuart. Stuart began producing her after writing songs for Smith's 1998 comeback album. Stuart described encountering Smith 26 years earlier, after attending her concert: "I met Connie when I was 12 years old. She came to the Indian reservation in my hometown of Philadelphia, Mississippi to work at a fair. She hasn't changed a bit. She looked great then and she looks great now." Stuart said he told his mother then that he was going to marry Connie Smith. Smith explains how they have sustained their marriage : "Make the Lord the center...and commit."
Smith revealed in a New York Times interview that she had been diagnosed with COVID-19 in February 2021. She was hospitalized, developing sepsis and pneumonia. She eventually made a full recovery. "They asked me if my heart stopped, did I want to be revived, and I said 'Of course, I don't want to be a COVID statistic,'" she told the Nashville Scene.
## Musical styles and vocal ability
Connie Smith's sound is defined by the Nashville Sound musical style, primarily during her breakthrough years in the 1960s. While most Nashville Sound recordings of the time mainly included full orchestras, Smith's sound remained more traditional with its use of steel guitar and her twangy vocals, while still featuring some pop-influenced instrumentation to provide urban pop appeal. Critics have largely praised Smith's use of the steel guitar, which have often been described as "sharp" and "prominent". Her steel guitar player Weldon Myrick is often credited with creating what Smith has called "The Connie Smith Sound". In an interview with Colin Escott in his book Born to Sing, Myrick recalls how Smith's producer (Bob Ferguson) wanted the guitar to sound, "He came out and said he wanted a bright sound, and he adjusted my controls. I thought it was an awfully thin sound, but it wound up being very popular."
Smith's vocal delivery has also been considered to be part of her musical style. Writer Stephen Thomas Erlewine noted in 2012 that Smith sings with a "cool, authoritative ease, a skill that brought her to the attention of some of Nashville's finest songwriters." Mary A. Bufwack and Robert K. Oermann called her singing "a pillar-of-fire delivery sobbed with desolation." Thom Jurek of AllMusic stated that Smith's vocals offer "sophisticated emotional delivery" and that "her control and phrasing remain a high-water mark today."
## Legacy and honors
Smith is considered by many critics and historians to be one of country music's more celebrated and respected artists. In his review of Smith's 1996 compilation The Essential Connie Smith, Jurek explained why Smith's vocals are usually compared to Cline's, "Connie Smith is perhaps the only female singer in the history of country music who can truly claim to be the heiress to Patsy Cline's throne. It's not that there aren't many amazing vocalists in the field, and plenty of legends among them. But in terms of the pure gift of interpretation of taking virtually any song and making it a country song of class and distinction, Smith is it."
Writers and journalists have also cited Smith as an integral piece of country music history. Mary A. Bufwack and Robert K. Oermann categorized her as one of country's "heroines of heartbreak", due to her emotional vocal delivery. Bufwack and Oermann further stated that along with Tammy Wynette, Smith was among the genre's "most towering country voices of the 1960s and 1970s" who "sang from the depths of despair" and "spoke for conservative Middle America in both music and life."
Many artists in the country music industry have cited Smith as a significant musical influence or one of their favorite musical artists. George Jones cited Smith as his favorite female singer in his 1995 autobiography. Elvis Presley had many of Smith's albums in his record collection at his Graceland home and intended on recording Smith's version of "The Wonders You Perform", but never got around to doing so. In a discussion with country songwriter Fred Foster, Dolly Parton famously said "You know, there's really only three female singers in the world: Barbra Streisand, Linda Ronstadt, and Connie Smith. The rest of us are only pretending."
Smith has been given honors and achievements as part of her legacy. In 2002, she was ranked in the top ten of CMTs televised special of the 40 Greatest Women of Country Music. In 2011, she was inducted into the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame. Alongside Garth Brooks, Smith was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2012. "Just to be in the company of the great Kitty Wells is enough," she commented after hearing the news. In 2015, she celebrated 50 years as a member of the Grand Ole Opry radio broadcast. Her celebration was honored in a performance joined by Alison Krauss and Mel Tillis, among others. In 2017, she was ranked on Rolling Stones list of the "100 Greatest Country Artists of All-Time".
In March 2021, Smith's legacy was further cemented by the Library of Congress, which added "Once a Day" to the National Recording Registry. In April 2021, Smith's husband, Marty Stuart, announced a documentary to be released about her life and career titled Connie: The Cry of the Heart. "Studying the depth of what Marty and Connie have achieved in the industry and then discovering their ability to predict the business trends around their legacy makes me very excited to be part of what they are doing," said Nick Kontonicolas, who will help broadcast the documentary on his network.
## Discography
Studio albums'''
- Connie Smith (1965)
- Cute 'n' Country (1965)
- Miss Smith Goes to Nashville (1966)
- Connie Smith Sings Great Sacred Songs (1966)
- Born to Sing (1966)
- Downtown Country (1967)
- Connie in the Country (1967)
- Connie Smith Sings Bill Anderson (1967)
- Soul of Country Music (1967)
- I Love Charley Brown (1968)
- Sunshine and Rain (1968)
- Connie's Country (1969)
- Young Love (with Nat Stuckey) (1969)
- Back in Baby's Arms (1969)
- Sunday Morning with Nat Stuckey and Connie Smith (with Nat Stuckey) (1970)
- I Never Once Stopped Loving You (1970)
- Where Is My Castle (1971)
- Just One Time (1971)
- Come Along and Walk with Me (1971)
- Ain't We Havin' Us a Good Time (1972)
- If It Ain't Love and Other Great Dallas Frazier Songs (1972)
- A Lady Named Smith (1973)
- God Is Abundant (1973)
- That's the Way Love Goes (1974)
- I Never Knew (What That Song Meant Before) (1974)
- I Got a Lot of Hurtin' Done Today/I've Got My Baby On My Mind (1975)
- Connie Smith Sings Hank Williams Gospel (1975)
- Joy to the World (1975)
- The Song We Fell in Love To (1976)
- I Don't Wanna Talk It Over Anymore (1976)
- Pure Connie Smith (1977)
- New Horizons (1978)
- The Best of Connie Smith (1989)
- By Request (1995)
- Clinging to a Saving Hand (1995)
- Connie Smith (1998)
- Love Never Fails (with Barbara Fairchild and Sharon White) (2003)
- Long Line of Heartaches (2011)
- The Cry of the Heart (2021)
## Filmography
## Awards, nominations and honors
!Ref. \|- \| 1964 \| Billboard Magazine \| Most Promising Female Country Artist \| \| align="center"\| \|- \| rowspan=8\| 1965 \| rowspan=3\| Grammy Awards \| Best Country and Western Single – "Once a Day" \| \| align="center" rowspan="3"\| \|- \| Best New Country and Western Artist \| \|- \| Best Country & Western Vocal Performance, Female – "Once a Day" \| \|- \| Billboard Magazine \| Most Promising Female Country Artist \| \| align="center"\| \|- \| rowspan=2\| Billboard Magazine \| Favorite Female Country Performer \| \| align="center"\| \|- \| Favorite Album (1964–1965) – Connie Smith \| \| align="center"\| \|- \| Cash Box \| Most Promising Female Country Vocalist \| \| align="center"\| \|- \| Country Music Review \| Most Promising Female Singer \| \| align="center"\| \|- \| rowspan=8\| 1966 \| rowspan=2\| Grammy Awards \| Best Sacred Recording – Connie Smith Sings Great Sacred Songs \| \| align="center" rowspan="2"\| \|- \| Best Country and Western Vocal Performance, Female – "Ain't Had No Lovin'" \| \|- \| rowspan=2\| Billboard Magazine \| Favorite Female Country Performer \| \| align="center"\| \|- \| Favorite Country Album – Cute 'n' Country \| \| align="center"\| \|- \| Cash Box \| Most Programmed Female Artist \| \| align="center"\| \|- \| Country Music Life Award \| Favorite Female Artist \| \| align="center"\| \|- \| rowspan=2\| Record World \| Top Female Vocalist \| \| align="center"\| \|- \| Most Outstanding Female Country and Western Vocalist \| \| align="center"\| \|- \| rowspan=4\| 1967 \| Billboard Magazine \| Top Country Artist, Female Vocalist \| \| align="center"\| \|- \| Cash Box \| Most Programmed Female Artist \| \| align="center"\| \|- \| Record World \| Top Female Vocalist \| \| align="center"\| \|- \| Country Music Association Awards \| Female Vocalist of the Year \| \| align="center"\| \|- \| 1968 \| Grammy Awards \| Best Country & Western Solo Vocal Performance, Female – "Cincinnati, Ohio" \| \| align="center"\| \|- \| rowspan=2\| 1969 \| Academy of Country Music \| Top Female Vocalist \| \| align="center"\| \|- \| Grammy Awards \| Best Country Vocal Performance, Female – "Ribbon of Darkness" \| \| align="center"\| \|- \| rowspan="2"\| 1970 \| Country Music Association \| Female Vocalist of the Year \| \| align="center"\| \|- \| Record World \| Top Female Vocalist \| \| align="center"\| \|- \| 1971 \| Grammy Awards \| Best Sacred Performance – "Whispering Hope" (with Nat Stuckey) \| \| align="center"\| \|- \| rowspan=2\| 1972 \| Music City News Awards \| Top Female Vocalist \| \| align="center"\| \|- \| Country Music Association \| Female Vocalist of the Year \| \| align="center"\| \|- \| rowspan=2\| 1974 \| Grammy Awards \| Best Inspirational Performance – "All the Praises" \| \| align="center"\| \|- \| Music City News Awards \| Top Female Vocalist \| \| align="center"\| \|- \| 1975 \| Music City News Awards \| Top Female Vocalist \| \| align="center"\| \|- \| 1976 \| Grammy Awards \| Best Gospel Performance – Connie Smith Sings Hank Williams Gospel \| \| align="center"\| \|- \| 1979 \| Music City News Awards \| Gospel Group/Act of the Year \| \| align="center"\| \|- \| 2002 \| Country Music Television \| 40 Greatest Women of Country Music \| \| align="center"\| \|- \| 2007 \| Country Universe \| 100 Greatest Women – Rank (#24) \| \| align="center"\| \|- \| 2010 \| Grammy Awards \| Best Country Collaboration with Vocals – "Run to You" (with Marty Stuart) \| \| align="center"\| \|- \| 2011 \| West Virginia Music Hall of Fame \| Inducted \| \| align="center"\| \|- \| 2012 \| Country Music Association \| Country Music Hall of Fame induction \| \| align="center"\| \|- \| 2017 \| Rolling Stone'' \| 100 Greatest Country Artists of All Time – Rank (#69) \| \| align="center"\| \|- |
32,153,569 | Talking to the Moon | 1,170,366,322 | 2011 single by Bruno Mars | [
"2010 songs",
"2010s ballads",
"2011 singles",
"Brasil Hot 100 Airplay number-one singles",
"Brasil Hot Pop number-one singles",
"Bruno Mars songs",
"Contemporary R&B ballads",
"Pop ballads",
"Song recordings produced by Jeff Bhasker",
"Song recordings produced by the Smeezingtons",
"Songs written by Ari Levine",
"Songs written by Bruno Mars",
"Songs written by Jeff Bhasker",
"Songs written by Philip Lawrence (songwriter)",
"Torch songs",
"Warner Music Group singles"
] | "Talking to the Moon" is a song by American singer-songwriter Bruno Mars from his debut studio album, Doo-Wops & Hooligans (2010). The song was first unveiled on Mars's debut extended play, It's Better If You Don't Understand (2010), as its last track. It was written by Mars, Philip Lawrence, Ari Levine, Albert Winkler, and Jeff Bhasker, while production was handled by the Smeezingtons in collaboration with Bhasker. "Talking to the Moon" is a pop and R&B power ballad about a failed relationship, solitude, and sadness. Instrumentally, the track relies on drum percussion and piano.
"Talking to the Moon" received mixed reviews from music critics. Some praised its slow pace and lyrics, while others criticized its overwhelming production. The song was announced as a single only in Brazil, on April 12, 2011, through Warner Music Brasil, following its appearance on the soundtrack of the Brazilian telenovela Insensato Coração (2011). The song charted on the Brasil Hot 100 Airplay, where it spent several weeks at number one, and on the Billboard Brasil Hot Pop & Popular. It was certified twice platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). It was performed during Mars's debut world tour, The Doo-Wops & Hooligans Tour (2010–2012), on the Hooligans in Wondaland Tour (2011) and during a show on the South American leg of the 24K Magic World Tour (2017–2018).
## Background and production
"Talking to the Moon" was first recorded by Bruno Mars for his debut EP, It's Better If You Don't Understand, which was released on May 11, 2010 under Elektra Records. When asked about the lyrical content of the record, Mars stated that "[he] just [writes] songs that [he] strongly believe in and that are coming from inside. There's no tricks. It's honesty with big melodies. And [he is] singing the s\*\*\* out of them." During an interview, Mars explained that after writing and producing songs for other artists, he thought that he could write a song for himself. He started writing the lyrics of "Talking to the Moon" while playing the piano. The track was included five months later on his debut studio album, Doo-Wops & Hooligans, released on October 4, 2010 under the Elektra and Atlantic labels. Mars also recorded an acoustic piano version included on the deluxe edition of the album. Ari Levine described how the song was conceived in an interview for Sound on Sound:
> We only had the first verse and the horns. We then had three different bridges and we spent a lot of time trying to find out which one was the best. Jeff Bhasker is a fantastic musician, and he helped write that track. I think we tried to arrange and produce this in four different ways, mostly trying to figure out what kind of drums to put on.
"Talking to the Moon" was written by Mars, Philip Lawrence, Levine, Bhasker, and Albert Winkler, and produced by the former three, under their alias, the Smeezingtons, while Bhasker co-produced the song. Levine and Mars played all the instruments on the track and recorded them; Levine was as well responsible for engineering the song at Levcon Studios in California. The mixing of the track was done at Larrabee Sound Studios in Los Angeles by Manny Marroquin, with Christian Plata and Erik Madrid serving as assistants. It was mastered by Stephen Marcussen at Marcussen Mastering in Hollywood, California.
## Composition
"Talking to the Moon" is a "soaring" pop and R&B power ballad. It has a stripped-down production, and instrumentation consisting primarily of drums and a piano. According to the digital sheet music, the song was written in the key of C minor and was set in a four-four time signature with a ballad tempo of 73 beats per minute. Mars's vocal range spans from B<sub>3</sub> to C<sub>5</sub>, and the song follows the chord progression E–G<sub>7</sub>–Cm–B–A. Natalie Li from The Harvard Crimson felt the song has an "electro twist". Sasha Frere-Jones wrote for The New Yorker that the single relies on a "gorgeous wall of backing harmony".
The song's lyrics describe feelings of loneliness, loss, and hope in the chorus: "Talking to the moon/Try to get to you/In hopes you're on the other side/Talking to me, too". As the song continues, it shows the singer's vulnerable side with soft, sincere lyrics about a lost love that has now gone, according to Alex Young of Consequence of Sound. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's Scott Mervis described Mars's vocals on the track as "yearning". Sherri Thornhill of Yahoo!, believed the lyrics reveal the singer's hope that "his former flame is talking to the moon just as he is." A similar opinion was shared by Seattle Post-Intelligencer's Tyrone Reid, noticing Mars "waxing poetic about love and longing".
## Critical reception
The song received mixed reviews from music critics. Alex Young of Consequence of Sound gave the song a positive review writing that the song "may be the best of this collection [album]", adding that "this track is primed for radio; a soft, sincere piano-driven song about a lost love that has now gone [...] belts the vulnerable Mars." Yahoo!'s music critic, Sherri Thornhill, praised the song, calling it a "beauty" and "relatable", since the lyrics show the "heartbroken lover['s]" wish that his former lover is doing the same as he is – talking to the moon. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer's reviewer, Tyrone S. Reid, considered the song "beautifully written, waxing poetic about love and longing – a forte that the singer employs with great results in his work." Leah Greenblatt of Entertainment Weekly called "Talking to the Moon" "woebegone", adding that "a malt-shop heart beats beneath [its] digital skin". Emily Yang of The Signal stated that Mars "focuses on the slow pace of the drums and piano to convey his sorrow. He sings of loneliness which is almost palpable in the chorus."
On the other hand, Bill Lamb of About.com wrote that it "is possibly the weakest track simply because the heavy production threatens to overwhelm the centerpiece of Bruno Mars' singing because it is a big power jazz ballad that would work well from the stage." In the same vein, Mike Diver of BBC Music considered the song "a ballad devoid of detectable emotion". The same perspective was replicated by Jamie Milton from musicOMH, who called it a "over-sentimental ballad". The Scotsman compared "Talking to the Moon" to the "Gary Barlow stirring-yet-banal mould", dubbing it "a slowed-down, doleful version of "Billionaire" (2011).
## Commercial performance
Following the track's inclusion on the soundtrack of Insensato Coração, which generated most of the song's success Warner Music Brasil decided to release it as an official single in Brazil on April 12, 2011. After its release, "Talking to the Moon" charted on two Brazilian charts – Billboard Brasil Hot Pop & Popular and the Brasil Hot 100 Airplay with it reaching the top position in both cases. The song spent nine weeks at number one on the latter chart, while it topped the former chart for 22 weeks. It became the fourth song with the most weeks spent at the top of Billboard Brasil Hot Pop & Popular and on Brasil Hot 100 Airplay it ranked seventh with the most weeks at number one as of 2012. In 2017, "Talking to the Moon" debuted on the Japan Hot 100 at number 45. In April 2021, the song received a resurgence on the video-sharing app TikTok, which it led to enter various charts, such as Australia and Switzerland. "Talking to the Moon" was certified two times platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and gold by IFPI Denmark.
## Other usage and live performances
The song was used on the soundtrack of Brazilian telenovela Insensato Coração. It was also used in the movie, A Turtle's Tale: Sammy's Adventures, with it being as well included on the movie soundtrack as a bonus song. An acoustic piano version of "Talking to the Moon" was included on the charity compilation album, Songs for Japan, released on March 25, 2011. "Talking to the Moon" was featured in the movie Think Like a Man, released in 2012, where the song was attributed to Mars in the final credits. In 2020, American R&B band Michelle and American singer Catie Turner covered "Talking to the Moon", in different instances, as part of the tenth anniversary of Mars's debut album. It was the fourteenth song on the set list of his debut world tour, The Doo-Wops & Hooligans Tour (2010–2012) and was also, sometimes, sung as an encore on the Hooligans in Wondaland Tour (2011). It was also performed during a show on the South American leg of the 24K Magic World Tour (2017–2018). In 2021, Gambian-born rapper Jnr Choi's single "To the Moon" sampled a cover of the song by British singer-songwriter Sam Tompkins.
## Personnel
Credits adapted from the liner notes of Doo-Wops & Hooligans.
- Bruno Mars – lead vocals, songwriting, instrumentation
- Philip Lawrence – songwriting
- Ari Levine – songwriting, instrumentation, engineering
- Albert Winkler – songwriting
- Jeff Bhasker – songwriting, co-production
- The Smeezingtons – production
- Manny Marroquin – mixing
- Christian Plata – mixing assistant
- Erik Madrid – mixing assistant
- Stephen Marcussen – mastering
## Charts
### Charts
## Certifications
## See also
- List of Hot 100 number-one singles of 2011 (Brazil)
- List of number-one pop hits of 2011 (Brazil) |
26,854,756 | Ivan Jones (Emmerdale) | 1,165,449,322 | Fictional character from Emmerdale | [
"Emmerdale characters",
"Fictional LGBT characters in television",
"Fictional bisexual men",
"Fictional people from Newcastle upon Tyne",
"Male characters in television",
"Television characters introduced in 2005"
] | Ivan Jones is a fictional character from the British ITV soap opera, Emmerdale, played by Daniel Brocklebank. He appeared in the series from 5 May 2005 until 2 August 2006. Ivan was originally introduced to participate in a storyline about the character of Jarvis Skelton (Richard Moore) and only meant to feature in three episodes. The serial's producers were impressed with Brocklebank and made Ivan a regular character. The character is a Geordie, which required the actor to adopt the accent. Ivan is characterised as a "good-humoured" and "charming" dustman, while Brocklebank described him as having "quite a few" love interests and stated that he has "slept his way around the village".
It was later announced that the character is bisexual and he starts a sexual relationship with Paul Lambert (Mathew Bose). Their relationship proved to be an "explosive combination" due to Ivan wanting it to remain a secret. Brocklebank has praised his storyline and spoke of his hopes that it would remove the social stigma attached to bisexuality. His sexuality is accidentally revealed to everyone he knows by Paul. Ivan is later subject to a revenge campaign after he turns down the advances of Paul's sister, Nicola Blackstock (Nicola Wheeler). She lies that Ivan has been having an affair with her, ruining his relationship with Paul. In April 2006, Brocklebank announced his decision to leave the serial to concentrate on other projects. The actor said that he had grown "very attached" to Ivan and enjoyed being a part of Emmerdale. He filmed his final scenes in June and Ivan left in August.
The character caused controversy when 126 viewers complained to television watch dog Ofcom about Ivan and Paul's intimacy. The company later cleared Emmerdale of any wrongdoing. Brocklebank said that Christian groups wrote to him condemning him to hell because of Ivan's sexuality. However, he also had letters from young lesbian and gay people who claimed that Ivan gave them the courage to be themselves. Paul Flynn from The Guardian praised his storyline involving Nicola's affair lies. Kevin O'Sullivan from the Sunday Mirror opined that Ivan was clearly gay because he was as "camp as a row of tents".
## Casting
Brocklebank was hired by Emmerdale to play Ivan for a three episode stint. They introduced Ivan as part of the storyline about the character of Jarvis Skelton (Richard Moore) getting too old to be a binman. Brocklebank told Roz Laws of the Sunday Mercury that the serial's producers did not intend for his character to develop, but they enjoyed his work and kept him on. They later extended his contract to last into mid-2006. Brocklebank found that taking the role gave him a "new respect" for soap opera actors because of how hard he had to work. While the actor is from Warwickshire; Ivan is a Geordie and has the regional accent. Brocklebank had to put the accent on for the role and members of the public were confused when they heard him speak in person.
## Character development
### Characterisation and bisexuality
A writer from Emmerdale's Finnish broadcaster MTV3 described Ivan as being a "good-humoured", "dark" and "charming dustman" Ivan is revealed to be bisexual and admits his attraction to Paul Lambert (Mathew Bose). Brocklebank told a writer from So So Gay that Ivan had "quite a few" love interests and "slept his way around the village". When the actor first started the role, Ivan was straight and married. He said that it was not until eight months after he started that he was informed his character would be bisexual. Brocklebank, who is openly gay, said there was a risk of himself becoming "pigeonholed" playing a bisexual character, but added it was not something that worried him.
Ivan had previously been married to a woman and he enjoys flirting with females. One such moment is a flirtation with Jasmine Thomas (Jenna-Louise Coleman); they bond over her liking of the Brontë novels Wuthering Heights and Shirley. When Nicola Blackstock (Nicola Wheeler) confesses her attraction to Ivan, he tells her that it is her brother, Paul that he is interested in and kisses him on the cheek. Brocklebank told Laws that he had known Bose for six years prior to joining the serial and was also living with him. He said that it would be "embarrassing" if romance developed between their characters because of their friendship. However, the actor did think it was "great" to be given "such a meaty storyline". Brocklebank told a reporter from The People that he dreaded to think what his grandmother would make of the storyline. He said he was interested to receive the reaction from viewers because "it's a subject that hasn't been covered before". The actor later said that he found Ivan's bisexuality "really interesting" because he felt that it had not "really been tackled in soaps before". Brocklebank later spoke of his belief that there was "still a stigma attached to being bisexual" and his hopes that Ivan's storyline would "break some barriers" around the issue.
Ivan starts to pursue Paul and they start sleeping together. However, Ivan's lax and secretive attitude to their relationship soon annoys Paul. Bose told a writer from Inside Soap that his character is a "serial monogamist" and "has a lot of love to give". Ivan is the opposite and he has "been cracking on to all the girls in the village and Paul can't relate to that". His bisexuality and secretive nature becomes an issue for Paul; Ivan cannot offer Paul "100 per cent – physically, emotionally or spiritually, no matter how much they like each other". Paul attempts to come to terms with the situation and tries to dump him. The next time they are around each other they struggle to keep their flirtation hidden. Bose added that Ivan still "wants to do everything on the quiet", which is a "real hardship" for Paul. The dynamic of their relationship proves to be an "explosive combination". Ivan later has to decide if he is ready for a gay relationship, while Paul weighs up the risks of getting hurt by Ivan. Bose told Laura Davidson from the Sunday Mail that "whether or not Ivan is the one for Paul, I'd like to see him with someone who makes him happy."
When Paul is tormented by a group of homophobic men, Ivan steps in to rescue him. Brocklebank told Kris Green of Digital Spy that Ivan tells the men that if they have a problem they should take it out on him, not his boyfriend. This is the first time Ivan "actually vocalises it" and he is shocked because "he has ever considered anyone to be his boyfriend before". Paul then invites Ivan out for dinner with his father, but Ivan is not ready to come out. The actor said that Ivan needs more time until he feels comfortable with the situation. Ivan's ex-wife Jordan (Erin Shanagher) caught him with another man, outed him and which resulted in a "horrendous" reaction from those he knew. Brocklebank said that this causes his reluctance to come out again because "he's become scared about opening himself up to a new community of people and is worried about the villagers' reaction."
Brocklebank explained the dynamic between the two characters: Paul finds it "extremely difficult" to be in a secretive relationship because he wants different things in a relationship. When Paul does his drag act "Thelma Louise" in the local pub, he mentions that he is a secret relationship. This annoys Ivan and an argument ensues in the toilets. However, Paul has accidentally left his microphone on and Ivan is outed to the whole pub. Brocklebank said that Ivan feels "upset and betrayed" and "deep down he knows he’s bisexual but isn’t sure if a relationship is going to work with Paul" as he cannot conform to Paul's ideas about relationships.
### Nicola Blackstock's lies
Ivan and Paul's relationship is tested when "scheming" Nicola attempts to seduce Ivan, despite the fact he is in a relationship with her brother. Ivan is not impressed and rebuffs Nicola's advances. Wheeler told the Sunday Mail's Davidson that Nicola trying to seduce Ivan is a "long shot" but she is not ready to give in because she has a "huge crush" on him. She added that the storyline was "hilarious" and "madness" because he is "having sex with her brother and she's still entertaining the idea of being with him". Once Nicola sees something she wants, "nothing will stop her".
Nicola sets out to seduce Ivan after an argument with her boyfriend Simon Meredith (Dale Meeks). Wheeler told Allison Maund from Inside Soap that Nicola calls Ivan for "some comfort" and they get drunk and "very cosy"; but Ivan presumes they are just good friends. Ivan gets out of the shower wearing a towel and is confronted with Nicola "dressed in her sexiest underwear". Ivan tells Nicola to stop because he loves Paul, but Simon's mother Lesley Meredith (Sherrie Hewson) walks in on them and assumes that they are having an affair. Nicola does not correct Lesley and tells her to believe what she likes and then Paul learns of the situation. Wheeler said that Nicola realises she cannot "get out of the lie now" and even tells her father, Rodney Blackstock (Patrick Mower) that she has slept with Ivan. The actress added that "Nicola's just quite pleased with the fact that she's got her own back on Ivan". He confronts her in public and asks her to tell the truth, but she "turns on the waterworks" to get everyone to turn against Ivan. Later Nicola argues with Paul and she tells him that she and Ivan have slept together many times. Wheeler said that Nicola just thinks "Sod it, I'm going to leave them all stewing". Her lies ruin Ivan's relationship with Paul, who believes Nicola's lies.
The serial later played out another chance for Ivan and Paul to be together. While interviewed by Claire Brand from Inside Soap, Bose said that Paul visits Ivan to give him back a CD he left over his house and "both of them realise that they don't have anything left to say to each other." Bose opined that Ivan and Paul were "doomed from the start" because he needed Ivan to commit. Rodney thinks that he can reunite Paul and Ivan and sets the pair up. He explained that the two had "just about got over their awkwardness with one another" and Rodney tells the whole pub that it is obvious that Paul and Ivan love each other and need to reconcile. The whole situation is "embarrassing for both of them" and Ivan is furious with Rodney's intervention. After some "soul searching", Ivan calms down and "stuns" Paul when he asks him to get back with him. Paul rejects Ivan's advances, Bose said that Paul normally likes "the big love affair" but this time gives him his "marching orders". Ivan is left heartbroken once again and decides to take some time away from the village. Bose stated that his character goes to see him off and there is a "terrible silent moment" between the two. He concluded that the audience could clearly see that Ivan and Paul were "kicking themselves" for not saying how they really feel.
### Departure
In April 2006, Brocklebank revealed that he had quit the role and would film his final scenes in June. He told a reporter from Inside Soap that the fact he was originally employed for a guest role; then staying for a year-and-a-half had been "great". He added that he was pleased to see Ivan depart the series on a "high note" because he had enjoyed the experience. An Emmerdale spokesperson added that the character would become "a pawn in the rivalry" between his former employer King & Sons and Matthew King (Matt Healy) and Sadie King's (Patsy Kensit) new business. In addition they planned a "romantic liaison" for Ivan which would be a "big shock to viewers and villagers alike". Ivan departed the series in August 2006 when he left to work in Costa Rica alongside fellow character Simon. Brocklebank later told a columnist from the Peterborough Evening Telegraph that he would not rule out a future return because there was "room for the character to go back". He found leaving "liberating in a way" because he wanted to pursue other projects.
## Storylines
Ivan arrives in the village working as a binman for "King & Sons" just after he has separated from his wife. He starts to outperform Jarvis in his new job role and has a fling with Toni Daggert (Kerry Stacey). Ivan takes an interest in Jasmine's liking of literature. He gives her a copy of the Bronte novel Shirley and she lets him buy her a drink. Laurel Thomas (Charlotte Bellamy) becomes concerned and warns Jasmine away from Ivan because of their age difference. When Nicola reveals that she is attracted to Ivan, he reveals that he likes Paul by kissing him on the cheek. Ivan and Paul soon start a sexual relationship; but Ivan does not want anyone else to know about the relationship, which Paul finds difficult. Paul grows tired of being secretive and dumps Ivan. However, when Nicola arranges a meal that they both attend, Ivan and Paul get drunk and flirt. Ivan moves in with Simon and Nicola.
Ivan goes to collect some things that he left behind at Jordan's house. Paul goes with him and takes Rodney's van. When he returns, Ivan finds the van with graffiti reading "ladyboys" and Paul surrounded by men. Ivan threatens the homophobic group with a cricket bat and tells them that he is Paul's boyfriend. Ivan is shocked that he finally admitted it to someone but still insists that they remain quiet upon returning to the village. Nicola thinks that Paul is seeing someone and attempts to find out who it is. She tells Laurel that she still likes Ivan. When Paul does his drag queen act "Thelma Louise" at The Woolpack, he makes jibes about having a secret boyfriend and drops hints. Ivan gets angry and the pair argue in the toilets, unaware that the whole pub can still hear them because Paul forgets to switch off his microphone. Ivan accuses Paul of doing it on purpose, but he eventually deals with being outed.
When Nicola feels down about Simon moving on, she decides to seduce Ivan. He rebuffs her advances but she tells Lesley, Rodney and Laurel that she slept with Ivan. When Ivan tries to get the truth, she convinces everyone else that he lying. Paul refuses to speak to Ivan and makes his father throw Nicola out of her home. She then tells Laurel that she lied about the whole thing. Laurel then tells everyone inside the pub that Nicola has lied and Ivan refuses to accept everyone's apologies. Rodney thinks that Ivan and Paul should get back together and lets the whole pub know. Ivan is annoyed but then realises he is right. When Ivan asks Paul for another chance, he turns him down and Ivan leaves the village. When he returns, Simon is annoyed with him for leaving him to pay the rent on Mulberry Cottage. He forgives him when Ivan reveals that he is just back for his job. He is made haulage manager for Matthew and Sadie's new business after they poach him. However, the job soon ends and along with Simon they leave Emmerdale for a new life in Costa Rica.
## Reception
A scene in which Ivan and Paul shared a kiss on a sofa sparked some controversy with viewers. 126 people complained to media watch dog Ofcom deeming the scenes to be explicit. The company later cleared Emmerdale of any wrongdoing, and a spokesperson said that "Ivan and Paul's behaviour was no more explicit than that previously exhibited by other characters in the soap. Given the inexplicit portrayal of this relationship, we consider that these scenes were acceptable." While Andy Green of the Liverpool Echo said "Paul and Ivan's fumble on the sofa was probably the steamiest pre-watershed gay scene ever shown on mainstream TV." Brocklebank told So So Gay's reporter that Ivan's bisexuality storyline had a "huge effect" on the viewers. He revealed that he had received "a lot" of letters from Christian groups telling him that he would go to hell for kissing another male on pre-watershed television. However, he also received many from young gay and lesbian teenagers who had thanked him for "making it easier to come out" because they had someone to relate to. He added that "the majority was very positive" feedback and felt happy to know that his portrayal had helped people face their sexuality.
On Ivan and Paul intimacy, Imogen Ridgway of the Evening Standard said that "Emmerdale was never this racy when my gran used to watch it". She mocked Ivan's plan to keep his relationship a secret because the village is full of gossips. Suzanne Kerins of the Sunday Mirror reported that viewers were "not impressed" when the "bisexual binman" shared a kiss with Paul. Ivan was labelled as a "hunky binman" by Jane Simon from the Daily Mirror and the Sunday Mercury's Laws, the latter branded his relationship with Paul a "surprising Emmerdale storyline". Kevin O'Sullivan from the Sunday Mirror opined that "Paul's reluctant bisexual binman lover Ivan the Terrible Queen is as camp as a row of tents". He added that Nicola was a "numbskull" with a "useless" gaydar for not realising Ivan liked men. Fiona Wynne of the Daily Mirror said that Paul tried hard to get Ivan out of the closet but "he's hanging on so tightly by his fingertips he's going to get splinters".
A writer from the Yorkshire Evening Post opined that Ivan and Paul being confronted by homophobic thugs was a "dramatic moment" that made for a "gripping start to 2006" in Emmerdale. Paul Lang from Lowculture said that he was enjoying the serial because of Ivan's outing. He added that everyone wanted the two men to get together, "even if Paul is a fucking nightmare and Ivan is very much the wrong side of shifty." Paul Flynn from The Guardian said that Ivan was a "hot bisexual" and felt that his storyline with Paul and Nicola was "played without resorting to cheap laughter". Terry Ramsey of the Evening Standard questioned why Ivan even returned to the village after his break. The writer concluded that it was because "Emmerdale is probably the only bisexual-friendly village in Yorkshire". |
4,952 | Rockwell B-1 Lancer | 1,172,449,395 | American strategic bomber by Rockwell, later Boeing | [
"1970s United States bomber aircraft",
"Aircraft first flown in 1974",
"Cruciform tail aircraft",
"Quadjets",
"Rockwell aircraft",
"Strategic bombers",
"Supersonic aircraft",
"Variable-sweep-wing aircraft"
] | The Rockwell B-1 Lancer is a supersonic variable-sweep wing, heavy bomber used by the United States Air Force. It is commonly called the "Bone" (from "B-One"). It is one of three strategic bombers serving in the U.S. Air Force fleet along with the B-2 Spirit and the B-52 Stratofortress as of 2023.
The B-1 was first envisioned in the 1960s as a platform that would combine the Mach 2 speed of the B-58 Hustler with the range and payload of the B-52, and was meant to ultimately replace both bombers. After a long series of studies, Rockwell International (now part of Boeing) won the design contest for what emerged as the B-1A. This version had a top speed of Mach 2.2 at high altitude and the ability to fly for long distances at Mach 0.85 at very low altitudes. The combination of the high cost of the aircraft, the introduction of the AGM-86 cruise missile that flew the same basic speed and distance, and early work on the B-2 stealth bomber reduced the need for the B-1. The program was canceled in 1977, after the B-1A prototypes had been built.
The program was restarted in 1981, largely as an interim measure due to delays in the B-2 stealth bomber program. The B-1A design was altered, reducing top speed to Mach 1.25 at high altitude, increasing low-altitude speed to Mach 0.96, extensively improving electronic components, and upgrading the airframe to carry more fuel and weapons. Dubbed the B-1B, deliveries of the new variant began in 1985; the plane formally entered service with Strategic Air Command (SAC) as a nuclear bomber the following year. By 1988, all 100 aircraft had been delivered.
With the disestablishment of SAC and its reassignment to the Air Combat Command in 1992, the B-1B was converted for a conventional bombing role. It first served in combat during Operation Desert Fox in 1998 and again during the NATO action in Kosovo the following year. The B-1B has supported U.S. and NATO military forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. As of 2021 the Air Force has 45 B-1Bs. The Northrop Grumman B-21 Raider is to begin replacing the B-1B after 2025; all B-1s are planned to be retired by 2036.
## Development
### Background
In 1955, the USAF issued requirements for a new bomber combining the payload and range of the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress with the Mach 2 maximum speed of the Convair B-58 Hustler. In December 1957, the USAF selected North American Aviation's B-70 Valkyrie for this role, a six-engine bomber that could cruise at Mach 3 at high altitude (70,000 ft or 21,000 m). Soviet Union interceptor aircraft, the only effective anti-bomber weapon in the 1950s, were already unable to intercept the high-flying Lockheed U-2; the Valkyrie would fly at similar altitudes, but much higher speeds, and was expected to fly right by the fighters.
By the late 1950s, however, anti-aircraft surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) could threaten high-altitude aircraft, as demonstrated by the 1960 downing of Gary Powers' U-2. The USAF Strategic Air Command (SAC) was aware of these developments and had begun moving its bombers to low-level penetration even before the U-2 incident. This tactic greatly reduces radar detection distances through the use of terrain masking; using features of the terrain like hills and valleys, the line-of-sight from the radar to the bomber can be broken, rendering the radar (and human observers) incapable of seeing it. Additionally, radars of the era were subject to "clutter" from stray returns from the ground and other objects, which meant a minimum angle existed above the horizon where they could detect a target. Bombers flying at low altitudes could remain under these angles simply by keeping their distance from the radar sites. This combination of effects made SAMs of the era ineffective against low-flying aircraft. The same effects also meant that low-flying aircraft were difficult to detect by higher-flying interceptors, since their radar systems could not readily pick out aircraft against the clutter from ground reflections (lack of look-down/shoot-down capability).
The switch from high-altitude to low-altitude flight profiles severely affected the B-70, the design of which was tuned for high-altitude performance. Higher aerodynamic drag at low level limited the B-70 to subsonic speed while dramatically decreasing its range. The result would be an aircraft with somewhat higher subsonic speed than the B-52, but less range. Because of this, and a growing shift to the intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) force, the B-70 bomber program was cancelled in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy, and the two XB-70 prototypes were used in a supersonic research program.
Although never intended for the low-level role, the B-52's flexibility allowed it to outlast its intended successor as the nature of the air war environment changed. The B-52's huge fuel load allowed it to operate at lower altitudes for longer times, and the large airframe allowed the addition of improved radar jamming and deception suites to deal with radars. During the Vietnam War, the concept that all future wars would be nuclear was turned on its head, and the "big belly" modifications increased the B-52's total bomb load to 60,000 pounds (27,000 kg), turning it into a powerful tactical aircraft which could be used against ground troops along with strategic targets from high altitudes. The much smaller bomb bay of the B-70 would have made it much less useful in this role.
### Design studies and delays
Although effective, the B-52 was not ideal for the low-level role. This led to a number of aircraft designs known as penetrators, which were tuned specifically for long-range low-altitude flight. The first of these designs to see operation was the supersonic F-111 fighter-bomber, which used variable-sweep wings for tactical missions. A number of studies on a strategic-range counterpart followed.
The first post-B-70 strategic penetrator study was known as the Subsonic Low-Altitude Bomber (SLAB), which was completed in 1961. This produced a design that looked more like an airliner than a bomber, with a large swept wing, T-tail, and large high-bypass engines. This was followed by the similar Extended Range Strike Aircraft (ERSA), which added a variable-sweep wing, then en vogue in the aviation industry. ERSA envisioned a relatively small aircraft with a 10,000-pound (4,500 kg) payload and a range of 10,070 miles (16,210 km) including 2,900 miles (4,700 km) flown at low altitudes. In August 1963, the similar Low-Altitude Manned Penetrator design was completed, which called for an aircraft with a 20,000-pound (9,100 kg) bomb load and somewhat shorter range of 8,230 miles (13,240 km).
These all culminated in the October 1963 Advanced Manned Precision Strike System (AMPSS), which led to industry studies at Boeing, General Dynamics, and North American. In mid-1964, the USAF had revised its requirements and retitled the project as Advanced Manned Strategic Aircraft (AMSA), which differed from AMPSS primarily in that it also demanded a high-speed high-altitude capability, similar to that of the existing Mach 2-class F-111. Given the lengthy series of design studies, Rockwell engineers joked that the new name actually stood for "America's Most Studied Aircraft".
The arguments that led to the cancellation of the B-70 program had led some to question the need for a new strategic bomber of any sort. The USAF was adamant about retaining bombers as part of the nuclear triad concept that included bombers, ICBMs, and submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) in a combined package that complicated any potential defense. They argued that the bomber was needed to attack hardened military targets and to provide a safe counterforce option because the bombers could be quickly launched into safe loitering areas where they could not be attacked. However, the introduction of the SLBM made moot the mobility and survivability argument, and a newer generation of ICBMs, such as the Minuteman III, had the accuracy and speed needed to attack point targets. During this time, ICBMs were seen as a less costly option based on their lower unit cost, but development costs were much higher. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara preferred ICBMs over bombers for the Air Force portion of the deterrent force and felt a new expensive bomber was not needed. McNamara limited the AMSA program to studies and component development beginning in 1964.
Program studies continued; IBM and Autonetics were awarded AMSA advanced avionics study contracts in 1968. McNamara remained opposed to the program in favor of upgrading the existing B-52 fleet and adding nearly 300 FB-111s for shorter range roles then being filled by the B-58. He again vetoed funding for AMSA aircraft development in 1968.
### B-1A program
President Richard Nixon reestablished the AMSA program after taking office, keeping with his administration's flexible response strategy that required a broad range of options short of general nuclear war. Nixon's Secretary of Defense, Melvin Laird, reviewed the programs and decided to lower the numbers of FB-111s, since they lacked the desired range, and recommended that the AMSA design studies be accelerated. In April 1969, the program officially became the B-1A. This was the first entry in the new bomber designation series, created in 1962. The Air Force issued a request for proposals in November 1969.
Proposals were submitted by Boeing, General Dynamics and North American Rockwell in January 1970. In June 1970, North American Rockwell was awarded the development contract. The original program called for two test airframes, five flyable aircraft, and 40 engines. This was cut in 1971 to one ground and three flight test aircraft. The company changed its name to Rockwell International and named its aircraft division North American Aircraft Operations in 1973. A fourth prototype, built to production standards, was ordered in the fiscal year 1976 budget. Plans called for 240 B-1As to be built, with initial operational capability set for 1979.
Rockwell's design had features common to the General Dynamics F-111 Aardvark and North American XB-70 Valkyrie. It used a crew escape capsule, that ejected as a unit to improve crew survivability if the crew had to abandon the aircraft at high speed. Additionally, the design featured large variable-sweep wings in order to provide both more lift during takeoff and landing, and lower drag during a high-speed dash phase. With the wings set to their widest position the aircraft had a much better airfield performance than the B-52, allowing it to operate from a wider variety of bases. Penetration of the Soviet Union's defenses would take place at supersonic speed, crossing them as quickly as possible before entering the more sparsely defended interior of the country where speeds could be reduced again. The large size and fuel capacity of the design would allow the "dash" portion of the flight to be relatively long.
In order to achieve the required Mach 2 performance at high altitudes, the exhaust nozzles and air intake ramps were variable. Initially, it had been expected that a Mach 1.2 performance could be achieved at low altitude, which required that titanium be used in critical areas in the fuselage and wing structure. The low altitude performance requirement was later lowered to Mach 0.85, reducing the amount of titanium and therefore cost. A pair of small vanes mounted near the nose are part of an active vibration damping system that smooths out the otherwise bumpy low-altitude ride. The first three B-1As featured the escape capsule that ejected the cockpit with all four crew members inside. The fourth B-1A was equipped with a conventional ejection seat for each crew member.
The B-1A mockup review occurred in late October 1971; this resulted in 297 requests for alteration to the design due to failures to meet specifications and desired improvements for ease of maintenance and operation. The first B-1A prototype (Air Force serial no. 74–0158) flew on 23 December 1974. As the program continued the per-unit cost continued to rise in part because of high inflation during that period. In 1970, the estimated unit cost was \$40 million, and by 1975, this figure had climbed to \$70 million.
### New problems and cancellation
In 1976, Soviet pilot Viktor Belenko defected to Japan with his MiG-25 "Foxbat". During debriefing he described a new "super-Foxbat" (almost certainly referring to the MiG-31) that had look-down/shoot-down radar in order to attack cruise missiles. This would also make any low-level penetration aircraft "visible" and easy to attack. Given that the B-1's armament suite was similar to the B-52, and it now appeared no more likely to survive Soviet airspace than the B-52, the program was increasingly questioned. In particular, Senator William Proxmire continually derided the B-1 in public, arguing it was an outlandishly expensive dinosaur. During the 1976 federal election campaign, Jimmy Carter made it one of the Democratic Party's platforms, saying "The B-1 bomber is an example of a proposed system which should not be funded and would be wasteful of taxpayers' dollars."
When Carter took office in 1977 he ordered a review of the entire program. By this point the projected cost of the program had risen to over \$100 million per aircraft, although this was lifetime cost over 20 years. He was informed of the relatively new work on stealth aircraft that had started in 1975, and he decided that this was a better approach than the B-1. Pentagon officials also stated that the AGM-86 Air-Launched Cruise Missile (ALCM) launched from the existing B-52 fleet would give the USAF equal capability of penetrating Soviet airspace. With a range of 1,500 miles (2,400 km), the ALCM could be launched well outside the range of any Soviet defenses and penetrate at low altitude like a bomber (with a much lower radar cross-section (RCS) due to smaller size), and in much greater numbers at a lower cost. A small number of B-52s could launch hundreds of ALCMs, saturating the defense. A program to improve the B-52 and develop and deploy the ALCM would cost at least 20% less than the planned 244 B-1As.
On 30 June 1977, Carter announced that the B-1A would be canceled in favor of ICBMs, SLBMs, and a fleet of modernized B-52s armed with ALCMs. Carter called it "one of the most difficult decisions that I've made since I've been in office." No mention of the stealth work was made public with the program being top secret, but it is now known that in early 1978 he authorized the Advanced Technology Bomber (ATB) project, which eventually led to the B-2 Spirit.
Domestically, the reaction to the cancellation was split along partisan lines. The Department of Defense was surprised by the announcement; it expected that the number of B-1s ordered would be reduced to around 150. Congressman Robert Dornan (R-CA) claimed, "They're breaking out the vodka and caviar in Moscow." However, it appears the Soviets were more concerned by large numbers of ALCMs representing a much greater threat than a smaller number of B-1s. Soviet news agency TASS commented that "the implementation of these militaristic plans has seriously complicated efforts for the limitation of the strategic arms race." Western military leaders were generally happy with the decision. NATO commander Alexander Haig described the ALCM as an "attractive alternative" to the B-1. French General Georges Buis stated "The B-1 is a formidable weapon, but not terribly useful. For the price of one bomber, you can have 200 cruise missiles."
Flight tests of the four B-1A prototypes for the B-1A program continued through April 1981. The program included 70 flights totaling 378 hours. A top speed of Mach 2.22 was reached by the second B-1A. Engine testing also continued during this time with the YF101 engines totaling almost 7,600 hours.
### Shifting priorities
It was during this period that the Soviets started to assert themselves in several new theaters of action, in particular through Cuban proxies during the Angolan Civil War starting in 1975 and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. U.S. strategy to this point had been focused on containing Communism and preparation for war in Europe. The new Soviet actions revealed that the military lacked capability outside these narrow confines.
The U.S. Department of Defense responded by accelerating its Rapid Deployment Forces concept but suffered from major problems with airlift and sealift capability. In order to slow an enemy invasion of other countries, air power was critical; however the key Iran-Afghanistan border was outside the range of the U.S. Navy's carrier-based attack aircraft, leaving this role to the U.S. Air Force.
During the 1980 presidential campaign, Ronald Reagan campaigned heavily on the platform that Carter was weak on defense, citing the cancellation of the B-1 program as an example, a theme he continued using into the 1980s. During this time Carter's defense secretary, Harold Brown, announced the stealth bomber project, apparently implying that this was the reason for the B-1 cancellation.
### B-1B program
On taking office, Reagan was faced with the same decision as Carter before: whether to continue with the B-1 for the short term, or to wait for the development of the ATB, a much more advanced aircraft. Studies suggested that the existing B-52 fleet with ALCM would remain a credible threat until 1985. It was predicted that 75% of the B-52 force would survive to attack its targets. After 1985, the introduction of the SA-10 missile, the MiG-31 interceptor and the first effective Soviet Airborne Early Warning and Control (AWACS) systems would make the B-52 increasingly vulnerable. During 1981, funds were allocated to a new study for a bomber for the 1990s time-frame which led to developing the Long-Range Combat Aircraft (LRCA) project. The LRCA evaluated the B-1, F-111, and ATB as possible solutions; an emphasis was placed on multi-role capabilities, as opposed to purely strategic operations.
In 1981, it was believed the B-1 could be in operation before the ATB, covering the transitional period between the B-52's increasing vulnerability and the ATB's introduction. Reagan decided the best solution was to procure both the B-1 and ATB, and on 2 October 1981 he announced that 100 B-1s were to be ordered to fill the LRCA role.
In January 1982, the U.S. Air Force awarded two contracts to Rockwell worth a combined \$2.2 billion for the development and production of 100 new B-1 bombers. Numerous changes were made to the design to make it better suited to the now expected missions, resulting in the B-1B. These changes included a reduction in maximum speed, which allowed the variable-aspect intake ramps to be replaced by simpler fixed geometry intake ramps. This reduced the B-1B's radar cross-section which was seen as a good trade off for the speed decrease. High subsonic speeds at low altitude became a focus area for the revised design, and low-level speeds were increased from about Mach 0.85 to 0.92. The B-1B has a maximum speed of Mach 1.25 at higher altitudes.
The B-1B's maximum takeoff weight was increased to 477,000 pounds (216,000 kg) from the B-1A's 395,000 pounds (179,000 kg). The weight increase was to allow for takeoff with a full internal fuel load and for external weapons to be carried. Rockwell engineers were able to reinforce critical areas and lighten non-critical areas of the airframe, so the increase in empty weight was minimal. To deal with the introduction of the MiG-31 equipped with the new Zaslon radar system, and other aircraft with look-down capability, the B-1B's electronic warfare suite was significantly upgraded.
Opposition to the plan was widespread within Congress. Critics pointed out that many of the original problems remained in both areas of performance and expense. In particular it seemed the B-52 fitted with electronics similar to the B-1B would be equally able to avoid interception, as the speed advantage of the B-1 was now minimal. It also appeared that the "interim" time frame served by the B-1B would be less than a decade, being rendered obsolete shortly after the introduction of a much more capable ATB design. The primary argument in favor of the B-1 was its large conventional weapon payload, and that its takeoff performance allowed it to operate with a credible bomb load from a much wider variety of airfields. Production subcontracts were spread across many congressional districts, making the aircraft more popular on Capitol Hill.
B-1A No. 1 was disassembled and used for radar testing at the Rome Air Development Center in the former Griffiss Air Force Base, New York. B-1As No. 2 and No. 4 were then modified to include B-1B systems. The first B-1B was completed and began flight testing in March 1983. The first production B-1B was rolled out on 4 September 1984 and first flew on 18 October 1984. The 100th and final B-1B was delivered on 2 May 1988; before the last B-1B was delivered, the USAF had determined that the aircraft was vulnerable to Soviet air defenses.
## Design
### Overview
The B-1 has a blended wing body configuration, with variable-sweep wing, four turbofan engines, triangular ride-control fins and cruciform tail. The wings can sweep from 15 degrees to 67.5 degrees (full forward to full sweep). Forward-swept wing settings are used for takeoff, landings and high-altitude economical cruise. Aft-swept wing settings are used in high subsonic and supersonic flight. The B-1's variable-sweep wings and thrust-to-weight ratio provide it with improved takeoff performance, allowing it to use shorter runways than previous bombers. The length of the aircraft presented a flexing problem due to air turbulence at low altitude. To alleviate this, Rockwell included small triangular fin control surfaces or vanes near the nose on the B-1. The B-1's Structural Mode Control System moves the vanes, and lower rudder, to counteract the effects of turbulence and smooth out the ride.
Unlike the B-1A, the B-1B cannot reach Mach 2+ speeds; its maximum speed is Mach 1.25 (about 950 mph or 1,530 km/h at altitude), but its low-level speed increased to Mach 0.92 (700 mph, 1,130 km/h). The speed of the current version of the aircraft is limited by the need to avoid damage to its structure and air intakes. To help lower its radar cross-section, the B-1B uses serpentine air intake ducts (see S-duct) and fixed intake ramps, which limit its speed compared to the B-1A. Vanes in the intake ducts serve to deflect and shield radar returns from the highly reflective engine compressor blades.
The B-1A's engine was modified slightly to produce the GE F101-102 for the B-1B, with an emphasis on durability, and increased efficiency. The core from this engine was subsequently used in several other engines, including the GE F110 used in the F-14 Tomcat, F-15K/SG variants and later versions of the General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon. It is also the basis for the non-afterburning GE F118 used in the B-2 Spirit and the U-2S. The F101 engine core is also used in the CFM56 civil engine.
The nose-gear door is the location for ground-crew control of the auxiliary power unit (APU) which can be used during a scramble for quick-starting the APU.
### Avionics
The B-1's main computer is the IBM AP-101, which was also used on the Space Shuttle orbiter and the B-52 bomber. The computer is programmed with the JOVIAL programming language. The Lancer's offensive avionics include the Westinghouse (now Northrop Grumman) AN/APQ-164 forward-looking offensive passive electronically scanned array radar set with electronic beam steering (and a fixed antenna pointed downward for reduced radar observability), synthetic aperture radar, ground moving target indication (GMTI), and terrain-following radar modes, Doppler navigation, radar altimeter, and an inertial navigation suite. The B-1B Block D upgrade added a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver beginning in 1995.
The B-1's defensive electronics include the Eaton AN/ALQ-161A radar warning and defensive jamming equipment, which has three sets of antennas; one at the front base of each wing and the third rear-facing in the tail radome. Also in the tail radome is the AN/ALQ-153 missile approach warning system (pulse-Doppler radar). The ALQ-161 is linked to a total of eight AN/ALE-49 flare dispensers located on top behind the canopy, which are handled by the AN/ASQ-184 avionics management system. Each AN/ALE-49 dispenser has a capacity of 12 MJU-23A/B flares. The MJU-23A/B flare is one of the world's largest infrared countermeasure flares at a weight of over 3.3 pounds (1.5 kg). The B-1 has also been equipped to carry the ALE-50 towed decoy system.
Also aiding the B-1's survivability is its relatively low RCS. Although not technically a stealth aircraft, thanks to the aircraft's structure, serpentine intake paths and use of radar-absorbent material its RCS is about 1/50th that of the similar sized B-52. This is approximately 26 ft<sup>2</sup> or 2.4 m<sup>2</sup>, comparable to that of a small fighter aircraft.
The B-1 holds 61 FAI world records for speed, payload, distance, and time-to-climb in different aircraft weight classes. In November 1993, three B-1Bs set a long-distance record for the aircraft, which demonstrated its ability to conduct extended mission lengths to strike anywhere in the world and return to base without any stops. The National Aeronautic Association recognized the B-1B for completing one of the 10 most memorable record flights for 1994.
### Upgrades
The B-1 has been upgraded since production, beginning with the "Conventional Mission Upgrade Program" (CMUP), which added a new MIL-STD-1760 smart-weapons interface to enable the use of precision-guided conventional weapons. CMUP was delivered through a series of upgrades:
- Block A was the standard B-1B with the capability to deliver non-precision gravity bombs.
- Block B brought an improved Synthetic Aperture Radar, and upgrades to the Defensive Countermeasures System and was fielded in 1995.
- Block C provided an "enhanced capability" for delivery of up to 30 cluster bomb units (CBUs) per sortie with modifications made to 50 bomb racks.
- Block D added a "Near Precision Capability" via improved weapons and targeting systems, and added advanced secure communications capabilities. The first part of the electronic countermeasures upgrade added Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM), ALE-50 towed decoy system, and anti-jam radios.
- Block E upgraded the avionics computers and incorporated the Wind Corrected Munitions Dispenser (WCMD), the AGM-154 Joint Standoff Weapon (JSOW) and the AGM-158 JASSM (Joint Air to Surface Standoff Munition), substantially improving the bomber's capability. Upgrades were completed in September 2006.
- Block F was the Defensive Systems Upgrade Program (DSUP) to improve the aircraft's electronic countermeasures and jamming capabilities, but it was canceled in December 2002 due to cost overruns and delays.
In 2007, the Sniper XR targeting pod was integrated on the B-1 fleet. The pod is mounted on an external hardpoint at the aircraft's chin near the forward bomb bay. Following accelerated testing, the Sniper pod was fielded in summer 2008. Future precision munitions include the Small Diameter Bomb.
The USAF commenced the Integrated Battle Station (IBS) modification in 2012 as a combination of three separate upgrades when it realised the benefits of completing them concurrently; the Fully Integrated Data Link (FIDL), Vertical Situational Display Unit (VSDU) and Central Integrated Test System (CITS). FIDL enables electronic data sharing, eliminating the need to enter information between systems by hand. VSDU replaces existing flight instruments with multifunction color displays, a second display aids with threat evasion and targeting, and acts as a back-up display. CITS saw a new diagnostic system installed that allows crew to monitor over 9,000 parameters on the aircraft. Other additions are to replace the two spinning mass gyroscopic inertial navigation system with ring laser gyroscopic systems and a GPS antenna, replacement of the APQ-164 radar with the Scalable Agile Beam Radar – Global Strike (SABR-GS) active electronically scanned array, and a new attitude indicator. The IBS upgrades were completed in 2020.
In August 2019, the Air Force unveiled a modification to the B-1B to allow it to carry more weapons internally and externally. Using the moveable forward bulkhead, space in the intermediate bay was increased from 180 to 269 in (457 to 683 cm). Expanding the internal bay to make use of the Common Strategic Rotary Launcher (CSRL), as well as utilizing six of the eight external hardpoints that had been previously out of use to keep in line with the New START Treaty, would increase the B-1B's weapon load from 24 to 40. The configuration also enables it to carry heavier weapons in the 5,000 lb (2,300 kg) range, such as hypersonic missiles; the AGM-183 ARRW is planned for integration onto the bomber. In the future the HAWC could be used by the bomber which, combining both internal and external weapon carriage, could conceivably bring the total number of hypersonic weapons to 31.
## Operational history
### Strategic Air Command
The second B-1B, "The Star of Abilene", was the first B-1B delivered to SAC in June 1985. Initial operational capability was reached on 1 October 1986 and the B-1B was placed on nuclear alert status. The B-1 received the official name "Lancer" on 15 March 1990. However, the bomber has been commonly called the "Bone"; a nickname that appears to stem from an early newspaper article on the aircraft wherein its name was phonetically spelled out as "B-ONE" with the hyphen inadvertently omitted.
In late 1990, engine fires in two Lancers led to a grounding of the fleet. The cause was traced back to problems in the first-stage fan, and the aircraft were placed on "limited alert"; in other words, they were grounded unless a nuclear war broke out. Following inspections and repairs they were returned to duty beginning on 6 February 1991. By 1991, the B-1 had a fledgling conventional capability, forty of them able to drop the 500-pound (230 kg) Mk-82 General Purpose (GP) bomb, although mostly from low altitude. Despite being cleared for this role, the problems with the engines prevented their use in Operation Desert Storm during the Gulf War. B-1s were primarily reserved for strategic nuclear strike missions at this time, providing the role of airborne nuclear deterrent against the Soviet Union. The B-52 was more suited to the role of conventional warfare and it was used by coalition forces instead.
Originally designed strictly for nuclear war, the B-1's development as an effective conventional bomber was delayed. The collapse of the Soviet Union had brought the B-1's nuclear role into question, leading to President George H. W. Bush ordering a \$3 billion conventional refit.
After the inactivation of SAC and the establishment of the Air Combat Command (ACC) in 1992, the B-1 developed a greater conventional weapons capability. Part of this development was the start-up of the U.S. Air Force Weapons School B-1 Division. In 1994, two additional B-1 bomb wings were also created in the Air National Guard, with former fighter wings in the Kansas Air National Guard and the Georgia Air National Guard converting to the aircraft. By the mid-1990s, the B-1 could employ GP weapons as well as various CBUs. By the end of the 1990s, with the advent of the "Block D" upgrade, the B-1 boasted a full array of guided and unguided munitions.
The B-1B no longer carries nuclear weapons; its nuclear capability was disabled by 1995 with the removal of nuclear arming and fuzing hardware. Under provisions of the New START treaty with Russia, further conversions were performed. These included modification of aircraft hardpoints to prevent nuclear weapon pylons from being attached, removal of weapons bay wiring bundles for arming nuclear weapons, and destruction of nuclear weapon pylons. The conversion process was completed in 2011, and Russian officials inspect the aircraft every year to verify compliance.
### Air Combat Command
The B-1 was first used in combat in support of operations in Iraq during Operation Desert Fox in December 1998, employing unguided GP weapons. B-1s have been subsequently used in Operation Allied Force (Kosovo) and, most notably, in Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan and the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The B-1 has deployed an array of conventional weapons in war zones, most notably the GBU-31, 2,000-pound (910 kg) JDAM. In the first six months of Operation Enduring Freedom, eight B-1s dropped almost 40 percent of aerial ordnance, including some 3,900 JDAMs. JDAM munitions were heavily used by the B-1 over Iraq, notably on 7 April 2003 in an unsuccessful attempt to kill Saddam Hussein and his two sons. During Operation Enduring Freedom, the B-1 was able to raise its mission capable rate to 79%.
Of the 100 B-1Bs built, 93 remained in 2000 after losses in accidents. In June 2001, the Pentagon sought to place one-third of its then fleet into storage; this proposal resulted in several U.S. Air National Guard officers and members of Congress lobbying against the proposal, including the drafting of an amendment to prevent such cuts. The 2001 proposal was intended to allow money to be diverted to further upgrades to the remaining B-1Bs, such as computer modernization. In 2003, accompanied by the removal of B-1Bs from the two bomb wings in the Air National Guard, the USAF decided to retire 33 aircraft to concentrate its budget on maintaining availability of remaining B-1Bs. In 2004, a new appropriation bill called for some retired aircraft to return to service, and the USAF returned seven mothballed bombers to service to increase the fleet to 67 aircraft.
On 14 July 2007, the Associated Press reported on the growing USAF presence in Iraq, including reintroduction of B-1Bs as a close-at-hand platform to support Coalition ground forces. Beginning in 2008, B-1s were used in Iraq and Afghanistan in an "armed overwatch" role, loitering for surveillance purposes while ready to deliver guided bombs in support of ground troops as required.
The B-1B underwent a series of flight tests using a 50/50 mix of synthetic and petroleum fuel; on 19 March 2008, a B-1B from Dyess Air Force Base, Texas, became the first USAF aircraft to fly at supersonic speed using a synthetic fuel during a flight over Texas and New Mexico. This was conducted as part of an USAF testing and certification program to reduce reliance on traditional oil sources. On 4 August 2008, a B-1B flew the first Sniper Advanced Targeting Pod equipped combat sortie where the crew successfully targeted enemy ground forces and dropped a GBU-38 guided bomb in Afghanistan.
In March 2011, B-1Bs from Ellsworth Air Force Base attacked undisclosed targets in Libya as part of Operation Odyssey Dawn.
With upgrades to keep the B-1 viable, the USAF may keep it in service until approximately 2038. Despite upgrades, a single flight hour needs 48.4 hours of repair. The fuel, repairs, and other needs for a 12-hour mission cost \$720,000 as of 2010. The \$63,000 cost per flight hour is, however, less than the \$72,000 for the B-52 and the \$135,000 of the B-2. In June 2010, senior USAF officials met to consider retiring the entire fleet to meet budget cuts. The Pentagon plans to begin replacing the aircraft with the B-21 Raider after 2025. In the meantime, its "capabilities are particularly well-suited to the vast distances and unique challenges of the Pacific region, and we'll continue to invest in, and rely on, the B-1 in support of the focus on the Pacific" as part of President Obama's "Pivot to East Asia".
In August 2012, the 9th Expeditionary Bomb Squadron returned from a six-month tour in Afghanistan. Its 9 B-1Bs flew 770 sorties, the most of any B-1B squadron on a single deployment. The squadron spent 9,500 hours airborne, keeping one of its bombers in the air at all times. They accounted for a quarter of all combat aircraft sorties over the country during that time and fulfilled an average of two to three air support requests per day. On 4 September 2013, a B-1B participated in a maritime evaluation exercise, deploying munitions such as laser-guided 500 lb GBU-54 bombs, 500 lb and 2,000 lb JDAM, and Long Range Anti-Ship Missiles (LRASM). The aim was to detect and engage several small craft using existing weapons and tactics developed from conventional warfare against ground targets; the B-1 is seen as a useful asset for maritime duties such as patrolling shipping lanes.
Beginning in 2014, the B-1 was used against the Islamic State (IS) in the Syrian Civil War. From August 2014 to January 2015, the B-1 accounted for eight percent of USAF sorties during Operation Inherent Resolve. The 9th Bomb Squadron was deployed to Qatar in July 2014 to support missions in Afghanistan, but when the air campaign against IS began on 8 August, the aircraft were employed in Iraq. During the Battle of Kobane in Syria, the squadron's B-1s dropped 660 bombs over 5 months in support of Kurdish forces defending the city. This amounted to one-third of all bombs used during OIR during the period, and they killed some 1,000 ISIL fighters. The 9th Bomb Squadron's B-1s went "Winchester"–dropping all weapons on board–31 times during their deployment. They dropped over 2,000 JDAMs during the six-month rotation. B-1s from the 28th Bomb Wing flew 490 sorties where they dropped 3,800 munitions on 3,700 targets during a six-month deployment. In February 2016, the B-1s were sent back to the U.S. for cockpit upgrades.
### Air Force Global Strike Command
As part of a USAF reorganization announced in April 2015, all B-1s were reassigned from Air Combat Command to Global Strike Command (GSC) in October 2015.
On 8 July 2017, the USAF flew two B-1s near the North Korean border in a show of force amid increasing tensions, particularly in response to North Korea's 4 July test of an ICBM capable of reaching Alaska.
On 14 April 2018, B-1s launched 19 JASSM missiles as part of the 2018 bombing of Damascus and Homs in Syria. In August 2019, six B-1Bs met full mission capability; 15 were undergoing depot maintenance and 39 under repair and inspection.
In February 2021, the USAF announced it will retire 17 B-1s, leaving 45 aircraft in service. Four of these will be stored in a condition that will allow their return to service if required.
In March 2021, B-1s deployed to Norway's Ørland Main Air Station for the first time. During the deployment, they conducted bombing training with Norwegian and Swedish ground force Joint terminal attack controllers. One B-1 also conducted a warm-pit refuel at Bodø Main Air Station, marking the first landing inside Norway's Arctic Circle, and integrated with four Swedish Air Force JAS 39 Gripen fighters.
## Variants
B-1A: The B-1A was the original B-1 design with variable engine intakes and Mach 2.2 top speed. Four prototypes were built; no production units were manufactured.
B-1B: The B-1B is a revised B-1 design with reduced radar signature and a top speed of Mach 1.25. It is optimized for low-level penetration. A total of 100 B-1Bs were produced.
B-1R: The B-1R was a 2004 proposed upgrade of existing B-1B aircraft. The B-1R (R for "regional") would be fitted with advanced radars, air-to-air missiles, and new Pratt & Whitney F119 engines (from the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor). This variant would have a top speed of Mach 2.2, but with 20% shorter range. Existing external hardpoints would be modified to allow multiple conventional weapons to be carried, increasing overall loadout. For air-to-air defense, an active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar would be added and some existing hardpoints modified to carry air-to-air missiles.
## Operators
The USAF had 62 B-1Bs in service as of August 2017.
## Aircraft on display
B-1A:
B-1B:
## Accidents and incidents
From 1984 to 2001, ten B-1s were lost due to accidents with 17 crew members or people on board killed.
- In September 1987, B-1B (serial number 84–0052) from the 96th Bomb Wing, 338th Combat Crew Training Squadron, Dyess AFB, crashed near La Junta, Colorado, while flying on a low-level training route. This was the only B-1B crash to occur with six crew members aboard. The two crew members in jump seats, and one of the four crew members in ejection seats perished. The root cause of the accident was thought to be a bird strike on a wing's leading edge during the low-level flight. The impact was severe enough to sever fuel and hydraulic lines on one side of the aircraft, while the other side's engines functioned long enough to allow for ejection. The B-1B fleet was later modified to protect these supply lines.
- In October 1990, while flying a training route in eastern Colorado, B-1B (86-0128) from the 384th Bomb Wing, 28th Bomb Squadron, McConnell AFB, experienced an explosion as the engines reached full power without afterburners. Fire on the aircraft's left was spotted. The No. 1 engine was shut down and its fire extinguisher was activated. The accident investigation determined that the engine had suffered catastrophic failure, engine blades had cut through the engine mounts and the engine became detached from the aircraft.
- In December 1990, B-1B (83-0071) from the 96th Bomb Wing, 337th Bomb Squadron, Dyess AFB, Texas, experienced a jolt that caused the No. 3 engine to shut down with its fire extinguisher activating. This event, coupled with the October 1990 engine incident, led to a 50+ day grounding of the B-1Bs not on nuclear alert status. The problem was eventually traced back to problems in the first-stage fan, and all B-1Bs were equipped with modified engines.
## Specifications (B-1B)
### Weapons loads
## Notable appearances in media
## See also |
896,839 | WrestleMania I | 1,173,817,361 | 1985 World Wrestling Federation pay-per-view event | [
"1980s in Manhattan",
"1985 WWF pay-per-view events",
"1985 in New York City",
"Events in New York City",
"Madison Square Garden",
"March 1985 events in the United States",
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"WrestleMania"
] | WrestleMania (sequentially known as WrestleMania I) was the inaugural WrestleMania and inaugural professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) event (only in selected areas), produced by the World Wrestling Federation (WWF, now WWE). It took place on March 31, 1985, at Madison Square Garden in New York City. The attendance for the event was 19,121. The event was seen by over one million viewers through closed-circuit television, making it the largest pay-per-view showing of a wrestling event on closed-circuit television in the United States at the time.
The event consisted of nine professional wrestling matches. In the main event, Hulk Hogan and Mr. T defeated Paul Orndorff and Roddy Piper. Also, Wendi Richter (accompanied by manager Cyndi Lauper) defeated Leilani Kai to win the WWF Women's Championship, and Nikolai Volkoff and The Iron Sheik defeated The U.S. Express (Mike Rotundo and Barry Windham) to win the WWF Tag Team Championship. Celebrity guests included former heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali as referee, baseball player/manager Billy Martin as ring announcer, and musician-actor Liberace as timekeeper.
## Production
The attendance at the event was 19,121. In addition, the event was seen by over one million viewers through closed-circuit television, making it the largest wrestling event on closed-circuit television in the United States at the time. A technical glitch ended the closed circuit broadcast early into the showing at the Civic Arena in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. To appease angry fans who pelted the screen with garbage, WrestleMania was broadcast in its entirety on local ABC affiliate WTAE-TV two weeks later.
WWF announcer Gene Okerlund sang the national anthem, and Gorilla Monsoon and Jesse Ventura performed on commentary. Okerlund also did interviews backstage, and Alfred Hayes did interviews near the entrance to the locker room, right outside the ring. Howard Finkel was the ring announcer. The opening theme for the event was the instrumental portion of the Phil Collins and Philip Bailey hit "Easy Lover", while the closing theme for the credits was "Axel F" by Harold Faltermeyer. Celebrity guests in attendance included Billy Martin, Cyndi Lauper, Mr. T, Muhammad Ali, and Liberace accompanied by The Rockettes.
### Background
During the 1980s, World Wrestling Federation's main competition in the professional wrestling industry was from Jim Crockett Promotions. Vince McMahon countered Jim Crockett's successful Starrcade annual events, which began airing in 1983, by creating the WrestleMania franchise. A rights agreement which Barry Diller, head of USA Network co-owner Paramount, pushed by 1983 also allowed for better access to programming at the Madison Square Garden, including on any regional pay television network.
For the first WrestleMania, McMahon began cross promoting with MTV, which aired two wrestling specials. The first one was The Brawl to End It All, aired on July 23, 1984, in which a match from a live Madison Square Garden broadcast was shown on MTV. Wendi Richter, allied with Cyndi Lauper, defeated The Fabulous Moolah, backed by Lou Albano, to win the WWF Women's Championship on the card. At The War to Settle the Score, which aired on February 18, 1985, Leilani Kai, accompanied by Moolah, defeated Richter, again accompanied by Lauper, to win the Women's Championship. Aside from Lauper, other celebrities also appeared during the buildup to and at the event; most notably Muhammad Ali, Liberace (with The Rockettes), and Major League Baseball manager Billy Martin all appeared during the main event.
WrestleMania would become considered the WWF's flagship event. It has since become the longest-running professional wrestling event in history and is held annually between mid-March to mid-April. Following the advent of Survivor Series in 1987 and then Royal Rumble and SummerSlam in 1988—WWF's four original pay-per-views—the four would eventually be dubbed the "Big Four". WrestleMania would eventually be described as the Super Bowl of sports entertainment.
### Storylines
The card consisted of nine matches that resulted from scripted storylines, where wrestlers portrayed villains, heroes, or less distinguishable characters in scripted events that built tension and culminated in a wrestling match or series of matches, with results predetermined by WWF's writers.
Three championships were defended at WrestleMania: the WWF Women's Championship, WWF Intercontinental Heavyweight Championship and the WWF World Tag Team Championship. Prior to the event, Greg "The Hammer" Valentine had feuded with Tito Santana over the Intercontinental Heavyweight belt. Valentine defeated Santana on September 24, 1984, for the championship. Mike Rotunda and Barry Windham won the WWF Tag Team Championship three months before WrestleMania from the team of Adrian Adonis and Dick Murdoch.
In the months leading up to the first WrestleMania, "Rowdy" Roddy Piper began a talk-show segment on WWF television entitled "Piper's Pit". On one episode of the show, he hit Jimmy Snuka over the head with a coconut, leading to a feud between the two men. As part of the storyline, Piper recruited "Cowboy" Bob Orton to be his bodyguard. On another episode of Piper's Pit, Piper spoke out against the burgeoning Rock 'n' Wrestling connection, which led to a confrontation with Hulk Hogan. In February 1985, the two men faced each other at The War to Settle the Score, where Hogan won by disqualification after interference by Paul Orndorff and Mr. T. Their on-going feud led to their match at WrestleMania.
As part of the promotion for the event, Hogan appeared on Hot Properties four days prior to WrestleMania, where he put host Richard Belzer into a front chinlock —a move that cuts off the flow of blood to the brain. Belzer, however, fell to the floor unconscious and began to bleed profusely. His injury required eight stitches. Belzer later sued Hogan for \$5 million, but they eventually settled out of court. The night before WrestleMania, Hogan and Mr. T hosted an episode of Saturday Night Live to help promote the event.
## Event
### Preliminary matches
Gene Okerlund opened the event by singing the national anthem. The originally intended singer, a celebrity guest that Okerlund and Vince McMahon refused to name, failed to appear.
The first match was between Tito Santana and The Executioner (Buddy Rose). Santana won the match after applying a figure four leglock on The Executioner, which was a shot at current Intercontinental Champion Greg Valentine, as the figure four was his finishing move.
Following the match, King Kong Bundy (accompanied by Jimmy Hart) and Special Delivery Jones made their way to the ring. After crushing his opponent against the turnbuckle and landing on him stomach-first, Bundy pinned Jones. The WWF's official time for the match is a then-record time of nine seconds (a record since surpassed by The Rock defeating Erick Rowan at WrestleMania 32), although the match actually lasted 25 seconds.
The next match was between Ricky Steamboat and Matt Borne. Steamboat took the early advantage in the match-up, until Borne flipped him over and slammed him to the mat using a belly-to-belly suplex. After performing a flying crossbody Steamboat pinned Borne for the win.
After the match ended, David Sammartino, accompanied by his father Bruno Sammartino, and Brutus Beefcake, accompanied by Johnny Valiant, made their way to the ring. The action favoured both contestants, as each wrestler alternated having the advantage. After Beefcake threw David Sammartino out of the ring, Valiant lifted him up and slammed him to the cement floor. He then pushed Sammartino back into the ring before being attacked by Bruno. A short while later, all four men began fighting in the ring, and the match ended in a no-contest.
The first championship defense of WrestleMania was between Junkyard Dog and the reigning WWF Intercontinental Heavyweight Champion Greg Valentine, who was accompanied to the ring by his manager Jimmy Hart. Junkyard Dog began the match in the offensive position, performing headbutts and punches on Valentine. As the action went back and forth, Hart climbed on the ring apron, where Valentine accidentally hit him. Later, Valentine pinned Junkyard Dog with his feet on the ropes for leverage, which is an illegal maneuver. As a result, Tito Santana ran down to the ring and explained to the referee what had happened and the match was restarted. Junkyard Dog eventually won the match by count-out as Valentine failed to re-enter the ring. Valentine, however, kept his title as titles do not change hands through count-out.
The following match was for the WWF Tag Team Championship. Nikolai Volkoff and The Iron Sheik, accompanied to the ring by Freddie Blassie, challenged the reigning champions, The U.S. Express (Mike Rotundo and Barry Windham), who were accompanied by Lou Albano. The U.S. Express dominated the early part of the match until Volkoff and The Sheik began to gain the offensive advantage over Rotundo. Rotundo then tagged in Windham, who performed a bulldog on The Sheik. After nearly being pinned, The Sheik hit Windham in the head with Blassie's cane as the referee had his back turned. After Volkoff got the pin, Volkoff and The Sheik were crowned as the new tag champions, becoming the first people to win a championship at WrestleMania.
### Main events
The next match on the card was a \$15,000 Body Slam Challenge between André the Giant and Big John Studd, who was accompanied by Bobby Heenan. The stipulation of the match was that André the Giant had to body slam Studd to win \$15,000, and if he failed, he would be forced to retire. After beginning the match in the defensive position, André countered with chops and a headbutt. From then on André controlled the match and after weakening Studd's knees with multiple kicks, André was able to lift Studd over his shoulders and execute a body slam to win the match. After André collected his prize money, he started throwing the money out to the audience. Heenan, however, grabbed the bag holding the remainder of the winnings and ran from ringside. As a result of the match, André was able to continue his career and his WWF undefeated streak was unscathed.
After all the men had left ringside, it was time for the WWF Women's Championship match between Wendi Richter, managed by singer Cyndi Lauper, and Leilani Kai, managed by former champion The Fabulous Moolah. Shortly after the match began, Moolah grabbed Richter as she was outside on the floor, but Lauper saved her from an attack. Kai then performed a flying crossbody from the top rope, but Richter used Kai's momentum to roll-up Kai in a pinning position. With this pin, Richter became the new Women's Champion.
The main event and last match of the night pitted Hulk Hogan, the reigning WWF World Heavyweight Champion, and Mr. T, accompanied by Jimmy Snuka, against "Rowdy" Roddy Piper and "Mr. Wonderful" Paul Orndorff, accompanied by "Cowboy" Bob Orton. Professional boxer Muhammad Ali was the special guest referee (on the outside of the ring), New York Yankees manager Billy Martin was the guest ring announcer while Liberace (accompanied by The Rockettes) was the guest time keeper. First, Piper, Orndorff, and Orton made their way to the ring as drums and bagpipes played, causing the crowd to boo. Crowd favorites Hogan, Mr. T, and Snuka made their way to the ring next. The match began with Mr. T and Piper in the ring and the two traded blows. Midway through the match, all four men began brawling in the ring, and Muhammad Ali punched Piper in an attempt to restore order. After the match's order was restored, Orndorff and Piper had the offensive advantage. As Orndorff locked Hogan into a full nelson, Orton climbed the top rope to attempt to knock out Hogan. Instead, Orton mistakenly hit Orndorff, and Hogan pinned him to win the match. In frustration, Piper knocked out the in-ring official, Pat Patterson, before he and Orton retreated backstage leaving Orndorff alone in the ring with Hogan, Mr. T, and Snuka.
## Aftermath
Approximately three months after WrestleMania, on July 6, 1985, Greg Valentine lost the Intercontinental Championship back to Tito Santana in a cage match. At about the same time, Nikolai Volkoff and The Iron Sheik lost the WWF Tag Team Championship back to The U.S. Express. They held the titles until August, when the team of Brutus Beefcake and Greg Valentine, later known as the Dream Team, became the new champions. On July 8, 1985, Don Muraco won the inaugural King of The Ring tournament by defeating the Iron Sheik in the finals. After André the Giant defeated Big John Studd at the event, Studd formed a tag team with King Kong Bundy, and the duo faced André and Hulk Hogan on a number of occasions. Later, the team of Studd and Bundy teamed up in Handicap matches—a two against one wrestling match—against André, which renewed the feud between André and Studd.
In late 1985, Wendi Richter lost her WWF Women's Championship in controversial fashion. She wrestled a masked female wrestler known as The Spider Lady, who pinned Richter to win the title. After the match, the Spider Lady was revealed as the Fabulous Moolah. This finish was a screwjob, i.e. one participant (in this case Richter) was unaware of the planned title change. Richter left the WWF shortly after, and Moolah held the title for approximately two years.
In a new storyline after WrestleMania, Roddy Piper began training Bob Orton as a boxer. Hulk Hogan accepted a challenge on the behalf of Mr. T to face Orton in a match on the February 15, 1986 Saturday Night's Main Event V. After Mr. T won the match, Orton and Piper attacked him, leading to a boxing match at WrestleMania 2 between Piper and Mr. T. At the second annual WrestleMania, Piper was disqualified in the Fourth round.
## Reception
John Powell of Slam! Wrestling rated the event as average, citing that it "wasn't the greatest". Despite his overall rating, he praised several moments, including Orton hitting Orndorff with his cast, King Kong Bundy's win, and André the Giant throwing the money into the crowd. Powell listed Mr. T wrestling as his least favorite moment of the pay-per-view, saying the main event match, in which Mr. T took part, was humorous despite its lack of technical wrestling. Pro Wrestling Illustrated awarded the main event match its annual PWI Match of the Year honor. The event was included in a July 2007 special that aired on the MSG Network titled "The 50 Greatest Moments at Madison Square Garden", ranking at No. 30.
In the December 2002 issue of Wrestling Digest, the main event match-up was listed as number five in the most memorable twenty-five matches of the past twenty-five years. Echoing John Powell's thoughts, Kevin Eck of Wrestling Digest stated, "The match itself was far from a technical-wrestling classic, but it delivered in terms of entertaining the crowd." In another Wrestling Digest article, written by Keith Loria, the main event was ranked third in the top ten matches in WrestleMania history. In contrast to Powell, Loria believed that Mr. T "proved to be an adequate grappler".
## Results |
65,214,265 | Beulah Ream Allen | 1,167,792,908 | American nurse and physician (1897–1989) | [
"1897 births",
"1989 deaths",
"20th-century American physicians",
"20th-century American women physicians",
"American nurses",
"American prisoners of war in World War II",
"American women nurses",
"Burials at Golden Gate National Cemetery",
"Harold B. Lee Library-related 20th century articles",
"Idaho State University alumni",
"People from Bear Lake County, Idaho",
"Physicians from Idaho",
"Recipients of the Medal of Freedom",
"University of California alumni",
"University of Utah alumni"
] | Beulah Ream Allen (January 26, 1897 – March 17, 1989) was an American nurse, physician, and civilian physician during World War II. After graduating with a nursing degree in 1922, she worked as a supervising nurse and headed the educational department for the LDS Hospital in Salt Lake City. She worked as a hospital inspector for the state of Utah until 1928, when she moved to San Francisco to attend medical school. While earning her degree at the University of California, San Francisco, she worked as a nurse in the Bay Area. Upon her graduation in 1932, she moved to the Philippines, where she opened a medical practice.
During World War II, she volunteered as a civilian surgeon for the United States Army. She was stationed in Baguio and was responsible for the care of nearly 30 soldiers, when the rest of the Army retreated to the Bataan Peninsula. Taken prisoner in 1941, she was held in three internment camps before being liberated. Returning to the United States, she resumed her practice in the Bay Area. She was awarded the Medal of Freedom in 1946. In 1960, she moved her practice to Provo, Utah, where she served as dean of the Brigham Young University College of Nursing until 1964. Allen retired in 1979 and in that year married and relocated to Mesa, Arizona, where she lived until her death in 1989.
## Early life and education
Beulah Estelle Ream was born on January 26, 1897, in Dingle, Idaho, to Nora Ellen (née Crockett) and William Dewine Ream. She was raised on her father's farm with a large family of siblings including: William Wesley (1886), Mitchell Alvin (1888), Lee Emerson (1890), Fabian Dewine (1891), Ida Nora (1893), George Douglas (1895), John Rodney (1900), Milton Parke (1901) and Kenneth Durward (1903). She attended public schools and graduated from the Academy of Idaho in 1916 with teaching credentials. She began teaching in 1917, but the outbreak of the 1918 flu epidemic led her to enroll in nursing school at the Illinois Training School for Nurses [Wikidata] (program merged in 1926 into the University of Chicago's School of Nursing and ceased to exist in 1929). She completed her registered nurse requirements in 1922.
## Career
### Nursing and further education (1922–1932)
After her graduation in 1922, Ream moved to Salt Lake City, Utah, where she worked at the LDS Hospital as a supervising nurse until 1923. She then served as head of the education department until 1925 and worked as a nurse, before becoming a hospital inspector for the State of Utah between 1927 and 1928. Keen to improve her ability to assist her patients, Ream decided to return to school to become a physician and completed her bachelor's degree in 1928 at the University of Utah. She then transferred to the University of California, San Francisco, where she worked as a nurse in the Bay Area until earning her Doctor of Medicine degree in 1932. She completed her internship at the Women's and Children's Hospital of San Francisco.
### Physician in the Philippines (1933–1945)
Upon her graduation, Ream traveled to the Philippines to visit her brother Fabian and his family. In addition to setting up a private practice in Manila, from 1934 she served as the chief medical officer of the Mary Johnston Hospital. In 1937, she married Major Henderson Wilcox "Sam" Allen, a U.S. Army officer from Kentucky. In 1940, their son Lee was born. Although she could have been evacuated because of the impending Japanese invasion of the Philippines, Allen chose to remain with her husband. He received a medical discharge in December 1941, but, before the family could leave, the attack on Pearl Harbor occurred and Sam was called back to active duty.
On December 8, 1941, Japanese bombers began an air raid at Baguio in the Philippines, where the Allens had made their home. Establishing a makeshift hospital to care for the wounded, Allen volunteered her services to the Army as a civilian physician-surgeon. When the rest of the army retreated to the Bataan Peninsula, she was responsible for the care of nearly 30 soldiers. After the Battle of Bataan in April 1942, her husband was captured and forced to make the Bataan Death March. Henderson Allen died June 17, 1942, in the Cabanatuan Internment Camp without seeing his family again. Allen was captured in late 1941 and initially interned with her son at Camp John Hay. She worked as part of the medical staff at the camp hospital. On April 20, 1942, they were moved by bus with other westerners to Camp Holmes Internment Camp, where her second son, Henderson Rey, was born on July 4, 1942. While in captivity, Allen had to pay "\$75 for a pound of oatmeal, \$300 for a pound of sugar and \$25 for one egg."
As before, Allen worked in the camp hospital, but had a difficult relationship with its head, Dr. Dana Nance. Allen pressed for improved sanitation controls to limit the cases of dysentery and disease among the camp chickens, suggesting that all garbage be buried. She pushed for the isolation of new internees until it could be determined if they had communicable diseases. Nance ignored her suggestions, as well as her recommendation for the staff to move outside of the hospital so that the patients were not housed in tents. Conditions in the camp were poor and inadequate food supplies often led to malnutrition. Allen gave yeast supplements to the patients to improve their health.
Frustrated that women were not allowed to vote on the General Committee that operated the camp, Allen organized a Women's Committee and demanded that the General Committee include both men and women in camp governance. The committee polled the prison population, and though Allen's proposal won the majority of votes, the General Committee ignored the result and maintained a men-only voting policy. Eventually all of Allen's proposals were adopted at the camp, but she was no longer there to see the result. After 18 months of captivity, she asked for a transfer and took her boys to the Santo Tomas Internment Camp, where there was a shortage of physicians, in early 1943.
Conditions at Santo Tomas were dire. By 1943, the shortages of drugs, sheets, blankets, mosquito nets and other basic supplies impacted the ability to treat patients. Relief supplies did not arrive until December 1943, requiring doctors to search for substitute medical treatments, but were again at critical shortage levels by the end of 1944 and starvation was a serious problem. There was no food source or regular supply of food, except from the Red Cross. Though obligated to feed the prisoners, the Japanese commandant was unable to secure adequate funds. The General Committee asked for 55 cents per person per day, but the authorities were willing to grant only 35 cents. By late 1944, food supplies were so scarce that inmates were eating vegetable peelings, and the garbage disposal crews became obsolete.
When Allen arrived, she was appointed to several committees and at various times headed the camp's children's hospital. She was assigned to serve both the children’s hospital and the isolation hospital along with D. Chambers, F. O. Smith, and Evelyn M. Withoff. In addition to her appointment on the Medical Board, Allen served on the Food Committee, Committee on Releases to Outside Hospitals, and Public Health Committee and was elected to the Parents' Association Board. On February 3, 1945, the camp was liberated by American troops. Within a few weeks, the Allen family were headed back to the United States, arriving in San Francisco on March 30, 1945. They were welcomed by Allen's family, the Reams. After her homecoming, an article in the Oakland Tribune called Allen "a real heroine...who worked 'sometimes night and day' caring for the sick".
Allen was awarded the Medal of Freedom (later known as the Presidential Medal of Freedom) by General Douglas MacArthur. In 1947, she accepted the Soldier's Medal and Bronze Star Medal on behalf of her husband's service.
### Later career (1945–1979)
Allen re-established her medical practice in California. Initially, she worked with her brother Dr. Milton P. Ream, who lived in San Leandro and saw patients in Oakland. She established a home for her sons and her mother in San Francisco and worked in San Francisco, Cupertino, and Palo Alto. She returned to the University of California, taking post-graduate courses.
In 1960, she was hired as the dean of the Brigham Young University College of Nursing and moved to Provo, Utah. In this capacity, she instituted an associate degree program for nursing students, which began to be offered in fall semester of 1963. After four years in the post, she returned to private practice until her retirement in 1979. That year, at the age of 82, she married Joseph Smith Jarvis and moved to Mesa, Arizona.
## Death and legacy
She died on March 17, 1989, in Mesa. Her funeral was held March 20 at the Oak Hills 4th Ward Chapel in Provo, before she was interred at the Golden Gate National Cemetery, in San Bruno, California. In 2001, Lucinda and Helen Bateman published Beulah, the Good Doctor: A Biography of Beulah Ream Allen.
## Explanatory notes |
36,994,830 | Belinda Bencic | 1,173,854,492 | Swiss tennis player (born 1997) | [
"1997 births",
"French Open junior champions",
"Grand Slam (tennis) champions in girls' singles",
"Hopman Cup competitors",
"Living people",
"Medalists at the 2020 Summer Olympics",
"Olympic gold medalists for Switzerland",
"Olympic medalists in tennis",
"Olympic silver medalists for Switzerland",
"Olympic tennis players for Switzerland",
"Sportspeople from the canton of St. Gallen",
"Swiss expatriate sportspeople in the United States",
"Swiss female tennis players",
"Swiss people of Slovak descent",
"Tennis players at the 2020 Summer Olympics",
"Wimbledon junior champions"
] | Belinda Bencic (Slovak: Belinda Benčičová, ; born 10 March 1997) is a Swiss professional tennis player. She has a career-high ranking of No. 4 by the Women's Tennis Association (WTA) which she achieved in February 2020. Bencic has won eight career singles titles, including a gold medal at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, and two doubles titles on the WTA Tour.
Bencic was born in Switzerland to Slovak parents; she began playing tennis at the age of two. Her father arranged for her to train with Martina Hingis's mother and coach Melanie Molitor [de] daily from the age of seven. By the time she was 16, Bencic was the No. 1 ranked junior in the world and won two junior Grand Slam singles titles at the French Open and Wimbledon. On the professional tour, she made her top 100 debut shortly after turning 17. Her big breakthrough came at the 2014 US Open, where she became the youngest quarterfinalist since Hingis in 1997. Bencic won her first two WTA Tour titles in 2015, including the Canadian Open where she defeated four of the top six players in the world. She then made her top-ten debut the following year while still 18 years old.
From 2016 through 2018, Bencic struggled with a variety of injury issues, most notably needing to have wrist surgery in 2017 that kept her out for five months and saw her drop outside the top 300 in the WTA rankings. Nonetheless, she rebounded quickly and rose back into the top 50 within a year of her comeback. She then posted her best season to date in 2019, winning her second Premier-5 title at the Dubai Championships reaching her first Grand Slam semifinal at the US Open, qualifying for her first WTA Finals where she reached the semifinals, and finishing the year inside the top 10 for the first time, which helped her win the WTA Comeback Player of the Year award.
## Early life and background
Bencic was born in Flawil in northeastern Switzerland to Dana and Ivan Benčič. Her parents were both born in Czechoslovakia, but her father's family emigrated to Switzerland in 1968 to escape from the Warsaw Pact invasion by the Soviet Union. Her father was a professional hockey player in the Swiss National League A and National League B before becoming an insurance broker. Her mother was a high-level handball player. Bencic hit her first tennis balls at the age of two and began training with her father, who was also a recreational tennis player, for one hour per day at the age of four. She entered her first national tournament at that age, losing to an opponent six years older in straight sets without winning a game. Bencic would regularly face much older opponents as a child and was encouraged by her father to try to win two games per set.
When Bencic was five years old, her father contacted fellow Czechoslovak immigrant Melanie Molitor, the mother and coach of world No. 1 Swiss tennis player, Martina Hingis, for coaching advice. Hingis becoming the top player in the world around the time Bencic was born was also one reason her father was inspired to introduce her to the sport of tennis. Molitor agreed to gauge Bencic's abilities, which led to Bencic working with Molitor once a week for about a year. At the age of six, Bencic also spent six months at Nick Bollettieri's academy in Florida, winning several under-10 tournaments. Around this time, her father also asked Marcel Niederer, a childhood friend and fellow hockey player who had become an entrepreneur, if he could help sponsor his daughter's career. Niederer agreed to invest in Bencic, which gave her father the ability to quit his job so he could spend more time traveling with and coaching his daughter while she competed at tournaments. In 2004, when Bencic was seven years old, her family moved to Wollerau, where Molitor had just opened up her own academy, so that she could train there every day. She continued to work with Molitor through her teenage years, and has also occasionally worked with Hingis.
## Junior career
Bencic is a former world No. 1 junior. She began competing on the ITF Junior Circuit in 2010 at the age of 13, reaching the final in her debut event at the lowest-level Grade 5 Luzern Junior Competition in Switzerland. In early 2012, Bencic won two high-level Grade 1 events at the Czech International Junior Indoor Championships and the Open International Junior de Beaulieu-sur-Mer in France, the first of which coming at 14 years old. She also made her junior Grand Slam debut, playing in all of the major tournaments except the Australian Open. Although she won just two matches in total in singles, she finished runner-up in doubles at both Wimbledon and the US Open. She lost to the American team of Taylor Townsend and Gabrielle Andrews at both events, partnering with Ana Konjuh at the former and Petra Uberalová at the latter. Bencic closed out the year by winning her first Grade A title at the Abierto Juvenil Mexicano, losing just 15 games in six matches.
Bencic did not play again on the junior tour until May 2013, instead opting to focus on professional events. When she returned to the juniors, she won her first five tournaments of the year and extended her win streak in singles to 39 matches. All of her titles were Grade 1 or higher, including three Grade A titles at the Trofeo Bonfiglio and two Grand Slam events, the French Open and Wimbledon. She defeated Antonia Lottner in the French Open final and Townsend in the Wimbledon final. The victory over Townsend was a rematch of their quarterfinal at the French Open, which finished 9–7 in the third and final set. Bencic became the first player to win the girls' singles titles at the French Open and Wimbledon in the same year since Amélie Mauresmo in 1996. She was also the first Swiss girl to win a junior Grand Slam singles title since Martina Hingis in 1994, who won the same two titles that year. Bencic's win streak was ended at the European Junior Championships by Barbora Krejčíková in the semifinals. Lottner then defeated her at the US Open in the quarterfinals in her last tournament of the year. She also had a third Grand Slam runner-up finish in doubles at the US Open, losing to the Czech team of Krejčíková and Kateřina Siniaková alongside Sara Sorribes Tormo. With her success, Bencic became the world No. 1 junior in June and finished the season with the top ranking to earn the title of ITF Junior World Champion.
## Professional career
### 2011–14: Newcomer of the Year, US Open quarterfinal at 17
Bencic entered her first professional tournament on the ITF Women's Circuit in March 2011 in Fällanden, Switzerland, shortly after her 14th birthday. She reached the quarterfinals as a qualifier, recording her first ITF main-draw win over compatriot Tess Sugnaux. Bencic made her WTA Tour qualifying draw debut at the Luxembourg Open towards the end of the year in October, losing in three sets to Yulia Putintseva. She received a wildcard into the main draw at the following year's event, where she lost her WTA Tour main-draw debut to Venus Williams. The tournament came a few weeks after Bencic had won her first two ITF singles titles in back-to-back weeks at Sharm El Sheikh in Egypt, also winning the doubles title in the first week. In 2013, Bencic progressed from \$10k to \$25k and \$50k tier events. Her best results in the first half of the year were a singles semifinal at the \$50k Indian Harbour Beach Pro Tennis Classic in the United States and a doubles title at the \$25k event in Lenzerheide, Switzerland. Bencic played in three WTA Tour main draws in the second half of the year. After losing at the Swedish Open in July, she won her first career WTA main draw match as a wild card at the Pan Pacific Open against Daria Gavrilova. She also won a match the following week at the Japan Women's Open. In her last event of 2013, Bencic reached the semifinals of the \$75k Dunlop World Challenge in Tokyo to break into the top 200 for the first time. She finished the year ranked at No. 184, a vast improvement from her ranking of No. 612 in January.
Despite beginning 2014 well outside of the top 100, Bencic only played in WTA Tour-level events throughout the year. She made her Grand Slam debut at the Australian Open, qualifying for the main draw. She defeated Kimiko Date-Krumm in the first round in a matchup of the oldest and second-youngest players in the draw before losing to the eventual champion Li Na in her next match. Bencic did not win another main-draw match until April when she made it to the semifinals as a qualifier at the Charleston Open in her first clay court event of the year. She defeated four top 100 players at the tournament, including No. 29 Maria Kirilenko and No. 11 Sara Errani. With this result, she also made her top-100 debut less than a month after turning 17. Her clay-court season ended at Roland Garros with another loss to No. 29 Venus Williams. Bencic improved on that result at each of her next two Grand Slam events. After reaching the third round at Wimbledon, she made it to the quarterfinals at the US Open. During the tournament, she recorded the first two top-ten victories of her career over No. 7, Angelique Kerber, and No. 10, Jelena Janković, to become the youngest quarterfinalist at the US Open since Hingis in 1997. Thanks to her success at the Grand Slam tournaments she rose to No. 33 in the world after the event. Bencic closed out the year by reaching her first career WTA tournament final at the Tianjin Open, where she finished runner-up to Alison Riske. At the end of the season, she was named WTA Newcomer of the Year.
### 2015: Maiden WTA Tour title, Premier 5 title, world No. 12
Bencic struggled in the first half of 2015. Through the French Open at the end of May, she won multiple matches in the same event only twice, reaching the fourth round at both the Indian Wells Open and the Miami Open. At Indian Wells, she notably won a match against No. 5 Caroline Wozniacki, the highest-ranked player she had ever defeated at the time. Bencic lost in the opening round at the Australian Open and the second round at the French Open. She began to turn her year around during the grass-court season. In the lead-up to Wimbledon, she made her second and third career WTA finals. After finishing runner-up to Camila Giorgi at the Rosmalen Championships, she won the Eastbourne International over Agnieszka Radwańska for her maiden WTA title. Bencic then improved on her previous year's result at Wimbledon by reaching the fourth round.
At the Premier-level Canadian Open in August, Bencic produced her best performance of the year to win the title. During her run, she defeated six of the top 25 players in the world, including four of the top six, and her third victory of the year against No. 5, Caroline Wozniacki. In the last two rounds, she recorded her first victory over a current world No. 1 player in Serena Williams, before beating No. 3 Simona Halep in the final; Halep needed to retire in the third set due to heat illness. Serena had entered the tournament with only one loss on the season, having won the first three majors of the year. With the title, Bencic became No. 12 in the world. She ended the summer with a third round loss at the US Open to Venus Williams. Bencic reached another final later that month at the Pan Pacific Open. During the event, she recorded two more top ten victories, including a fourth over Wozniacki, before finishing runner-up to Radwańska in their second final of the year. In early October, Bencic ended her season early due to leg and hand injuries. As a result, she withdrew from the WTA Elite Trophy, the second-tier year-end championship, despite qualifying for the event.
### 2016–17: Top 10 debut, injury layoffs
Bencic returned to the tour for the Australian hardcourt season. She had a strong start to the year, reaching the semifinals at the Sydney International and losing in the fourth round at the Australian Open to No. 5, Maria Sharapova. At the St. Petersburg Trophy, Bencic was the top seed and finished runner-up to Roberta Vinci. This performance helped her enter the top 10 for the first time while still 18 years old, making her the first teenager in the top 10 of the WTA rankings since Caroline Wozniacki in 2009. After St. Petersburg, Bencic began to struggle. She retired from her second-round match at Miami and was forced to miss nearly the entire clay-court season due to a back injury, including the French Open. Bencic returned for the grass-court season, but could not match her level of success prior to being injured. She recorded multiple wins at just two more events the rest of the year, the Rosmalen Championships where she reached the semifinals and the US Open where she reached the third round. She also had to retire from her second-round match at Wimbledon due to a wrist injury. As a result, Bencic fell to world No. 43 by the end of the season.
Bencic continued to struggle at the beginning of 2017. She recorded just one WTA Tour singles match-win through the first four months of the year. In late April, she underwent surgery on her left wrist that was expected to keep her out for several months. She did not return until September, at which point her ranking had dropped to No. 312 in the world. Bencic was able to rise back into the top 200 in just one week after winning her first comeback tournament, the \$100k Neva Cup. She then received a wildcard to play at the Linz Open and made the quarterfinals in her only WTA Tour event before the end of the season. Bencic finished the year by winning three tournaments in a row in Asia. She won two WTA 125 events in back-to-back weeks in November at the Hua Hin Championships and the Taipei Challenger before also winning the \$100k Al Habtoor Challenge in Dubai one month later. With these three titles, she moved back into the top 100, ending the year at No. 74 in the world.
### 2018: Slow ascent back into top 50
Bencic made her return to the Grand Slam tournaments at the Australian Open. After upsetting the previous year's runner-up No. 5 Venus Williams, she was upset by qualifier Luksika Kumkhum in the next round. For the third consecutive year, Bencic was forced to miss a few consecutive months due to injury. A stress fracture in her foot sidelined her from mid-March to late May. Although she missed the rest of the clay-court season, she made her return at the French Open and made it to the second round. She did better at Wimbledon, matching her career-best result of a fourth-round appearance highlighted by a first-round upset of No. 6, Caroline Garcia, and saving four match points in her second-round win against Alison Riske. This performance put her back in the top 50. Later that summer, Bencic lost her opening round match at the US Open. In the last stage of the season, Bencic reached her only WTA final of the year, finishing runner-up to top seed and world No. 9, Julia Görges, at the Luxembourg Open as a qualifier. After the end of the WTA Tour season, she entered several ITF and WTA 125 events to try to defend some of her rankings points from the previous year. Bencic won the \$80k title at the Red Rock Pro Open in Las Vegas, but still dropped from inside to No. 54 by the start of 2019.
### 2019: First Grand Slam semifinal, end of WTA Tour title drought
Despite being back outside of the top 50, Bencic had a strong start to 2019. She reached the semifinals at the Hobart International and made it to the third round at the Australian Open, losing to eventual finalist Petra Kvitová. Her next breakthrough came at the Dubai Tennis Championships. As an unseeded player, she defeated four top-ten players in the last four matches to win her third WTA singles title and second at the Premier 5-level. In order, she recorded wins over No. 9 Aryna Sabalenka, No. 2 Simona Halep, No. 6 Elina Svitolina, and No. 4 Petra Kvitová, all in three sets and two of which in a final set tiebreak. The title helped her rise to world No. 23. Bencic continued her win streak with a semifinal appearance at the Indian Wells Open. She defeated two more top-ten players in No. 1, Naomi Osaka, and No. 5 Karolina Plíšková before losing to No. 8, Angelique Kerber. In the lead-up to the French Open, Bencic produced another Premier Mandatory semifinal at the Madrid Open. She recorded another world-number-one win over Osaka, but could not defeat Halep in a tight three-set match. After the tournament, she moved up to No. 15. At the French Open, she advanced to the third round for the first time, where she was defeated by No. 24 Donna Vekić. During the grass-court season, Bencic made her second WTA final of the year at the Mallorca Open. After defeating top seed and world No. 6 Kerber, she finished runner-up to Sofia Kenin, after having three match points in the second set. Like at the Australian Open and the French Open, she lost in the third round at Wimbledon.
Bencic only played the two Premier 5 tournaments in the lead-up to the US Open, with her best result a third-round appearance at the Canadian Open. At the US Open, Bencic produced the best Grand Slam result of her career to date. In the fourth round, she defeated defending champion and world No. 1 Osaka for the third time this season. She went on to make the semifinals, where she lost to eventual champion Bianca Andreescu. This result put her back in the top 10 for the first time since June 2016. Bencic then finished the season strong by winning her second title of the year at the Kremlin Cup as a wildcard. She defeated hometown favourite Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova in the final, which helped her jump ahead of Kiki Bertens and Serena Williams to qualify for the WTA Finals for the first time. At the year-end championships, Bencic was grouped with Ashleigh Barty, Petra Kvitová, and Naomi Osaka, the latter of whom was replaced by Bertens after one match. After losing her opening match to Barty, Bencic defeated Kvitová and Bertens to advance to the knockout rounds. Her season came to an end with a semifinal loss to Elina Svitolina. She finished the year at No. 8 in the world. At the end of the season, Bencic won the WTA Comeback Player of the Year for her return to the top 10.
### 2020–21: Top 5 debut, two WTA 500 finals, Olympic champion in singles
In February 2021, she reached the final of the WTA 500 Adelaide International event. At the German Open, Bencic reached her second final in the season but lost, after a stunning comeback from the qualifier Liudmila Samsonova. She had not won a title on the WTA 500-level in two years since she won the title in Moscow in 2019.
At the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, Bencic beat Jessica Pegula, Misaki Doi, French Open champion Barbora Krejčíková and Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova to reach the semifinals. A three-set victory over Elena Rybakina guaranteed Bencic a medal. She defeated Markéta Vondroušová in the final, to become the first Swiss woman to win the gold medal in singles. Bencic also won silver in the women's doubles, teaming up with Viktorija Golubic.
Bencic reached the quarterfinals of the US Open. Seeded 11th, Bencic beat Arantxa Rus, Martina Trevisan, Jessica Pegula, and Iga Świątek without dropping a set, before losing in straight sets to eventual champion Emma Raducanu.
### 2022: Miami semifinal, first WTA Tour title on clay, win over Serena Williams
Bencic started her season at Sydney, she defeated Beatriz Haddad Maia, Océane Dodin to reach the quarterfinals. Then she lost to eventual champion Paula Badosa.
At the Australian Open, Bencic lost to Amanda Anisimova in the second round.
In St. Petersburg, she defeated Veronika Kudermetova, Kaja Juvan before she lost to eventual champion Anett Kontaveit in the quarterfinals. At Doha, she lost to Clara Tauson in the first round.
Bencic entered the Indian Wells Open, and as the 22nd seed received a bye in first round, but then lost to Kaia Kanepi in second. She played in Miami seeded 22nd again, where she defeated Marta Kostyuk, Heather Watson, and Aliaksandra Sasnovich to reach her first Miami quarterfinal. Then she beat Daria Saville to made her first ever Miami semifinal. In the semifinal, she lost to Naomi Osaka.
Bencic entered the Charleston Open as tenth seed and defeated Wang Xiyu, Linda Fruhvirtová and Madison Keys to reach the quarterfinals. Then she beat world No. 3, Paula Badosa, for the first time in four meetings to make the semifinals. In the semifinals, she defeated Ekaterina Alexandrova to reach her first WTA clay court final. Then she defeated fourth seed Ons Jabeur to win her first ever WTA clay-court title and sixth overall. However, Bencic lost to Ons Jabeur in the round of 16 at her next event, the Madrid Open. At the French Open, she lost in the third round to Leylah Fernandez, in three sets, at her first meeting between them.
Bencic entered the German Open as eighth seed, and made it to the final losing to top seed Ons Jabeur; en route to the final, she defeated a few top players like Veronika Kudermetova and Maria Sakkari.
At Wimbledon, she lost in the first round to Wang Qiang.
At the WTA 1000 Canadian Open, she defeated qualifier Tereza Martincová, Serena Williams, who was playing under a protected ranking, and Garbiñe Muguruza to reach the quarterfinals.
### 2023: Two titles and return to top 10
In Adelaide, she reached the final by defeating Garbiñe Muguruza, Anna Kalinskaya, world No. 4 Caroline Garcia, and Veronika Kudermetova, who withdrew from the semifinals. Then, she beat fifth seed Daria Kasatkina in a lopsided match to win her seventh WTA title. As a result, she returned to the top 10, for the first time since 28 September 2020.
At the Australian Open, she defeated Viktoriya Tomova, Claire Liu and Camila Giorgi to reach the round of 16 in which she lost to eventual champion Aryna Sabalenka.
Then she entered the Abu Dhabi Open as the second seed, and defeated Marta Kostyuk, qualifier Shelby Rogers & Beatriz Haddad Maia to make her seventeenth final overall and second of the season. She defeated Liudmila Samsonova in the final to win her eighth title, after saving three match points.
## National representation
### Fed Cup
Bencic made her debut for the Switzerland Fed Cup team in 2012 at the age of 14. That year, she played in two doubles dead rubbers with Amra Sadiković, losing to the Australian pair of Casey Dellacqua and Jelena Dokic and defeating the Belarusian pair of Aliaksandra Sasnovich and Darya Lebesheva. She played in her first live rubbers in 2014 when Switzerland were World Group II. Although Bencic won both of her singles matches against France over Alizé Cornet and Virginie Razzano, her compatriots Timea Bacsinszky and Stefanie Vögele lost their matches to set up a decisive doubles rubber. Bencic and Bacsinszky lost the match and the tie to Cornet and Kristina Mladenovic. In the World Group II play-off round two months later, Bencic and Bacsinszky led Switzerland to a 4–1 win over Brazil, with Bencic winning one of her two singles matches. The following year, the duo swept their first three singles matches against Sweden to advance to the World Group play-offs. Although Bencic missed the play-off due to injury, Switzerland defeated Poland to return to the top-tier World Group the following year.
In the World Group, Switzerland made it to the semifinals in both 2016 and 2017. Bencic led the team to their 2016 first round over Germany, winning both of her singles matches against Andrea Petkovic and Angelique Kerber as well as the decisive doubles rubber with Martina Hingis. She was injured for the next tie, a loss to the Czech Republic. The following year, Bencic split her two singles matches as Switzerland advanced 4–1 past France. She was named to the team for the semifinal round against Belarus, but did not play in any of the live rubbers as she was dealing with a wrist injury at the time. In 2018, Switzerland were again eliminated by the Czech Republic, this time in the first round as Bencic lost both of her singles matches. She was unavailable for the play-off round due to injury, which Switzerland lost to Romania to fall out of the World Group. The next year, Bencic led her team to a victory over Italy in World Group II with two singles wins. However, she was unavailable as Switzerland lost their play-off tie to the United States to keep them in World Group II.
In 2022, team Switzerland won the Billie Jean King Cup for the first time in history. Bencic was among three other nominated players – Teichmann, Golubic and Waltert. On their way to the play-off, they beat Canada and Italy in Group A with losing an only match to Canada. In the semifinal, the Swiss team won against Czech Republic by winning both singles matches and advanced to the final. Once again, it was enough to win both singles matches against Australia and so they became the 2022 champions.
### Hopman Cup
Bencic has competed at the Hopman Cup in January with Roger Federer for three consecutive years from 2017 through 2019. After finishing in second place in their round robin group to the eventual champions France in 2017, the pair won the tournament in each of the next two years. In 2018, they won all nine of their round robin rubbers to set up a final against the German team of Angelique Kerber and Alexander Zverev. After Federer defeated Zverev and Bencic lost to Kerber, the Swiss team won the decisive mixed doubles rubber in straight sets for the title. During the 2019 event, they were upset by the Greek team of Maria Sakkari and Stefanos Tsitsipas in their last round robin tie, but still advanced to the final through the tiebreak criteria. In a rematch of the previous year's final, Federer again beat Zverev while Kerber again defeated Bencic. The mixed doubles rubber was much closer than in 2018 and came down to a winner-take-all point in the third-set tiebreak as part of the Fast4 format. Federer served the point, which Switzerland won in a long rally to win their second consecutive Hopman Cup.
### Olympics
Seeded No. 9, she also represented her country in her first Olympic Games at Tokyo, after having to skip Rio 2016 due to injury, where she defeated Roland Garros champion and eighth seed Barbora Krejcikova in the third round of the competition and the Roland Garros finalist and 13th seed Russian Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova in the quarterfinals. She reached the final defeating 15th seed Kazakh Elena Rybakina in the semifinals booking Switzerland the first Olympic female singles final.
She also advanced to the doubles final with Viktorija Golubic, which she eventually won the Olympic silver medal in. Bencic became the fifth player to reach two finals at the same Olympic event since tennis returned at the Games in 1988, joining Serena and Venus Williams, Andy Murray and Nicolás Massú.
## Playing style
Bencic has an all-court game, who possesses an aggressive playing style. She is regularly compared to former world No. 1 Martina Hingis, as both players are Swiss, of Slovak descent, and have been coached by Hingis's mother. Hingis has compared herself with Bencic, saying, "The technique, my mom puts a lot of attention to that. So the game, I mean, [Bencic has] got a great backhand as well. But also she's stronger, so she can work with other weapons than I had. I mean, maybe I was more maybe a little better mover, but when she hits a shot it can be a winner. Like she's hitting a lot more winners than did I. So it's different a little bit." Tennis coach Günter Bresnik has called her an "unbelievably smart player" and noted that, "She understands the game really well and knows exactly how to throw the other player off." Bencic possesses a powerful first serve, peaking at 113 mph (182 km/h), allowing her to serve aces and dictate play from the first stroke of a point. Despite this, Bencic's second serve is a considerable weakness, and is heavily affected by nerves, meaning that she typically serves a large number of double faults. Bencic possesses the ability to hit powerful groundstroke winners, but she can also hit lob and drop shot winners when presented with the opportunity. When playing with Roger Federer at the Hopman Cup, he praised her prowess at returning serve. Bencic excels at hitting the ball early or on the rise, and is capable of turning defense into offense, excelling at redirecting cross-court shots down the line. Bencic is an accomplished opponent on all surfaces, although she has stated that her favourite surface is grass.
## Coaches
As a junior, Bencic was coached by her father and Melanie Molitor, the mother of Martina Hingis. Molitor coached Bencic daily from 2004 to 2012, at which point her father Ivan again became her primary coach. In late 2017, she hired Iain Hughes during her recovery from wrist surgery. Vladimír Pláteník worked with Bencic in 2018 from Wimbledon in July until mid-October, at which point her father returned as her main coach. In their first tournament back together, Bencic reached the final at the Luxembourg Open. Bencic was coached by Russian tennis player Dmitry Tursunov until April 2023.
## Endorsements
Bencic has been endorsed by Yonex for racquets since turning professional, and was endorsed by Adidas for clothing and footwear from 2011. In 2015, Bencic signed a 'top-to-toe' endorsement deal with Yonex, being supplied with clothing and footwear by the company, along with her racquets. In 2018, upon her return to professional tennis after a long injury layoff, Bencic became endorsed by Nike for clothing and footwear. In 2023, Bencic switched to Asics for clothing and footwear. Bencic has used the Yonex EZONE 100 racquet throughout her professional career.
## Personal life
Bencic has a brother named Brian who is three years younger and also plays tennis. He trained with her at Molitor's academy and was ranked as a top 200 junior in the world. She has both Swiss and Slovak citizenship.
## Career statistics
### Grand Slam performance timelines
#### Singles
#### Doubles
### Olympic Games
#### Singles: 1 (gold medal)
#### Doubles: 1 (silver medal) |
22,355,608 | Resonance of Fate | 1,151,971,214 | 2010 video game | [
"2010 video games",
"Japanese role-playing video games",
"PlayStation 3 games",
"PlayStation 4 games",
"Post-apocalyptic video games",
"Sega video games",
"Single-player video games",
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"Tri-Ace",
"Video games developed in Japan",
"Video games scored by Kohei Tanaka",
"Video games scored by Motoi Sakuraba",
"Windows games",
"Xbox 360 games"
] | Resonance of Fate is a role-playing video game developed by tri-Ace and published by Sega for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. It was released in January 2010 in Japan and March 2010 in Western territories. The game uses a fast-paced strategic combat system revolving around different types of firearms and combination moves between the three playable characters. A remastered version titled Resonance of Fate 4K/HD Edition was released worldwide for PlayStation 4 and Microsoft Windows on October 18, 2018.
Resonance of Fate takes place on Earth in the distant future. When atmospheric pollution nearly annihilates life on Earth, the remnants of humanity construct a purification system called Basel. In time, the surviving human population create a civilization around Basel's central tower, watched over by its mechanical core Zenith. Zenith ties human lives to quartz stones, making them immune to the pollution while giving them predetermined social status and lifespans. The three protagonists—Zephyr, Leanne, and Vashyron—form a mercenary group that take odd jobs for the populace of Basel. During their missions, they discover a plan by the city's ruling Cardinals to subvert Zenith's rule, and discover their own connections to the Cardinals' plans.
Resonance of Fate is set in a steampunk environment with combat involving guns. Developed with a Western audience in mind, it was the first collaboration between tri-Ace and Sega which formed due to the originality of the project and Sega's interest in gaining a high-profile role-playing game for its catalog. It was designed around tri-Ace's proprietary ASKA Engine, which was shared with titles such as Star Ocean: The Last Hope. Its gameplay was influenced by multiple Western action films including The Matrix. The music was co-composed by Motoi Sakuraba and Kohei Tanaka. Reception of the title was mixed, with its gameplay receiving the majority of praise.
## Gameplay
The combat of Resonance of Fate employs the "tri-Attack Battle system", which involves a mixture of real-time and turn-based controls. During each character's turn, the player can move around and perform actions, limited by the number of action points. The turn ends when the player attacks or all action points are exhausted. Initiating an attack employs a charging system; once a target is selected, the attack charges up until the meter is full and the attack is unleashed. Players can also choose to charge up the attack multiple times, for a more powerful attack. The time needed to charge depends on the proximity of the enemy. Closer enemies require less charge time but it renders the player more vulnerable to attack. Enemies also require charge to attack and battle strategy involves interrupting their charges. There are two damage types in the game. The first is "scratch damage", which is only dealt by sub-machine guns. Scratch damage accumulates quickly, but cannot kill an opponent. Scratch damage must be converted into "direct damage", using pistols and grenades on an enemy with scratch damage to defeat it.
Players are able to move around the battlefield freely, but they have the option to create predefined paths for the character to follow. While moving along these paths, characters gain access to Hero actions, which make them immune to damage and speed up charge times. However, the use of these Hero actions requires the use of Bezels; these items are an essential element in battle and are recharged through a variety of methods, such as destroying portions of an enemy's weapons and armor, or killing an enemy. Characters using Hero actions can attack while jumping in the air, and are also able to unleash special attacks which manifest as stylish firearm maneuvers. Enemies are only able to move while the player's current character is moving and will usually attack only that character.
In addition to fueling Hero actions, Bezels act as a safeguard to character defeat. Characters will not receive any direct damage as long as there is at least one Bezel. If there are enough Bezels remaining, receiving damage that would otherwise defeat the character instead causes the character to be knocked into the air and the Bezel is shattered into shards that scatter across the battlefield. If the player does not have any Bezels remaining, the characters go into critical mode. Critical mode causes the characters to become extremely scared, leaving them unable to shoot quickly, unable to use Hero actions, and taking direct damage from every attack. Four Bezel Shards must be collected by the characters in order to restore a Bezel and replenish their power, and enemies can even pick up Bezel Shards to regenerate health and shields. The game ends if any character is killed and there are no intact Bezels to protect them.
The player may suspend and save the game at any time. Upon completion of the game, the player may start a New Game Plus, which restarts the game with certain features carried over and unlocks a harder mode. With each successful completion of a new difficulty level, further difficulty levels will become available in which enemy health and damage is multiplied. There are ten difficulty settings in Resonance of Fate.
## Synopsis
### Setting
Resonance of Fate takes place on Earth in the distant future. The levels of pollution in the atmosphere trigger massive environmental changes, making the world hostile to human life. On the brink of extinction, humanity creates Basel, a giant air purification module controlled by the Zenith System. As conditions worsened in the land surrounding Basel, the remnants of humanity gathered around it and built a great city at the base of Zenith's tower. While Basel and the Zenith System control the surrounding environment to make it habitable for humans, it also controls the human population: each person has their social status determined at birth, and their exact lifespan is controlled through quartz crystals programmed by Zenith. Basel evolves for countless years into a class-driven society, the populace forgets everything about Basel's past: those at the top of the tower are the city's leaders, dubbed Cardinals, and indoctrinate the people into a religion deifying the Zenith System.
### Characters
- Zephyr (ゼファー, Zefā) – Raised in a seminary from a young age it's suggested he was an outcast as he did not agree with the God-based teachings; for motivations not entirely clear, Zephyr became deranged and killed everyone at the facility before being subdued by Vashyron. Despite expecting to die, Zenith intervened; Zephyr stays with Vashyron as his partner. They make their living as "Hunters", mercenaries that take on odd jobs throughout Basel. He is voiced by Scott Menville in English and Hiro Shimono in Japanese.
- Leanne (リーンベル, Rīnberu, Reanbell in the Japanese version) – A young woman living with Zephyr and Vashyron, acting as a trainee recruit on their jobs. She is also known as Subject \#20 (実験体20号, Jikken-tai 20-gō, lit. "Experimental Body No. 20")—as part of a test of Zenith's life-controlling capabilities, she is meant to die on her 20th birthday though she somehow survived beyond her designated time. Unlike the rest of the cast, her name was changed in the Western versions in consultation with the original team to better suit naming tastes overseas. Leanne is voiced by Jessica DiCicco in English and Aya Endou in Japanese.
- Vashyron (ヴァシュロン, Vashuron) – A former official soldier of the Cardinals who was the sole survivor of his team, he now makes his living as the leader of the Hunters. He acts as an older brother figure to Zephyr and Leanne, not talking much about his past and acting as the most light-hearted member of the group. Vashyron is voiced by Nolan North in English and Ken Narita in Japanese.
- Rowen (ロエン, Roen) – The ruling Cardinal of Basel, acting as one of the main antagonists. He is the man who authorized the experiment that created Leanne and her nineteen counterparts. Traumatized by the death of Prelate Frieda, he wishes to fulfill her dream and perhaps bring her back to life. Rowen is voiced by Jim Ward in English and Keiji Fujiwara in Japanese.
- Sullivan (サリバン, Sariban) – The Cardinal responsible for the experiments on Zephyr and Leanne, and the man who originally revealed the Zenith System's true nature to Rowen. His research, while also working against Zenith, goes in a different direction than Rowen's, working to free humanity from the need to stay close to Zenith. Sullivan is voiced by Chris Edgerly in English and Takehito Koyasu in Japanese.
- Rebecca (レベッカ, Rebekka) – A woman from beyond the borders of Basel. She is one of a few humans who were left to die beyond Basel's borders and evolved immunity and superhuman strength, which led to them hating the people of Basel. During an attack, she has a run-in with Vashyron, and has her mind broken by Zenith. She is taken in by Sullivan, with whom she establishes a strong bond. Throughout most of the game, Rebecca does not speak intelligibly, instead making non-verbal noises. Rebecca is voiced by Catherine Taber in English and Yukana in Japanese.
- Juris (ユリス, Yurisu) – A scientist who worked with Rowen on the project that birthed Leanne. After seeing the other subjects die at their appointed times, Juris took pity on Leanne and freed her, leading to her meeting Zephyr and Vashyron. Juris is voiced by Kirk Thornton in English and Hidenobu Kiuchi in Japanese.
- Frieda (フリーダ, Furīda) – The former Prelate (教皇, Kyōkō, lit. "Pope"), leader of the Cardinals and ruler of Basel, she wished to free the people from the fates given to them by the Zenith System. Her wish attracted the following of the Cardinals, particularly Rowen, but she was killed by extremists. Her death is the catalyst for Rowen and Sullivan's actions. Frieda is voiced by Julie Nathanson in English and Yuki Sakura in Japanese.
### Plot
The game opens with Vashyron doing battle with a berserk Zephyr. Despite Zephyr being shot twice in the head, he does not die. Vashyron decides to take him in as a partner in his Hunter group. Some time later, Zephyr sees and attempts to save Leanne as she jumps from a bridge, and both miraculously survive their resultant fall. The story skips forward two years—Zephyr and Vashyron are running their group with Leanne, taking on odd jobs across the city. Among their clients are the ruling Cardinals and people from lower strata of the tower. During their missions, they encounter instances of people's fates changing unexpectedly, going against the pre-determined path set by Zenith. They also have run-ins with Rebecca, a superhuman, mentally unstable woman from beyond Basel's borders. It is revealed that Vashyron himself faced Rebecca when she first arrived in Basel. He was fatally wounded, but was saved by Zenith, and its resultant retaliation on Rebecca broke her mind.
As they continue taking missions, the three learn that the city's ruling Cardinals are directly responsible for the crisis. Over twenty years before, Prelate Frieda envisioned a world where people were free of Zenith's control. While she was popular among the Cardinals, with her closest ally being Cardinal Rowen, her ideals led to her being killed by extremists. Rowen was thrown into despair by her death, and when shown the truth about Zenith by Cardinal Sullivan, he is convinced to work with the other Cardinals to fulfill Frieda's vision. Rowen and Sullivan create test subjects programmed to die at specific times: Leanne was \#20, designed to die on her 20th birthday. A sympathetic scientist named Juris freed Leanne, and when she learned the truth, she tried to commit suicide before being saved by Zephyr. At the same time, Sullivan studied Rebecca, who had developed natural immunity to the poisons beyond Basel's borders, and sought a way of imprinting her powers onto others. Zephyr was one of his test subjects, along with Zephyr's sister, who was killed by Zephyr during his rampage.
By the time Vashyron and his comrades learn the full tale from Juris, Rowen is in the midst of a crisis of faith due to his control over the Zenith System through his ring. During the party's confrontation with Sullivan where he threatens to destroy Leanne's quartz, Rowen shoots Sullivan to try and prove the existence of a higher power through Leanne's survival. The three then confront Rowen directly and fatally wound him, but Rowen's control of the Zenith System preserves his life. Vashyron calls Zephyr and Leanne off, seeing further fighting is pointless. During the game's credits, Rowen uses his power to resurrect the Cardinals, then leaves the control ring on Frieda's grave, and Sullivan is seen reuniting with Rebecca. In a post-credit scene, Leanne, Zephyr and Vashyron explore the now-clean world beyond Basel, and Leanne's quartz is revealed to have been safely embedded in her hand.
## Development
Development of Resonance of Fate took place over three years, beginning around 2007, using the codename "Project Cobra". The game was developed by tri-Ace, whose other notable games include Valkyrie Profile and the Star Ocean series. It was directed by Takayuki Suguro, produced by Mitsuhiro Shimano and Jun Yoshino, and programmed by Yuichiro Kitao and Yoshiharu Gotanda. At the start of development, the team decided upon the key concepts: a story focusing on the world's fate, a setting where human life was "managed", a limited number of characters, a unified game area that was expansive while not being open world, and a combat system that revolved around firearms. During the planning stages, production time and costs were taken in account, and all the features were carefully planned and chosen so as little content as possible needed to be cut. According to Suguro, the game began development on Xbox 360 because it was the first major seventh generation console to be released, and it was relatively easy to develop games on the system. It was ported to the PlayStation 3 later in production.
A key element of the gameplay is its focus on guns over swords and magic. When deciding upon the game's basics, the team wanted to create a cinematic feeling in battles. If they had gone with a more traditional battle system, then it would have quickly lost its cinematic quality due to the prevalence of close combat. Likewise, they wanted the cinematic feel to persist throughout the whole game rather than restricted to cutscenes. A major challenge was to strike a balance between accessibility and difficulty when developing for a player base that might be made of up of both action game and RPG players. This resulted in the addition of strategy elements. Another wish was to create something new and fresh in the RPG market. When creating the gameplay style, the team looked at action movies such as The Matrix and Rebellion during their research. Despite its fast-paced action, the game relies heavily upon strategic, turn-based gameplay. During early development, the game was based on a real-time system and meant for only one character to be controlled by the player; the other two would have been handled by the game's artificial intelligence (AI). After some testing, they decided that this would create unwanted difficulties in gameplay such as characters dying off-screen without the player noticing or the AI not directing them properly.
On designing the battle system, Kitao said that his two main aims were creating something never before seen in an RPG and designing something accessible yet challenging. Adjustments to the battle system went on all through development, with some changes being made at the very last minute. The gun customization system was originally a puzzle-based system, but was later converted to a diagram set-up. Weapons were originally going to be represented in three-dimensions, but technical issues prevented this. On the whole, the development was a taxing one for him. The most difficult part about incorporating guns into the system was creating a workable system that did not rely on first-person and third-person shooter mechanics. The two types of damage and various special moves in the game were born from the team's discussions about how the three playable characters might be directed to work in unison, dealing different types of attacks. Being able to attack while moving was inspired by a suggestion from staff members stemming from more traditional action games and scenes from Hollywood action films. For the camera, the team decided to balance it between limited control during player turns and a more dynamic feel during attacks.
The game was developed using an in-house multi-platform proprietary engine called ASKA (tri-Ace Superlative Knowledge-based Architecture), developed by a team led by Gotanda. The engine was in development since 2005 and was used for three different games in tandem: Resonance of Fate, Infinite Undiscovery and Star Ocean: The Last Hope. While the staff were satisfied with its performance, it had to be customized for this game's specific needs. The engine employs multiple advanced graphics and lighting techniques, including high-dynamic-range rendering, and multiple layered shader tools to manage graphical layers and shadow effects. Motion blur effects were implemented using techniques similar to those of the second-generation CryEngine. Creating realistic blurring during camera movement was complicated by graphical inconsistencies generated by ASKA's structure. A separate graphics buffer system was designed to address the issue. Environments and characters employ a relatively low number of polygons in order to free up resources to render the main cast, whose character models use at least four times as many polygons as models in the PlayStation 2 era. The main characters' faces use 40 bones for facial movement and their hair use 250. This enables more detailed facial expressions compared to the "doll"-like facial movements of earlier video game characters. Character hair uses additional shaders and layered textures to give it a lifelike appearance and behavior. The physics simulation was similar to that used for Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria, but improved and expanded to suit the new hardware's capacity. There were minor differences between the graphical effects and performances of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 titles. Shadow and blurring effects were more sophisticated on 360. The estimated frame rate of 30fps was identical across both versions. The team managed to fit all the game's content onto a single disc for both versions while keeping load times short. This was due to the staff not wanting players to know when they had reached the halfway point, prolonging the sense of adventure.
### Scenario and design
The story and script were created by Suguro and Masaki Norimoto, and the script was written by Norimoto and Yasushi Otake. For Norimoto, his primary challenge was taking the story's themes—conflicts between justice and evil, the nature of God, and destiny—which were fairly common in RPGs, and put an original spin on them. He did not want to create specific heroes and villains, blurring the lines between friend and foe and having each character following their own understandable agenda. The team decided upon a steampunk aesthetic over a science fiction setting as the latter would necessitate an overly-distant future setting. It was also chosen as steampunk was a rarity in video games. The gun-based gameplay likewise drove the game to a more realistic setting. The Zenith System was conceived as equivalent to a supercomputer from science fiction, which ties into the story elements surrounding Zenith's control of humanity. The choice to make Zenith an impartial machine stems from the team not wanting an off-screen third party force to distract the player from the main narrative. The writers decided to make Zenith the product of an earlier culture rather than a contemporary creation. The Zenith System's influence over the fate of its people gave rise to the design motif of cogs, creating a "world of clockwork". This motif of an inorganic force controlling humanity fits in with the theme of human strength finding expression, acting as a counterweight against Zenith's influence. The overall design of Basel mirrors its mechanical nature, being grim and inorganic, but dashes of color are present through references to the city's religion to balance this out.
The character and world designs were handled by art director Kentaro Kagami, and artist and graphics designer Masashi Nakagawa. Leanne was the first character to be envisioned, before most of the game's concepts had been finalized. The second was Zephyr, who was nicknamed "Boy of the Demonic Possession". The third was Vashyron, who was dubbed "ultimate gentleman". While originally conceived as a "glistening" character, he was reworked as a big brother figure, which in turn led to the scene where he and Zephyr first fight. Rowen's early artwork depict his position as an authority figure looking down on the world from the Zenith System. According to Kagami, his character artwork was created in consultation with Norimoto and Suguro. The three main characters went through multiple design revisions. While Zephyr and Vashyron were designed to reflect the grim environment of Basel, Leanne was meant to contrast against them. Zephyr was initially a lighter, less antagonistic character due to him being younger than Leanne. Unlike other characters, Vashyron's design went through a fairly smooth development process, with his clothing remaining consistent through the design phase. Leanne's clothing took a long time to finalize: earlier versions of her were based on a concept of her being fashion conscious, but this made her look odd next to the other characters. The small cast was something decided upon at an early stage, along with adjusting the male characters to appear less feminine than others from Japanese RPGs. The latter change was made with a Western audience in mind. The CGI cutscenes were created by Marza Animation Planet.
### Audio
The music for Resonance of Fate was composed by Motoi Sakuraba and Kōhei Tanaka: Sakuraba had done work on multiple titles for tri-Ace titles, while Tanaka's most notable recent work was on the Sakura Wars series for Sega. Their work began in 2009. The two composers were asked to collaborate on Resonance of Fate by tri-Ace and Sega respectively. Sakuraba was originally going to compose 41 tracks for the game, but during development the number increased to 77. Tanaka's contribution amounted to between 30 and 40 pieces. Sakuraba was told to make the music in an old-fashioned style with no clear leitmotifs, while Tanaka had great freedom. One major directive was that their music tracks should contrast with each other. Sakuraba handled the game's battle music, with many of his tracks using a strong rock music element using synthesizers meant to emulate music from the 1960s and 70s. Some of his pieces were deliberately outside his usual style, using analog synthesizer and electric piano and recording the resultant sound after it had been fed through leslie speakers. He also worked against custom by improvising some pieces. Tanaka composed tracks for cutscenes, town areas, and the title theme; he was asked to focus on "regal orchestra" instrumentation. His tracks were recorded with a group of studio musicians at Hitomi Memorial Hall who were able to emulate the impact of a full orchestra.
Japanese voice recording for the game began two years before its release in 2008. Several voice actors had worked on other tri-Ace titles in the past. Beyond merely being given directions for their performances, the actors were able to contribute to the characters' personalities. Many characters were revised based on suggestions given by their voice actors during recording. The cast enjoyed their experience, as the game gave them the opportunity for a large range of performances, from comedic to dramatic scenes. Overall, the production process for both actors and development staff was a positive one. The English voice recording began in August 2009 under the supervision of Sega. Recording took place at studios in Los Angeles, and was overseen by Shimano and Suguro. Speaking about his view of the three main actors, Shimano was impressed, praising DiCocco's range and expression for Leanne and noting Menville's performances as Zephyr required fewer retakes than other actors.
### Release
Resonance of Fate was first hinted at prior to April 2009, then announced as an untitled "mystery" RPG at the beginning of the month. According to Shimano, its codename "Project Cobra" had been bandied about prior to the reveal, but no-one had suspected anything about its true nature. Its official Japanese title, along with details such as tri-Ace's partnership with Sega, were unveiled on April 8, 2009. Resonance of Fate marked the first collaboration between tri-Ace and Sega—most of tri-Ace's previous games had been published by Square Enix. The reason for the choice was two-fold: tri-Ace wanted a different publisher due to the radical nature of their new game, and Sega wanted a title to break into the RPG market. As Resonance of Fate seemed unique enough to stand out in the market, Sega agreed to take up publishing duties. According to staff, the Japanese title was originally going to be either Resonance of Fate or Resonance of Time, but Sega asked it to be changed to End of Eternity. This fell in line with a trend among many Japanese games of referencing endings in their titles. It was officially announced for a Western release in May 2009. The game debuted in Japan on January 28, 2010, with a March release in North America and PAL regions. The European version came with text localization in English, French, German, Spanish and Italian.
## Reception
Resonance of Fate received "mildly positive" reviews, according to video game review aggregator Metacritic. The game launched in Japan with 145,000 copies sold in the first week across both platforms but dropped off Media Create's top 30 list within a month. Critics were most vocal in their praise of the gameplay and battle system. Eurogamer called its innovative design "one of the most inspired approaches to the role-playing video game seen in a decade." IGN stated that "the battle system in Resonance of Fate is strong enough to hold everything together" and added "the unique combat system steps up to be the star of the show." GameSpot noted that "the cinematography used during hero actions is so over-the-top and exciting to watch that it makes battles a joy to take part in." USgamer also lauded the faster pace of the combat system and its emphasis on teamwork to win battles. But some reviewers noted that "the flow of combat in Resonance of Fate is initially confusing, especially if you don't take the optional tutorial." The game was the runner-up for RPGamer's Best Battle System award.
Outside of the battle system, GameSpot commented that the world map's "sparsely detailed overhead view gives the impression of a board game, and you need to employ a puzzle-game mind-set to effectively use your limited pieces to clear the appropriate number of tiles. It's an interesting way to open up new places to explore, and it even ties in to the combat". Critics also praised the weapon customization system, "the weapon upgrade system puts a unique spin on traditional standards. Although you do earn the occasional new gun, you spend more time enhancing your current firearm." RPGamer gave the game its Most Original award, for presenting "a gaming experience unlike any this past year", including a "unique battle system" emphasizing tactical combat, the strategic way in which "the world map was opened up", the ability to "modify almost every aspect of the characters' appearances", and "the way that its story is told." The game was the second runner-up for RPGamer's Best Console RPG and Most Overlooked awards.
The story, on the other hand, received mixed reviews though some critics looked past these flaws. GameSpot wrote that "the story in Resonance of Fate is told in a drawn-out, stilted way that only reveals its agenda dozens of hours into your quest" but what "makes this story engaging even before your ultimate goal becomes clear is that the characters are well-developed and easy to relate to," concluding that the "quirky story provides laughs and drama." Destructoid noted that "Resonance of Fate builds its world mostly through inference and implication rather than exposition" and added "the main plot being somewhat threadbare, it never really ascends to the kind of epic scale one would expect from the genre." RPGamer praised the storytelling, stating that it uses "a futuristic sci-fi setting as a backdrop to tell the story of its main characters" who are "trying to survive in a futuristic world gone mad." It chose the game as the runner-up for its Best Script award, for bringing the "characters to life" and "doing an amazing job with the localization." The game was also the runner-up for RPGamer's Best Voice Acting award.
Critics were also divided about the game's graphics and pacing. Destructoid stated that "while detailed, most environments alternate between concrete gray and brick red." GameSpot echoed criticism of the "lack of visual variety." IGN added that "the world map and dungeons are crying for more detail." Despite this, Destructoid allowed that "the colorful clothing helps offset the game's otherwise limited palette." IGN disliked the fact that "large difficulty spikes are interjected every now and then" and "Resonance of Fate is built for those that enjoy the grind." In contrast, the GameSpot reviewer liked this aspect of the game, "You need to use every trick you have learned, and a few you may not have even realized yet, to tackle these treacherous monsters, but there is nothing quite as sweet as toppling something that has tormented you for so long."
## Legacy
An artbook titled End of Eternity Design Works was released on June 11, 2010, in Japan. Published by Enterbrain, Inc., this 176-page artbook is divided in four chapters: Character, Enemy, World view and Benefits.
Resonance of Fate characters and costumes make appearances in a number of other Sega games. In 2010's Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA 2nd, Vocaloid Kagamine Rin can obtain a Leanne outfit. Zephyr, Vashyron, and Leanne are the three characters representing Resonance of Fate in Project X Zone, a Namco-Capcom-Sega mega-crossover video game for the Nintendo 3DS. Zephyr and Leanne are a Pair Unit while Vashyron is a Solo Unit. Various enemies from Resonance of Fate also appear as enemy units. The trio returns in Project X Zone 2, this time with Zephyr and Vashyron being the Pair Unit and Leanne as the Solo Unit. Cardinal Garigliano also appears in the game as a non-playable character.
In 2012, Jostein Johnsen of 1UP.com credited the game with redefining the turn-based battle system, attempting to turn it "into an interactive animated film." According to Johnsen, what "we are really seeing here is a proto-attempt at a live and interactive animated sequence. A sequence where the player decides what happened, and what attacks were used to slay the cardboard cutouts on the left." He credited the game for "saving the JRPG" and "truly renewing it for more advanced technology."
On September 18, 2018, it was revealed that Resonance of Fate would be re-released on the PlayStation 4 and Microsoft Windows as a "4K/HD Remaster." The release date was October 18, 2018. |
5,331,552 | No. 82 Wing RAAF | 1,108,765,005 | null | [
"Cold War history of Australia",
"Military units and formations established in 1944",
"RAAF wings"
] | No. 82 Wing is the strike and reconnaissance wing of the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF). It is headquartered at RAAF Base Amberley, Queensland. Coming under the control of Air Combat Group, the wing operates F/A-18F Super Hornet multirole fighters, EA-18G Growler electronic warfare aircraft, and Pilatus PC-21 forward air control aircraft. Its units include Nos. 1 and 6 Squadrons, operating the Super Hornet and Growler respectively, as well as No. 4 Squadron, operating the PC-21.
Formed in August 1944, No. 82 Wing operated B-24 Liberator heavy bombers in the South West Pacific theatre of World War II. Initially comprising two flying units, Nos. 21 and 24 Squadrons, the wing was augmented by 23 Squadron in 1945. After the war its operational units became Nos. 1, 2 and 6 Squadrons. It re-equipped with Avro Lincolns in 1948 and, from 1953, English Electric Canberra jets. Both types saw action in the Malayan Emergency during the 1950s; the Canberras were also deployed in the Vietnam War from 1967 to 1971.
Between 1970 and 1973, as a stop-gap pending delivery of the long-delayed General Dynamics F-111C swing-wing bomber, Nos. 1 and 6 Squadrons flew leased F-4E Phantoms. No. 2 Squadron continued to fly Canberras until it was disbanded in 1982. After taking delivery of their F-111Cs in 1973, Nos. 1 and 6 Squadrons operated the type for 37 years through numerous upgrades, augmented in the mid-1990s by ex-USAF G models. The forward air control unit joined No. 82 Wing in 2002. In 2010, the wing retired its F-111s and replaced them with Super Hornets as an interim force until the planned entry into Australian service of the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter. Twelve Boeing EA-18G Growlers were procured to augment the Super Hornet fleet from 2017.
## History
### World War II
No. 82 (Heavy Bomber) Wing—the RAAF's first such wing—was formed at Ballarat, Victoria, on 25 August 1944, under the command of Group Captain Deryck Kingwell. Comprising Nos. 21 and 24 Squadrons, both equipped with B-24 Liberators, the wing became operational on 11 January 1945. By this time it was headquartered in the Northern Territory, and came under the control of the RAAF's North-Western Area Command (NWA). Based at Fenton Airfield, the wing's aircraft sank seven Japanese ships in the Dutch East Indies during March.
On 6 April, all available Liberators joined B-25 Mitchells of No. 79 Wing in an assault on a Japanese convoy that included the cruiser Isuzu. Anti-aircraft fire from the cruiser and other ships, as well as attacks by enemy fighters, resulted in the loss of two Liberators, and the crews' standard of aerial gunnery was criticised afterwards. Allied submarines sank the damaged Isuzu the following day. Later that month, No. 23 Squadron, having recently converted to Liberators from A-31 Vengeances, was added to No. 82 Wing's strength. The wing's three flying squadrons identified themselves with black chevrons on the tail fins of their aircraft, No. 21's facing backwards, No. 23's downwards, and No. 24's forwards.
No. 82 Wing's Liberators played both a tactical and a strategic role in the Borneo Campaign, beginning with the lead-up to Operation Oboe One, the invasion of Tarakan on 1 May 1945. During that month a detachment relocated from Fenton to Morotai, attacking targets in Celebes and Balikpapan prior to Operation Oboe Six, the invasion of Labuan. In June, while the final Allied offensive of the Borneo Campaign got under way as Operation Oboe Two, the Battle of Balikpapan, the remainder of No. 82 Wing transferred from NWA to the command of the Australian First Tactical Air Force in Morotai. In the middle of the month the wing dropped 120 tons of bombs on Balikpapan's oil fields and surrounding areas, as well as coastal defence sites. During July it bombed targets at Celebes and Borneo, losing five Liberators for the month, including that of its new commanding officer, Group Captain Donald McLean. McLean died with most of his crew after being hit by anti-aircraft fire and ditching into the sea, a notoriously risky operation in the Liberator owing to the fuselage's tendency to break in two upon striking the water.
Just before the end of hostilities in the Pacific, the recently established garrison headquarters No. 11 Group unofficially directed the wing's operations. Following the Japanese surrender in September 1945, No. 82 Wing's Liberators were converted to transports and used to repatriate RAAF personnel from the South West Pacific. Over the course of its wartime existence, the wing's personnel numbered between 3,000 and 5,000, of whom more than half were ground crew. Along with its flying squadrons, its complement included No. 24 Air Stores Park, No. 6 Repair and Servicing Unit, and No. 30 Medical Clearing Station.
### Cold War and after
No. 82 Wing moved to its present location at RAAF Base Amberley, Queensland, in 1946, where it came under the control of the RAAF's Eastern Area Command. In May that year, No. 482 (Maintenance) Squadron was formed from No. 4 Repair and Servicing Unit, to be responsible for repair and upkeep of the wing's aircraft. Its flying complement now included Nos. 12 (formerly of No. 85 Wing), 21, and 23 Squadrons, but these were renumbered Nos. 1, 2 and 6 Squadrons respectively in February 1948. At the same time, the wartime Liberators were replaced by Avro Lincoln heavy bombers. During 1949–50, some of the Lincolns were specially modified with advanced radar and other instrumentation to participate in Operation Cumulative, a joint program with the Royal Air Force gathering long-range navigation and bombing data for use in potential air campaigns against the Soviet Union.
Between 1950 and 1958—for the first two years under the control of No. 90 (Composite) Wing—the Lincolns of No. 1 Squadron were deployed for service in the Malayan Emergency, tasked with the prime responsibility for the Commonwealth's bombing campaign against Communist insurgents. This arrangement meant that No. 82 Wing's flying units were reduced to Nos. 2 and 6 Squadrons. From 1952 to 1957, the wing flew observation flights in connection with British atomic tests in Australia. No protective clothing was issued to air or ground crews during these flights and, following the second such operation in October 1953, nine of the twelve Lincolns involved were found to be contaminated, four so heavily that they were parked in a remote corner of the Amberley air base and never flown again. On 9 April 1953, the wing wrote off three Lincolns—without loss of life—in two separate incidents that collectively became known as "Black Thursday"; one of the Lincolns crashed on landing at Amberley during the day, and that night another Lincoln collided with one of its brethren at Cloncurry Aerodrome, Queensland.
In December 1953, No. 82 Wing took delivery of the RAAF's first jet bomber, the Canberra Mk.20, 48 of which re-equipped the wing's three squadrons over the next five years. The new bombers were acquired partly for their capacity to deliver nuclear weapons, an ordnance option the RAAF seriously investigated but never implemented. Following the re-equipping of Nos. 2 and 6 Squadrons with the Canberra, a Lincoln Conversion Flight was formed in July 1955 under No. 82 Wing to provide training on the older bomber for crews preparing to deploy to Malaya for service with No. 1 Squadron; it disbanded in March 1956. Canberras from No. 2 Squadron relieved the Lincolns of No. 1 Squadron in Malaya during 1958. In January 1959, No. 1 (Bomber) Operational Conversion Unit (No. 1 OCU) was established at Amberley under the control of No. 82 Wing. Its role was to convert pilots and navigators to the Canberra, and train them for operations with the three bomber squadrons.
In 1964, No. 82 Wing's Canberras were slated for possible bombing and reconnaissance tasks against Indonesian forces under Operation Handover, a little-publicised contingency plan put into effect during the Indonesia–Malaysia Konfrontasi, although no combat ensued. No. 2 Squadron Canberras saw extensive action in the Vietnam War from 1967 to 1971, under the control of the USAF's 35th Tactical Fighter Wing. The Canberras flew almost 12,000 sorties and delivered over 76,000 pounds of bombs, for the loss of two aircraft to enemy action, and gained a high reputation for their accuracy. No. 1 OCU was made independent of No. 82 Wing in April 1968; its sole purpose from then until its disbandment in June 1971 was to supply trained crews to No. 2 Squadron in Vietnam. Nos. 1 and 6 Squadrons effectively ceased operations in 1968, while their crews underwent conversion to the General Dynamics F-111C swing-wing bomber, which was expected to enter service soon afterwards. Between 1970 and 1973, as an interim measure pending the delayed delivery of the F-111, Nos. 1 and 6 Squadrons flew leased F-4E Phantoms; meanwhile No. 2 Squadron continued to operate the Canberra, mainly for aerial survey work in Australia and Indonesia, until disbanding in 1982. The Air Force retained the option to purchase the Phantoms if the F-111C program was cancelled. Though not as sophisticated an aircraft as the F-111, the Phantom was a significant advance over the Canberra, and was highly regarded by its RAAF crews.
On 1 June 1973, the Officer Commanding No. 82 Wing, Group Captain Jake Newham, led the first F-111Cs in to land at Amberley, a gala occasion attended by the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defence, Lance Barnard, the Chief of the Air Staff, Air Marshal Charles Read, the Air Officer Commanding Operational Command, Air Vice Marshal Brian Eaton, and a large media contingent. Read ordered Newham to operate the F-111 with great caution initially, well within limits, lest the controversial aircraft suffer greater damage to its reputation through early attrition. Over its 37-year career with No. 82 Wing, the F-111 underwent numerous upgrades, including the Pave Tack infra-red and laser-guided precision weapons targeting system, Harpoon anti-shipping missiles, and advanced digital avionics. Roles within the wing were demarcated such that No. 1 Squadron was the lead strike unit, while No. 6 Squadron was primarily tasked with crew conversion training; No. 6 Squadron was also responsible for reconnaissance missions using specially modified RF-111Cs until these aircraft were transferred to No. 1 Squadron in 1996, and flew leased Learjets for survey work in 1982–87.
During 1982–83, four F-111s from the RAAF's original order that had been lost through accidents were replaced by four F-111As upgraded to C models. In 1992 an order was placed to augment the F-111C force with fifteen ex-USAF G models, to be operated by No. 6 Squadron. No. 82 Wing was awarded the Duke of Gloucester Cup as most proficient RAAF unit of 1994, in part for its success in introducing the F-111G with minimal additional staff. Alan Stephens, in the official history of the post-war Air Force, described the F-111 as "the region's pre-eminent strike aircraft" and the RAAF's most important acquisition. The closest the bombers came to being used in anger, however, was during the Australian-led INTERFET intervention into East Timor in September 1999. Both F-111 squadrons were deployed to RAAF Base Tindal, Northern Territory, to support the international forces, and remained there until December. From 20 September, when INTERFET began to arrive in East Timor, the aircraft were maintained at a high level of readiness to conduct reconnaissance flights or air strikes if the situation deteriorated. As it happened, INTERFET did not encounter significant resistance, and F-111 operations were limited to reconnaissance by the RF-111Cs from 5 November through 9 December.
No. 482 Squadron merged with Amberley's No. 3 Aircraft Depot to form No. 501 Wing in March 1992. The squadron completed its disbandment in June that year. In 1998 the RAAF became the only air force operating the F-111, after the USAF retired the type. From 2001, Boeing Australia performed all F-111 maintenance under contract. In February 2002, No. 82 Wing came under the control of the newly established Air Combat Group (ACG), formed by merging Tactical Fighter Group (TFG) and Strike Reconnaissance Group (SRG). The reorganisation altered the wing's responsibilities, as it transferred lead-in training for the F-111s to No. 78 Wing at RAAF Base Williamtown, New South Wales, and put No. 82 Wing in charge of the strike capability of No. 81 Wing's F/A-18 Hornet fighters, also based at Williamtown. No. 82 Wing's role was reiterated as "precision strike and reconnaissance"; the Forward Air Control Development Unit (FACDU), flying Pilatus PC-9s, was added to its strength. The merger of TFG and SRG was designed to position the Air Force to replace both the F-111 and the F/A-18 with a single Joint Strike Fighter (JSF).
In 2007, the Australian government decided to retire all of the F-111s by 2010, and acquire 24 F/A-18F Super Hornets as an interim replacement, pending the arrival of the F-35 Lightning II JSF then under development. The F-111 fleet was considered to be at risk owing to fatigue issues, and too expensive to operate as each aircraft required 180 hours of maintenance for every hour of flying time. No. 82 Wing began re-equipping with the Super Hornet in 2010, and the last F-111s were retired on 3 December that year. FACDU was combined with the RAAF Special Tactics Project in July 2009 to form No. 4 Squadron. The following year, No. 82 Wing became home to No. 5 Flight, which was responsible for training personnel to operate the RAAF's two IAI Heron unmanned aerial vehicles based at Kandahar in Afghanistan. The Air Force acquired a third Heron in 2011, based in Australia and operated by No. 5 Flight. As of that year, the F-35 was not expected to enter Australian service until 2018. The RAAF hoped to be able to sell off its Super Hornets "with very low kilometres on the clock" by 2020, but this would depend on delivery of the replacement F-35s. In April 2013, No. 5 Flight was transferred from No. 82 Wing to Surveillance and Response Group's No. 92 Wing. The following month, the Federal government announced plans to purchase twelve Boeing EA-18G Growlers to supplement the Super Hornet fleet.
On 7 July 2017, the RAAF completed delivery of the 12 EA-18G Growlers with the arrival of the last Growler at RAAF Base Amberley, home of No. 6 Squadron. All Super Hornets were transferred to No. 1 Squadron.
In June 2020 No. 82 Wing Training Flight RAAF was established as part of a two year trial of returning Super Hornet training to Australia from the United States. The unit was equipped with six F/A-18Fs transferred from No. 1 Squadron. |
38,847,341 | 2014 Brazilian Grand Prix | 1,155,142,145 | null | [
"2014 Formula One races",
"2014 in Brazilian motorsport",
"Brazilian Grand Prix",
"November 2014 sports events in South America"
] | The 2014 Brazilian Grand Prix (formally the Formula 1 Grande Prêmio Petrobras do Brasil 2014) was a Formula One motor race held on 9 November at the Autódromo José Carlos Pace in São Paulo. It was the 18th and penultimate round of the 2014 Formula One World Championship and the 42nd Brazilian Grand Prix as part of the series. Mercedes driver Nico Rosberg won the 71-lap race from pole position. His teammate Lewis Hamilton finished second and Williams driver Felipe Massa was third. It was Rosberg's fifth victory of the season and the eighth of his career.
Rosberg won the pole position by setting the fastest lap in qualifying and maintained the lead until his first pit stop at the end of lap seven. Nico Hülkenberg led after Hamilton's lap eight pit stop and held it until Rosberg overtook him six laps later. Hamilton returned to the lead when Rosberg made a second pit stop 12 laps later but a spin at turn four during the extra lap he was on the track lost him the position. On blistered front tyres, Hamilton remained close by Rosberg by the time of the third cycle of pit stops but Rosberg held off his teammate to win the race.
The result allowed Rosberg to lower Hamilton's lead in the World Drivers' Championship to 17 points while Daniel Ricciardo secured third place despite retiring with a suspension issue. Sebastian Vettel and Fernando Alonso each gained one position to move into fourth and fifth places. Mercedes increased their unassailable lead in the World Constructors' Championship to 278 points over Red Bull Racing with one race left in the season.
## Background
The 2014 Brazilian Grand Prix was the 18th of the 19 rounds in the 2014 Formula One World Championship and the 42nd running of the event as part of the series. It was held on 9 November at the 4.309 km (2.677 mi) 15-turn Autódromo José Carlos Pace in São Paulo. As they were at the the week before, Formula One's commercial rights owner Bernie Ecclestone granted Caterham and Marussia dispensation to miss the race due to their ongoing financial struggles coupled with the high cost of travel to the western hemisphere and the one-week gap between the United States and Brazilian Grand Prix. The drag reduction system (DRS) had two activation zones for the race: one was on the straight linking turns three and four and the second was on the straight linking the final and first corners. The event's official name was the Formula 1 Grande Prêmio Petrobras do Brasil 2014.
Before the race, Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton led the Drivers' Championship with 316 points, 24 ahead of teammate Nico Rosberg in second and Daniel Ricciardo third. Valtteri Bottas was fourth on 155 points, six ahead of Sebastian Vettel in fifth. While the Drivers' Championship had not been won, Mercedes taken the Constructors' Championship at the . Red Bull ensured they would finish second, while Williams with 238 points were third, Ferrari with 196 were fourth and McLaren fifth. With the introduction of double points for the season-ending , the Drivers' Championship could not be won in Brazil as Hamilton winning and Rosberg scoring no points would keep Rosberg in mathematical contention by being 49 points behind Hamilton.
In mid-2014, the track was resurfaced in an effort to reduce its bumpiness and the pit lane was re-profiled with the entry brought forward off the racing line at the Arquibancadas corner and a chicane added to the pit lane to further slow cars following a series of accidents in national races. The pit lane exit was moved further away from the track to allow for a run-off area to the left of turn two. In addition, in response to an crash by Jules Bianchi in the , procedures relating to the location of a tractor crane at the Senna "S" chicane were altered. Pirelli originally nominated the orange-banded Hard and white-banded Medium tyres, as it had done since 2012. However, following the Russian Grand Prix one month prior, many drivers criticised the low level of grip and wear shown on the new tarmac of the Sochi Autodrom. Since the Autódromo José Carlos Pace was completely repaved, there was concern that the hard compound would be "very dangerous". Along with unanimous agreement from all eleven teams, Pirelli ultimately decided to bring the Medium and yellow-banded Soft tyres to Brazil.
During practice, the sport's governing body, the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile re-tested its Virtual Safety Car system, which was proposed for the 2015 season to better deal with race track emergencies, following the incident suffered by Bianchi in the Japanese Grand Prix. Changes made to this system, relative to the version first tested in the United States, satisfied the drivers. There were driver changes for the first practice session. Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters racer Daniel Juncadella replaced Sergio Pérez at Force India for the third time in 2014, while GP2 Series competitor Felipe Nasr used Bottas's car, and the Formula Three European Championship third-place finisher Max Verstappen drove Jean-Éric Vergne's Toro Rosso car.
## Practice
There were three practice sessions—two 90-minute sessions on Friday and another one-hour session on Saturday—preceding Sunday's race. Rosberg was fastest in the first session, which took place in dry and warm weather, with a lap of 1 minute, 12.764 seconds, two-tenths of a second faster than teammate Hamilton in second. Daniil Kvyat, Fernando Alonso, Felipe Massa, Verstappen, Pastor Maldonado, Kimi Räikkönen, Kevin Magnussen and Ricciardo occupied positions three to ten. During the session, where drivers struggled with grip on the resurfaced track, Juncadella spun at turn six, and lost control of his car's rear, hitting the turn eight barrier, damaging his car's nose cone and suspension, and stopping the session. Force India replaced several engine hydraulic components following a heat soak and Pérez missed the second session. Jenson Button was unable to participate when he stopped at the entry to the pit lane with an energy recovery system failure. Esteban Gutiérrez was also not able to record a lap because of engine electrical issues.
In the second session, Rosberg recorded the day's fastest time of 1 minute, 12.123 seconds; teammate Hamilton, Räikkönen, Ricciardo, Bottas, Massa, Alonso, Kvyat, Vettel and Magnussen followed in the top ten. The session was disrupted three times: Vergne stopped on track at turn four when his engine suddenly lost power after 11 minutes. The second stoppage was caused by Alonso's engine catching fire and him stopping on the straight between turns three and four. He vacated his Ferrari to get a fire extinguisher to stop the blaze before marshals could reach his car. Gutiérrez caused the final stoppage when his car stopped with an energy recovery system failure with 13 minutes left. The final session was held in dry but overcast weather and saw Rosberg complete a free practice sweep with a lap of 1 minute, 10.446 seconds on soft compound tyres. Hamilton was second-fastest and spun under braking for the Senna S chicane. Hamilton was later delayed by a Lotus car while on a fast lap. The Williams duo of Massa and Bottas were third and fourth; Ricciardo, Button, Räikkönen, Alonso, Magnussen and Kvyat completed the top ten.
## Qualifying
Saturday afternoon's qualifying session was divided into three parts. The first part ran for 18 minutes, eliminating cars that finished the session 15th or below. The 107% rule was in effect, requiring drivers to reach a time within 107 per cent of the quickest lap to qualify. The second part lasted 15 minutes, eliminating cars in 11th to 14th. The final 12-minute session determined pole position to tenth. Cars who progressed to the final session were not allowed to change tyres for the race's start, using the tyres with which they set their quickest lap times in the second session. Rosberg was fastest in all three sessions, taking his tenth pole position of the season, and the 14th of his career, with a time of 1 minute, 10.023 seconds, breaking Rubens Barrichello's 2004 pole lap record by six-tenths of a second. He won the first FIA Pole Trophy as Hamilton could not overtake his poles total with one race left. He was joined on the grid's front row by Hamilton who lost time entering turn ten too fast, causing him to lose control of the rear of his car. Massa qualified third; traffic slowed his final timed lap and he locked his tyres at the Senna S chicane. Fuel pressure problems shut down Massa's engine. Bottas in fourth aborted his final lap after locking his tyres three times.
Button and Vettel took fifth and sixth. Button's fastest timed lap was his first but he failed to improve on his second. It allowed Vettel to challenge him but was 0.080 seconds slower than Button on his second timed lap. Magnussen in seventh did not feel the soft tyres helped him and was unable to go faster. The Ferrari duo of Alonso and Räikkönen were eighth and tenth; Ricciardo separated them, believing minor pre-qualifying fine-tuning adjustments to his car affected its balance. Gutiérrez, considered as "one of the standout performers" of qualifying, was the fastest driver not to qualify for the final session. Nico Hülkenberg had difficulty finding a rhythm and took 12th, ahead of Adrian Sutil's slower Sauber car. Kvyat qualified 14th after electing not to record a lap in the second session and was demoted ten places on the grid for carrying over an engine penalty from the United States Grand Prix. Hence, Romain Grosjean inherited the position, after Lotus made overnight adjustments to his car. Vergne had difficulty in driving and an incorrect set-up left him in 15th. Pérez originally took 16th but a seven-place grid penalty was applied after he was deemed to have caused an avoidable accident with Sutil in the United States and Maldonado inherited the place.
### Qualifying classification
The fastest lap in each of the three sessions is denoted in bold.
Notes:
- – Daniil Kvyat received a seven-place grid penalty to complete the ten-place penalty that he received at the previous race.
- – Sergio Pérez received a seven-place grid penalty for causing an avoidable accident in the previous race.
## Race
The race began at 14:00 Brasilia Time (UTC−02:00). The weather at the start was dry and sunny with an air temperature between 23 and 24 °C (73 and 75 °F) and a track temperature ranging from 46 to 50 °C (115 to 122 °F); forecasts of rain for Sunday did not materialise. Sutil started from the pit lane after his mechanics reconfigured his car's cooling system. The first ten starters began on the soft compound tyres with four on the medium tyres. When the race began, Rosberg maintained the lead at the Senna S chicane as Bottas was slow but returned to fourth place. Heading into the Curva do Sol turn, Vettel over-committed in the braking zone and ran wide while defending from Magnussen. By doing so, Magnussen and Alonso demoted Vettel to eighth behind teammate Ricciardo. Kvyat moved from 17th to 13th by the end of the first lap, while Sutil lost five positions over the same distance. At the end of the first lap, Rosberg led Hamilton by 0.8 seconds, who was followed in turn by, Massa, Bottas, Button, Magnussen, Alonso, Ricciardo and Gutiérrez.
Rosberg began to pull away from Hamilton, opening up a 1.2-second lead over his teammate while Massa was a further one second behind Hamilton. Ricciardo attempted to pass Vettel into the Senna S chicane on the start of the third lap but was not close enough to overtake. Massa was the first driver to have severe blistering on the soft compound tyres and was the first of the leading drivers to make a pit stop at the end of lap five for the change to the medium compound tyres, with Vettel, Bottas and Button making similar stops on the following lap. Rosberg held a one-second lead over Hamilton and made his first pit stop from the lead at the end of lap seven. Hamilton was more conservative on his tyres and went half a second faster in clear air. Massa was imposed a five-second penalty for speeding in the pit lane, and Hamilton made his pit stop from the lead at the conclusion of lap eight and came out narrowly behind teammate Rosberg.
With Hamilton's and Rosberg's pit stops completed, Hülkenberg and Kvyat were first and second, followed by Grosjean. Traffic slowed Rosberg, allowing Hamilton to potentially attack his teammate. Rosberg was protected from Hamilton overtaking on the main straight because he used DRS to defend himself since he was close behind Grosjean. He drew nearer to Kvyat and passed him for second on lap 12. On the same lap, Button overtook Sutil for eighth place. Mercedes instructed Hamilton to manage his right-rear tyre temperatures and lost more time to Rosberg by following Kvyat, who allowed Hamilton past before the Senna S chicane just as Hülkenberg had Rosberg close behind. Hülkenberg reported a blistered front-right tyre to Force India and Rosberg overtook him for the lead into the Senna S chicane at the start of lap 14. Massa passed Grosjean and Bottas overtook Grosjean at the Senna S chicane for sixth place on lap 15. With his front tyres blistered, Hamilton used DRS to pass Hülkenberg into the Senna S chicane on the following lap.
Massa drew closer to Kvyat and passed him into the Senna chicane for fourth place on lap 17 as Alonso overtook Sutil at the same turn for tenth on that lap. At the same time, Hülkenberg made his pit stop and rejoined the track in 15th. Hamilton's right-front tyre was blistered but was not significantly hindered and set a new fastest lap to be 2.1 seconds behind Rosberg at the start of lap 20, after Rosberg became aware of not over stressing his tyres and Hamilton being faster. The two drivers pulled away from Massa. Button drove close behind Bottas and used his DRS to pull away from Magnussen, Vettel, Alonso and Ricciardo. Magnussen steered left to pass Grosjean for sixth on lap 23. Alonso attempted to pass Grosjean on the outside into the Senna chicane on the next lap but Grosjean blocked him. Alonso tried again on the main straight and overtook Grosjean before the Descida do Lago turn for seventh. Vettel also passed Grojean at the same turn. Massa served his penalty on the 26th lap, and after taking it, had new tyres installed on his car.
Rosberg made his second pit stop on the same lap, returning the lead to Hamilton. Bottas also made a pit stop but a delay in fitting his unbuckled seat belt and adjusting it, allowed Button into fourth as Bottas fell to 12th. Hamilton drove faster than any driver to try and take the lead after his pit stop. Mercedes asked Hamilton on lap 28 to make an energy recovery switch to raise the harvesting rate but not a forward brake bias adjustment. When Hamilton braked for the Descida do Lado turn, his rear tyre locked, oversteered and spun onto the run-off area. Hamilton rejoined the track seven seconds later. Hamilton made his pit stop on that lap and emerged in second, 7.4 seconds behind teammate Rosberg. Button closed up to Kvyat and waited until the main straight to pass with DRS into the Senna chicane on lap 30. Hamilton moved to within five seconds of his teammate Rosberg on blistered rear tyres by lap 35. Räikkönen made a pit stop from third on the same lap but lost time after the front jack was lowered before his right-front tyre was installed. He rejoined the track in 13th, behind Grosjean.
Vettel overtook Kvyat at the Senna chicane for fifth on lap 37. Ricciardo's front-left suspension began to move unsteadily on the main straight on lap 39, and veered right into the Senna chicane. Ricciardo entered the pit lane to retire, ending a 15-race finishing streak extending back to the . Hülkenberg passed Bottas for eighth by putting him onto the run-off area at the Senna chicane on lap 42. Bottas defended from Räikkönen on the outside at Descida do Lago turn before going wide on the exit. Bottas had a problematic pit stop on lap 44: one of his mechanics struggled to adjust the front wing and Bottas fell to 16th. Magnussen had worse tyre degradation than his teammate Button and Alonso could not pass Button on the outside into the Senna S chicane on lap 45. The battle continued through the following corners but Button's defence into Descida do Lago turn compromised his exit and Alonso overtook him on the inside of turn five.
Hamilton closed up to Rosberg by 1.9 seconds by the start of lap 50. Rosberg made his final pit stop from the lead that same lap. Slower traffic delayed Hamilton, who rejoined just behind his teammate after his own pit stop. Massa and Button made pit stops on that lap and they exited the pit lane in fifth and sixth, respectively. Button had closed up to Massa after the latter drove onto the incorrect pit box. Hülkenberg moved to third but Massa passed him into the Senna chicane on lap 54. Hamilton attacked Rosberg, who responded by going faster than his teammate but Hamilton stayed close by with DRS on the straights. The duo pulled away from Massa and Räikkönen. Slower traffic did not affect Rosberg and Hamilton enough to be slowed. On lap 61, Räikkönen—on 25-lap worn tyres—blocked a pass by Button for fourth into the Senna chicane. Button held the racing line and drew alongside Räikkönen on the back straight before passing on the outside at the Descida do Lago turn. Räikkönen lost momentum at the corner and Vettel passed him. Alonso began to battle teammate Räikkönen who defended over the next few laps.
Grosjean stopped on track near a fire marshal with smoke billowing from his engine on lap 65 and retired from the race. Hülkenberg passed Magnussen for eighth on lap 68, while Räikkönen lost traction in his tyres at the bottom of the hill at the Senna S chicane, allowing teammate Alonso into sixth on the same lap. Hamilton moved to within 0.8 seconds of his teammate Rosberg at the start of the final lap, but Hamilton could not get close enough to pass Rosberg, who took his fifth victory of the season and the eighth of his career. Massa finished third, with Button fourth, Vettel fifth, Alonso sixth from teammate Räikkönen, Hülkenberg eighth, and Magnussen ninth. Bottas held off Kvyat in the final laps to claim tenth. Maldonado, Vergne, Gutiérrez, Pérez and Sutil were the final finishers. Mercedes took their 11th one-two finish of the season, breaking McLaren's 1988 record with Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna. It was also the team's 15th victory of 2014, equalling McLaren and Ferrari's joint record. There were seven lead changes in the race: three drivers reached the front of the field. Rosberg led four times for a total of 59 laps, more than any other driver.
### Post-race
At the podium interviews, conducted by three-time World Champion Nelson Piquet, Rosberg declared his happiness over the weekend sweep, having been able to feel comfortable to attack in his Mercedes. Hamilton said despite his turn four spin, it had been "an amazing race" and praised his team for the work they put in and enjoyed his battle with Rosberg. Massa said he was "grateful" for his fast car. In the later press conference, Rosberg said it was important for him to improve after the United States, and was confident that he could control the gap to Hamilton and ensure he did not battle for the win. When asked if his spin prevented him from winning the race, Hamilton said he felt it did and admitted his error. He said he felt the team's record-breaking race was "absolutely incredible" and called it an "unbelievable job" by Mercedes. Massa said he thought his chances of a podium finish were diminished with his five-second time penalty but was unworried about parking in the wrong pit stall.
Vettel explained his poor start triggered memories of his first lap collision with Bruno Senna in 2012, saying he felt Red Bull would be stronger against McLaren at the start but that it was highly competitive and was hoping to possibly finish in a higher position. Williams' Head of Vehicle Performance Rob Smedley was angry with himself for not stopping Massa driving through the McLaren pit stall after the team switched garage positions for the race and exchanged words afterwards. He felt it should have been given more consideration and given advance warning. However he praised Bottas for scoring an extra point and described the Williams team's race as a "character building" event, something he was taught at Ferrari by technical director Ross Brawn. Bottas said he had severe left-rear tyre graining on his final stint, causing him to slide massively and lose positions: "I was managing a lot at the beginning and then could just avoid [Daniil] Kvyat from overtaking. At one point there was some debris in the rear wing [as well], a tear off or something. [As I said] it was just not my day."
Following Button's fourth-place finish, which was the fifth time in 2014 he achieved a top four finish, he said he did not compete to attempt to prove anything but was in the sport "to do my job and my job is to do the best job I can for myself and for the team and that's exactly what I did." However, he was delighted to duel the Williams team, saying, "It was a lot of fun. And then the battle with Kimi Raikkonen, going past him was mega – I really enjoyed that. We're not the best of friends but we battle hard but clean." Alonso was not frustrated with his teammate Räikkönen over their late-race battle for sixth: "The most important thing was not the battle with him, it was the battle with the other teams and we got some good points for Ferrari today. Even if I could have overtaken Kimi a little quicker I had to save a lot of fuel in the last couple of laps so a battle with Sebastian was never a possibility." Räikkönen dismissed the battle as "normal racing" and felt it had not hindered his team because it would score the same number of points regardless of his finishing position.
The press praised Rosberg. Andrew Benson of BBC Sport said his weekend was "copybook" and it was needed to "re-establish his position as a credible championship contender" to many people. L'Équipe said Rosberg "demonstrated above all that he knew how to let the past, and his recent disappointments, behind him. He is psychologically ready to face his rival and lead the hard life until the last round of the last Grand Prix." The Daily Telegraph's Formula One correspondent Daniel Johnson described Rosberg's performance as "the race of his life under relentless pressure" and called his victory "the finest of his career." Writing for The Independent, David Tremayne wrote Rosberg had "finally avenged himself" on teammate Hamilton by winning and gave him realistic title chances by proving he could resist pressure.
The result reduced Hamilton's World Drivers' Championship lead over Rosberg by seven points to 17. Despite his retirement, Ricciardo had secured third place as no other driver could overtake his points total with one race remaining. Vettel move to fourth with 159 points, two points ahead of fifth-placed Alonso. Mercedes further extended their unassailable lead in the World Constructors' Championship to 278 points over Red Bull. Williams and Ferrari remained in third and fourth with 254 and 210 points and McLaren were fifth on 161 points with one race left in the season. Despite his lead, Hamilton said he would take "zero comfort" for the season's final race: "There are 50 points to gain. The last race, you never know whats going to happen, so I'm going there to win."
### Race classification
Drivers who scored championship points are denoted in bold.
## Championship standings after the race
Drivers' Championship standings
Constructors' Championship standings
- Note: Only the top five positions are included for both sets of standings.
- Bold text and an asterisk indicates competitors who still had a theoretical chance of becoming World Champion.
## Explanatory notes and references
### Explanatory notes |
50,911,471 | Ai no Uta (Words of Love) | 1,115,866,285 | null | [
"2016 singles",
"2016 songs",
"Japanese-language songs"
] | "Ai no Uta (Words of Love)" (Japanese: 愛の詩 (words of love);, "Love Poem (words of love)) is a song recorded by Japanese recording artist Haruka Chisuga, taken from her debut studio album Try! (2016). It was released as the fifth single from the album by Victor Entertainment and their subsidiary label Flying Dog on April 27, 2016. The lyrics were written by Yamada Toshiaki and the music was composed and produced by Swedish electronic dance musician Rasmus Faber. Musically, "Ai no Uta (Words of Love)" is an electronic dance song, influenced by four on the floor that features synthesizers and string arrangements in its instrumentation.
Upon its release, it received positive reviews from music critics. Some complimented the composition, noting a departure from her previous J-pop influenced music, and commended the songwriting. Commercially, the song fared better in Japan than her previous releases, peaking at number 47 on the Oricon Singles Chart. An accompanying music video was directed by Nozomi Tanaka, which featured Chisuga in a large aquarium surrounded by bright lights. To promote the single, Chisuga appeared on radio stations throughout Japan including Rajira Sunday and Hiroshi Kamiya's All Night, and was used as the closing theme song for the second season of Japanese anime television series, The Asterisk War.
## Background and release
On October 4, 2015, it was confirmed through Anime News Network that Chisuga was to voice over the character Sylvia Lyyneheym for the second season of Japanese anime television series, The Asterisk War. However, Chisuga did not comment about a potential theme song recording for the show. Then in February 2016, Chisuga confirmed that a new song, titled "Ai no Uta (Words of Love)", would serve as the show's ending theme song. "Ai no Uta (Words of Love)" was written by Yamada Toshiaki and produced by Swedish electronic dance musician Rasmus Faber. Musically, it is an electronic dance song, influenced by four on the floor and incorporates "elegant strings" sections, as described by a staff member at CD Journal.
The single was released as the album's fifth single by Flying Dog, a subsidiary label owned by Victor Entertainment, on April 27, 2016. It was released on a CD single in Japan, which included the track, two B-side songs "Lonely Feather" and "Ai no Taiyou", and an a cappella version of "Lonely Feather". It also included the instrumental versions of the first three tracks. The digital EP included the four recordings but omitted the instrumental versions. Through CDJapan.com, pre-ordered versions of the CD single included a large B2-sized poster and a scanned hand-written letter by Chisuga herself, which was then signed.
## Reception
Upon its release, it received positive reviews from music critics. A staff member at Amazon.com complimented Faber's production and arrangement, who believed he was able to "expand" Chisuga's sound outside of J-pop. The reviewer also complimented the songwriting and her vocal performance. In a similar review, a CD Journal staff member praised Chisuga's "free" and "vigorous" vocal performance, alongside its "glossy" production. The review concluded with the reviewer calling it a "high degree of completion".
Commercially, the song fared better in Japan than her previous releases. It debuted at number 47 on the Oricon Singles Chart, her highest selling entry and first top 50 single since "Planet Cradle" / "Wandering" in 2013; it sold 1,462 units. Despite falling outside of the top 50 the following week, it lasted eight weeks inside the top 200. As of June 2016, "Ai no Uta (Words of Love)" is her second best selling single according to Oricon Style.
## Promotion
To promote the single, Chisuga appeared on several radio stations in Japan including Rajira Sunday and Hiroshi Kamiya's All Night radio show through Nippon Broadcasting System. She also held a live event to promote the single in Osaka, Japan, May 2015. Then throughout early-mid May 2016, Chisuga visited the Japanese music store Animate in cities Yokohama, Nagoya, Kyoto, Sannomiya, and Osaka, and signed autographs. She then followed up by visiting stores Namba Shop and Akiba Sofmap in Japan. On July 9, Chisuga will perform "Ai no Uta (Words of Love)" for the first time, in order to promote the single. An accompanying music video was directed by Nozomi Tanaka. It was shot in an aquarium, and included Chisuga sitting down and observing several fishes. Along with this, she was surrounded by several glow lights and spot lights. It was released on YouTube by Victor Entertainment, Chisuga's parent label, and premiered through Japanese music television on April 8, 2016.
## Personnel
Credits adapted from the CD liner notes of "Ai no Uta (Words of Love)".
Recording and management
- Recorded in 2016. Management and record label Flying Dog and Victor Entertainment.
Credits
- Haruka Chisuga – vocals, background vocals
- Yamada Toshiaki – songwriting (track 1)
- Yūho Iwasato – songwriting (track 3)
- Rasmus Faber – songwriting (track 2), production, arranging, composing
- Nozomi Tanaka – music video director
## Track listings and formats
## Charts
### Weekly charts
### Rankings chart
### Sales
## Release history |
22,943,673 | Malvern water | 1,170,293,097 | Natural spring water from the Malvern Hills | [
"Bottled water brands",
"English brands",
"English drinks",
"Malvern, Worcestershire",
"Non-alcoholic drinks",
"Springs of England",
"Water"
] | Malvern water is a natural spring water from the Malvern Hills on the border of the counties of Herefordshire and Worcestershire in England. The Hills consist of very hard granite and limestone rock. Fissures in the rock retain rain water, which slowly permeates through, escaping at the springs. The springs release an average of about 60 litres a minute and the flow has never been known to cease.
Beneficial properties of the water have been reported for over 400 years, and the reason for such benefits was a topic of scholarly discussion by 1817. In the 19th century Malvern became famous for the water cure, resulting in its rapid development from a village to a busy town with many large Victorian and Edwardian hotels. The writings of the hydrotherapists James Gully and James Wilson, and well known patients who included Lord Lytton contributed to Malvern's renown at that time. The water was bottled on an industrial scale under the Schweppes brand from 1850 until 2010, and has been bottled by a family-owned company since 2009 as Holywell Malvern Spring Water. In 2012 the Holywell Water Co Ltd was granted permission to use the world-famous "Malvern" name in its branding, thus becoming Holywell Malvern Spring Water. It has been drunk by several British monarchs. Elizabeth I drank it in public in the 16th century; Queen Victoria refused to travel without it.
## Purity
Malvern water has long been acclaimed for its purity. In 1756 Dr John Wall tested the water, found that it contained very few minerals, and said: "The Malvern water is famous for containing just nothing at all...!" William Heberden also noted the purity of Malvern water, stating "the Malvern water is purer than that of any other springs in England, which I ever examined or heard of".
The natural untreated water is generally devoid of all minerals, bacteria, and suspended matter, approaching the purity of distilled water. In 1987 Malvern gained official EU status as a natural mineral water, a mark of purity and quality. However, in spite of regular quality analysis, drought in 2006 dried out the rock that filters the water, allowing the water to flow through it too quickly for the natural filtering process. Due to the slight impurities, the Coca-Cola Company, bottler of the Schweppes brand, had to install filtration equipment, which reclassifies the water as spring water under EU law.
## Springs
There are sources in about 70 locations around the Hills, where residents regularly fill containers free of charge, including the St Ann's Well, which is housed in a building dating from 1815, in the town of Great Malvern. Major popular water sources are:
- Beauchamp Fountain – Cowleigh Road
- Enigma Fountain plus Malvhina water feature, Belle Vue Terrace – town centre
- Evendine Spring – Jubilee Drive (west flank of the Hills)
- Hayslad Spring – West Malvern Road
- Holy Well – Malvern Wells
- Jubilee Fountain – Malvern Wells
- Morris Well, Wells Common – Lower Wyche
- St Ann's Well – Great Malvern
The Walms Well dating from around 250 BC is one of the earliest to be documented.
## Medicinal use
Local legend has it that the curative benefit of the spring water was known in mediaeval times. The medicinal value and the bottling of Malvern water are praised in verses 15 and 16 of "a poem attributed to the Reverend Edmund Rea, who became Vicar of Great Malvern in 1612". These are part of "an old song in praise of Malvern", that was published with comments on a different and uncertain provenance by Chambers in his history of the town.
> To drink thy waters store, Lie in bushes
> Many with ulcers sore; Many with bruises.
> Who succour find from ill, By money given still
> Thanks to the Christian will; O praise the Lord.
> A thousand bottles here, were filled weekly,
> And many costrils rare, for stomachs sickly;
> Some were to London sent, Some of them into Kent,
> Others on to Berwick went, O praise the Lord.
In 1622, Richard Banister, the pioneering oculist, wrote the following verse about the Eye Well, close to the Holy Well in his Breviary of the Eyes.
> A little more I'll of their curing tell.
> How they helped sore eyes with a new found well.
> Great speech of Malvern Hills was late reported
> Unto which spring people in troops resorted.
In 1756, Dr. John Wall published a 14-page pamphlet on the benefits of Malvern water, that reached a 158-page 3rd edition in 1763. Further praise came from the botanist Benjamin Stillingfleet in 1757, the poet Thomas Warton in 1790, quoted in a review by the medical historian W.H. McMenemy. Cure tourism in Malvern got press mention. In a letter dated 18 July 1759 to Mrs Montague, Benjamin Stillingfleet wrote: "I have been at Malvern about twelve days, where, with difficulty, I have got a lodging, the place is so full, nor do I wonder at it, there being some instances of very extraordinary cures, in cases looked on as desperate, even by Dr. Wall, who first brought these waters into vogue...The road is very fine, and made on purpose for the convenience of the drinkers". Chambers, in a footnote to the "song" quoted above, wrote "Though modern visitors do not now lie in bushes, yet so crowded was Malvern one season that a lady of rank and fashion, with her equipage and servants were actually obliged to be sent to the Workhouse. It is now the custom, during the season, to let out this house to visitors, and the money gained this way is applied to the funds for maintaining the poor." Nicholas Vansittart brought his wife Catherine to Malvern for a rest cure in 1809. In 1828, William Addison, the physician of the Duchess of Kent (mother of Queen Victoria) lectured about Malvern at the Royal Institution commending "its pure and invigorating air, the excellence of its water, and the romantic beauty of its scenery".
In 1842 Drs James Manby Gully and James Wilson opened water cure clinics at Malvern, thus beginning the town's prosperity. Based on the therapy offered at Vincent Priessnitz's clinic in Gräfenberg, Silesia, then part of the Austrian Empire (now in the Czech Republic), the centre was Britain's first purpose-built water cure establishment. As the fame of the establishment grew, Gully and Wilson became well-known national figures. Two more clinics were opened at Malvern. Famous patients included Charles Darwin's daughter (who died and is buried in Malvern), Thomas Carlyle, Florence Nightingale, Lord Tennyson, Samuel Wilberforce, and Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, whose writing contributed to the popularity of Malvern water. The fame of Gully and Wilson was not without detractors; Sir Charles Hastings, the founder of the British Medical Association, was extremely critical of hydropathy, and of Dr Gully in particular. The cure was satirized by "Dr. Oddfish".
## Commercialisation
Malvern water has been bottled and distributed in the UK and abroad from as early as the reign of James I, with water bottling at the Holy Well being recorded in 1622. Various local grocers have bottled and distributed Malvern water during the 19th and early 20th centuries, but it was first bottled on a large commercial scale by Schweppes, who opened a bottling plant at Holywell in Malvern Wells in 1850. As official caterers to the Great Exhibition of 1851, Schweppes introduced the water as Malvern Soda, later renaming it Malvern Seltzer Water in 1856. In 1890 Schweppes moved away from Holywell, entered into a contract with a Colwall family, and built a bottling plant in the village in 1892. The Holywell was subsequently leased to John and Henry Cuff, who bottled there until the 1960s. The Holywell became derelict until 2009 when with the aid of a Lottery Heritage grant, production of 1200 bottles per day of Holywell Spring Water was recommenced by an independent family-owned company. The well is believed to be the oldest bottling plant in the world.
In the 1850s Malvern Water was bottled by John and William Burrow at the Bottling Works Spring in Robson Ward's yard on Belle Vue Terrace in Great Malvern. Bottling ceased there in the 1950s and the former bottling works are now furniture showrooms. Water for the Bottling Works Spring is piped from St Ann's Well.
In 1927, Schweppes acquired from the Burrows family Pewtress Spring, in Colwall, on the western side of the Herefordshire Beacon, approximately two miles from Colwall village. The source here emerges at the fault line between the Silurian thrust and the Precambrian diorite and granite above it. The spring was renamed Primeswell Spring, and in 1929 Schweppes commenced bottling. The factory employed 25 people who filled 26 million bottles annually. It was operated by Coca-Cola Enterprises Ltd., and the water was sold under the Schweppes brand name. On 20 October 2010 Coca-Cola Enterprises, who owned the Malvern brand, announced that production would be ceasing as of 3 November 2010. This decision, which was widely criticised both in the town and beyond, was due to the declining market share Malvern has on the overall water market. On 28 October 2011, it was reported that the bottling plant is being sold to a property company.
## Interest groups
Among the interest groups promoting the legacy of Malvern water, the two primary ones are The Malvern Spa Association, and The Friends of Malvern Springs and Wells.
The Malvern Spa Association (MSA) is a non-profit organisation, founded in September 1998, with two primary aims. "To conserve, protect and restore the Springs, Wells, Spouts and Fountains of the Malvern Hills", and "to promote the study, conservation, development and awareness" of them, and of "Great Malvern as a Spa Town". Apart from various fundraising activities and membership fees, the MSA receives funding through the Heritage Lottery Fund, which is managed by the Malvern Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty Unit (Malvern Hills AONB), under the umbrella of the National Association for Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (NAAONB). The Malvern Hills AONB also provides grants via such mechanisms as the Sustainable Development Fund. The MSA was founded by the Spa Water Strategy Working Group, comprising Malvern town councillors and artist Rose Garrard. Its patrons are Lord and Lady Sandys, after whose family a spout located in Spring Lane, Malvern Link is named, and which was restored in 2005 as part of the Malvern heritage Project. In 2004, in order to finance improvements and restoration to 20 historical sites, a grant of £270,000 was awarded by the Heritage Lottery Fund. The MSA produces a free newsletter available at the Tourist Information Centre in Great Malvern, at St Ann's Well and for download.
The Friends of Malvern Springs and Wells is an informal group led by Cora Weaver and Bruce Osborne that identified the 130+ springs and wells of the Malvern Hills in the early 1990s. This was in conjunction with a University of Birmingham project to promote new tourism opportunities. Since then they have published various books and a regular bi-monthly newsletter and promoted interest in the wells, including an award scheme for conservation or renovation of springs and wells and their immediate environment. The award scheme is the St Werstan Award for the Enhancement of Water Heritage, given in honour of St. Werstan, one of the earliest saints associated with Malvern. In August 2008, the group's St Werstan award for conservation or renovation of the springs and wells and their surroundings was presented to Coca-Cola Great Britain. At the behest of the Friends, the company is also sponsoring a project to transfer an iconic mulberry tree sapling from Melbourne, Australia. The sapling derives from a cutting taken from a mulberry tree originally planted in 1936 by George Bernard Shaw at the Malvern Festival. The tree was destroyed in a storm in 2000, but research by members of the Friends group revealed that in 1956, a cutting from the tree was sent to Malvern in Victoria, Australia. The Friends group also assists in the general maintenance of wells and spouts, and in organising events and well dressing ceremonies. According to research made by local historians, a tradition of well dressing in the Malverns dates from the 12th and 13th centuries when around 5 August each year, tribute was paid to St Oswald for water cures. The tradition of well dressing continues, fostered by interest groups and activities such as arts projects.
## Art projects
In 1996 the Malvern Hills District Council appointed a Malvern Spa Water Strategy Working Group. Independently, in June 1996, sculptor Rose Garrard proposed to the MHDC the creation of a sculpture trail by nationally known sculptors, placed at forgotten springs around the town centre. The council began with the installation of new water features as part of its plan to beautify the town centre. In 1997 the District Council implemented a Spring Water Arts Project to map water sources around the hills. Garrard undertook a two-month artist's residency and collaborated with the public, who provided locations of over 200 water sources. Garrard was commissioned to create the drinking spout, Malvhina, which was unveiled on 4 September 1998.
On 26 May 2000, the Enigma Fountain, also by Garrard, was unveiled by the Duke of York. Its cost of £5,000 was funded by the Malvern Hills District Council, public subscription, and support from by Severn Trent Water, West Midlands Arts, and local businesses. Located on the Bellevue Terrace island in the very centre of the town, together with the statue of Edward Elgar, the group of sculptures embodies both music and water, the two major aspects of Malvern's cultural history.
Art projects continue in various ways. Each year in April a well dressing competition is organised around a theme set by the Malvern Spa Association, with Gold, Silver and Bronze awards presented to adult's and children's groups. The well dressing initiative usually takes place over a period of four or five days with the Malvern spouts starting the annual season of well dressing around the country in the Derbyshire tradition. In 2003, photographer Bob Bilsland gave permission to the BBC to publish 21 of his special panaoramic views of the decorated wells and spouts.
For the 2010 competition based on 'Celebrations', a group of pupils of a local primary school decorated the Great Malvern Railway Station Trough with paper figures representing famous people who have visited Malvern, such as Shaw and Elgar, celebrating 150 years of the railway in the town. Also in 2010, the connection of Florence Nightingale with Malvern water is being celebrated with the help of the Malvern Museum's school poster competition.
Other art projects encapsulate different connections with Malvern water. In 2002 the Elmley Foundation donated an 8-foot water clock designed by French sculptor, and horologist Bernard Gitton to the Malvern theatre and the people of Malvern. The clock, on permanent exhibition in the foyer of the theatre, represents the three main industries of the town: its science, theatre, and water. |
14,517,800 | Anti-nuclear movement in Australia | 1,173,476,905 | None | [
"Anti-nuclear movement by country",
"Environmentalism in Australia",
"Nuclear energy in Australia",
"Political movements in Australia",
"Protests in Australia",
"Social movements in Australia",
"Technology in society"
] | Nuclear weapons testing, uranium mining and export, and nuclear power have often been the subject of public debate in Australia, and the anti-nuclear movement in Australia has a long history. Its origins date back to the 1972–1973 debate over French nuclear testing in the Pacific and the 1976–1977 debate about uranium mining in Australia.
Several groups specifically concerned with nuclear issues were established in the mid-1970s, including the Movement Against Uranium Mining and Campaign Against Nuclear Energy (CANE), cooperating with other environmental groups such as Friends of the Earth and the Australian Conservation Foundation. The movement suffered a setback in 1983 when the newly elected Labor Government failed to implement its stated policy of stopping uranium mining. But by the late 1980s, the price of uranium had fallen, the costs of nuclear power had risen, and the anti-nuclear movement seemed to have won its case; CANE was disbanded in 1988.
As of 2015, Australia has no nuclear power stations and five uranium mines, four of which are located in South Australia. Olympic Dam (Roxby Downs) is a large underground mine, Beverley, Four Mile and Honeymoon are in-situ leach mines and Ranger in an open pit mine in the Northern Territory. As of 2021 only two mines are operating (Olympic Dam and Four Mile) following the closure of Beverley and Ranger and the placement of Honeymoon into care-and-maintenance. Uranium mined in Australia is mainly for export. Australia has no nuclear weapons or nuclear-powered vessels.
## History
### 1950s and 1960s
In 1952 the Australian Government established the Rum Jungle Uranium Mine 85 kilometres south of Darwin. Local aboriginal communities were not consulted to the extent of a formal treaty or agreement about mining and the mine site became an emblem for environmental disaster, with a small area of disturbance easily repaired and remedied.
Also in 1952, the Liberal Government passed legislation, the Defence (Special Undertakings) Act 1952, which allowed the British Government access to remote parts of Australia to undertake atmospheric nuclear weapons tests. The general public were largely unaware of the risks from the testing program, stemming from official secrecy about the testing program and the remote locations of the test sites. But as the "Ban the Bomb" movement gathered momentum in Western societies throughout the 1950s, so too did opposition to the British tests in Australia. An opinion poll taken in 1957 showed 49 per cent of the Australian public were opposed to the tests and only 39 per cent in favour.
In 1963, Australia was one of the first signatories to a Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. In 1964, very small Peace Marches which featured "Ban the bomb" placards, were held in several Australian capital cities.
In 1969, a 500 MW nuclear power plant was proposed for the Jervis Bay Territory, 200 km south of Sydney. A local opposition campaign began, and the South Coast Trades and Labour Council (covering workers in the region) announced that it would refuse to build the reactor. Some environmental studies and site works were completed, and two rounds of tenders were called and evaluated, but in 1971 the Australian government decided not to proceed with the project, citing economic reasons.
### 1970s
The Ranger uranium deposits were first discovered by a joint venture between Peko-Wallsend and Electrolytic Zinc Corporation, by airborne survey radiometric signals in October 1969. Remoteness and difficult terrain set the pace of ground investigation, but by about 1972 there was confidence that the Northern Territory of Australia hosted the largest and richest uranium deposits then known to the world.
The 1972–73 debate over French nuclear testing in the Pacific mobilised several groups, including some trade unions. In 1972 the International Court of Justice in a case launched by Australia and New Zealand, and advocated by Dr Helen Caldicott, ordered that the French cease atmospheric nuclear testing at Mururoa atoll. In 1973 Australia's concerns saw it as a champion and an early adopter of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, and around this time, the Government ratified the Seabed Arms Control Treaty. Shortly after this, the Government negotiated with the International Atomic Energy Agency to put in safeguards to ensure Australia could mine and export nuclear material but not breach the intent of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
In 1974 and 1975 concern came to focus on uranium mining in Australia and several Friends of the Earth groups were formed. The Australian Conservation Foundation also began voicing concern about uranium mining and supporting the activities of the grass-roots organisations. Concern about the environmental effects of uranium mining was a significant factor and poor management of waste at an early uranium mine, Rum Jungle, led it to become a significant pollution problem in the 1970s. The Australian anti-nuclear movement also acquired initial impetus from notable individuals who publicly voiced nuclear concerns, such as nuclear scientists Richard Temple and Rob Robotham, and poets Dorothy Green and Judith Wright.
In 1975, Moss Cass, Minister for the Environment and Conservation, led parliamentarians and ALP branch members in expressing concerns about the effects of uranium mining. A key concern was the adverse effect that uranium mining would have on the northern Aboriginal people. Cass said: "nuclear energy creates the most dangerous, insidious and persistent waste products, ever experienced on the planet".
The years 1976 and 1977 saw uranium mining become a major political issue, with the Ranger Inquiry (Fox) report opening up a public debate about uranium mining. Several groups specifically concerned with nuclear issues were established, including the Movement Against Uranium Mining (founded in 1976) and Campaign Against Nuclear Energy (formed in South Australia in 1976), cooperating with other environmental groups such as Friends of the Earth (which came to Australia in 1975) and the Australian Conservation Foundation (formed in 1975).
In November and December 1976, 7,000 people marched through the streets of Australian cities, protesting against uranium mining. The Uranium Moratorium group was formed and it called for a five-year moratorium on uranium mining. In April 1977 the first national demonstration co-ordinated by the Uranium Moratorium brought around 15,000 demonstrators into the streets of Melbourne, 5,000 in Sydney, and smaller numbers elsewhere. A National signature campaign attracted over 250,000 signatures calling for a five-year moratorium. In August, another demonstration brought 50,000 people out nationally and the opposition to uranium mining looked like a potential political force. During 1977 environmentalists also disrupted the loading of yellowcake for export at Sydney’s Glebe Island container terminal.
In 1977, the National Conference of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) passed a motion in favour of an indefinite moratorium on uranium mining, and the anti-nuclear movement acted to support the Labor Party and help it regain office. However, a setback for the movement occurred in 1982 when another ALP conference overturned its anti-uranium policy in favour of a "one mine policy". After the ALP won power in 1983, its 1984 National Conference voted in favour of a "Three mine policy". This referred to the then three existing uranium mines in Australia, Nabarlek, Ranger and Roxby Downs/Olympic Dam, and articulated ALP support for pre-existing mines and contracts, but opposition to any new mining.
In 1977–78, the West Australian Government, under the leadership of Charles Court, announced plans for a nuclear power reactor near Perth. 1977 was seen as the year of mass mobilization in WA, with 300 at the first anti-nuclear demonstration to 9,000 at the third protest in the inner city of Perth. Despite public protest, the WA Government selected a first site for a nuclear reactor in 1979 at Wilbinga, 70 kilometres north of Perth. Court predicted that at least another 20 nuclear power plants would be needed by the end of the century to meet rapidly growing power demand, but all of this never eventuated.
From the late 1970s, a number of agreements were signed enabling the potential peaceful export (and import) of nuclear material:
- In July 1978 with Finland
- August 1978 with the United States of America
- August 1978 with the Philippines
- May 1979 with South Korea
- July 1979, with the United Kingdom
- October 1980, with France for ultimate use by Japan
- March 1981, with Canada
These International agreements created a market for Australia to mine and export uranium.
### 1980s and 1990s
Between 1979 and 1984, the majority of what is now Kakadu National Park was created, surrounding but not including the Ranger uranium mine. Tension between mining and conservation values led to long running controversy around mining in the Park region.
The two themes for the 1980 Hiroshima Day march and rally in Sydney, sponsored by the Movement Against Uranium Mining (MAUM), were: "Keep uranium in the ground" and "No to nuclear war." Later that year, the Sydney city council officially proclaimed Sydney nuclear-free, in an action similar to that taken by many other local councils throughout Australia.
In the 1980s, academic critics (such as Jim Falk) discussed the "deadly connection" between uranium mining, nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons, linking Australia's nuclear policy to nuclear proliferation and the "plutonium economy".
In the 1980s, Australia experienced a significant growth of nuclear disarmament activism:
> On Palm Sunday 1982, an estimated 100,000 Australians participated in anti-nuclear rallies in the nation's biggest cities. Growing year by year, the rallies drew 350,000 participants in 1985. The movement focused on halting Australia's uranium mining and exports, abolishing nuclear weapons, removing foreign military bases from Australia's soil, and creating a nuclear-free Pacific. Public opinion surveys found that about half of Australians opposed uranium mining and export, as well as the visits of U.S. nuclear warships, that 72 percent thought the use of nuclear weapons could never be justified, and that 80 percent favoured building a nuclear-free world.
The Nuclear Disarmament Party won a Senate seat in 1984, but soon faded from the political scene. The years of the Hawke-Keating ALP governments (1983–1996) were characterised by an "uneasy standoff in the uranium debate". The ALP acknowledged community feeling against uranium mining but was reluctant to move against the industry.
The 1986 Palm Sunday anti-nuclear rallies drew 250,000 people. In Melbourne, the seamen's union boycotted the arrival of foreign nuclear warships.
Australia's only nuclear energy education facility, the former School of Nuclear Engineering at the University of New South Wales, closed in 1986.
By the late 1980s, the price of uranium had fallen, and the costs of nuclear power had risen, and the anti-nuclear movement seemed to have won its case. The Campaign Against Nuclear Energy disbanded itself in 1988, two years after the Chernobyl Disaster.
The government policy preventing new uranium mines continued into the 1990s, despite occasional reviews and debate. Following protest marches in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane during 1998, a proposed mine at Jabiluka was blocked.
Also in 1998, there was a proposal from an international consortium, Pangea Resources, to establish a nuclear waste dump in Western Australia. The plan, to store 20 per cent of the world's spent nuclear fuel and weapons material, was "publicly condemned and abandoned".
### 2000s
In 2000, the Ranger Uranium Mine in the Northern Territory and the Roxby Downs/Olympic Dam mine in South Australia continued to operate, but Nabarlek Uranium Mine had closed. A third uranium mine, Beverley Uranium Mine in SA, was also operating. Several advanced projects, such as Honeymoon in SA, Jabiluka in the Northern Territory and Yeelirrie in WA were on hold because of political and indigenous opposition.
In May 2000 there was an anti-nuclear demonstration at the Beverley Uranium Mine, which involved about 100 protesters. Ten of the protesters were mistreated by police and were later awarded more than \$700,000 in damages from the South Australian government.
Following the McClelland Royal Commission, a large clean-up was completed in outback South Australia in 2000, after nuclear testing at Maralinga during the 1950s contaminated the region. The cleanup lasted three years, and cost over A\$100 million, but there was controversy over the methods used and success of the operation.
On 17 December 2001, 46 Greenpeace activists occupied the Lucas Heights facility to protest the construction of a second research reactor. Protestors gained access to the grounds, the HIFAR reactor, the high-level radioactive waste store and the radio tower. Their protest highlighted the security and environmental risks of the production of nuclear materials and the shipment of radioactive waste from the facility.
As uranium prices began rising from about 2003, proponents of nuclear power advocated it as a solution to global warming and the Australian government began taking an interest. However, in June 2005, the Senate passed a motion opposing nuclear power for Australia. Then, in November 2006, the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Industry and Resources released a pro-nuclear report into Australia's uranium. In late 2006 and early 2007, then Prime Minister John Howard made widely reported statements in favour of nuclear power, on environmental grounds.
Faced with these proposals to examine nuclear power as a possible response to climate change, anti-nuclear campaigners and scientists in Australia emphasised claims that nuclear power could not significantly substitute for other power sources, and that uranium mining itself could become a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions. Anti-nuclear campaigns were given added impetus by public concern about the sites for possible reactors: fears exploited by anti-nuclear power political parties in the lead-up to a national election in 2007.
The Rudd Labor government elected in 2007 opposed nuclear power for Australia. The anti-nuclear movement continues to be active in Australia, opposing expansion of existing uranium mines, lobbying against the development of nuclear power in Australia, and criticising proposals for nuclear waste disposal sites, the main candidate being Muckaty station in the Northern Territory.
By April 2009, construction had begun on South Australia's third uranium mine—the Honeymoon Uranium Mine. In October 2009, the Australian government was continuing to plan for a nuclear waste dump in the Northern Territory. However, there was opposition from indigenous people, the NT government, and wider NT community. In November 2009, about 100 anti-nuclear protesters assembled outside the Alice Springs parliamentary sittings, urging the Northern Territory Government not to approve a nearby uranium mine site.
### 2010s
As of 2016, Australia has no nuclear power stations and the former Gillard Labor government was opposed to nuclear power for Australia. Australia has three operating uranium mines at Olympic Dam (Roxby) and Beverley – both in South Australia's north – and at Ranger in the Northern Territory. Australia has no nuclear weapons. Australia operates a research reactor which produces medical radioisotopes at OPAL.
As of early April 2010, more than 200 environmentalists and indigenous people gathered in Tennant Creek to oppose a radioactive waste dump being built on Muckaty Station in the Northern Territory.
Western Australia has a significant share of the Australia's uranium reserves, but between 2002 and 2008, a statewide ban on uranium mining was in force. The ban was lifted when the Liberal Party was voted into power in the state and, as of 2010, many companies are exploring for uranium in Western Australia. One of the industry's major players, the mining company BHP, planned to develop the Yeelirrie uranium project in a 17 billion dollar project. Two other projects in Western Australia are further advanced then BHP's Yeelirrie, these being the Lake Way uranium project, which is pursued by Toro Energy, and the Lake Maitland uranium project, pursued by Mega Uranium. But it is unlikely that any new projects will enter active development until the market improves. As of 2013 uranium prices are very low.
As of late 2010, there are calls for Australians to debate whether the nation should adopt nuclear power as part of its energy mix. Nuclear power is seen to be "a divisive issue that can arouse deep passions among those for and against".
Following the March 2011 Fukushima nuclear emergency in Japan, where three nuclear reactors were damaged by explosions, Ian Lowe sees the nuclear power option as being risky and unworkable for Australia. Lowe says nuclear power is too expensive, with insurmountable problems associated with waste disposal and weapons proliferation. It is also not a fast enough response to address climate change. Lowe advocates renewable energy which is "quicker, less expensive and less dangerous than nuclear".
Nuclear reactors are banned in Queensland and Tasmania. Uranium mining was previously prohibited in New South Wales under the Uranium Prohibition Act of 1986, however in 2012 Premier Barry O'Farrell amended the legislation to allow prospecting and mining of uranium in New South Wales.
In December 2011, the sale of uranium to India was a contentious issue. MPs clashed over the issue and protesters were marched from Sydney's convention centre before Prime Minister Julia Gillard's motion to remove a party ban on uranium sales to India was narrowly supported 206 votes to 185. Long-time anti-nuclear campaigner Peter Garrett MP spoke against the motion.
In March 2012, hundreds of anti-nuclear demonstrators converged on the Australian headquarters of global mining giants BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto. The 500-strong march through southern Melbourne called for an end to uranium mining in Australia, and included speeches and performances by representatives of the expatriate Japanese community as well as Australia's Indigenous communities, who are concerned about the effects of uranium mining near tribal lands. There were also events in Sydney.
A site within Muckaty Station was considered for Australia's low-level and intermediate-level radioactive waste storage and disposal facility. However, the plan was withdrawn following a High Court hearing, and one of the seven clans of traditional owners of Muckaty Station, the Ngapa clan, served papers on the Northern Land Council over the way the process was handled.
More than 400 people joined a "Lizard's Revenge march" to the Olympic Dam site in July 2012. The anti-nuclear activists, including Elder Kevin Buzzacott, protested against the mine expansion and the uranium industry. They say the company and the government have put short-term economic gain ahead of environmental and health concerns. Organiser Nectaria Calan said police harassed protesters, demanding identification and controlling access to and from their campsite. In August 2012, BHP Billiton announced that the expansion was being postponed indefinitely pending investigation of a "new and cheaper design".
Historically, many prospective Australian uranium mines have been constrained by active antinuclear opposition, but state governments have now approved mine development in Western Australia and Queensland. But it is unlikely that any new projects will enter active development until the market improves. As of 2013 uranium prices are very low. Cameco placed the Kintyre project on hold until market prices improve and Paladin has stated that its project proposals (Bigrlyi, Angela/Pamela, Manyingee, Oobagooma, and Valhalla/Skal) need higher uranium market prices before they can proceed. Toro wants to take the Wiluna proposal to the development phase, but has not been successful in attracting equity investors. When market prices go up again, so that mine development is justified, most projects would need at least five years to proceed to production.
In 2013, Prime Minister Tony Abbott supported nuclear power, saying: "nuclear power is the only proven way of generating the base load power Australia needed without producing carbon pollution". Abbott's Coalition's Resources and Energy policy says "the Coalition will formalise the agreement to sell uranium to India". In 2016 under Malcolm Turnbull, both Australian political parties opened the door for uranium exports to India, with trade potentially starting in 2017.
In 2015, South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill announced that a Royal Commission would be held to investigate the state's role in the nuclear fuel cycle. South Australia is currently home to four of Australia's five uranium mines, and the possibility of the state developing nuclear power generation, enrichment and waste storage facilities have previously proven to be contentious issues. The Royal Commission comes at a time of economic contraction for South Australia, which is suffering from job losses in mining and manufacturing sectors. Immediately following the announcement of the Royal Commission, emeritus Prof. Ian Lowe suggested that the current inquiry risks retreading old ground already covered by several previous public inquiries and proposals for nuclear industrialisation. Lowe referred to the 2006 UMPNER review's finding that substantial government subsidies would be required to support nuclear industrial development in Australia, and the 1976-78 Ranger Uranium Environmental Inquiry (Fox Report), which drew attention to the problems of nuclear weapons proliferation and nuclear waste. On 17 April 2015, Lowe was selected as one of five members of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission Expert Advisory Committee.
## Issues
The case against nuclear power and uranium mining in Australia has been concerned with the environmental, political, economic, social and cultural impacts of nuclear energy; with the shortcomings of nuclear power as an energy source; and with presenting a sustainable energy strategy. The most prominent adverse impact of nuclear power is seen to be its potential contribution towards proliferation of nuclear weapons. For example, the 1976 Ranger Inquiry report stated that "The nuclear power industry is unintentionally contributing to an increased risk of nuclear war. This is the most serious hazard associated with the industry".
The health risks associated with nuclear materials have also featured prominently in Australian anti-nuclear campaigns. This has been the case worldwide because of accidents like the Chernobyl disaster, but Australian concerns have also involved specific local factors such as controversy over the health effects of nuclear testing in Australia and the South Pacific, and the emergence of prominent anti-nuclear campaigners Helen Caldicott and Tilman Ruff, who are medical practitioners.
The economics of nuclear power has been a factor in anti-nuclear campaigns, with critics arguing that such power is uneconomical in Australia, particularly given the country's abundance of coal resources.
According to the anti-nuclear movement, most of the problems with nuclear power today are much the same as in the 1970s. Nuclear reactor accidents still occur and there is no convincing solution to the problem of long-lived radioactive waste. Nuclear weapons proliferation continues to occur, notably in Pakistan and North Korea, building on facilities and expertise from civilian nuclear operations. The alternatives to nuclear power, efficient energy use and renewable energy (especially wind power), have been further developed and commercialised.
## Public opinion
A 2009 poll conducted by the Uranium Information Centre found that Australians in the 40 to 55 years age group are the "most trenchantly opposed to nuclear power". This generation was raised during the Cold War, experienced the anti-nuclear movement of the 1970s, witnessed the 1979 partial meltdown of the Three Mile Island reactor in the US, and the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. It was the generation which was also subject to cultural influences including feature films such as the "nuclear industry conspiracies" The China Syndrome and Silkwood and the apocalyptic Dr Strangelove. Younger people are "less resistant" to the idea of nuclear power in Australia. Analysis of opinion polls from 2012 shows a "significant decrease in favourable views of nuclear power" following the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster.
Indigenous land owners have consistently opposed uranium mining and have spoken out about the adverse impact it has on their communities. The British nuclear tests at Maralinga were found to have left significant radiation hazards in land given back to the Maralinga Tjarutja people, and the issue continues to cause indigenous opposition.
## Active groups
## Individuals
There are several prominent Australians who have publicly expressed anti-nuclear views:
- Dorothy Auchterlonie
- Sandra Bloodworth
- David Bradbury (film maker)
- Bob Brown
- Eileen Kampakuta Brown
- Kevin Buzzacott
- Helen Caldicott
- Joseph Camilleri
- Moss Cass
- Ian Cohen
- Michael Denborough
- Mark Diesendorf
- Jim Falk
- Malcolm Fraser
- Peter Garrett
- Jim Green (activist)
- Margaret Holmes
- Avon Hudson
- Jacqui Katona
- Sandra Kanck
- Ian Lowe
- Scott Ludlam
- Yvonne Margarula
- Dee Margetts
- Jillian Marsh
- Kerry Nettle
- David Noonan (environmentalist)
- John Quiggin
- Mia Pepper
- Tilman Ruff
- Nancy Shelley
- Dave Sweeney
- Jo Vallentine
- Giz Watson
- Peter Watts
- Patrick White
- Stuart White
- Bill Williams
- Eileen Wani Wingfield
## See also
- Anti-nuclear protests
- Arkaroola, South Australia
- Australian Renewable Energy Agency
- Australian Uranium Association
- Fallout and Follow Me (1977 play)
- Gavin Mudd
- History of the anti-nuclear movement
- International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament
- List of anti-nuclear groups
- List of Australian inquiries into uranium mining
- List of environmental accidents in the fossil fuel industry in Australia
- Lists of nuclear disasters and radioactive incidents
- Nuclear industry in South Australia
- Renewable energy commercialization
- Renewable energy in Australia
- Say Yes demonstrations |
1,692,598 | Break the Ice (song) | 1,166,274,580 | 2008 single by Britney Spears | [
"2007 songs",
"2008 singles",
"American contemporary R&B songs",
"Animated music videos",
"Britney Spears songs",
"Jive Records singles",
"Music videos directed by Robert Hales",
"Song recordings produced by Danja (record producer)",
"Songs written by Danja (record producer)",
"Songs written by Jim Beanz",
"Songs written by Keri Hilson",
"Songs written by Marcella Araica"
] | "Break the Ice" is a song by American singer Britney Spears from her fifth studio album, Blackout (2007). It was released as the third and final single from the album on March 3, 2008, by Jive Records. The song was written by Nate "Danja" Hills, Jim Beanz, Keri Hilson and Marcella Araica, while production was handled by Danja and vocal production was handled by Beanz. "Radar" was originally planned to be released as the third single, but "Break the Ice" was released after it was chosen by a poll on Spears's official website. Musically, "Break the Ice" is an electro-R&B song with influences of crunk. The song opens with a choir and features synthesizers. Its lyrics deal with an attraction between two people. "Break the Ice" received critical acclaim, with reviewers praising its lyrics, production, Spears' vocal performance and deemed it a strong electronic song from the record.
"Break the Ice" was a moderate success, reaching the top ten in Canada and Finland, and charting within the top 40 in Australia, New Zealand and many other European countries. In the United States, the single reached number 43 on the Billboard Hot 100, while peaking at number one on the Dance Club Songs chart. An accompanying music video, directed by Robert Hales, was released on March 12, 2008. The anime-influenced animation video was based on the superheroine character of Spears's "Toxic" video, and portrays her destroying a highly secured laboratory with several clones, including one of herself. A remix of "Break the Ice" was used as a video interlude during The Circus Starring Britney Spears (2009) and was performed for the first time during her residency show at Planet Hollywood Las Vegas, Britney: Piece of Me (2013–17).
## Background
"Break the Ice" was written by Nate "Danja" Hills, Marcella "Ms. Lago" Araica, Keri Hilson, James Washington and produced by Danja. Spears started working with Danja in July 2006. He explained that the creative process was not difficult at first since he was "left to do pretty much whatever I wanted to", and "if she felt it, she was gonna ride with it. If she didn't, you’d see it in her face." Spears began recording the track in Las Vegas in August 2006, while she was seven months pregnant with her second child, Jayden James. Recording continued at Spears' house in Los Angeles, California, three weeks after she gave birth. Hilson commented that "She gave 150 percent. [...] I don’t know any other mother that would do that." "Radar" was originally planned to be released as the third single from Blackout, according to Ezekiel Lewis of The Clutch. "Break the Ice" was chosen as a single by a poll on Spears' official Jive Records website. On February 11, 2008, it was announced that the song had won, receiving 39% of the total votes.
## Composition
"Break the Ice" is an electro-R&B song with influences of crunk. According to Leah Greenblatt of Entertainment Weekly, "Break the Ice" sounds similar to "Say It Right" by Nelly Furtado. It opens with Spears singing the lines "It's been a while / I know I shouldn't have kept you waiting / But I'm here now", which serve as an apology for being gone so long from the music industry as well as away from her love interest in the song. After the first line, Spears sings over a choir. According to Chuck Arnold of People, Spears delivers her "trademark breathy vocals". In the first verse, synthesizers kick in and run until the end of the second chorus. After it, Spears stops the song and sings "I like this part / It feels kind of good", mimicking Janet Jackson in "Nasty" (1986). The music changes, as described by Tom Ewing of Pitchfork Media, to "[something that] sounds like spacehoppers [are] bouncing in slow motion round a padded cell". The song is constructed in the common verse-chorus form. Lyrically, the song is about two people, in which one of them asks the other to get to know each other and break the ice.
## Critical reception
Eric R. Danton of The Hartford Courant deemed it as a "crunk-style thumper", while calling it one of the "killer tracks" off the album along with "Radar" and "Hot as Ice". Nick Levine of Digital Spy called it "a booming slice of multi-layered electro R&B" and said that it, along with "Radar", is "as avant-garde as pop gets in 2007". A reviewer from Popjustice said "[it] is a really brilliant track", Stephen Thomas Erlewine of Allmusic said some of the songs of Blackout, "really show off the skills of the producers", exemplifying "Gimme More", "Radar", "Break the Ice", "Heaven on Earth" and "Hot as Ice". He also referred to the song as a "stuttering electro-clip".
Jennifer Vineyard of MTV said the song "might have been a stronger album leadoff track than 'Gimme More', [...] since [Spears] re-introduces herself at the top and apologizes for being gone for so long." Kelefe Sanneh of The New York Times said the song was "nearly as good" as previous singles "Gimme More" and "Piece of Me", and described it as a "rave-inspired flirtation". A reviewer from the Ottawa Citizen said that "[t]here's also a lot to like about Break The Ice, Why Should I Be Sad and Perfect Love[r]". Jim Abbott of the Orlando Sentinel said that "Musically, songs such as 'Piece of Me,' 'Radar' and 'Break the Ice' are one-dimensional, robotic exercises." Joan Anderman of The Boston Globe called it "numbing club filler."
## Chart performance
In the United States, "Break the Ice" entered the Billboard Hot 100 at number one hundred on the issue dated March 15, 2008. It peaked at number forty-three on May 24, 2008. Two weeks later, it peaked at number one on the Billboard Hot Dance Club Songs, becoming the third consecutive single from the album to reach the top position of the chart. As of July 2010, "Break the Ice" has sold 688,000 paid digital downloads in the United States. In Canada, the song entered the Canadian Hot 100 at number ninety-seven on March 1, 2008. On April 26, 2008, it reached its peak position of number nine. On May 5, 2008, the track debuted at number forty-one on the Australian ARIA Singles Chart. It peaked at number twenty-three on the issue dated May 19, 2008. In New Zealand, the single debuted at number thirty-seven on April 7, 2008. It peaked at number twenty-four three weeks later. "Break the Ice" entered the UK Singles Chart at number thirty-six on March 31, 2008. On April 20, 2008, it peaked at number fifteen. The song also had moderate success through Europe, reaching the top ten in Belgium (Flanders and Wallonia) and Finland, and the top twenty in Denmark and Sweden. In Denmark, it was certified gold by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) for sales over 7,500 copies.
## Music video
Originally, the remix with Fabolous was initially to be released as the album's third single and have a music video with a chair dancing sequence similar to the video for Spears' 2000 single "Stronger". However, due to her personal life struggles at the time, this idea was cancelled and Spears came up with the idea for creating an animated video instead.
The music video for "Break the Ice" was directed by Robert Hales. It was created with an anime-influenced animation style and was produced by a South Korean animation studio called "Studio Animal" (the name "홍치우", an animator who participated in the production can be seen throughout the music video). It premiered on March 12, 2008 at BlackoutBall.com, a website created exclusively for the premiere, in which fans could access a chat room.
The video begins with Spears wearing a short black bodysuit and knee-high black boots, standing on the roofs of a futuristic city. As the first verse begins, she breaks into a research facility and battles with suited henchmen. Spears ends up gaining access to a highly secured laboratory and walks through aisles of clones held in liquid cocoons. She sees that one is a clone of her, kisses her and plants a bomb on the tank. After this, Spears infiltrates the base of the apparent villain, kissing him, and then destroying him, revealing him to be a robot also. From there, she dodges a bullet and sets off a panic among the newly arrived henchmen, meanwhile the bomb's timer runs lower and lower. Next, there is a wide shot of the building exploding, while Spears is jumping and "Victory" is depicted on the side of the structure. The video ends with the phrase "To be continued...".
## Live performances
A remix of "Break the Ice" was used as a video interlude during The Circus Starring Britney Spears (2009). The song was performed for the first time in 2013, during Spears' Las Vegas residency Britney: Piece of Me. Halfway through the performance of "Gimme More", Spears and her dancers, wearing cowboy-inspired plaid and denim outfits, performed a fragment of "Break the Ice", which was then followed by a dance routine which pays tribute to Michael Jackson and then "Piece of Me". In the revamp of the concert in 2016, the song was moved to the first act of the show with a different choreography. Spears also performed it during her concert at the 2016 Apple Music Festival on September 27, 2016.
According to rehearsal videos published at Spears' social media accounts in late 2018, "Break the Ice" was set to be performed at her planned residency Britney: Domination prior to its cancellation.
## Track listings and formats
- CD single
1. "Break the Ice" – 3:16
2. "Everybody" – 3:16
- CD maxi single
1. "Break the Ice" – 3:16
2. "Break the Ice" (Kaskade Remix) – 5:28
3. "Break the Ice" (Tracy Young Mix) – 6:32
4. "Break the Ice" (Tonal Remix) – 4:52
5. "Break the Ice" (Video Enhancement) – 3:22
- 12-inch vinyl – The Remixes
1. "Break the Ice" (Kaskade Remix) – 5:28
2. "Break the Ice" (Jason Nevins Rock Remix) – 3:18
3. "Break the Ice" (Tonal Remix) – 4:52
4. "Break the Ice" (Mike Rizzo Funk Generation Dub) – 7:14
5. "Break the Ice" (Tracy Young Club Mix) – 8:51
6. "Break the Ice" (Doug Grayson Remix) – 4:43
- Digital download – EP
1. "Break the Ice" – 3:16
2. "Break the Ice" (Jason Nevins Rock Remix) – 3:16
3. "Break the Ice" (Kaskade Remix) – 5:28
- Digital download – Remixes
1. "Break the Ice" (Jason Nevins Extended) – 6:18
2. "Break the Ice" (Jason Nevins Dub) – 6:57
3. "Break the Ice" (Mike Rizzo Generation Club Mix) – 6:41
4. "Break the Ice" (Mike Rizzo Generation Dub) – 7:14
5. "Break the Ice" (Tracy Young Club Mix) – 8:50
6. "Break the Ice" (Tracy Young Dub) – 8:28
## Credits and personnel
Credits for "Break the Ice" are taken from Blackout's liner notes.
- Britney Spears – lead vocals
- Nate "Danja" Hills – songwriting, production
- Marcella Araica – songwriting, instruments, programming, mixing
- Keri Hilson – recording, songwriting, background vocals
- James Washington – songwriting
- Jim Beanz – background vocals
## Charts
### Weekly charts
### Year-end charts
## Certifications
## Release history |
23,796,139 | Tempus Fugit (The X-Files) | 1,167,594,591 | null | [
"1997 American television episodes",
"Television episodes set in New York (state)",
"Television episodes written by Chris Carter (screenwriter)",
"Television episodes written by Frank Spotnitz",
"The X-Files (season 4) episodes"
] | "Tempus Fugit" is the seventeenth episode of the fourth season of the American science fiction television series The X-Files. It premiered on the Fox network on March 16, 1997. It was directed by Rob Bowman, and written by Frank Spotnitz and series creator Chris Carter. "Tempus Fugit" featured guest appearances by Joe Spano, Tom O'Brien and Brendan Beiser, and saw the return of Scott Bellis as alien abductee Max Fenig. The episode helped to explore the overarching mythology, or fictional history of The X-Files. "Tempus Fugit" earned a Nielsen household rating of 11.9, being watched by 18.85 million people in its initial broadcast. The title translates from Latin as "time flies."
The show centers on FBI special agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) who work on cases linked to the paranormal, called X-Files. In the episode, Max Fenig—an old acquaintance of Mulder—is found dead following an airplane crash, which Mulder believes to have been caused by a UFO attempting to abduct Fenig. "Tempus Fugit" is a two-part episode, with the plot continuing in the next episode, "Max".
"Tempus Fugit" was conceived when the series' special effects supervisor Dave Gauthier constructed an elaborate rig capable of simulating a crashing airplane. Carter and Spotnitz expanded upon the idea of a crash to bring back the character of Fenig, who had last been seen in season one's "Fallen Angel". "Tempus Fugit" received mixed to positive critical reception, and earned the production crew two Emmy Award nominations, including a win for Outstanding Sound Editing For A Series.
## Plot
Four years after his abduction, Max Fenig (Scott Bellis) is traveling on Flight 549, which is flying over upstate New York. He watches another man on the plane who seems to be following him. The man heads to the plane's bathroom, where he assembles a zip gun. However, when he comes back out, the airplane begins shaking and a bright light flashes outside, showing that the plane is encountering a UFO. The emergency door next to Max's seat is opened.
Elsewhere, Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) celebrate Scully's birthday. They are approached by a woman named Sharon Graffia, who claims to be Max's sister; she tells them that Max planned to deliver something to Mulder, but that his flight to Washington has crashed. The agents head to the crash site in Northville, New York, and attend an NTSB meeting where Flight 549's final transmissions are shown. Mulder theorizes that the plane was forced down by aliens attempting to abduct Max; the NTSB team, led by chief investigator Mike Millar (Joe Spano), dismisses his claims.
When Mulder and Scully survey the crash site, they realize that there is a nine-minute disparity between the crash and the time on the victims' wristwatches, indicating missing time. Mulder believes that Max was abducted from the plane and that his body will not be found. Meanwhile, Scott Garrett, a Man in Black posing as an NTSB investigator, steals the zip gun from the assassin's body and erases his face and fingerprints with acid. Larold Rehbun, a passenger who sat next to Max, is found alive. His injuries indicate exposure to radiation.
Upon being confronted by Scully, Sharon denies that Max brought a radioactive substance aboard the plane, but gives up details about his underground life. Scully subsequently tells Mulder that Max worked at a nuclear weapons assembly facility in Colorado under an alias, and believes that he may have caused the crash after bringing plutonium on board; Mulder, however, believes that Max was taken off the plane by a UFO, and that Rehbun's injuries were caused by exposure to the craft. Scully informs Mulder that Max's body has already been pulled from the crash site. Meanwhile, Sharon is abducted from her hotel room.
After identifying Max's body, Mulder finds that the wristwatches have been stolen from the other victims. He refutes the NTSB's official explanation of malfunction as a cause of the crash, and is doubtful that the true cause will be found unless they discern what happened during the nine minutes of missing time. The agents visit Sergeant Louis Frish (Tom O'Brien), an air traffic controller from the U.S. Air Force who was on duty during the crash. Frish denies anything unusual happened. However, after the agents leave, Frish and a colleague argue over whether to reveal the "truth" about Flight 549's demise.
After finding Sharon's trashed hotel room, Mulder meets with Millar, who tells him that the door was pulled off the plane from the outside while it was in flight. Later, Frish finds his colleague dead from a faked suicide. A group of commandos arrive to capture Frish, but he escapes. Frish goes to see Mulder and Scully, telling them that he lied before and that his commanding officer had ordered him to track the plane's coordinates as it was being intercepted by a second aircraft. Seconds later, there was an explosion and the plane disappeared from his radar. Mulder believes that a third aircraft, a UFO, approached the plane and was destroyed by the second aircraft, also causing Flight 549 to crash. The agents leave with Frish and are soon chased by the commandos, but they manage to lose them by driving under a landing plane. Meanwhile, Millar returns to the crash site and encounters a UFO. He finds Sharon nearby, having just been returned by her abductors.
Scully returns to Washington with Frish while Mulder heads to Great Sacandaga Lake, searching for the crashed UFO. Scully brings Frish to a local bar where they run into fellow FBI agent Pendrell (Brendan Beiser). Garrett soon enters the bar seeking to kill Frish, accidentally shooting Pendrell instead while Scully shoots him back. Meanwhile, Mulder arrives at the lake where he finds a team of men already searching for the crashed UFO. He dives underwater and finds the craft, including an alien body. Before he can return to the surface, a bright light shines down from above the water.
## Production
### Writing
During the production of the third season, special effects supervisor Dave Gauthier constructed an elaborate mock-up of a Boeing 737 airplane in order to be able to simulate a crash. Series creator Chris Carter decided to make use of this rig during the fourth season. When conceiving of the episode, the desire to add to Fox Mulder's emotional involvement by having someone he knew on board led to the writers bringing back the character of Max Fenig to be that person.
Scott Bellis, who had previously portrayed Fenig in the first season episode "Fallen Angel", had auditioned for other roles on the show in the interim, but had always been rejected by the producers because his character was felt to be too memorable. Bellis met series star David Duchovny at a gym several times, and learnt from him that the character of Max was being considered for a two-part episode. The episode's co-writer Frank Spotnitz did not want to have Fenig's appearance "milked" or do something the show had already done. As such he came up with the idea to kill off Fenig in the first part of the episode, which he felt was "a bold choice".
### Filming
Gauthier's 737 rig—which required 400 U.S. gallons (1,500 L) of hydraulic fluid to mimic an airplane fuselage movement across multiple axes in order to better simulate turbulence; it could rotate 22 degrees each way about its length, and move four feet to either side. The fuselage could be opened up at intervals every 6 feet (1.8 m) to better allow cameras to record inside it. The show's producers wanted the plane crash site and investigation to be as authentic as possible, so they used a National Transportation Safety Board official to act as their technical advisor on the episode to ensure that everything was properly recreated. The NTSB officials noted that the site was authentic in every way "except for the smell"; Carter has noted that this level of verisimilitude left some of the crew members "frightened by their work". Director Rob Bowman admitted that the episode exceeded its given budget, noting that Carter would often defend him from Fox studio officials angry at his production costs.
## Broadcast and reception
"Tempus Fugit" premiered on the Fox network on March 16, 1997, and was first broadcast in the United Kingdom on BBC Two on January 14, 1998. The episode earned a Nielsen household rating of 11.9 with an 18 share, meaning that roughly 11.9 percent of all television-equipped households, and 18 percent of households watching television, were tuned in to the episode. A total of 18.85 million viewers watched this episode during its original airing.
The episode received mixed to positive reviews from critics. Zack Handlen, writing for The A.V. Club, rated "Tempus Fugit" an A−. Handlen praised the effectiveness of the cold open, and noted the episode highlighted how "particularly ruthless" the series was with its recurring cast, noting "the mortality rate helps to create a mood of ever-encroaching doom, as if the darkness that seems about to swallow Mulder and Scully in so many scenes ... is as much symbolic as it is literal". Paula Vitaris, writing for Cinefantastique, rated "Tempus Fugit" two-and-a-half stars out of four, describing it as "gripping" with "lots of action". However, Vitaris felt that the fleeting use of guest star Scott Bellis was "a waste", and that the discovery of an alien corpse towards the end "robs this story of any ambiguity". Robert Shearman and Lars Pearson, in their book Wanting to Believe: A Critical Guide to The X-Files, Millennium & The Lone Gunmen, rated the episode four stars out of five, calling it "the best conspiracy episode we've seen in nearly two years". Shearman and Peason felt that "Tempus Fugit" was "told very clearly, with remarkably little baggage", and praised the acting of guests Tom O'Brien and Joe Spano. Twelve members of the show's post-production crew won the 1997 Emmy Award for Outstanding Sound Editing For A Series for their work on this episode; while four others received a nomination for Outstanding Sound Mixing for a Drama Series. |
42,517,401 | Music of Final Fantasy XIV | 1,171,554,399 | Music from the video game Final Fantasy XIV | [
"Final Fantasy XIV",
"Final Fantasy music",
"Video game music discographies",
"Video game soundtracks"
] | The music for the MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV was composed by Nobuo Uematsu, a regular contributor to the music of the Final Fantasy series. Several other composers including Masayoshi Soken and Naoshi Mizuta contributed music for updates to the game. The music for the game's reboot, Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, and subsequent expansions, is compiled of a collection of original and remixed songs by numerous composers, namely Uematsu, Soken, as well as others including guest composers such as Okabe of the NIER series. Soken was the sound director for both releases of the game. Music from both releases of the game has been released in several albums. A pair of mini-albums containing a handful of selected tracks from XIV, Final Fantasy XIV: Battle Tracks and Final Fantasy XIV: Field Tracks, were released by Square Enix in 2010 when XIV first launched. A soundtrack album titled Final Fantasy XIV - Eorzean Frontiers, containing most of the music that had been released by that point for XIV, was digitally released in 2012. A final soundtrack album for the original release of the game, Before Meteor: Final Fantasy XIV Original Soundtrack, was released in 2013 just before the launch of A Realm Reborn, and contains all of the music that was composed for XIV throughout its lifetime. The latest soundtrack album, Shadowbringers: Final Fantasy XIV Original Soundtrack, was released in 2019. This album contains the music for the third expansion, Shadowbringers, and music from the previous expansion, Stormblood, that was added to the game via patches after the release of that expansion's soundtrack.
The soundtracks for both releases of the game were well received by critics. Uematsu's mix of orchestral and rock tracks for XIV were praised, though the delayed release of a full album drew criticism. Soken's work on A Realm Reborn, including both his original tracks as well as themes carried over from XIV and previous Final Fantasy games, were heavily praised by reviewers for the game. Music from the initial release of the game has been played in the international Distant Worlds Final Fantasy concert series, and books of sheet music for piano arrangements of music from the game have been produced.
## Creation and influence
The massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) Final Fantasy XIV was released in two versions: the original (live between 2010 and 2012), and its remake (Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, live since 2013). The music for XIV was composed by Nobuo Uematsu, who was the lead composer for the first ten main Final Fantasy games and a contributor to the Final Fantasy XI and XII soundtracks. Over the two years that XIV was active, several updates were made to the game, which included additional music composed by Masayoshi Soken, Naoshi Mizuta, Tsuyoshi Sekito and Ryo Yamazaki. XIV was poorly received, and despite the updates, Square Enix decided to take the game offline for a time, and relaunch it with a new development team under a new name. Soken, the sound director for both releases, composed the soundtrack to A Realm Reborn.
Prior to agreeing to create XIV's score, Uematsu had already planned to compose "Kimi ga Iru Kara", the theme song for Final Fantasy XIII. Wanting him to fully focus on XIV, Square Enix asked XIII's main composer Masashi Hamauzu to write the song instead. Thus, XIII was the first main-series Final Fantasy game soundtrack to not include Uematsu's work. Despite XIV being an MMO and thus a new genre for him, Uematsu treated it as any other video game project. Compared to his previous work within the series, Uematsu had considerable creative freedom while composing the soundtrack, because the rest of the production team did not fully envision beforehand how the soundtrack would sound or fit into the game. Uematsu created a mixture of orchestral and rock pieces for the game's battle themes. There was a momentary crisis when he lost most of the data for his completed tracks and needed to hire a data recovery service. He worked as a freelance composer during the project for Square Enix, also composing the music for The Last Story, a game from Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi. The game's theme song, "Answers", was sung by Susan Calloway. She was chosen by Uematsu, who had worked with her during the first Distant Worlds concert and was impressed by her singing abilities.
For A Realm Reborn, Soken was the primary contributor for numerous original and remixed songs, in addition to reprising his XIV role as lead sound director. The primary goal given to the music team was to make the music true to the series, such as remixed versions of traditional Final Fantasy theme songs including the Final Fantasy theme, Chocobo theme, victory fanfare as well as many others. Naoki Yoshida, the game's producer and director, told Soken to "give [the team] something straightforward that anyone could identify as Final Fantasy, with an easy-to-understand, expressive orchestral sound". Soken focused primarily on creating the soundtrack rather than his sound director role. He often created new tracks due to requests from staff members. As the game was developed and released in a shorter timeframe than the original release, Soken and the sound team were given less than a year to create both the music and the various sound effects for the game world. According to Soken, it felt like "enough work for two full games in that time". Unlike the freedom given Uematsu for XIV, most of the tracks for A Realm Reborn had specific guidelines, though Soken was allowed to "do what [he liked]" for Titan's battle theme. Soken sang the vocal work for some tracks, such as the battle theme for Leviathan. Several themes and tracks from the original game were carried over both directly and as a part of new tracks in A Realm Reborn, including the original vocal theme. Soken also remixed pieces from earlier Final Fantasy games for use in special in-game events.
## Original release
### Mini-albums
The mini-albums Final Fantasy XIV: Battle Tracks and Final Fantasy XIV: Field Tracks were the first releases of music from the game, and were published by Square Enix on September 29, 2010, a week after the game itself was released. They feature selected tracks from XIV. The music was composed by Uematsu and arranged by Tsutomu Narita. Kenichiro Fukui also helped arrange some of the pieces on the Field Tracks mini-album. Battle Tracks has nine pieces, and includes the game's opening theme, the boss theme "Nail of the Heavens", and Final Fantasy XIV's rendition of Uematsu's "Victory Fanfare". Field Tracks predominantly features the main themes for the game's countries Ul'dah, Gridania and Limsa Lominsa, along with other pieces of music heard during traveling, for a total of eight tracks. Each mini-album was accompanied by special liner notes by Uematsu describing his experiences writing music for the series, with particular reference to the first game.
Patrick Gann of RPGFan termed the mini-albums as a good return work from Uematsu despite some of the unexpected battle tracks, though he questioned whether the discs themselves would be worth purchasing once a full soundtrack album was released. Jayson Napolitano of Original Sound Version was generally positive, and cited the composition of the battle themes as "a cross between The Black Mages and Uematsu's work on Lord of Vermilion". The more orchestral field tracks were also praised. Chris Greening of Square Enix Music Online termed Field Tracks as "largely likeable", and appreciated Uematsu's use of rock music in Battle Tracks, though he disliked the strategy of releasing two incomplete mini-albums rather than a full soundtrack album. Both mini-albums sold well: Battle Tracks appeared at position \#73 on the Japanese Oricon album charts for a week, while Field Tracks appeared at position \#75 for that same week.
### Eorzean Frontiers
Final Fantasy XIV - Eorzean Frontiers was the first full album of music from the game to be released. It was published by Square Enix on September 1, 2012 as a digital album through iTunes. The tracks include most of the music that had been released for the game at that point, including pieces that were present at the game's launch and some which were added later, including "Rise of the White Raven", the theme for Nael Van Darnus, and the themes for the Grand Companies of Eorzea. All of the tracks from the album were additionally released on the same date in a set of smaller digital mini-albums, also released through iTunes, titled Final Fantasy XIV Frontiers - Gridania, Ishgard, Limsa Lominsa, and Ul'dah. The majority of the music was composed by Nobuo Uematsu, with additional pieces contributed by Masayoshi Soken, Naoshi Mizuta, Tsuyoshi Sekito, and Ryo Yamazaki. The 38 tracks of the album cover a duration of 3:14:24.
Derek Heemsbergen of RPGFan reviewed the album as an "incredibly rich and diverse musical score", and felt that regardless of the reception to the game itself, that the soundtrack was worthy of a Final Fantasy game. Jayson Napolitano of Destructoid, in his review of the album, found that while there were many interesting tracks in the album and that the total length of more than three hours made the album a "good deal", that most of the tracks that he enjoyed the most were previously featured on the Final Fantasy XIV Battle Tracks and Field Tracks mini-albums.
### Before Meteor
On August 14, 2013, two weeks before the release of A Realm Reborn, Square Enix published Before Meteor: Final Fantasy XIV Original Soundtrack, a full soundtrack album with all of the music composed for the original release of the game, which had shut down a year prior. The 104-track album was released on a single Blu-ray disc and included music lasting 6:05:51, with both the original music by Uematsu as well as the additional tracks composed by Mizuta, Yamazaki, Sekito, Soken, and Ai Yamashita during the game's run. The disc also included a remastered version of the "A New Beginning" trailer and a bonus download code for an in-game Dalamud Minion. The Blu-ray disc allowed purchasers to rip digital copies of the album on their Blu-ray devices to play without the disc. Emily McMillan of Video Game Music Online generally praised the music, praising some of the newer tracks and Uematsu's work on the more orchestral tracks. Her main criticisms were that some aspects seemed artificial and that the composers were playing safe with the themes and motifs used. Before Meteor appeared at position \#11 on the Japanese Oricon album charts for its release week and remained in the charts for three weeks.
## A Realm Reborn
### Original Soundtrack
Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn Original Soundtrack was released by Square Enix on March 21, 2014. It was released on a Blu-ray disc and features 119 tracks lasting 6:48:00, composed by numerous artists, including Nobuo Uematsu, Masayoshi Soken, Naoshi Mizuta, and Tsuyoshi Sekito. In addition to the tracks present in the initial launch of A Realm Reborn, the album also includes tracks used in the 2.1 patch, A Realm Awoken. Initial copies of the soundtrack also came with a special "Wind-up Bahamut" in-game pet. Soken contributed to composing, compiling, and remixing all of the music of the game, which includes traditional Final Fantasy themes composed originally by Uematsu, as well as sound effects, in only eight months. Emily McMillan of Video Game Music Online, in her review of the album, termed it a "truly fantastic score", and said that it was superior to the music of the original version of the game. She felt that it was an excellent merging of the traditional Final Fantasy musical style with a modern orchestral score. Mike Salbato of RPGFan also praised the album saying that it was his favorite soundtrack album of 2014, and that he "can't recommend A Realm Reborn's soundtrack highly enough".
In addition to reviews of the album, within the context of the game the music has been well received. Kotaku's Mike Fahey stated that the music was "wonderful, complex and satisfying". He often paused to remove the ambient and interface noises so as to hear it better. GamesRadar's Adam Harshberger called it "a standout even amongst Final Fantasy's storied heritage", while Digital Spy's Mark Langshaw called it "a sonic feast ... that pays appropriate homage to the long-running RPG series". The soundtrack won Video Game Music Online's 2013 Annual Game Music Awards in the Eastern category. A Realm Reborn appeared at position \#10 on the Japanese Oricon album charts for its release week, and remained in the charts for eight weeks, selling over 21,900 copies.
### From Astral to Umbral
Final Fantasy XIV: From Astral to Umbral - Band & Piano Arrangement Album is a Blu-ray album of rock and piano arrangements of music from A Realm Reborn. It features arrangements by Soken, GUNN, Keiko, and Nobuko Toda of pieces originally composed by Soken for the game, and was published by Square Enix on December 17, 2014. The first six tracks on the album are piano covers, performed by Keiko, of field and town themes from the game. The following six are rock covers by Soken's band The Primals of the musical themes from the game of the primals, powerful elemental creatures. The Blu-ray disc also features the original versions of the twelve tracks, videos of in-game scenes where the original music plays, as well as one secret track that needs a password to unlock. Some of the original tracks had not yet been released on an official album when Astral to Umbral was produced. In picking tracks to arrange for this album, Soken wanted to highlight the contrast between the two sides. He chose pieces that he originally composed on piano for the piano selections and on guitar for the rock selections.
Mike Salbato of RPGFan reviewed the album and described it as "a great, if perhaps disjointed experience". He praised the high quality of the arrangements and performances, but questioned the grouping of the more gentle piano tracks alongside the heavy rock pieces.
### Before the Fall
Before the Fall: Final Fantasy XIV Original Soundtrack is an album of music from four patches to Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. These were patches 2.2 through 2.5: "Through the Maelstrom", "Defenders of Eorzea", "Dreams of Ice", and "Before the Fall". The album was released by Square Enix on August 26, 2015 on Blu-ray, and includes all of the music that Soken composed for the updates, as well as several pieces for the updates written by Nobuo Uematsu, Naoshi Mizuta, and Ryo Yamazaki. Of the 61 tracks, 16 were previously released on other albums, primarily the Before Meteor album, and these tracks compose the majority of the non-Soken tracks. It sold around 14,500 copies.
Christopher Huynh of Video Game Music Online held a mixed opinion of the album, which he criticized as "a rather mixed bag of tracks". He said that while some of the tracks were excellent, there were several poor pieces as well, and was disappointed in the repeated material. He ascribed the uneven quality of the album to a lack of an overriding theme to the music, which left it as a collection of disparate material. He also criticized the sound quality, believing that the use of a real orchestra would have helped the orchestral pieces.
## Heavensward
Heavensward: Final Fantasy XIV Original Soundtrack is an album of music for the Heavensward expansion pack to A Realm Reborn. The album was released by Square Enix on February 24, 2016 on Blu-ray, and includes all of the music that Soken composed for the expansion and the 3.1 patch "As Goes Light, So Goes Darkness". A few of the 58 tracks on the album were composed by Yukiko Takada or Nobuo Uematsu, and the majority by Soken. Unlike the prior Before the Fall album, all of the music was new to the album, though 16 of the tracks were previously released in September through November 2015 as Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward -EP- Vol. 1. through 3. It sold over 10,600 copies.
The album was well received by Emily McMillan of Video Game Music Online, who lauded the soundtrack's "brilliant, varied, and extraordinarily fun to hear" themes. She praised the unique atmosphere of the new expansion's music, as well as its integration into the overall game's soundscape. It was also well received by Mike Salbato of RPGFan, who claimed that in the soundtrack, "Uematsu, Soken and co. really got a chance to shine musically". He listed "Dragonsong" and "Heavensward" as the "backbone" of the album, as their themes were prevalent in many other pieces in the soundtrack.
### Duality
Final Fantasy XIV: Duality \~Arrangement Album\~ is a Blu-ray album of rock and piano arrangements of music from Heavensward. It features arrangements by Soken, GUNN, and Keiko of pieces originally composed by Soken for the game, and was published by Square Enix on December 7, 2016. Like From Astral to Umbral, it is split between piano and rock band covers; the first six tracks are piano covers, performed by Keiko, of field and town themes from the game, while the following seven are rock covers by Soken's band The Primals of the musical themes from the game of the primals. The final track on the album is an acoustic and vocal cover of Oblivion, which was a rock song in the original game.
Mike Salbato of RPGFan reviewed the album and described it in similar terms to From Astral, the first arrangement album for the game. He praised the high quality of the arrangements and performances, but found the piano arrangements more interesting for their originality than the rock arrangements; unlike for the From Astral rock arrangements, many of the Duality arrangements were of rock or rock-inspired tracks, which he felt left the arrangements feeling superfluous. He concluded, however, that the piano arrangements and Oblivion cover made the album an "easy recommendation". Tien Hoang of VGMOnline felt it was inferior to From Astral; he described the piano tracks as "fine to listen to", but "not very memorable", and the rock arrangements as enjoyable but predictable and lacking the novelty of the first arranged album.
### The Far Edge of Fate
A soundtrack album composed of songs from Patch 3.2 through Patch 3.5, was released on 7 June 2017. It sold over 8,900 copies. Tien Hoang of VGMOnline reviewed the album and felt it contained several "great tracks", but was also repetitive.
### Orchestral albums
An album of orchestral arrangements from A Realm Reborn and Heavensward, Final Fantasy XIV Orchestral Arrangement Album, was released on September 20, 2017. Performed by the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, the eight-track album includes arrangements from Sachiko Miyano, Yoshitaka Suzuki, Kenichi Kuroda, Takahiro Tsuji, and Shota Nakama. An expanded eighteen-track album was released on Blu-ray on December 20 the same year, as Eorzean Symphony: Final Fantasy XIV Orchestral Album in two versions, one containing studio recordings and one containing live concert recordings. Only two tracks are not included in the original Orchestral Arrangement Album or are from the game itself with minor changes. Tien Hoang of VGMOnline reviewed both albums; they felt that both albums included a solid set of arrangements and performances, though none were particularly innovative or creative.
### The Primals
The Primals, an album of rock arrangements by the eponymous band created by composer Masayoshi Soken, was released on May 16, 2018. It monstly contains arrangements that were included in the From Astral to Umbral and Duality albums, with some additional tracks from the Heavensward patches. Tien Hoang of VGMOnline reviewed the album, and found that the tracks worked better together on a dedicated album then they had alongside other arrangement styles in their original albums.
## Stormblood
A soundtrack album composed of songs from the Stormblood expansion, covering Patch 4.0 through Patch 4.3, was released on July 4, 2018. The 105-track Blu-ray album was reviewed by Tien Hoang of VGMOnline, who highly praised the album's quality and emotional impact, though they felt the breadth of references to prior games' music left the album less focused than the album for the Heavensward expansion.
### Piano
An album of piano arrangements, Piano Collections Final Fantasy XIV, was released on March 6, 2019. The 17-track album includes piano renditions of songs from throughout the game's soundtrack. It was reviewed by Tien Hoang of VGMOnline, who found it enjoyable and felt the arrangements new to the album were superior to the inconsequential arrangements of From Astral to Umbral or "improvisational" arrangements from Duality.
### Journeys
Journeys: Final Fantasy XIV Arrangement Album is an album of arranged songs from the Heavensward and Stormblood expansions, split between piano and rock arrangements and released on June 19, 2019. Several of the eighteen tracks were previously included in The Primals and the Final Fantasy XIV Piano Collections albums. In Tien Hoang of VGMOnline's review, he termed it the best of the piano/rock arrangement albums released to date, with creative arrangements of solid pieces.
## Shadowbringers
An album composed of songs from Patch 4.4 through Patch 5.05, covering the Shadowbringers expansion, was released on September 11, 2019.
### Pulse
An album of electronic remixes of Final Fantasy XIV tracks, Pulse: Final Fantasy XIV Remix Album, was released on September 30, 2020. The fourteen-track album contains remixes by Takafumi Imamura, Daiki Ishikawa, and Masayoshi Soken, covering songs from A Realm Reborn and the Heavensward, Stormblood, and Shadowbringers expansions. It was reviewed by Tien Hoang of VGMOnline, who found it "solid and entertaining" and one of the more successful arrangement projects of the game's music.
### Death Unto Dawn
Another album, composed of songs from Patch 5.1 through 5.55, was released on September 15, 2021.
## Legacy
Four tracks from Final Fantasy XIV ("Navigator's Glory", "Twilight Over Thanalan", "Primal Judgement", and an orchestral rendition of "Answers" with vocals by Susan Calloway) were included in the Distant Worlds: Music from Final Fantasy Returning Home concert on November 6 and 7, 2010 in Tokyo, Japan, which was released as a CD-DVD package in 2011. Those four tracks along with "Beneath Bloodied Banners" were then added to the general setlist options for the international Distant Worlds: Music from Final Fantasy concert tour. Tracks from A Realm Reborn were included in the Nintendo 3DS rhythm game Theatrhythm Final Fantasy: Curtain Call. An 88-page book of sheet music for piano arrangements of songs from the soundtrack titled Final Fantasy XIV Piano Solo Sheet Music was published by Dream Music Factory in 2010, containing the tracks featured in the mini-albums. Dream Music Factory also published piano-arranged sheet music for Before Meteor in 2013 titled Before Meteor: Final Fantasy XIV Piano Solo Sheet Music.
A series of concerts of music from Final Fantasy XIV began in 2017, titled Eorzean Symphony. The series began in September with a three-night set of concerts in Tokyo performed by the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, led by conductor Hirofumi Kurita. It continued in June 2018 with another concert in Los Angeles and in then again in August in Dortmund, Germany. An album was released on December 20, 2017 containing music from the Tokyo concerts; a Blu-ray release contains sixteen tracks as well as video from the concerts, while a CD release contains eight tracks. The album sold over 13,100 copies. |
1,886,675 | John Crichton-Stuart, 2nd Marquess of Bute | 1,170,571,327 | British noble (1793–1848) | [
"1793 births",
"1848 deaths",
"19th-century Welsh businesspeople",
"British businesspeople in the coal industry",
"Businesspeople from Cardiff",
"Fellows of the Royal Society",
"Glamorgan Militia officers",
"Knights of the Thistle",
"Lord-Lieutenants of Buteshire",
"Lord-Lieutenants of Glamorgan",
"Lords High Commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland",
"Marquesses of Bute"
] | John Crichton-Stuart, 2nd Marquess of Bute, KT, FRS (10 August 1793 – 18 March 1848), styled Lord Mount Stuart between 1794 and 1814, was a wealthy aristocrat and industrialist in Georgian and early Victorian Britain. He developed the coal and iron industries across South Wales and built the Cardiff Docks.
Bute's father, John, Lord Mount Stuart, died a few months after he was born and as a young child he was brought up first by his mother, the former Lady Elizabeth McDougall-Crichton, and later by his paternal grandfather, John Stuart, 1st Marquess of Bute. He travelled widely across Europe before attending Cambridge University. He contracted an eye condition and remained partially sighted for the rest of his life.
Having inherited large estates across Britain, he married his first wife, Lady Maria North, in 1818, and together they lived a relatively secluded life in Mount Stuart House in Scotland, one of Bute's four seats. Bute was dour but industrious, with a flair for land management. He focused his daily routine around extensive correspondence with his estate managers, making biennial tours of his lands around the country. The couple did not conceive any children, and Maria died in 1841. Bute remarried four years later, to Lady Sophia Rawdon-Hastings, and she gave birth to Bute's only child, John, in 1847.
Bute was a member of the House of Lords and controlled the votes of several members of the House of Commons. He was a political and religious conservative, a follower of the Duke of Wellington, but rarely took part in national debates unless his own commercial interests were involved. Early on, Bute realised the vast wealth that lay in the South Wales coalfields and set about commercially exploiting them through local ironmasters and colliers.
He constructed the Cardiff Docks, a major project which, despite running heavily over budget, enabled further exports of iron and coal and magnified the value of his lands in Glamorganshire. When violence broke out in the Merthyr Rising of 1831, Bute led the government response from Cardiff Castle, despatching military forces, deploying spies and keeping Whitehall informed throughout. The contemporary press praised the marquess as "the creator of modern Cardiff", and on his death he left vast wealth to his son.
## Background and personal life
Bute was the son of John, Lord Mount Stuart, and the former Lady Elizabeth McDouall-Crichton. His parents were both from wealthy, aristocratic backgrounds; his father was due to become the Marquess of Bute, with extensive landholdings in Scotland and in South Wales, and his mother was the sole heir to the Crichton estates, with over 63,980 acres (25,890 ha) of land in Scotland. Bute's father died in a riding accident in February 1794, leaving Elizabeth to give birth to Bute's younger brother, Patrick Stuart, later that year.
Initially Bute was brought up at Dumfries House by his mother and grandmother, but following their deaths he passed into the care of his grandfather, the 1st Marquess of Bute, and travelled with him across England and Europe. His family considered him to be clever and he went to study at Christ's College in Cambridge in 1809. Over the next few years he visited the Mediterranean, Scandinavia and Russia, taking a keen interest in land economics. He developed an eye condition during this period and became partially blind, leaving him unable to travel without assistance or to tolerate bright lights, and finding it difficult to read or write.
His maternal grandfather, Lord Dumfries, died in 1803, followed by his paternal grandfather in 1814, with Bute inheriting both sets of estates and adding Crichton to his surname after Lord Dumfries. As a consequence he held many hereditary titles and posts: in addition to being the Marquess of Bute, he was also the Earl of Windsor, Viscount Mountjoy, Baron Mount Stuart, Baron Cardiff, the Earl of Dumfries and Bute, the Viscount of Ayr and Kingarth, Baron Crichton, Lord Crichton of Sanquhar and Cumnock, and Lord Mount Stuart Cumra and Inchmarnock, and a Baronet of Nova Scotia. He was the Keeper of Rothsay Castle, the Lord Lieutenant and Custos Rotulorum of Glamorgan, the Lord Lieutenant, the hereditary Sheriff and Coroner of Buteshire, and the High Steward of Banbury.
Bute had four major seats, Mount Stuart House on the Isle of Bute, Dumfries House in Ayrshire, Luton Hoo in Bedfordshire, and Cardiff Castle in South Wales, with his London townhouse, Bute House, on Campden Hill in Kensington. Bute preferred to live in Mount Stuart House; he disliked London and only spent a few weeks in Cardiff Castle each year. Twice each year he would travel from Mount Stuart House through Ayrshire to Edinburgh, down through northern England to London, and on to Cardiff and his South Wales estates.
Concerned about his growing blindness, and not enjoying the social life in London, Bute retired to his estates on the Isle of Bute for the next six years. While recovering, Bute married his first wife, Lady Maria North, in 1818. Maria was one of the three daughters of the 3rd Earl of Guilford, and a wealthy heiress. £40,000 was settled on her at the time of her marriage and she was due to inherit a third of her father's extensive estates. Contemporaries considered Maria a kind and pleasant woman, but she was often unwell and the marriage proved childless. In 1820 his portrait was painted by Henry Raeburn, and published two years later as an engraving by William Ward. In 1827 his father-in-law died and Maria inherited lands worth over £110,000.
The historian John Davies describes Bute as "dour, remote and overbearing on first acquaintance" but with a "sense of responsibility, considerable imagination and an enormous capacity for hard work". By the aristocratic standards of the day, Bute lived a reclusive lifestyle. As a result of his personality and poor eyesight, he did not enjoy hunting, shooting, or large social gatherings, nor did he like racehorses or gambling. His first wife's illnesses added to this sense of exclusion from wider aristocratic society. Compared to other landowners of the period, Bute was relatively philanthropic, giving away around seven to eight percent of his rental income from South Wales in charitable donations, for example. He was keen to fund local schools and to construct new churches, partially because in doing so he was able to discourage any moves towards Nonconformism and the disestablishment of the official Church.
In 1841 Lady Maria died, and Bute blamed his excessive focus on the dock programme for exacerbating his wife's illness. As a result of the original marriage agreement, Bute continued to draw the incomes from his late wife's property for the remainder of his life, even though officially the estates would ultimately pass to Maria's sister, Lady Susan, on his own death. In November 1843, a fire swept through Luton Hoo House, destroying the interior; the house's historic library survived, however, and most of its famous collection of paintings were rescued from the blaze; it was subsequently sold off by Bute. From 1843, the London house was let out: first to the Lascelles family until 1856, then to the Duke of Rutland until 1888. Bute House was later acquired by Charles Weld-Blundell, who renamed it Blundell House: it was demolished 1912–1913.
Bute was created a Knight of the Thistle in 1843 by Queen Victoria. In 1845 Bute fell from his horse and injured his eyes further in the accident, making it still harder for him to read and write. Bute remarried the same year, this time to Lady Sophia Rawdon-Hastings, the daughter of the Marquess of Hastings. Sophia was obsessive, hard to please and did not get on well with John's family, especially his brother. She soon became pregnant, but gave birth to a stillborn child; the couple's second child, whom they named John, was successfully born in 1847.
Bute's relationship with his brother Patrick was often difficult. Their political views did not coincide, as Patrick was much more liberal than Bute and favoured political reform. Although Bute arranged for Patrick to become a Member of Parliament in 1818, in 1831 their differing views resulted in Bute removing him from Parliament. For many years, Patrick had good reason to expect that Bute would die childless, leaving him to inherit the family estates; after Bute's death, he disputed the occupancy of Cardiff Castle with Lady Sophia.
## Landowner and industrialist
### Estate management
Bute was determined to develop his different estates and receive the best possible return from them. He was an active, ambitious manager, quick to generate new ideas for the properties, and spent the majority of his time managing his properties . Despite his poor eyesight, he wrote at least six letters to his managers each day. He had a detailed understanding of his various estates and businesses; he attempted to keep up with affairs in Glamorgan, for example, by reading the local Welsh newspapers from his house in Scotland and through exchanging letters with influential local figures. Bute recognised that his land holdings were too extended and disparate to be easily managed and attempted to rationalise them. He attempted to sell his Luton estates in the early 1820s but failed to obtain an adequate price; he successfully sold them in the early 1840s. Luton and Luton Hoo was finally sold in 1845, by then comprising around 3,600 acres (1,500 ha).
Unusually for an aristocrat of the period, Bute owned almost all of his lands fully, as an owner in fee simple, rather than having his rights diluted through arrangements with trustees. When he married in 1818, Bute placed his English and Wales estates into a trustee arrangement for any future children, but this agreement expired with Lady Maria's death in 1842; when he remarried in 1845 a similar trustee agreement was set up, although in this version the Glamorgan estates were administered separately from his other holdings in England and Wales. Bute continued to run his network of estates and estate managers personally, helped by Onesipherus Bruce, a barrister-agent and close friend.
As early as 1815, Bute had his Glamorgan estates fully surveyed, which highlighted that the estates had been neglected for many years and were now in a poor condition. Edward Richards became the senior official in charge of the estates by 1824 and represented Bute on both estate and political affairs across the region. Despite this, Bute retained the final authority over even quite minor issues on the estates, including making decisions on the buttons to be used on local school uniforms or the reuse of a broken flag pole, for example, which could result in considerable delays as letters were sent between South Wales and Scotland. As the complexity of the Glamorgan estates grew, more officials were appointed to help manage the docks, farms and mineral interests, but these all reported separately to Bute, putting increasing pressure on the marquess.
On the Isle of Bute, the marquess expanded his properties, purchasing land in Ascog, Kilmahalmag and Etterick Mill.
### Glamorganshire
Bute was closely involved in the developments across Glamorganshire during the first half of the 19th century. The region saw tremendous economic and social changes in a short period. The population almost trebled in the first forty years of the century and industrial outputs soared, with the output of pig iron increasing from 34,000 to 277,000 tons between 1796 and 1830. Industry and mining replaced agriculture as the main sources of work. In driving forward and responding to these changes, Bute transformed his South Wales estate into a major industrial enterprise.
Bute's land holdings in Glamorgan were spread out across the county and he took steps to consolidate them, selling around 1,800 acres (730 ha) of some of the outlying properties in the west and investing heavily in buying 4,600 acres (1,900 ha) of land around Cardiff between 1814 and 1826. The rising prices of land and the costs of the docks brought an end to this expansion. Estimating the profitability of the Glamorgan estates is challenging because of the way that the accounts were drawn up during the period, but estimates suggest that once land purchases and the dock building cost were factored in, the estates cost the marquess much more than they delivered in income. Bute borrowed heavily; he had inherited debts of £62,500, but by the time of his death owed £493,887. Financing and supporting this debt was difficult, particularly during the early 1840s, when credit was hard to come by, and John was forced to juggle lenders and different lines of credit. He believed that ultimately his investments would provide a rich return, and in 1844 noted that he thought "well of the prospects of my income in the distance".
The economic growth across South Wales drove up the demand for new housing for the growing workforce. Bute was not prepared to sell any of his lands for housing, and did not see much profit in building and renting housing himself, but was prepared to lease land in the growing urban areas and mining communities for land development. Initially, he attempted to negotiate 63-year long leases, which would have given his successors additional, early flexibility in how they managed the land, but these proved unpopular so he reverted to offering the more typical 99-year leases. None of the contracts offered by Bute allowed the lessee to buy the freehold or automatically renew the lease at the end of this term, which ultimately resulted in substantial political difficulties for the third and fourth marquesses when there was a storm of complaints in the late 19th and early 20th century. Bute left the style of the early developments up to the lessees, but was concerned by the poor results. Bute then began to approve the designs for new buildings personally, laying out some grand streets in the centre of Cardiff and retaining open areas for eventual use as parks. Very little money was invested in the sewage and drainage systems for his new developments, however, and a damning 1850 inquiry showed that this had resulted in cholera outbreaks across the town.
At the start of the 19th century, scientific investigation began to indicate that the Glamorgan valleys were rich with coal deposits. Bute, who already owned coal mines in County Durham, commissioned further surveys in 1817 and 1823–24 which showed that there were potentially huge profits to be made from the reserves, both from the coal sitting beneath Bute's own lands, but also from the coal under common lands in the region that Bute could claim through his feudal titles. Bute set about consolidating his rights and existing investments during the late 1820s and 1830s, acquiring extensive rights to the coalfields in the process. Bute established and managed a few colleries – such as that at Rhigos – directly, but given the investment costs and attention they took up, generally preferred to lease out his coal fields and claim a royalty on the coal mined instead. The lessees might be iron-masters, who used the coal in their own operations, or colliery owners who sold the coal on to industrial or domestic customers. The profits increased from £872 in the second half of 1826, to £10,756 in 1848–49.
### Cardiff Docks
Between 1822 and 1848 Bute played a central role in the creation of the Cardiff Docks. The idea was first put forward to Bute by one of his staff in 1822, who suggested that, with the right investment, Cardiff could be transformed into a major port for exporting coal and iron. The existing seaport, used by the Glamorganshire Canal, was small and inefficient. The new port would then deliver a direct return to Bute from shipping rates, improve the value of his lands in Cardiff itself and increase the value of the royalties he could charge on his coal fields. Initially Bute opposed plans for docks put forward by the local ironmasters, but then changed his mind and pushed forward with his own scheme shortly afterward.
The first phase was to build a new dock and connecting canal in Cardiff, making the Glamorganshire Canal redundant in the process, at an estimated cost of £66,600, considered to opponents to be a "wild speculation". Parliamentary permission was acquired in 1830, despite opposition from the local canal companies of iron masters. The project proved more complex than originally planned, driving Bute to become irritable and angry with almost all of his associates, but the dock opened successfully in 1839. The costs of building the docks had been far more than anticipated, however. Instead of the original estimate, construction costs had soared to £350,000, reaching £10,000 a month in 1837. Bute had to mortgage his local estates to raise the sums required to finish the project. To make matters worse, when they first opened the docks did not receive the traffic he had expected, particularly from the larger ships; Bute put this down to a coalition of ironmasters and others intent on ruining him.
Bute responded by putting commercial pressure on shipping companies to abandon the Glamorganshire Canal and using his feudal rights to force shippers to move their wharfs to his docks. His efforts paid off and although trade through the docks only came to 8,000 tons in 1839, they then rose quickly, reaching 827,000 tons by 1849. Between 1841 and 1848 the docks brought in a gross income of just under £68,000, a relatively disappointing figure compared to the size of the investment. Successive marquesses would find themselves under huge pressure to continue investing and expanding in the docks and subsequent phases of construction over the coming decades.
## Politics
### National
Bute was born into the pre-Reform system of government in Britain. The British Parliament was divided into the hereditary House of Lords and the elected House of Commons, but voting systems varied widely across England and in many cases only very small numbers of local people were enfranchised to vote. Some members of the House of Lords, termed "patrons", often controlled these "closed" or "nominated" seats in the Commons, effectively appointing their own candidates. Criticism of the system, led by the Whigs, grew during the first half of Bute's life.
Bute was a member of the House of Lords, able to vote on national affairs, but he had a reputation for not attending unless to vote on acts relating to his estates or business interests. When he did vote, it was usually as a moderate conservative, and Bute himself described himself as a follower of the Duke of Wellington, by then a leading Tory politician. John was in favour of Catholic Emancipation, opposed to slavery, the New Poor Law and the Game Laws. Like Wellington, he was in favour of repealing the Corn Laws. He passionately opposed electoral reform, however, and any attempts to disestablish the Church of England or Scotland. Bute had strong views on the necessity of encouraging the poor to work, and was in favour of removing the Irish poor from the mainland back to Ireland. He was a notoriously poor public speaker.
In addition to his personal role in Parliament, Bute sought to control the votes of members of the House of Commons, primarily to ensure the passage of legislation affecting his business interests. Initially, the Isle of Bute had only 21 voters who were dominated by his private estate, but it only returned a Member of Parliament in alternate elections, and his estates in Luton were too limited to allow him to influence the electoral process there. The best remaining option for Bute was to control the voting in Cardiff, but even here he had to choose his candidate carefully and apply careful financial pressure through his control of leases and rents to ensure their election.
In 1832 the Reform Act was passed by Parliament, widening the electorate across the country. The Isle of Bute's electorate rose to 300 and acquired a permanent Member of Parliament, still controlled by Bute. Cardiff saw a short-term drop in its electorate as a result of the act, and Bute benefited from the granting of the vote to many of his richer agricultural tenants. In the aftermath of the reforms, Bute secretly sponsored the creation of the conservative newspaper the Glamorgan Monmouth and Brecon Gazette and Merthyr Guardian, to increase support across the county, and underwrote its losses for many years.
From 1842 to 1846 he acted as Her Majesty's High Commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. He was known for his generosity as a host in this role. He was in office during the schism in the Church of Scotland known as "the Disruption", when many many ministers of the Church broke away from the established Church to form the Free Church. Bute took a firm line on the matter: when his head-gardener at Mount Stuart House joined the Free Church, he was immediately sacked, and when the minister at one of Bute's churches in the north of the island attempted to hold a Free Church ceremony there, Bute demanded the keys to the church be returned and had the property closed up.
### South Wales
#### Re-establishing authority
Bute was determined to control the local government around Cardiff, considering it part of his rights and duties as a major landowner and aristocrat. On inheriting his estates, however, he found himself facing a difficult political situation. The Butes' grip on Glamorganshire had been weakened in the late 18th century, and the management of their political interests had been left for many years in the hands of John Wood, a local solicitor, whose family was embroiled in local politics, with their own set of interests. Glamorgan was also politically split between factions in the west and the east of the county, with most of Bute's estates in the eastern half. Bute's residence in the area, Cardiff Castle, was understaffed and regarded as unsuitable as a residence; consequently, he lacked the easy local patronage that would have come with a major, properly functioning establishment.
There were tensions between Bute and the new industrialists around the region, including ironmasters such as John Guest, the master of the Dowlais Ironworks. Bute was a financial competitor or landlord with many of these men, and keen to drive as good a deal as possible in his negotiations with them. He also had political differences, seeing himself as a benevolent feudal lord in South Wales, and perceiving the local iron-masters as arrogant, power-hungry individuals, abusing their economic power towards communities and workers.
Nonetheless, Bute was able to personally appoint the Constable of Cardiff Castle, and the constable by law acted as the effective mayor of Cardiff, ran the town's council and had wide powers when appointing local officials. He inherited the title of Lord-Lieutenant of the county in 1815, giving him the right to recommend the appointments of new magistrates and various other civic posts; potential candidates for these posts were advised to vote for Bute's representatives at elections. In 1825 he became the Colonel of the Royal Glamorgan Light Infantry Militia, and used this authority to instruct the militia to vote for his candidates. Those who publicly voted against Bute faced charitable donations and support being cut off. His later control of the Cardiff Docks also helped to provide patronage and influence voting behaviour.
In 1817, John Wood died in the midst of a financial scandal, and Bute decided to appoint two of his rivals to the posts of Constable and Cardiff's Town Clerk. This would have reaffirmed Bute's power to change the appointments and broken the Wood's family hold on local power, but it provoked a storm of local political wrangling. The Wood family turned on Bute, arguing that he should abandon his claims to control local Welsh affairs from Scotland. Bute replied by trying to crush the Wood family's bank and stacking the town council with his appointees in early 1818. The Woods successfully took legal action, challenging Bute's authority to take these actions, and anti-Bute violence flared that summer, resulting in arrests by Special Constables appointed by Bute. The pro-Bute faction in Cardiff rallied and the Woods were defeated at the Parliamentary elections that year, the results reaffirming Bute's authority over the town council.
#### Merthyr Rising
Bute played a role in the event of the Merthyr Rising, a large, armed industrial protest that occurred in Merthyr Tydfil in South Wales in 1831. Political tensions amongst the working classes in Glamorgan had grown during the 1820s: although wages were impressive by contemporary standards during good years, they deteriorated quickly during depressions, plunging many into destitution; sanitation and health standards in the fast-growing industrial communities were appalling, child mortality rates were extremely high. 1831 saw a severe economic depression, with wages falling quickly and food prices rising, and complaints against the local debt courts and their bailiffs were numerous. Nationally, the electoral reform movement was making considerable protests and protests against the Corn Laws—which kept the prices of food high—were growing. In South Wales, several of the major ironmasters were associated with these movements, promoting reform under the Whig administration voted into power between April and June 1831.
By late 1830, and certainly by the spring of 1831, trouble in South Wales looked likely and, probably in response, Bute broke from his normal annual plans and in May travelled south from Scotland to Cardiff Castle. With a reform bill looking likely, tensions grew between the different political factions in Glamorganshire and how the potential new parliamentary seats should be shared out, especially between Bute and his conservative allies, Crawshay and Guest. Radical demonstrations occurred in Merthyr Tydfil, one of the largest industrial communities, in May, and the crowd set light to effigies of conservative politicians. Violence broke out and arrests were made on 10 May; the prisoners were released by the angry crowd and the local authorities effectively lost any control of the town. A general insurrection ensued on 30 May.
Two local magistrates, J. Bruce and Anthony Hill, were stranded in the Castle Inn in Merthyr Tydfil. They swore in around 70 men as special constables, but they were heavily outnumbered by the radical crowds. Bruce wrote an urgent letter to Bute in Cardiff Castle, asking for urgent advice on whether to call in the armed forces, and querying whether the Marquess had readied the Militia for action. Huge crowds marched on the local iron works, stopping production. The messages from Merthyr Tydfil reached Bute that afternoon, who began to assemble the Eastern and Central Yeomanry, Militia and transport ready for deployment. Bute paused until the morning, hoping to hear better news, but messengers bought more desperate news from Bruce and Hill, and the Yeomanry were dispatched. Meanwhile, an 80-man unit of the 93rd Foot had arrived in the Castle Inn from Brecon. Bute continued to keep Whitehall informed of the events by letter throughout.
On the morning of 3 May, the 93rd Foot reached the Castle Inn, where the magistrates had been joined by the established figures of the town, deputised as constables, including the High Sheriff and most of the ironmasters. Outside, the radical crowds had grown to an estimated number of between 7,000 and 10,000. Tensions rose alarmingly and the Riot Act was read in English and Welsh. Violence flared, the crowds attempted to seize the soldiers' weapons and the soldiers responded with volleys of musket fire. The town's working classes exploded in anger and set about searching the region for weapons. A messenger escaped the inn to reach Bute in Cardiff, who set about mobilising all the remaining armed forces he had available. Bute also despatched Lieutenant-Colonel Richard Morgan of the Militia into Merthyr to replace the commander of the 93rd Foot who had been badly injured.
The men in the Castle Inn retreated to Penydarren House, who were joined by the initial reinforcements from the Yeomanry, bringing the establishment's numbers to around 300, not all of them were armed and able to fight. They faced increasingly well-armed insurgents and Bute became increasingly concerned about the quality of the opposition facing his men. Bute sent spies into the insurgency, and nearby Cyfarthfa Castle was pressed into service as an observation post. Bute mobilised military pensioners, and used them to start to bring Penydarren House additional weaponry from Cardiff; he was advised to be careful, however, in case the shipments fell into the hands of the insurgency. Morgan's forces were able to prevent the radical crowds from entering either Penydarren or Cyfartha, and Bute arrested potential insurgents in Cardiff.
On 16 May, Morgan was in a position to advance in force into Merthyr, pushing forward and taking advantage of the poor communications between the various elements of the insurgency. The uprising collapsed, and over the next few days the authorities regained control, making arrests and forcing the workers back to business. Government inquiries into the incident began and Bute, among others, provided analysis and reports to Whitehall. In the aftermath, Richard Lewis, one of the radical crowd, was hanged in Cardiff. The execution proved controversial and it is unknown whether Bute, who had by then left to attend Parliament in London, approved of the decision.
#### Later years
Concerns over possible violent outbreaks continued for many years. Chartism became prominent in the region in the late 1830s, again causing Bute considerable worries in 1839 and leading to him encouraging the mobilisation of military forces to deal with the threat. Bute began to advocate the creation of a police force to suppress the problems in the northern valleys, for once allying himself with the local ironmasters to overcome rural opposition to the scheme. In 1841 the scheme was passed by the Glamorgan magistrates, with a chief constable and headquarters established that year.
In 1835 an act of Parliament reformed the local government structure, introducing a new town corporation structure with an elected mayor for the first time. Bute had to work harder to maintain his influence over the new corporation, using the various levers of influence at his disposal. He was successful, and in practice the elected officials and councillors were controlled by Bute and his interests.
## Death
Bute died in Cardiff on 18 March 1848, and was buried in Kirtling, alongside Maria, his first wife. His funeral had 31 carriages in attendance and drew large crowds, although his funeral was snubbed by the local ironmasters. The national press gave his death little coverage, but the local Daily Chronicle noted Bute's unusual achievement in building up the industrial base of his South Wales estates, and particularly praised his role in constructing the Cardiff Docks. The Cardiff Docks, whose opening in 1837 had led the press to praise Bute as "the creator of modern Cardiff", continued to transform the city over the rest of the century. They would also form a financial liability to Bute successors, the costs of the continual investment needed to maintain and grow the facilities partially off-setting the huge profits that Bute's son enjoyed from the South Wales coalfields.
A subscription was raised across Glamorgan to pay for a statue to be made of him, which was erected in Cardiff's High Street in 1853, outside the town hall. In 2000 the statue, Cardiff's oldest, was moved to Bute Square, but the location was renamed Callaghan Square in 2002, leading to proposals from local officials that Bute's statue might be better relocated once again, potentially to outside Cardiff Castle. |
14,659,931 | David Larson | 1,145,040,374 | American swimmer | [
"1959 births",
"American male freestyle swimmers",
"Bolles School alumni",
"Florida Gators men's swimmers",
"Living people",
"Medalists at the 1979 Pan American Games",
"Medalists at the 1983 Pan American Games",
"Medalists at the 1984 Summer Olympics",
"Olympic gold medalists for the United States in swimming",
"Pan American Games gold medalists for the United States",
"Pan American Games medalists in swimming",
"Pan American Games silver medalists for the United States",
"People from Jesup, Georgia",
"Swimmers at the 1979 Pan American Games",
"Swimmers at the 1983 Pan American Games",
"Swimmers at the 1984 Summer Olympics",
"World record setters in swimming"
] | David Erwin Larson (born June 25, 1959) is an American former competition swimmer who is an Olympic gold medalist and former world record-holder. Larson is a Georgia native who became an All-American college swimmer for the University of Florida. He was known for his success as a member of American relay teams in international competition at the Pan American Games and the Olympics – and for setting two world records in the 4×200-meter relay event on the same day at the 1984 Olympics.
## Early years
Larson was born in the small town of Jesup, Georgia in 1959. He started swimming as an age-group competitor in 1963. He attended the Bolles School in Jacksonville, Florida, where he swam for the Bolles high school swim team. He graduated from Bolles in 1977.
## College swimming career
Larson accepted an athletic scholarship to attend the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida, where he swam for the Florida Gators swimming and diving team in National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and Southeastern Conference (SEC) competition under coach Randy Reese from 1978 to 1981. Larson won two NCAA championships at Florida in the 800-yard freestyle relay (1979, 1981), setting American and NCAA records in the process. He finished second in the 200-yard freestyle to Rowdy Gaines of Auburn in 1981, but then out-swam Gaines on the final leg of the 800-yard freestyle relay to claim the NCAA championship in the event. Larson earned twenty-one All-American honors and was national record holder in the 400-yard freestyle relay.
Larson graduated from the University of Florida with a bachelor's degree in sociology in 1987, and was later inducted into the University of Florida Athletic Hall of Fame as a "Gator Great."
## International swimming career
Larson was first selected for the U.S. national swim team for the 1979 Pan American Games held in San Juan, Puerto Rico. In what would become a regular match-up, Larson earned a silver medal in the men's 200-meter freestyle for his second-place finish (1:52.24) behind American teammate Rowdy Gaines (1:51.22). Two days later, Larson and Gaines combined with fellow Americans Brian Goodell and Kris Kirchner to win a Pan American Games gold medal in the 4×200-meter freestyle relay (7:31.28).
He qualified for the U.S. Olympic Team in 1980, as a member of the U.S. team in the men's 4×200-meter freestyle relay, but was unable to compete because of the United States-led boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics held in Moscow. After completing his college career in 1981, Larson was tired of swimming and quit, only to return to competition a year later because he missed the focus. Larson continued his training with the program that coach Randy Reese had created for post-college swimmers in Gainesville, Florida.
At the 1983 Pan American Games in Caracas, Venezuela, he again won a gold medal as a member of the winning U.S. team in the men's 200-meter freestyle relay, together with Richard Saeger, Bruce Hayes and Rowdy Gaines (7:23.63).
Larson represented the United States at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. In the preliminary heats of the men's 4×200-meter freestyle relay, he and U.S. teammates Geoff Gaberino, Hayes and Saeger set a new world record of 7:18.87. But the new record was short-lived. Later that same afternoon, Larson won the gold medal in the event final of the 4×200-meter freestyle relay, together with his American teammates Mike Heath, Jeff Float and Hayes, by defeating the Michael Gross-anchored West German team by four one-hundredths (0.04) of a second, and setting yet another new world record of 7:15.69 in the process. The American media dubbed the four swimmers the "Gross Busters," a play on the title of the popular 1984 movie Ghostbusters.
In the aftermath of the 1984 Olympics, Larson retired from competitive swimming at the age of 25.
## Life after swimming
After the post-Olympic national celebrations, Larson was offered an opportunity to work in sports marketing in New York City. His early professional career involved dealings with agents, creating event sponsorships, and negotiating athlete contracts. He spent the next decade working in sports marketing, then in television. He worked with NBC on its Olympic broadcasts, including the 2005 Winter Games.
Larson and his wife Kitty, a Miami lawyer, have a son.
## World records
Men's 4×200-meter medley relay
## See also
- List of Olympic medalists in swimming (men)
- List of United States records in swimming
- List of University of Florida alumni
- List of University of Florida Athletic Hall of Fame members
- List of University of Florida Olympians
- World record progression 4 × 200 metres freestyle relay |
19,204,702 | Aether (video game) | 1,151,184,156 | 2008 video game | [
"2008 video games",
"Adventure games",
"Armor Games games",
"Art games",
"Browser games",
"Flash games",
"Freeware games",
"Puzzle video games",
"Single-player video games",
"Video games about extraterrestrial life",
"Video games designed by Edmund McMillen",
"Video games designed by Tyler Glaiel",
"Video games developed in the United States",
"Video games set on fictional planets"
] | Aether is a video game designed by Edmund McMillen and Tyler Glaiel and published by Armor Games, released on September 3, 2008. Players control a lonely boy and an octopus-like monster that the boy encounters, solving puzzles on different planets to restore them from monochrome to color. The pair travel through space by swinging on clouds and asteroids with the monster's elongated tongue, searching other planets for life to which the boy can relate. It is also a part of The Basement Collection.
McMillen and Glaiel created the game and developed it in 14 days. Both developers expressed interest in seeing a version being released on the Wii game console through the WiiWare online service. Aether received a positive response from video game blogs for its unusual visual style and atmosphere. The single looped piece of background music received a mixed response and the controls were highlighted as an area of the game that could have been improved before release.
## Gameplay
Aether is a space adventure game with washed-out pastel colors and a varying soundtrack consisting of a piano, synthesizer, guitar, and percussion piece. There are four monochrome planets to explore, which have subdued hues. Players control a lonely boy from Earth and an octopus-like monster he befriends. The monster's tongue is used to propel itself and the boy through space and onto other planets. Each planet has a unique soundtrack that gets louder as you approach it. Each moon or planet exerts gravity over the player character, requiring momentum to escape from the planet's orbit. To escape a planet, the tongue must first be latched onto a cloud floating above the planet's surface, which can then be used to swing the player around. By propelling themselves from the initial cloud using swinging momentum, players can latch onto the next and repeat the process to leave the planet's orbit. After reaching space the process is repeated with stars and asteroids. In space the lack of gravity causes the player to drift until the direction is changed by swinging on another object.
When travelling through space, players are drawn to a planet's orbit once they get close. Each planet's location is labeled with a colored marker which disappears once that planet's puzzle is solved. The player encounters characters who can be helped if a puzzle is solved. Each planet besides Earth has its own puzzle. The monster's ability to swing around objects is used in some of the game's puzzles. One puzzle involves swinging on the crystals which surround the core of a hollow planet called Gravida, without swinging on the same crystal twice or breaking the chain. Solving each planet's puzzle produces a flash of light, after which monochrome planets change to color, subdued pastel colors brighten, and the planet's unique soundtrack becomes permanent.
The game's plot describes a journey through a child's emotions and anxieties. After befriending the monster, the boy leaves Earth on the creature's back to look for life elsewhere in the galaxy. He hopes to find someone to relate to. The hollow planet Gravida's surface is patrolled by a creature that complains of stomach pains. This larger creature is followed by several tiny creatures, some of which ride on its back. One of these smaller inhabitants has fallen into the core of Gravida. Though it is isolated and lonely, the creature consoles itself that nobody can harm it. The planet Malaisus is composed of water, with a monster identical to the player's swimming around with a shoal of fish. The monster tells the player to leave. Planet Bibulon has two faces on opposite sides, one angry and one happy. A two-faced creature travels across the surface; one is happy and the other morose. Bibulon is orbited by four moons, each of which has differing opinions on an unnamed man or boy. When players find the planet Debasa, they discover that it is surrounded by a green fog. Gravity is very intense within the fog. Four orbiting satellites produce the fog, which has trapped two boys. Earth shrinks slightly after each planet has been completed. After restoring color to all the surrounding planets, the game is completed by returning to Earth. The Earth has shrunk until it is only slightly larger than the monster; it is destroyed when the boy and his monster land. Both fly upwards and land on the moon, where the boy is free to craft a future of his choosing.
## Development
Aether was created by Edmund McMillen and Tyler Glaiel, McMillen was a member of independent development studio Cryptic Sea and co-creator of the award-winning Gish. Glaiel runs his own independent studio, Glaiel Games, and develops Flash games for game and animation website Newgrounds. The game's graphics and story were created by McMillen, while Glaiel wrote the game's music and code. The game was developed in 14 days; McMillen found he could "ride off" Glaiel's inspiration and allowed the project to be completed quickly. "People being creative and taking risks with their work always is inspiring to me, honesty in art is also very inspiring," he stated.
McMillen's childhood experiences and fears were used for the game's themes of loneliness, nervousness, and fear of abandonment or rejection. The boy's journeys through space represent inward-thinking and imagination, planets represent fears and the inhabitants personify McMillen's childhood "inner demons". He was initially unsure as to whether or not he wished to release Aether, since it was based on personal experiences and made him feel vulnerable. Glaiel created the game's planets and gameplay, designing the layout of the planets to convey the emotions involved in the game, but he did not know which planets would ultimately be used to relate to each emotion. He felt that the game's sense of emotion and mood was improved because development was not thoroughly planned from the outset. Both developers expressed a wish to port the game to the WiiWare service on the Wii video game console. Aether was released as part of McMillen's game and comic compilation CD This is a Cry For Help in early November 2008.
## Reception
The game was positively received by gaming blogs, though reviewers held mixed opinions about the controls. The story was compared to The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's 1943 novella. Aether's graphics were praised by reviewers. Alec Meer of website Rock Paper Shotgun described them as "beautiful to look at", Justin McElroy of Joystiq said the game has a "unique visual style" and described the pastel shades as attractive, and Peter Cohen of Macworld described them as a unique look composed of "cute characters with sometimes grotesque imagery". Meer also enjoyed the game but found the looped piano music irritating. Nate Ralph of Wired found the game "hauntingly beautiful, if short".
Reviewers noted that the solution to some of the puzzles were unclear, further hindered by the planets' inhabitants, whose dialogue does not change when the planet's puzzle is completed. Meer enjoyed the spacefaring aspect of the game, and Derek Yu of the indie games forum TIGSource stated the controls "sometimes felt brilliant, at other times felt unresponsive and awkward." Patrick Dugan of Play This Thing saw potential in the tongue-swinging gameplay, noting that Aether appeared to be the first of a series. He suggested that more spatial elements, such as nebulae and black holes, would have made space flight more interesting. McMillen described Aether as "just the prelude to a larger experience", while Yu suggested that a larger game with improved controls "could be something better than great".
Aether received an Honorable Mention at IndieCade in 2009. |
45,798 | Clouded leopard | 1,173,743,974 | Species of wild cat | [
"Carnivorans of Malaysia",
"Fauna of Arunachal Pradesh",
"Fauna of Assam",
"Fauna of Eastern Himalaya",
"Fauna of Sikkim",
"Felids of Asia",
"Mammals described in 1821",
"Mammals of Cambodia",
"Mammals of China",
"Mammals of Laos",
"Mammals of Myanmar",
"Mammals of Nepal",
"Mammals of Thailand",
"Mammals of Vietnam",
"Neofelis",
"Symbols of Meghalaya",
"Taxa named by Edward Griffith (zoologist)",
"Vulnerable fauna of Asia"
] | The clouded leopard (Neofelis nebulosa), also called mainland clouded leopard, is a wild cat inhabiting dense forests from the foothills of the Himalayas through Northeast India and Bhutan to mainland Southeast Asia into South China. It was first described in 1821 on the basis of a skin of an individual from China. The clouded leopard has large dusky-grey blotches and irregular spots and stripes reminiscent of clouds. Its head-and-body length ranges from 68.6 to 108 cm (27.0 to 42.5 in) with a 61 to 91 cm (24 to 36 in) long tail. It uses its tail for balancing when moving in trees and is able to climb down vertical tree trunks head first. It rests in trees during the day and hunts by night on the forest floor.
The clouded leopard is the first cat that genetically diverged 9.32 to 4.47 million years ago from the common ancestor of the pantherine cats. Today, the clouded leopard is locally extinct in Singapore, Taiwan, and possibly also in Hainan Island and Vietnam. The wild population is believed to be in decline with fewer than 10,000 adults and no more than 1,000 in each subpopulation. It has therefore been listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List since 2008. The population is threatened by large–scale deforestation and commercial poaching for the wildlife trade. Its body parts are offered for decoration and clothing, though it is legally protected in most range countries.
The clouded leopard has been kept in zoological gardens since the early 20th century. Captive breeding programs were initiated in the 1980s. In captivity, the clouded leopard has an average lifespan of 11 years.
## Taxonomy and phylogeny
Felis nebulosa was proposed by Edward Griffith in 1821 who first described a skin of a clouded leopard that was brought alive from Canton Province in China to the menagerie at Exeter Exchange in London. Felis macrosceloides proposed by Brian Houghton Hodgson in 1841 was a clouded leopard specimen from Nepal. Felis brachyura proposed by Robert Swinhoe in 1862 was a clouded leopard skin from Taiwan. The generic name Neofelis was proposed by John Edward Gray in 1867 who subordinated all three to this genus. At present, N. nebulosa is considered a monotypic species due to lack of evidence for subspeciation.
Felis diardi proposed by Georges Cuvier in 1823 was based on a clouded leopard skin from Java. It was considered a clouded leopard subspecies by Reginald Innes Pocock in 1917. In 2006, it was identified as a distinct Neofelis species, the Sunda clouded leopard. Populations in Taiwan and Hainan Island are considered to belong to the mainland clouded leopard.
### Phylogeny
Skulls of clouded leopard and Panthera species were analysed morphologically in the 1960s. Results indicate that the clouded leopard forms an evolutionary link between the Pantherinae and the Felinae. Phylogenetic analysis of the nuclear DNA in tissue samples from all Felidae species revealed that the evolutionary radiation of the Felidae began in the Miocene around in Asia. Analysis of mitochondrial DNA of all Felidae species indicates a radiation at . The clouded leopard is estimated to have been the first cat that genetically diverged from the common ancestor of the Felidae , based on analysis of their nuclear DNA. The clouded leopard from mainland Asia reached Borneo and Sumatra via a now submerged land bridge probably during the Pleistocene, when populations became isolated during periods of global cooling and warming. Genetic analysis of hair samples of the clouded leopard and its sister species the Sunda clouded leopard (N. diardi) indicates that they diverged 2.0–0.93 million years ago.
## Characteristics
The clouded leopard's fur is of a dark grey or ochreous ground-color, often largely obliterated by black and dark dusky-grey blotched pattern. There are black spots on the head, and the ears are black. Partly fused or broken-up stripes run from the corner of the eyes over the cheek, from the corner of the mouth to the neck, and along the nape to the shoulders. Elongated blotches continue down the spine and form a single median stripe on the loins. Two large blotches of dark dusky-grey hair on the side of the shoulders are each emphasized posteriorly by a dark stripe, which passes on to the foreleg and breaks up into irregular spots. The flanks are marked by dark dusky-grey irregular blotches bordered behind by long, oblique, irregularly curved or looped stripes. These blotches yielding the clouded pattern suggest the English name of the cat. The underparts and legs are spotted, and the tail is marked by large, irregular, paired spots. Its legs are short and stout, and paws broad. Females are slightly smaller than males.
Its hyoid bone is ossified, making it possible to purr. Its pupils contract into vertical slits. Irises are brownish yellow to grayish green. Melanistic clouded leopards are uncommon. It has rather short limbs compared to the other big cats. Its hind limbs are longer than its front limbs to allow for increased jumping and leaping capabilities. Its ulnae and radii are not fused, which also contributes to a greater range of motion when climbing trees and stalking prey. Clouded leopards weigh between 11.5 and 23 kg (25 and 51 lb). Females vary in head-to-body length from 68.6 to 94 cm (27.0 to 37.0 in), with a tail 61 to 82 cm (24 to 32 in) long. Males are larger at 81 to 108 cm (32 to 43 in) with a tail 74 to 91 cm (29 to 36 in) long. Its shoulder height varies from 50 to 55 cm (20 to 22 in).
Its skull is long and low with strong occipital and sagittal crests. The canine teeth are exceptionally long, the upper being about three times as long as the basal width of the socket. The first premolar is usually absent. The upper pair of canines measure 4 cm (1.6 in) or longer. It has a bite force at the canine tip of 544.3 Newton and a bite force quotient at the canine tip of 122.4. The clouded leopard is often referred to as a "modern-day sabre-tooth" because it has the largest canines in proportion to its body size.
## Distribution and habitat
The clouded leopard occurs from the Himalayan foothills in Nepal, Bhutan and India to Myanmar, southeastern Bangladesh, Thailand, Peninsular Malaysia and to south of the Yangtze River in China. It is locally extinct in Singapore and Taiwan.
In Nepal, the clouded leopard was thought to be extinct since the late 1860s. But in 1987 and 1988, four individuals were found in the central part of the country, close to Chitwan National Park and in Pokhara Valley. These findings extended the known range westward, suggesting it is able to survive and breed in degraded woodlands that previously harboured moist subtropical semideciduous forest. Since then, the clouded leopard has been recorded in Shivapuri Nagarjun National Park and in Annapurna Conservation Area. Between 2014 and 2015, it was also recorded in Langtang National Park at an elevation range of 1,823–3,498 m (5,981–11,476 ft).
In India, it occurs in the states of Sikkim, northern West Bengal, Tripura, Mizoram, Manipur, Assam, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh, as well as in the Meghalaya subtropical forests. In Pakke Tiger Reserve, a clouded leopard was photographed in semi-evergreen forest at an elevation of 144 m (472 ft). In Sikkim, clouded leopards were photographed by camera traps at elevations of 2,500–3,720 m (8,200–12,200 ft) between April 2008 and May 2010 in the Khangchendzonga Biosphere Reserve. In Manas National Park, 16 individuals were recorded during a survey in November 2010 to February 2011. Between January 2013 and March 2018, clouded leopards were also recorded in Dampa Tiger Reserve, Eaglenest Wildlife Sanctuary and Singchung-Bugun Village Community Reserve, in Meghalaya's Nongkhyllem National Park and Balpakram-Baghmara landscape.
In Bhutan, it was recorded in Royal Manas National Park, Jigme Singye Wangchuck National Park, Phibsoo Wildlife Sanctuary, Jigme Dorji National Park, Phrumsengla National Park, Bumdeling Wildlife Sanctuary and several non-protected areas. In Bangladesh, it was recorded in Sangu Matamuhari in the Chittagong Hill Tracts in 2016. In Myanmar, it was recorded by camera traps for the first time in the hill forests of Karen State in 2015.
In Thailand, it inhabits relatively open, dry tropical forest in Huai Kha Khaeng Wildlife Sanctuary and closed-forest habitats in Khao Yai National Park. In Laos, it was recorded in Nam Et-Phou Louey National Protected Area in dry evergreen and semi-evergreen forests. In Cambodia, it was recorded in deciduous dipterocarp forest in Phnom Prich Wildlife Sanctuary between 2008 and 2009, and in Central Cardamom Mountains National Park, Southern Cardamom National Park, Botum Sakor National Park and Phnom Samkos Wildlife Sanctuary between 2012 and 2016. In Peninsular Malaysia, it was recorded in Taman Negara National Park, Ulu Muda Forest, Pasoh Forest Reserve, Belum-Temengor, Temengor Forest Reserve and in a few linkages between 2009 and 2015.
The last confirmed record of a Formosan clouded leopard dates to 1989, when the skin of a young individual was found in the Taroko National Park. It was not recorded during an extensive camera trapping survey conducted from 1997 to 2012 in more than 1,450 sites inside and outside Taiwanese protected areas.
## Behaviour and ecology
The clouded leopard is a solitary cat. Early accounts depict it as a rare, secretive, arboreal, and nocturnal inhabitant of dense primary forest.
It is one of the most talented climbers among the cats. Captive clouded leopards have been observed to climb down vertical tree trunks head first, and hang on to branches with their hind paws bent around branchings of tree limbs. They are capable of supination and can even hang down from branches only by bending their hind paws and their tail around them. When jumping down, they keep hanging on to a branch this way until the last moment. They can climb on horizontal branches with their back to the ground, and in this position make short jumps forward. When balancing on thin branches, they use their long tails to steer. They can easily jump up to 1.2 m (3 ft 11 in) high. They use trees as daytime rest sites, but also spend time on the ground when hunting at night. Captive clouded leopards have been observed to scent mark by spraying urine and rubbing their heads on prominent objects. Their vocalisations include a short high-pitched meow call, a loud crying call, both emitted when a cat is trying to locate another one over a long or short distance; they prusten and raise their muzzle when meeting each other in a friendly manner; when aggressive, they growl with a low-pitched sound and hiss with exposed teeth and wrinkled nose.
Radio-collared clouded leopards were foremost active by night but also showed crepuscular activity peaks. Clouded leopards recorded in northeast India were most active in the late evening after sunset.
Home ranges have only been estimated in Thailand:
- Four individuals were radio-collared in Phu Khieo Wildlife Sanctuary from April 2000 to February 2003. Home ranges of two females were 25.7 km<sup>2</sup> (9.9 sq mi) and 22.9 km<sup>2</sup> (8.8 sq mi), and of two males 29.7 km<sup>2</sup> (11.5 sq mi) and 49.1 km<sup>2</sup> (19.0 sq mi).
- Two individuals were radio-collared during a study from 1997 to 1999 in the Khao Yai National Park. The home range of one female was 39.4 km<sup>2</sup> (15.2 sq mi), of the one male 42 km<sup>2</sup> (16 sq mi). Both individuals had a core area of 2.9 km<sup>2</sup> (1.1 sq mi).
In 2016, clouded leopards were detected in the forest complex of Khlong Saeng Wildlife Sanctuary and Khao Sok National Park during camera trapping surveys; 15 individuals were identified in a core zone of 200 km<sup>2</sup> (77 sq mi) with population density estimated at 5.06 individuals per 100 km<sup>2</sup> (39 sq mi); but only 12 individuals were identified in an edge zone of 297 km<sup>2</sup> (115 sq mi), which is more disturbed by humans, with density estimated at 3.13 individuals per 100 km<sup>2</sup> (39 sq mi).
### Hunting and diet
When hunting, the clouded leopard stalks its prey or waits for the prey to approach. After making and feeding on a kill, it usually retreats into trees to digest and rest. Its prey includes both arboreal and terrestrial vertebrates. Pocock presumed that it is adapted for preying upon herbivorous mammals of considerable bulk because of its powerful build, long canines and the deep penetration of its bites. In Thailand, clouded leopards have been observed preying on southern pig-tailed macaque (Macaca nemestrina), Indian hog deer (Axis porcinus), Bengal slow loris (Nycticebus bengalensis), Asiatic brush-tailed porcupine (Atherurus macrourus), Malayan pangolin (Manis javanica) and Berdmore's ground squirrel (Menetes berdmorei). Known prey species in China include barking deer (Muntiacus sp.) and pheasants. In northern Peninsular Malaysia, a male clouded leopard was photographed while carrying a binturong (Arctictis binturong) in its jaws.
### Reproduction and life cycle
Both males and females average 26 months at first reproduction. The female is in estrus for about six days, with her estrous cycle lasting about 30 days. In the wild, mating usually occurs between December and March. The pair mates multiple times over the course of several days. The male grasps the female by the neck who responds with vocalization. Occasionally, he also bites her during courtship and is very aggressive during sexual encounters. Females can bear one litter each year. The male is not involved in raising the cubs.
The female gives birth to a litter of one to five, mostly three cubs, after a gestation period of 93 ± 6 days. Cubs are born with closed eyes and weigh from 140 to 280 g (4.9 to 9.9 oz). Their spots are solid dark, rather than dark rings. Their eyes open after about 10 days. They are active within five weeks and fully weaned at around three months of age. They attain the adult coat pattern at around six months and become independent after around 10 months.
Captive clouded leopards have an average lifespan of 11 years. One individual has lived to be almost 17 years old.
The generation length of the clouded leopard is about seven years.
## Threats
Clouded leopard require larger areas of intact forest than are present in many parts of their range. They are threatened by habitat loss following large–scale deforestation and commercial poaching for the wildlife trade. In Myanmar, 301 body parts of at least 279 clouded leopards, mostly skins and skeletons, were observed in four markets surveyed between 1991 and 2006, despite the protected status of clouded leopards in Myanmar. Some markets are located near Myanmar's borders with China and Thailand and are used to facilitate cross-border smuggling.
In Nepal, 27 cases of clouded leopard body parts were discovered between November 1988 and March 2020 in nine districts of the country, comprising at least 51 individual clouded leopards. In 17 of these cases, the poachers and traders were arrested.
## Conservation
The clouded leopard is listed in CITES Appendix I and protected over most of its range. Hunting is banned in Bangladesh, China, India, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam. It is not legally protected outside Bhutan's protected areas. Hunting is regulated in Laos. No information about its protection status is available from Cambodia. These bans, however, are poorly enforced in India, Malaysia and Thailand.
In the United States, the clouded leopard is listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act, prohibiting trade in live animals or body parts.
International Clouded Leopard Day is celebrated each year on 4 August since 2018 in zoos and conservation organizations all over the world.
### In captivity
Clouded leopards have been kept in zoos since the early 20th century. The international studbook was initiated in the 1970s. Coordinated breeding programs were started in the 1980s and encompass the European Endangered Species Programme, the Species Survival Plan, and the Indian Conservation Breeding Programme. As of 2014, 64 institutions keep clouded leopards, including six zoos in India:
- The zoo in Sipahijola Wildlife Sanctuary since 1996
- Darjeeling Zoo since 1996
- Aizawl Zoo since 2006
- Itanagar Zoo since 2009
- Gangtok Zoo since 2010
- Shillong Zoo since 2012
Early captive-breeding programs involving clouded leopards were not successful, largely due to ignorance of their courtship behaviour. Males have the reputation of being aggressive towards females. For breeding success, it has been deemed extremely important that male and female clouded leopards are compatible. Introducing pairs at a young age gives them opportunities to bond and breed successfully. Facilities breeding clouded leopards need to provide the female with a secluded, off-exhibit area. There has been some recent captive breeding success using artificial insemination with cubs successfully born in 1992, 2015 and 2017.
A study on morbidity and mortality rate of 271 captive clouded leopards across 44 zoos in Europe, Asia and Australia showed that 17% of them died because of respiratory disease, 12% due to maternal neglect and starvation, 10% from generalized infectious disease, 10% from digestive diseases, and 10% from trauma.
In March 2011, two breeding females at the Nashville Zoo at Grassmere gave birth to three cubs, which were raised by zookeepers. Each cub weighed 0.23 kg (0.5 lb). In June 2011, two cubs were born at the Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium. The breeding pair was brought from the Khao Kheow Open Zoo in Thailand in an ongoing education and research exchange program. Four cubs were born at Nashville Zoo in 2012. In May 2015, four cubs were born in Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium.
## In culture
The clouded leopard is the state animal of the Indian state of Meghalaya. In the 1970s, the print of Rama Samaraweera's painting Clouded leopard was a best-seller in the US.
## See also
- List of largest cats |
466,808 | Slender glass lizard | 1,170,111,985 | Species of reptile | [
"Endemic reptiles of the United States",
"Fauna of the Eastern United States",
"Fauna of the Great Lakes region (North America)",
"Fauna of the Southeastern United States",
"Legless lizards",
"Ophisaurus",
"Reptiles described in 1880",
"Taxa named by Spencer Fullerton Baird"
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<td><p>Ophisaurus attenuatus<br />
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<li>Ophisaurus ventralis attenuatus<br />
Baird in Cope, 1880</li>
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<li id="fn1">Baird SF (1880). In: Cope ED (1880). "On the Zoölogical Position of Texas". Bulletin of the United States National Museum (17): 1–51. (Ophisaurus ventralis attenuatus, new subspecies, p. 18).<a href="#fnref1" class="footnote-back" role="doc-backlink">↩︎</a></li>
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The slender glass lizard (Ophisaurus attenuatus) is a legless lizard in the glass lizard subfamily (Anguinae). The species is endemic to the United States. Two subspecies are recognized. The lizard was originally believed to be a subspecies of the eastern glass lizard (Ophisaurus ventralis). Their name comes from their easily broken tail which they can break off themselves without ever being touched. It is difficult to find a specimen with an undamaged tail. The lizard eats a variety of insects and small animals, including smaller lizards. Snakes and other animals are known to prey on the species. Humans have a part in destroying their environment and killing their food supply with insecticides. The lizard is considered to be a least-concern species according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), though it is vulnerable in Iowa and endangered in Wisconsin. It is important to note that the streamlined, legless species is often confused with snakes. Glass Lizards, however, differ from snakes as they possess a moveable eyelid, which is absent in snakes. Another way to distinguish glass lizards from snakes is the presence of an external ear opening, which are absent in snakes.
## Taxonomy
The species was originally believed by American herpetologist Edward Drinker Cope to be a subspecies of Ophisaurus ventralis in 1880 under the name Opheosaurus ventralis attenuatus. It was not until 1885 when the British herpetologist George Albert Boulenger recognized it to be its own species. However, Cope's belief influenced other herpetologists until 1949 when another American herpetologist Wilfred T. Neill expressed his belief that Boulenger was correct about it being a distinct species. The difference between this species with O. ventralis and other species in the genus is that the white spots on its dorsum are located on the posterior edges of its scales, with none of the spots being located mainly in middle of its scales. Another distinctive difference is that this species has 98 or more scales along its lateral fold. In the word Ophisaurus, orphis is Ancient Greek for serpent or reptile and saurus means lizard or reptile. The word attenuatus is Latin for "tapered, drawn out, thin".
### Subspecies
- Western slender glass lizard, O. a. attenuatus Baird in Cope, 1880
The western slender glass lizard reaches an average of 0.66 m (26 in). It can be found in woods or dry rocky hillsides, in grass or the burrows of small mammals. The species can easily camouflage itself in tall grass because of its color.
- Eastern slender glass lizard, O. a. longicaudus McConkey, 1952
The males are larger than females with a longer head and tail. Males have more scales above their lateral fold and along the center of their back than females. Larger males have waxy white crossbars on their dorsum's anterior, which have an outline of black and are not present in smaller males and females.
## Description
Slender glass lizards have yellow to brown bodies with six stripes and they have a middorsal stripe. White specks on the middle of the lizard's scales may sometimes form light stripes. O. attenuatus can attain a total length of 0.56 m (22 in) to 0.91 m (36 in). The species is closely related to collared lizards. Its tail comprises two-thirds of its body length. Its scales are supported by an osteoderm which makes the body hard and stiff. The species has a pointed snout and a non-distinct head. Males and females are of similar size. Its markings may fade as an individual ages.
Unlike snakes, they have eyelids and ears. Slender glass lizards have some difficulty moving across smooth surfaces because they do not have the large belly-plates and related muscles of snakes. The body of a snake is more flexible than that of this species and have different shaped scales.
## Behavior
Slender glass lizards are primarily diurnal and they can move fast. If captured, a specimen may thrash vigorously, causing part of the tail to fall off in one or more pieces. While a potential predator is distracted by the wiggling tail, the lizard quickly escapes. Observations have also reported the ability of western slender glass lizards to swim considerable distances when avoiding predation. They are known to sleep in burrows borrowed from other animals and they will use those burrows to hibernate. The species is active during the day when the weather is cool, but is only active during dawn and dusk when the temperature is hot. Similar to snakes, the species will hibernate in a hibernaculum. The species has also been known to make their own burrows in sandy soil. The lizard hibernates from October until April or May.
When a predator breaks off part of its tail, the tail never completely grows back which causes its tail to become shorter each time that it is attacked. They are known as slender glass lizards because their tail can be broken easily. The species can snap off their tail without it being touched and the partial tail that regenerates is tan, but it does not have the pattern of the original tail. The pieces of tail will continue to move once broken off. Two common beliefs are that the pieces of broken tail can grow into new lizards or rejoin into a new tail. In a 1989 study, 79% of the specimens in the population area had broken tails. It is hard to find a slender glass lizard that has its entire tail. They seldom bite when they are threatened. When they are approached, the lizard will sometimes stay still and try to blend in with the vegetation.
## Distribution
O. attenuatus is found in the midwestern and southeast United States, where it is endemic, in prairies, old fields, or open woodlands, often near water. They can also sometimes be found in longleaf pine forests and human-made debris.
## Diet and predators
Slender glass lizards eat a range of insects, such as grasshoppers, crickets and beetles, and will also consume spiders, small rodents, and snails. They have also been known to eat small lizards and small snakes. Unlike snakes, glass lizards do not have flexible jaws, and this limits the size of prey items they can consume. The size of their food can be no larger than the size of their head. They forage underground in burrows. A fold of their skin is able to expand their body when they are breathing, eating a large meal, or when they are carrying eggs.
Broad-winged hawks, red-tailed hawks, opossums, coyotes, bob cats, and raccoons are predators of the lizard. Snakes that feed on the lizard include the eastern racer (Coluber constrictor), ring-necked snake (Diadophis punctatus), prairie kingsnake (Lampropeltis calligaster), common kingsnake (Lampropeltis getula), and copperhead (Agkistrodon contortrix).
## Reproduction
Mating typically occurs biannually in May and they lay 5 to 15 oval eggs in late June or July. Eggs hatch 50–60 days after being laid and the mother then stays beside them throughout the incubation period. The eggs are laid under objects that can cover them including a log or a board. The eggs hatch after 53 days during August to October. Hatchlings are 10–13 cm (3.9–5.1 in) long and are difficult to find. Sexual maturity is attained at three or four years of age.
## Conservation status
Although not endangered overall in the United States, it is listed as vulnerable in Iowa and endangered in Wisconsin. O. attenuatus is regarded as vulnerable in Iowa, where it is illegal to even capture them. Its primary threats are loss of habitat, and the fragmentation of what remains, by human development. Insecticides are harmful to the lizard because they can kill the insects that they consume and those insects can be ingested by the lizard.
The Iowa Department of Natural Resources recommended steps to conserve the slender glass lizard which are to avoid burning grassland from April to October, to remove trees mechanically instead of using chemicals, and to limit insecticide use in areas where slender glass lizards are known to inhabit. |
14,233,507 | 2008 Spanish Grand Prix | 1,134,828,827 | null | [
"2008 Formula One races",
"2008 in Spanish motorsport",
"April 2008 sports events in Europe",
"Spanish Grand Prix"
] | The 2008 Spanish Grand Prix (formally the Formula 1 Gran Premio de España Telefónica 2008) was a Formula One motor race held on 27 April 2008 at the Circuit de Catalunya, Montmeló, Spain. It was the fourth race of the 2008 Formula One World Championship. Kimi Räikkönen for the Ferrari team won the 66-lap race starting from pole position. Felipe Massa finished second in the other Ferrari, and Lewis Hamilton was third in a McLaren.
Räikkönen began the race from pole position alongside Renault driver Fernando Alonso. Massa began from third, alongside BMW Sauber driver Robert Kubica. Hamilton, the eventual Drivers' Champion, began from fifth and passed Kubica into the first corner, as Massa passed Alonso. Räikkönen maintained his lead through most of the race, leading to Ferrari's one-two finish. The safety car was deployed several times throughout the race, including for a serious crash involving McLaren driver Heikki Kovalainen, though the Finn escaped with only a minor concussion.
Prior to the race weekend, the event was put on probation by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile, the sport's governing body, for racist taunting during pre-season testing at the circuit. Subsequently, no such racism was reported during the race weekend. The event was Super Aguri's final Grand Prix, withdrawing afterwards due to financial pressures, leaving the sport with ten teams; this was also the last race for both of the team's drivers, Takuma Sato and Anthony Davidson. The result promoted Ferrari to the lead in the Constructors' Championship, 12 points ahead of BMW Sauber and 13 points ahead of McLaren. Räikkönen extended his lead in the Drivers' Championship to 29 points, nine points ahead of Hamilton and ten points ahead of Kubica. Massa moved into fourth place on 18 points, with 14 races remaining in the season.
## Background
The Grand Prix was contested by 22 drivers, in 11 teams of two. The teams, also known as "constructors", were Ferrari, McLaren-Mercedes, Renault, Honda, Force India, BMW Sauber, Toyota, Red Bull Racing, Williams, Toro Rosso and Super Aguri. Tyre supplier Bridgestone brought two different tyre compounds to the race; the softer of the two marked by a single white stripe down one of the grooves.
Prior to the race, Ferrari driver Kimi Räikkönen led the Drivers' Championship with 19 points, and BMW Sauber driver Nick Heidfeld was second with 16 points. McLaren driver Lewis Hamilton, BMW driver Robert Kubica and Hamilton's teammate Heikki Kovalainen held the next three positions, all with 14 points. In the Constructors' Championship, BMW Sauber were leading with 30 points, one point ahead of Ferrari, and two ahead of McLaren-Mercedes.
After Hamilton won the season opener in Australia, Ferrari had dominated the next two races in Malaysia and Bahrain. In the , Ferrari driver Felipe Massa had claimed pole position, and while he later spun off and retired, his teammate Räikkönen went on to win the race. Ferrari's form had continued at the , where Massa had led Räikkönen to a one-two finish. Despite the promising start to the season, Ferrari team principal Stefano Domenicali said the team was not celebrating prematurely:
> The real Ferrari is not the one we've seen at the Australian GP. The team reacted immediately and has shown the great potential of our package, which is extremely competitive. Having said that, we have to be aware. We're approaching the Spanish GP with a maximum effort, keeping our feet on the ground: we were not depressed after the first race and we are not euphoric after Bahrain. We need absolute motivation and we are aware of the fact that our competitors are getting better.
With his team leading the Constructors' Championship, Heidfeld said BMW was outperforming expectations: "It's better than expected after the winter time, of course, but it could also be better. It can always be better." BMW had opened the season with podium finishes in each of the first three races, which team principal Mario Theissen said put his team amongst the top three, along with Ferrari and McLaren.
After a poor race in Bahrain, where he narrowly avoided stalling on the grid before colliding with Renault's Fernando Alonso a lap later, Hamilton said he would return stronger in Spain: "I approach it in the same way and obviously I won't be making the same mistake again. This weekend being here, feeling fresh after a good break from racing, and making sure we come here fresh has been important. I feel good." His team said that they had made significant improvements to their car, the McLaren MP4-23, in the three-week break, but were reserving judgement until the race to see how their performance had improved in comparison to their rivals.
The event also took place under the shadow of incidents that had taken place at the same circuit during pre-season testing. At one of the test sessions, Hamilton was subjected to racist taunting by some of the spectators. In response, the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) launched a "Racing Against Racism" programme, and placed the Spanish and European Grands Prix on probation, the latter event being held in the Spanish city of Valencia. During the course of the event itself, no such incidents were reported. Hamilton was particularly unpopular with the country's Formula One fans due to his acrimonious inter-team rivalry with Spaniard Alonso during the previous year's championship, which had resulted in the latter leaving the McLaren team and returning to Renault for 2008.
The Super Aguri team had been in financial trouble since a proposed takeover deal backed by equity firm Dubai International Capital, under the "Magma Group" banner, failed to take effect. The team narrowly avoided folding in mid-April, and were only given confirmation to compete by team owners Honda on the Friday prior to the race. This would be the team's final Grand Prix, withdrawing after two years in Formula One prior to the , leaving the sport with ten teams for the first time since the 2005 season.
## Practice
Three practice sessions were held before the Sunday race—two on Friday, and a third on Saturday. The Friday morning and afternoon sessions each lasted 90 minutes. The third session was held on Saturday morning and lasted an hour. The Ferraris were fastest in the first session; Räikkönen was quickest with a time of 1:20.649, ahead of Massa, who recovered from a spin and an off-track excursion on his first two laps to take second. Hamilton, Kubica and Kovalainen took the next three positions, ahead of home driver Alonso in sixth. Räikkönen repeated his morning effort in the second session, with a time of 1:21.935, as the frontrunners experimented with higher fuel loads. Renault driver Nelson Piquet was next quickest, ahead of Alonso, Williams driver Kazuki Nakajima, Massa and Red Bull driver Mark Webber. The McLarens had a less successful session; Kovalainen struggled with gearbox problems, and difficulty with Hamilton's set-up meant he managed 11th after suffering from excessive oversteer. Heidfeld was quickest in the final session, his 1:21.269 benefiting from use of the quicker soft compound tyre. Webber's teammate David Coulthard was next quickest, ahead of Alonso, Kubica, Toyota driver Jarno Trulli and Sébastien Bourdais of Toro Rosso. Ferrari and McLaren again ran heavier cars, and neither team managed better than ninth quickest. Mechanical problems meant Webber failed to set a time, his car coming to a halt in the pit-lane exit after two installation laps.
## Qualifying
The qualifying session on Saturday afternoon was split into three parts. The first part ran for 20 minutes, and cars that finished the session 17th or lower were eliminated from qualifying. The second part of qualifying lasted 15 minutes and eliminated cars that finished in positions 11 to 16. The final part of qualifying determined the positions from first to tenth, and decided pole position. Cars which failed to make the final session could refuel before the race, so ran lighter in those sessions. Cars which competed in the final session of qualifying were not allowed to refuel before the race, and as such carried more fuel than in the previous sessions.
Räikkönen clinched his first pole position of the season with a time of 1:21.813. Alonso would start alongside him on the grid, amid suspicions the Spaniard was fuelled light for the race. Massa, Kubica and Hamilton qualified next quickest; just 0.2 seconds separated Hamilton's time from that of Räikkönen. Kovalainen would line up on the third row of the grid next to his teammate; Webber and Trulli would start from the fourth row. Heidfeld was disappointed with his ninth place, after suffering from tyre problems on his final lap; Piquet, who made it into the final session for the first time in his career, qualified just ahead of Honda driver Rubens Barrichello and Nakajima. Honda driver Jenson Button and Timo Glock of Toyota would occupy the seventh row; Williams driver Nico Rosberg was outqualified by his teammate for the first time in the season, and would start from 15th, ahead of Bourdais. Coulthard failed to make it through the first session after failing to get sufficient heat into his tyres; Toro Rosso driver Sebastian Vettel and the two Force Indias of Giancarlo Fisichella and Adrian Sutil took positions 18 to 20. The Super Aguris of Anthony Davidson and Takuma Sato would line up on the back row of the grid in their final race.
### Qualifying classification
## Race
The conditions on the grid were dry before the race. The air temperature was 23 °C (73 °F) and the track temperature was 38 °C (100 °F); weather forecasts indicated a light wind, but otherwise calm conditions. Räikkönen held his lead into the first corner, as Massa passed Alonso to take second; Hamilton passed Kubica to take fourth. However, an incident further down the field brought out the safety car. Sutil's car entered a spin after attempting to pass Coulthard; the resulting collision eliminated Sutil and Vettel from the Grand Prix. The race restarted on lap four when the safety car peeled off, Räikkönen quickly increased his lead over Massa to more than a second. The gap between the Ferraris increased as Räikkönen continued to lap the quickest on track; Hamilton began to close in on Alonso, only to see the Renault pit on lap 16, promoting the McLaren to third place.
Further down the field, several incidents reduced the field to 15 cars. Piquet, after running off the track on lap five, collided with Bourdais two laps later while attempting to pass at turn 10. The Renault retired from the race immediately; Bourdais struggled back to the pit lane before Toro Rosso decided to retire his car. The resulting debris ended Davidson's race when he retired on lap eight after sustaining radiator damage. On lap 22 Kovalainen's front left tyre suffered a rapid deflation, hurling his car into the barriers at an estimated 210 kilometres per hour (130 mph), with an impact of 26 g. As the track marshals extracted the McLaren from the barriers, the safety car was once again deployed. Heidfeld was forced to pit immediately as he was low on fuel, incurring a ten-second stop-go penalty for coming in before the pit-lane was officially re-opened. Barrichello and Fisichella then collided in the pit-lane on lap 26, heavily damaging the Honda's front wing, and requiring Barrichello to drive the whole lap with a disintegrating car, before retiring into his team's garage.
Räikkönen, Massa, Hamilton, Kubica and Alonso, having already made their pit stops, trailed the safety car until it peeled off on lap 29. As Räikkönen again increased his lead over Massa to more than two seconds, Alonso pulled over to the side of the track, smoke billowing from his engine, and retired. Rosberg's engine also suffered a failure, and the Williams retired on lap 42 from seventh place. Four laps later, Räikkönen set the fastest lap of the race, a 1:21.670 (a lap record that still stands), as Massa pitted from behind him. Räikkönen, Hamilton and Kubica followed into the pit-lane on lap 47. Coulthard and Glock collided on lap 53 after the Toyota driver attempted to pass the Red Bull at the first corner. Glock sustained front wing damage, and Coulthard suffered a puncture to his left rear tyre; both pitted soon after for repairs.
Räikkönen took his second win of the season when he crossed the line at the end of the 66th lap, 3.2 seconds ahead of the second-placed Massa. Hamilton took third, ahead of Kubica, Webber and Button, who scored Honda's first points for the season. Nakajima finished in seventh place, ahead of Trulli, who was running in sixth place before his team mistakenly called him into the pit-lane. Toyota had mistaken Glock's damaged car for Trulli, dropping the latter down the order after the stop. Heidfeld, recovering after his penalty, finished in ninth place ahead of Fisichella. Glock and Coulthard filled the next two positions after their late collision, ahead of Sato in 13th. Rosberg, Alonso, Barrichello, Kovalainen, Davidson, Bourdais, Piquet, Vettel and Sutil were the retirements from a punishing Spanish Grand Prix.
### Post-race
The top three finishers appeared on the podium and in the subsequent press conference, where Räikkönen said his pole position start was an important factor in his victory: "This circuit is very difficult to overtake. The start is the best place and when you have a lot of things going with the safety car you might be lucky or very unlucky, so the best place to try to win is always from the front. It was good yesterday and it really helped us today."
Massa said that the result was a good one for his team, as they moved ahead of BMW Sauber in the Constructors' Championship: "We did our homework and brought two Ferrari's in the front – first and second – which is very important for the Championship." Although Ferrari had performed well, Massa said their speed was not significantly better than their opponents, so "we need to keep working like crazy in the factory to improve the car in every area."
Hamilton agreed that the start was the most important part of the race: "Obviously when we qualified fifth we knew that it would be very difficult to beat the Ferraris. But the key was to get a good start and make as many places as possible and fortunately I was able to do that." Apart from the start of the race, only two passing manoeuvres were recorded: Heidfeld's lap 55 pass on Fisichella and Coulthard's lap 61 pass on Sato.
Despite his accident, Kovalainen suffered no physical injuries, except for minor concussion. After spending the night under observation in a nearby hospital, the McLaren driver was cleared to race in the next Grand Prix, two weeks later. McLaren said that the wheel failure was due to a faulty wheel clamp which made it vulnerable to the rapid changes in load and pressure that a Formula One car endures, eventually leading to the deflated tyre and Kovalainen's accident. Kovalainen praised Formula One's safety procedures and medical staff:
> It was a serious accident and I managed to walk away. I was a bit lucky, but the safety standards the FIA has been pushing worked very well, ... The chassis, the impact, all the barriers took the impact well, the FIA medical team plus the marshals and the team took the job very well and did a fantastic job to get me out of there quickly in a short period of time ... I was able to make a recovery without any injuries. I think it is something that we must still keep working on, but the work paid off that day.
However, Mark Webber, a director of the Grand Prix Drivers' Association, said that standards at the track should have been better. Speaking in his regular BBC Online column, Webber said the "run-off on that corner is too tight and we need to have a look at it because any driver that has an error there is going to have a big crash. If Heikki's accident had happened two seconds later he would have been fine and controlled the car, but it probably happened on the worst section of that whole track."
Räikkönen's win increased his points tally in the Drivers' Championship to 29 points, nine ahead of second-placed Hamilton. Kubica and Massa were one and two points behind Hamilton, respectively; Heidfeld was fifth on 16 points, after failing to score. In the Constructors' Championship, Ferrari took the lead with 47 points, 12 points ahead of BMW Sauber and 13 points ahead of McLaren, with 14 races remaining in the season.
### Race classification
## Championship standings after the race
Drivers' Championship standings
Constructors' Championship standings
- Note: Only the top five positions are included for both sets of standings.
## See also
- 2008 Catalunya GP2 Series round |
375,094 | Malvern, Worcestershire | 1,171,344,663 | Spa town and civil parish in Worcestershire, England | [
"Civil parishes in Worcestershire",
"Malvern, Worcestershire",
"Spa towns in England",
"Towns in Worcestershire"
] | Malvern (/ˈmɔːlvərn, ˈmɒl-/, locally also: /ˈmɔːvərn/) is a spa town and civil parish in Worcestershire, England. It lies at the foot of the Malvern Hills, a designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The centre of Malvern, Great Malvern, is a historic conservation area, which grew dramatically in Victorian times due to the natural mineral water springs in the vicinity, including Malvern Water.
At the 2021 census it had a population of 30,462. It includes Great Malvern on the steep eastern flank of the Malvern Hills, as well as the former independent urban district of Malvern Link. Many of the major suburbs and settlements that comprise the town are separated by large tracts of open common land and fields, and together with smaller civil parishes adjoining the town's boundaries and the hills, the built up area is often referred to collectively as The Malverns.
Archaeological evidence suggests that Bronze Age people had settled in the area around 1000 BC, although it is not known whether these settlements were permanent or temporary. The town itself was founded in the 11th century when Benedictine monks established a priory at the foot of the highest peak of Malvern Hills. During the 19th century Malvern developed rapidly from a village to a sprawling conurbation owing to its popularity as a hydrotherapy spa based on its spring waters. Immediately following the decline of spa tourism towards the end of the 19th century, the town's focus shifted to education with the establishment of several private boarding schools in former hotels and large villas. A further major expansion was the result of the relocation of the Telecommunications Research Establishment (TRE) to Malvern in 1942. QinetiQ, TRE's successor company, remained the town's largest local employer in 2009.
Malvern is the largest place in the parliamentary constituency of West Worcestershire and the district of Malvern Hills, being also the district's administrative seat. It lies adjacent to the Malvern Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The civil parish is governed by Malvern Town Council from its offices in Great Malvern.
## Toponymy
The name Malvern is derived from the ancient British or old Welsh moel-bryn, meaning "Bare or Bald Hill", the modern equivalent being the Welsh moelfryn (bald hill). It has been known as Malferna (11th century), Malverne (12th century), and Much Malvern (16–17th century).
## History
### Bronze Age to monastic times
Flint axes, arrowheads, and flakes found in the area are attributed to early Bronze Age settlers, and the "Shire Ditch", a late Bronze Age boundary earthwork possibly dating from around 1000 BC, was constructed along part of the crest of the hills near the site of later settlements. The Wyche Cutting, a pass through the hills, was in use in prehistoric times as part of the salt route from Droitwich to South Wales. A 19th-century discovery of over two hundred metal money bars suggests that the area had been inhabited by the La Tène people around 250 BC. Ancient folklore has it that the British chieftain Caractacus made his last stand against the Romans at the British Camp, a site of extensive Iron Age earthworks on a summit of the Malvern Hills close to where Malvern was to be later established. The story remains disputed, however, as Roman historian Tacitus implies a site closer to the river Severn. There is therefore no evidence that Roman presence ended the prehistoric settlement at British Camp. However, excavations at nearby Midsummer Hill fort, Bredon Hill, and Croft Ambrey all show evidence of violent destruction around the year 48 AD. This may suggest that the British Camp was abandoned or destroyed around the same time.
A study made by Royal Commission in 2005 that includes aerial photographs of the Hills "amply demonstrates the archaeological potential of this largely neglected landscape, and provides food for thought for a number of research projects". A pottery industry based on the Malverns left remains dating from the Late Bronze Age to the Norman Conquest, shown by methods of archaeological petrology. Via the River Severn, products were traded as far as South Wales. The Longdon and other marshes at the foot of Malvern Chase were grazed by cattle. "Woodland management was considerable", providing fuel for the kilns.
### Monastic Malvern
Little is known about Malvern over the next thousand years until it is described as "an hermitage, or some kind of religious house, for seculars, before the conquest, endowed by the gift of Edward the Confessor". The additions to William Dugdale's Monasticon include an extract from the Pleas taken before the King at York in 1387, stating that there was a congregation of hermits at Malvern "some time before the conquest". Although a Malvern priory existed before the Norman Conquest, it is the settlement of nearby Little Malvern, the site of another, smaller priory, that is mentioned in the Domesday Book. A motte-and-bailey castle built on the top tier of the earthworks of the British Camp just before the Norman Conquest was probably founded by the Saxon Earl Harold Godwinson of Hereford. It was destroyed by King Henry II in 1155.
The town developed around its 11th-century priory, a Benedictine monastery, of which only the large parish church and the abbey gateway remain. Several slightly different histories explain the actual founding of the religious community. Legend tells that the settlement began following the murder of St. Werstan, a monk of Deerhurst, who fled from the Danes and took refuge in the woods of Malvern, where the hermitage had been established. St Werstan's oratory is thought to have been on the site of St Michael's Chapel, which is believed to have stood on the site of Bello Sguardo, a Victorian Villa, which was built on the site of Hermitage Cottage. The cottage was demolished in 1825 and ecclesiastical carvings were found in it, along with a mediaeval undercroft, human bones, and parts of a coffin. Although the legend may be monastic mythology, historians have however concluded that St. Werstan was the original martyr.
The first prior, Aldwyn, founded the monastery on his bishop's advice, and by 1135 the monastery included thirty monks. Aldwyn was succeeded by Walcher of Malvern, an astronomer and philosopher from Lorraine in France, whose gravestone inside the priory church records details that the priory arose in 1085 from a hermitage endowed by Edward the Confessor. An ancient stained glass window in the Priory church depicts the legend of St. Werstan, with details of his vision, the consecration of his chapel, Edward the Confessor granting the charter for the site, and Werstan's martyrdom.
An 18th-century document states that in the 18th year of the reign of William the Conqueror (probably 1083), a priory was dedicated to St Mary the Virgin. Victoria County History describes how a hermit Aldwyn, who lived in the reign of Edward the Confessor, had petitioned the Earl of Gloucester for the original site (of the Priory) in the wood, and cites his source as "Gervase of Canterbury, Mappa Mundi (Rolls ser.)".
Large estates in Malvern were part of crown lands given to Gilbert "the Red", the seventh Earl of Gloucester and sixth Earl of Hertford, on his marriage to Joan of Acre the daughter of Edward I, in 1290. Disputed hunting rights on these led to several armed conflicts with Humphrey de Bohun, 3rd Earl of Hereford that Edward resolved. Nott states that Gilbert made gifts to the Priory, and describes his "great conflict" with Thomas de Cantilupe, Bishop of Hereford, also about hunting rights and a ditch that Gilbert dug, that was settled by costly litigation. Gilbert had a similar conflict with Godfrey Giffard, Bishop and Administrator of Worcester Cathedral (and formerly Chancellor of England). Godfrey, who had granted land to the Priory, had jurisdictional disputes about Malvern Priory, resolved by Robert Burnell, the current Chancellor.
A discussion in 2005 about the stained glass windows of the Priory Church in terms of the relationship between Church and Laity stresses the importance of Malvern in the development of stained glass. It refers to "the vast and strategically important estates of which Malvern was a part" in the 15th and 16th centuries, to a widespread awareness of Malvern Priory, to the likelihood of a pilgrimage route through the town. The discussion also mentions Thomas Walsingham's view that Malvern was a hiding place of the Lollard knight Sir John Oldcastle in 1414. Chambers wrote, in relation to the stained glass, "the situation of Malvern was so much admired by Henry VII, his Queen (Elizabeth of York) and their two Sons, Prince Arthur, and Prince Henry" that they made substantial endowments.
As a Royal forest, the area and the surrounding chase were subject to forest law. By Tudor times, royal lands had become used as commons and forest law had fallen into disuse.
### Post dissolution
During the Dissolution of the Monasteries the local commissioners were instructed to ensure that abbey churches used for parish worship, should continue or could be purchased by parishioners. Malvern Priory was thus acquired by a William Pinnocke and with it, much of the 15th century stained glass windows. The monastic buildings were taken apart and anything usable was sold off. With the exception of the church building (of which the south transept adjoining the monastery's cloisters was destroyed), all that remains of Malvern's monastery is the Abbey Gateway (also known as the Priory Gatehouse) that houses today's Malvern Museum.
The contemporary antiquary John Leland described the Malvern Hills and Hanley Castle. An Elizabethan land grant of 1558 mentions Holy Well. A Crown grant of tithes in 1589 mentions lambs, pigs, calves, eggs, hemp and flax. Elizabeth made her Chancellor, Sir Thomas Bromley, the Lord of the Manor.
King Charles I attempted to enclose and sell two thirds of the Chase, as part of a wider attempt to raise revenue for the Crown from the sale of Royal forests. The attempts to enclose the lands, used as commons, resulted in riots, part of a pattern of disturbances that ran across the disafforested royal lands. In 1633, the Court of Exchequer Chamber decreed the rights of the public to two thirds of the lands on the Malvern Hills, and rights of Sir Cornelius Vermuyden and his descendants, and the Crown, to one third (quoted in the preamble to the Malvern Hills Act of 1884). By that time, Malvern had become an established community and the major settlement in the Malvern Chase.
### Development as a spa (17th–19th centuries)
The purported health-giving properties of Malvern water and the natural beauty of the surroundings led to the development of Malvern as a spa, with resources for invalids for tourists. According to legend, the curative benefit of the spring water was known in mediaeval times. The medicinal value and the bottling of Malvern water are mentioned "in a poem attributed to the Reverend Edmund Rea, who became Vicar of Great Malvern in 1612". The occulist Richard Banister wrote about the Eye Well, close to the Holy Well, in a short poem in his Breviary of the Eyes (see Malvern water), in 1622. In 1756, Dr. John Wall published a 14-page pamphlet on the benefits of Malvern water, that reached a 158-page 3rd edition in 1763. Further praise came from the botanist Benjamin Stillingfleet in 1757, the poet Thomas Warton in 1790, and William Addison, the physician of the Duchess of Kent (mother of Queen Victoria) in 1828, all quoted in a review by the medical historian W.H. McMenemy. In his lecture about Malvern at the Royal Institution, Addison spoke of "its pure and invigorating air, the excellence of its water, and the romantic beauty of its scenery". Similar views appeared in the press, Nicholas Vansittart brought his wife Catherine to Malvern for a rest cure in 1809. Chambers, in his book about Malvern, praised Elizabeth, Countess Harcourt (daughter-in-law of the 1st Earl Harcourt), whose patronage contributed to the development of hillside walks.
Bottling and shipping of the Malvern water grew in volume. In 1842, Dr. James Wilson and Dr. James Manby Gully, leading exponents of hydrotherapy, set up clinics in Malvern (Holyrood House for women and Tudor House for men). Malvern expanded rapidly as a residential spa. Several large hotels and many of the large villas date from its heyday. Many smaller hotels and guest houses were built between about 1842 and 1875. By 1855 there were already 95 hotels and boarding houses and by 1865 over a quarter of the town's 800 houses were hospitality venues. Most were in Great Malvern, the town centre, while others were in the surrounding settlements of Malvern Wells, Malvern Link, North Malvern and West Malvern.
Queen Adelaide visited St. Ann's Well in September 1842. "Throughout the 1840s and 1850s Malvern attracted a stream of celebrated visitors, including royalty." Patients included Charles Darwin, Catherine, wife of Charles Dickens,
`Thomas Carlyle, Florence Nightingale, Lord Lytton, who was an outspoken advocate of the waters, Lord Tennyson and Samuel Wilberforce.`
The extension of the railway from Worcester to Malvern Link was completed on 25 May 1859. The following year, "Besides middle class visitors ... the railway also brought working class excursionists from the Black Country with dramatic effect ... At Whitsuntide ... 10,000 came from the Black Country to the newly opened stations at Great Malvern and Malvern Wells. Throughout June to September, day trips were frequent, causing the "town to be crowded with 'the most curious specimens of the British shopkeeper and artisan on an outing' ".
Following Malvern's new-found fame as a spa and area of natural beauty, and fully exploiting its new rail connections, factories from as far as Manchester were organising day trips for their employees, often attracting as many as 5,000 visitors a day. In 1865, a public meeting of residents denounced the rising rail fares – by then twice that of other lines – that were exploiting the tourism industry, and demanded a limitation to the number of excursion trains. The arrival of the railway also enabled the delivery of coal in large quantities, which accelerated the area's popularity as a winter resort.
The 1887 Baedeker's includes Malvern in a London–Worcester–Hereford itinerary and described as "an inland health resort, famous for its bracing air and pleasant situation" and "a great educational centre", with five hotels that are "well spoken of", a commercial hotel, the Assembly Rooms and Gardens, and many excursions on foot, pony and by carriage. Other descriptions of the diversions mention bands, quadrilles, cricket (residents vs visitors) and billiard rooms. The Duchess of Teck stayed, with her daughter Mary (later queen consort of George V), in Malvern in the Autumn of 1891, joined by Lady Eva Greville. and the Duke of Teck. The Duchess was "perfectly enchanted with Malvern and its surroundings" and, with the Duke, visited Malvern College. The Duchess returned to open the new waterworks at Camp Hill in 1895. In 1897, the painter Edward Burne-Jones came to Malvern for the "bracing air", on the recommendation of his doctor, but stayed in his hotel for a week. The 7-year-old Franklin D. Roosevelt visited in 1889, during a trip to Europe with his parents.
By 1875 encroachment on Malvern's wastelands by landowners had reached new heights and action was taken by the people of Malvern and the Commons Society to preserve the hills and common land and to prevent encroachment. Local lords of the manor indicated that they would like to give their rights to the wastes to the public. After preventing the enclosure of a common in 1882, negotiations were initiated with the owners of the northern hills and the first Malvern Hills Act was secured in parliament in 1884. Later Acts empowered the Malvern Hills Conservators to acquire land to prevent further encroachment on common land and by 1925 they had bought much of the manorial wastelands.
Towards the end of the 19th century, the popularity of the hydrotherapy had declined to the extent that many hotels were already being converted into private boarding schools and rest homes, and education became the basis of Malvern's economy. By 1865, the town already had 17 single-gender private schools, increasing to 25 by 1885. The area was well suited for schools due to its established attractive environment and access by rail. Children could travel unaccompanied with their trunks by rail to their boarding schools near the stations in Great Malvern, Malvern Wells, and Malvern Link. Malvern St James (formerly Malvern Girls College), in a former hotel, opposite Great Malvern railway station, has a tunnel (now derelict) to the basement of the building, which is visible from both platforms of the station.
### 20th century
Malvern began to develop into a modern town in the early 1900s, with a continuing strong agricultural presence. Modernisation continued, and the World War II years transformed the population and its activities, establishing the town as a centre of scientific research.
## Governance
Malvern is a town and civil parish governed at the lowest tier of local government by Malvern Town Council, part of the Malvern Hills District of the County of Worcestershire (a district comprising 68 civil parishes and 22 electoral wards). The ward boundaries were redefined from the wards of the former Malvern Urban District Council (1900–1974). Through the many changes in local government infrastructure since the beginning of the 20th century, the importance and distinction by local boundaries of the historical areas of Great Malvern, Malvern Link, North Malvern, Cowleigh, and other neighbourhoods, have been lost.
The original parish of Great Malvern included the hamlet of Guarlford and the chapelry of Newland, and stretched from the River Severn on the east to the Malvern Hills on the west. Guarlford became a separate civil parish in 1894 when, under the Local Government Act of 1894, urban district councils were created for Malvern and Malvern Link. The Guarlford parish covered much of eastern Malvern, including parts of Great Malvern, Pickersleigh, Poolbrook, Barnards Green, Hall Green and Sherrard's Green. By 1900 however, the urban districts of Malvern and Malvern Link amalgamated, absorbing parts of neighbouring parishes to create a town of six wards under the Malvern Urban District Council. In 1934 the boundaries changed again, and those areas came under the control of the Malvern council.
Residents of Malvern Town in the six Malvern Town Council electoral wards are represented by 15 elected members. The council is supported by a team of senior executives that includes a Town Clerk, a Deputy Town Clerk, a PA to the Town Clerk and chairman, an Operations and Events Officer, a Finance Officer, two Operations Managers, an Operations Supervisor, and eight Grounds Maintenance Operatives. The wards are based on the distribution of the population and generally ignore the names of the neighbourhoods and suburbs they contain, and use loaned names:
- Chase — named after Malvern Chase — covering much of the adjacent town centre suburb Barnards Green, the extensive Ministry of Defence property occupied by QinetiQ, the campus of The Chase School, the village of Poolbrook, and the largely rural south-eastern area of the adjoining Poolbrook and Malvern commons.
- Dyson Perrins, the northern part of Malvern adjacent to Link with the campus of Dyson Perrins School and the former MoD DERA North Site, and the former hamlets of Interfield, Halfkey, and Upper Howsell; this ward includes a new neighbourhood of the town — Malvern Vale.
- Link, that covers most of the area north of the Link Common from Link Top, through Malvern Link to Newland, and Upper and Lower Howsell.
- North Malvern - West Malvern, Served by West Malvern Road, an area immediately west of the range of hills between Link Top and West Malvern civil parish that includes the former village of Cowleigh.
- Pickersleigh, that includes the part of the former Great Malvern boundaries east of the railway between Barnards Green and Malvern Link to Madresfield, the former hamlets of Hall Green and Sherrards Green, and part of Barnards Green.
- Priory, covering much of Great Malvern, including all the town centre, and otherwise areas west of the railway between North Malvern and Malvern Wells civil parish.
## Geography
### Town centre
The town centre comprises two main streets at right angles to each other: the steep Church Street and Bellevue Terrace, a relatively flat north–south extension of the A449 which forms Malvern's western extremity along the flank of the hills. Among the many shops are two large modern supermarkets, both in Edith Walk, formerly a steep and unmade lane that served the rear entrances of the shops in Church Street. Many of the traditional high street shops such as butchers, bakers, grocers etc., are now health food shops, art and craft shops, charity shops, law firms, and estate agents.
The offices of Malvern Town Council, the Malvern Hills Conservators, The Malvern Hills AONB Partnership, and Malvern Hills District Council are in the town centre. The town's amenities include the Malvern Theatres complex, the Priory Park, the Splash leisure and swimming complex, the main library, the police station, the tourist information centre, and the museum. In the heart of the town is a statue of the composer Edward Elgar, while other statuary is dedicated to Malvern water.
Great Malvern station, a listed example of classical Victorian railway architecture, is close to the nearby former Imperial Hotel by the same architect, E. W. Elmslie.
### Suburbs and neighbourhoods
Malvern's rapid urbanisation during the latter half of the 19th century spread eastwards and northwards from Great Malvern, the traditional town centre on the steep flank of the Worcestershire Beacon, and engulfed the manors and farms in the immediate area. It was often the farms, such as Pickersleigh (now known as Pickersleigh Court and previously known as Pickersleigh House), near Great Malvern, and the Howsells in Malvern Link which merged with Great Malvern in 1900 that gave their names to many of the new neighbourhoods. The urban agglomeration continued to spread, and by the middle of the 20th century had reached the suburban parishes of West Malvern, Malvern Wells, Newland, Madresfield, and Guarlford.
### Climate
Malvern lies in the Lower Severn/Avon plain affording it a degree of shelter caused by virtue of its nestling in between the Cotswold hills to the east, the Welsh Hills and Mountains to the west, and Birmingham plateau to the north. Although as with all the British Isles it has a maritime climate, the local topography means summer warmth can become emphasised by a slight foehn effect off the surrounding hills. The record maximum stands at 35.8c(96.4f) set in August 1990. Typically 17.3 days of the year will reach 25.1c(77.2f) or higher and the annual warmest day should reach 29.8c(85.6f) according to the 1971–00 observing period.
Winter temperature inversions can also occur given the correct conditions allowing very low minima to occur. Nonetheless, on average the region is one of the warmest non-coastal areas in the UK, with overall night time minima in particular rivalling more urban areas. Indeed, despite the notable low absolute minima (several weather-observing sites nearby having fallen below −20 °C in the past) the annual average frost ratio is a mere 33 days per year (1971–00), actually lower than more urbanised weather station locations such as London's Heathrow Airport. A new absolute minimum of −19.5 °C (−3.1 °F) was recently set during the record cold month December 2010. Prior to this the coldest nights were recorded in the winter of 1981/82; -18.1 °C (−0.6 °F) in December 1981, −18.0 °C (−0.4 °F) in January 1982.
The sunniest year was 2003, when 1776 hours of sunshine were recorded. Rainfall averages around 740mm per year with over 1 mm being recorded on 123 days of the year. Snowfall is highly variable. When winter low pressure systems move from south-west to north-east the Malvern area is often on the northern flank, meaning heavy snowfall while areas further south and east receive rain or no precipitation at all. However, when snowfall arrives by means of convective showers driven by northerly, north–westerly or north–easterly winds the area tends to be one of the least snowy parts of the UK, owing to its sheltered positioning.
## Demography
At the 2011 UK census, the civil parish of Malvern had a population of 29,626. Together with the neighbouring parishes of West Malvern, Malvern Wells, Little Malvern and Newland (the settlements of which largely unite with that of Malvern) the population of the wider "Malverns" urban area is 34,517 (as of 2011).
For the purposes of statistical reporting the Office for National Statistics groups the population of the North Malvern ward of the Malvern civil parish with that of the West Malvern civil parish. For every 100 females, there were 91.7 males. The average household size was 2.4. Of those aged 16–74 in Malvern, 48.1% had no academic qualifications or one General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE), above the figures for all of the Malvern Hills local government district (39.7%) and England (45.5%). According to the census, 2.3% were unemployed and 35.0% were economically inactive. 19.7% of the population were under the age of 16 and 11.5% were aged 75 and over; the mean age of the people of the civil parish was 41.5. 66.8% of residents described their health as "good", similar to the average of 69.1% for the wider district.
### Ethnicity
The 2011 census found the White British ethnic group to be by far the largest in Malvern with 93.2% identifying as such. The next largest ethnic group was White Other, which accounted for 3.2% of the population, followed by the Asian and Mixed Race categories, which made up 1.9% and 1.2% respectively. Black ethnic groups made up 0.3% and the Other group constituted 0.2% of the population.
### Population development
The area remained a village and cluster of manors and farms until "taking of the water" in Malvern became popularised by Dr. Wall in 1756. By the 1820s the Baths and the Pump Room were opened; in 1842 Drs. James Wilson and James Manby Gully opened up water cure establishments in the town centre. By the middle of the 19th century, with the arrival of the railway, bath houses and other establishments catering for the health tourists flourished. By the early 20th century Malvern had developed from a small village centred on its priory to a town with many large hotels and Victorian and Edwardian country villas.
Malvern's population grew in 1942 when the Telecommunications Research Establishment (TRE) moved to Malvern, bringing 2,500 employees, increasing to around 3,500 by 1945. In the early 1950s, several large housing estates were built in Malvern by the government to provide accommodation for the staff and their families. A significant proportion of the current population of Malvern are present and former employees of the facility (now called QinetiQ), and its previously attached military contingent from REME and other units of all three British armed forces.
Malvern had already become an overspill for the nearby city of Worcester, and the new motorways constructed in the early 1960s brought the industrial Midlands within commuting distance by car. With this development came the construction of large private housing developments. The town continues to swell as increasingly more farmland, especially in the Malvern Link area between the villages of Guarlford and Newland, is turned over to housing projects creating new communities and suburbs.
Due to frequent merging of parishes and changes in boundaries, accurate figures based on specific areas are not available.
## Economy
### Research and development
Since 1942 research and development into defence physics and electronics has been the major source of employment in Malvern when during World War II the Telecommunications Research Establishment (TRE) moved from Worth Matravers on the south coast for safety from enemy action. The Radar Research and Development Establishment (RRDE) was moved to Malvern at the same time. Initially, TRE was housed at Malvern College.
TRE was the main United Kingdom research and development organization for radio navigation, radar, infra-red detection for heat seeking missiles, and related work for the Royal Air Force (RAF) during World War II and the years that followed. It was regarded as "the most brilliant and successful of the English wartime research establishments" under "Rowe, who saw more of the English scientific choices between 1935 and 1945 than any single man." TRE and RRDE merged in 1953 to form the Radar Research Establishment (RRE) to be further renamed Royal Radar Establishment (also RRE) in 1955. In 2001 when the facility was partly transferred from public to private ownership and became QinetiQ. The Dstl, the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory has since closed down with the remaining staff moving to other Dstl sites.
With the recognised science and technology developments in the Malvern area, Malvern Hills Science Park was built in 1999, and is now home to over 30 science and technological businesses, including, UTC Aerospace Systems (formerly Goodrich Corporation), and Textlocal.
### Manufacturing
Other manufacturing and service industries are mainly grouped in the Spring Lane Industrial Estate that was developed in the 1960s and the adjoining Enigma Business Park that was begun in the 1990s.
Pipe organs have been built in Malvern since 1841 by Nicholson Organs. Nicholson organs can be found in Gloucester and Portsmouth Cathedrals, and Great Malvern Priory. Cars have been constructed in Malvern since 1894 by Santler (Britains first petrol car) and 1910 by the Morgan Motor Company, one of the world's longest-existing private constructors of automobiles produced in series. The Morgan Motor Car is a traditional sports roadster and over the years has become a 'cult' vehicle, exported all over the world from the factory in Malvern Link. Specialist glass tubing and microscope slides are produced by Chance Brothers in their factory in Malvern next door to the Morgan Motor works.
### Agriculture and horticulture
Malvern is a centre for agricultural industry. The 70-acre (280,000 m<sup>2</sup>) Three Counties Showground, operated by the Three Counties Agricultural Society, is a few miles to the south of Malvern on the road to Upton upon Severn. It has been the permanent venue for the Royal Three Counties Show, held each year in June, since 1958. Representing the counties of Worcestershire, Herefordshire and Gloucestershire, it is one of the most important agricultural shows in the UK, and can be traced back to 1797. It attracts an average of 93,000 visitors over its three-day event, and the event almost doubles the town's local population. The showground also hosts the Royal Horticultural Society's Spring Gardening Show, followed by many other events throughout the year including other regular gardening shows. The Lobelia pioneers William Crump and Dr. Brent Elliott worked in Malvern and were awarded the Victoria Medal of Honour of the Royal Horticultural Society. A tea rose was named for the Malvern rose grower Mrs. Foley Hobbs in 1910 (see page 119 of cited work). As well as agricultural and horticultural shows, the showground holds regular antique and flea markets throughout the year. These have become some of the largest in the UK, attracting thousands of visitors each year.
## Culture
### Architecture
The town centre and its environs contain many examples of Regency, Victorian and Edwardian villas and hotels. Many of the houses were built during the Industrial Revolution and Malvern's boom years as a spa town by wealthy families from the nearby Birmingham area. Following the collapse of the spa industry, many of the hotels and villas became schools, and some have since been further converted to apartments, while some of the smaller hotels are now retirement homes. The Imperial Hotel in red brick with stone dressings, which later became a school, is one of the largest buildings in Malvern. It was built in 1860 by the architect E. W. Elmslie who also designed the Great Malvern railway station, and the Council House on the plot where Dr. Gully's original house stood. The Grove in Avenue Road in 1867, originally to be his private residence in 1927 became part of the Lawnside School for girls, and in 1860 Whitbourne Hall, a Grade II\* listed building, in Herefordshire. The Imperial was the first hotel to be lit by incandescent gas. It was equipped with all types of baths, and brine was brought specially by rail from Droitwich.
Much architecture and statuary in the town centre is dedicated to Malvern water, including the St Ann's Well, which is housed in a building dating from 1813.
### Music
Sir Edward Elgar, British composer and Master of the King's Musick, lived much of his life around Malvern. His Pomp and Circumstance, March No. 1, composed in 1901 and to which the words of Land of Hope and Glory were later set, was first performed in the Wyche School next to the church in the presence of Elgar. A sculpture group by artist Rose Garrard comprising the Enigma fountain together with a statue of Elgar gazing over Great Malvern stands on Belle Vue Terrace in the town centre. The Elgar Route, a 40-mile (64 km) drive passing some key landmarks from Elgar's life, passes through Malvern. Malvern Concert Club, founded in 1903 by Elgar, holds concerts held in the Forum Theatre, Malvern Theatres. Its programmes focus on renaissance, baroque, classical, romantic and contemporary music.
The Chandos Symphony Orchestra, under the professional direction of Michael Lloyd, has over 100 players. It specialises in performances of major works of the 19th and 20th Centuries. The Autumn in Malvern Festival is an annual event featuring performances of artists of music, poetry, writers and film makers held during October every year. The Colwell and other brass bands of the early century were part of the music of the town. The British violinist Nigel Kennedy lived in Malvern for many years and gives concerts in the town's culture venue.
`Julius Harrison (1885–1963), lived in Pickersleigh Road for most of the 1940s and was music director at Malvern College and director of the early Elgar Festivals in Malvern.`
In the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, the Malvern Winter Gardens was a major regional venue for concerts by popular rock bands, including The Rolling Stones, Dave Berry, T-Rex, The Jam, AC/DC, Black Sabbath, The Undertones, and Joy Division. Many of the 1960s concerts were staged by Bannister promotions while later events were promoted by Cherry Red, a London-based independent record label formed in 1978.
### Drama
Malvern Theatres, housed in the Winter Gardens complex in the town centre, is a provincial centre for the arts. The first Malvern Drama Festival, which took place in 1929, was dedicated to Bernard Shaw and planned by Sir Barry Jackson. A number of works have had their first performances at Malvern, six by Shaw including In Good King Charles's Golden Days, the 1929 English première of The Apple Cart, and the world première of Geneva in 1938. In 1956 Malvern held a Shaw centenary week. In February 1965 a Malvern Festival Theatre Trust was set up, and extensive refurbishment was undertaken. J. B. Priestley presided over the opening ceremony of the first summer season. In 1998, a further £7.2 million major redesign and refurbishment took place with the help of contributions from the National Lottery Distribution Fund (NLDF), administered by the government Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
The Theatre of Small Convenience entered the Guinness World Records in 2002 as the smallest theatre in the world. Housed in a former Victorian public convenience in the centre of the town in Edith Walk, the theatre had a capacity of 12 people. Before closing in 2017, the theatre regularly hosted puppetry, professional and amateur actors, drama, poetry, storytelling, and opera.
### Literature
William Langland's famous 14th-century poem The Visions of Piers Plowman (1362) was inspired by the Malvern Hills and the earliest poetic allusion to them occurs in the poem And on a Maye mornynge on Malverne hylles. Langland, the reputed writer, was possibly educated at the priory of Great Malvern. Several roads and buildings in Malvern are named after him.
Malvern entered the writings and lives of several 17th–19th century poets. These include
Michael Drayton: "While Malvern, king of hills, Severn overlooks", (Poly-Olbion, 1613, song 7),
John Dyer: "By the blue steeps of distant Malvern wall'd" (The fleece, 1757, about sheep farming),
Thomas Warton: "Health opes the healing power her chosen fount/ In ... Malvern's ample mount", (1790, Ode on his Majesty's birthday),
Thomas Gray visited in 1770 during his final travels,
Joseph Cottle: "As I climb ... One mass of glory ... A fairy vision!" (The Malvern Hills, 1798),
William Wordsworth: church bells ring as "high as Malvern's cloudy crest" (1835, St. Catherine of Ledbury),
Patrick Tytler died in Great Malvern, in 1849,
Lord Macaulay: "Till twelve fair counties saw the blaze on Malvern's lonely height" (The Armada).
C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien are among the authors that have frequented Malvern. Legend states that, after drinking in a Malvern pub one winter evening, they were walking home when it started to snow. They saw a lamp post shining out through the snow and Lewis turned to his friends and said "that would make a very nice opening line to a book". The novel The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by Lewis later used that image as the characters enter the realm of Narnia. Tolkien found inspiration in the Malvern landscape which he had viewed from his childhood home in Birmingham and his brother Hilary's home near Evesham. He was introduced to the area by Lewis, who had brought him here to meet George Sayer, the Head of English at Malvern College. Sayer had been a student of Lewis, and became his biographer, and together with them Tolkien would walk the Malvern Hills. Recordings of Tolkien reading excerpts from The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings were made in Malvern in 1952, at the home of George Sayer. The recordings were later issued on long-playing gramophone records. In the liner notes for J.R.R Tolkien Reads and Sings his The Hobbit & The Fellowship of the Rings, George Sayer wrote that Tolkien would relive the book as they walked and compared parts of the Malvern Hills to the White Mountains of Gondor.
The poet W. H. Auden taught for three years in the 1930s at The Downs School, in the Malvern Hills. He wrote many poems there, including: This Lunar Beauty; Let Your Sleeping Head; My Love, Fish in the Unruffled Lakes; and Out on the Lawn I Lie in Bed. He also wrote the long poem about the hills and their views, called simply The Malverns.
In his 1941 novel Mr Lucton's Freedom Halesowen-born novelist Francis Brett Young describes sleeping out on the Malvern Hills and seeing the sunrise over the town.
### Art
Works of art in Malvern include fountains, statues, and Malvern water spouts by the sculptor Rose Garrard. Among her sculptures are the statue of Sir Edward Elgar and the Enigma Fountain (Unveiled by Prince Andrew, Duke of York on Belle Vue Terrace, Malvern on 26 May 2000). and the drinking spout, Malvhina, also on Belle Vue Terrace, which was unveiled on 4 September 1998. Garrard's Hand of Peace war memorial, a sculpture in Portland stone is in the Barnards Green suburb of Malvern.
Paintings of Malvern include Little Malvern Church by Joseph Farington now held by the Royal Academy, and a squared drawing by the art historian Robert Witt in the collection of the Courtauld Institute, Joseph Powell's Great Malvern Priory ... from the North East (1797), now in the British Watercolours collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum.
David Prentice, artist and one of the founder members of Birmingham's Ikon Gallery, has lived and worked in Malvern since 1990. He started painting the Malvern Hills when he retired in 1983.
A sculpture of two buzzards by Walenty Pytel was installed in Rosebank Gardens, Great Malvern to commemorate the Queen's Diamond Jubilee in November 2012.
### Television
Elgar, a drama documentary made in 1962 by the British director Ken Russell, was filmed on location in Malvern and Worcester. Several scenes were filmed in Malvern at locations including 'Forli' in Alexandra Road, 'Craeg Lea' in Malvern Wells and St Ann's Well in Great Malvern. Made for BBC Television's long-running Monitor programme, it dramatised the life of the composer Edward Elgar. The film significantly raised the public profile of the composer.
The Malvern landscape forms the backdrop for Penda's Fen, a 1974 British television play written by David Rudkin and directed by Alan Clarke for the BBC's Play for Today series. It tells the story of Stephen, a vicar's son who has visions of angels, Edward Elgar, and King Penda, the last pagan ruler of England. The final scene of the play, where the protagonist has an apparitional experience of King Penda and the "mother and father of England" and King Penda, is set on the Malvern Hills.
The Tank Quarry on North Hill and West of England Quarry on the Worcestershire Beacon were used as locations in the Doctor Who serial The Krotons, starring Patrick Troughton. The serial was broadcast in four weekly parts from 28 December 1968 to 18 January 1969.
Great Malvern railway station featured in 1975 as the commuter-belt railway station in the first episode of Survivors (1975 TV series), the post-apocalyptic fiction drama television series created by Terry Nation and produced by Terence Dudley at the BBC.
### Malvern water
Malvern spring water flows freely from a number of fountains or spouts throughout the Malvern area. Upkeep of these historical springs is funded by several organisations, including the Town Council, the Heritage Lottery Fund, The Malvern Spa Association, and the Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The water became famous for containing "nothing at all". It was the reason for Malvern becoming a spa town and has formed a part of both local and national culture since Queen Elizabeth I made a point of drinking it in public in the 16th century, and Queen Victoria refused to travel without it. It is also a bottled water used by Queen Elizabeth II Until November 2010 when the plant was closed due to lack of profitability, millions of litres of Malvern water were bottled annually by Coca-Cola Enterprises under the Schweppes brand in a factory near Malvern and distributed worldwide. Malvern water is still being bottled from the original source by a family-run business under the name Holywell Spring Water.
### Twin town
Malvern has since 2013 been twinned with Mariánské Lázně, a spa town in the Czech Republic, and since 2016 also with Bagnères-de-Bigorre, a spa town in France.
## Places of worship
In addition to the 12th century priory, during and shortly after Malvern's expansion throughout the second half of the 19th century over twenty Christian churches were built. Many of these are reproductions of 13th and 14th century architecture including Church of St Matthias, Malvern Link (C of E) begun in 1843, which has a full set of ten ringing bells on which the first full peal of Grandsire Triples was rung on 1 June 1901. One of the most recent buildings is St Mary's Church (C of E), in Sherrards Green, a modern church built in 1958.
Pevsner mentions the following 19th and early 20th century churches in Malvern in his book on Worcestershire:
- All Saints, (The Wyche), 1903, by Nevinson and Newton (or possibly Troyte Griffith);
- St. Andrew in Poolbrook, 1885, contains a font inscribed 1724, by Blomfield; Ascension (Leigh Sinton Road) 1903, by Sir Walter Tapper, with a high metal screen by G. Bainbridge Reynolds;
- Christ Church (Avenue Road), 1875–6, by T. D. Barry & Sons, with unexpected cross gable;
- Chapel of the Convent of the Holy Name, (Ranelagh Road), 1893, by Comper, with wagon roof and stained glass;
- St. Joseph (Newtown Road), 1876, by T. R. Donnelly;
- St. Matthias (Church Road), original by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, 1844–46, enlarged and altered by F. W. Hunt, 1880–81, painted dado and stained glass;
- Our Lady and St. Edmund (College Road), 1905, by P. P. Pugin;
- St. Peter (St. Peter's Road), 1863–6, by G. E. Street, with crazy paving of Malvern granite;
- Holy Trinity, (Worcester Road), 1850–1, by S. Daukes, enlarged 1872 by Haddon brothers; with plate and stained glass;
- Congregational Church, (Queen's Drive), 1875, by J. Tait of Leicester;
- Emmanuel, (Countess of Huntingdon's Connexion), 1874, by Haddon Brothers.\*
## Health and emergency services
Malvern has a community hospital on Worcester Road in Malvern Link. The hospital was constructed on the grounds of a former independent preparatory school, Seaford Court, and began operation in 2010. It was officially opened by The Princess Royal in March 2011. This replaced the former community hospital on Lansdowne Crescent.
Major health facilities are provided by hospitals in Worcester. The town has seven health centres, including a health complex in Malvern Link and a group practice on Pickersleigh Road. Malvern also has several nursing and retirement homes for the care of senior citizens. The Malvern area is covered by the Midlands Air Ambulance service, which has operated from the site of Strensham motorway services since 1991.
Malvern is served by the West Midlands Ambulance Service operated by the NHS Trust. The ambulance station is in Victoria Road, Great Malvern, near the town centre.
Other emergency services are provided by West Mercia Police from a station in Victoria Road, and the Hereford and Worcester Fire and Rescue Service that has a station in Worcester Road, Malvern Link.
## Transport
Major road access to the area is provided by the A449 road that runs through the centre of Malvern, connecting it to Worcester and Ledbury. The M5 motorway (West Bromwich, north-west of Birmingham to Exeter in Devon) is accessible at junctions 7 and 8 to the east of Malvern. The M50 motorway (Tewkesbury to Ross-on-Wye), also known as the Ross Spur to the south is accessed at junction 1 on the A38 road between Tewkesbury and Malvern.
Two railway stations approximately one mile (1.6 km) apart at Great Malvern and Malvern Link. Great Western Railway and West Midlands Trains operate services as far as Hereford, Birmingham New Street, and London Paddington.
Malvern bus services include several circular urban routes connecting the main residential and commercial areas and out-of-town shopping malls. Other routes serve the surrounding villages and Worcester city centre. Most services are operated by First Midland Red.
Air services operate from Birmingham Airport, about an hour's drive away on the M5 and M42 motorways. Gloucestershire Airport, at Staverton, in the borough of Tewkesbury, is a busy general aviation airport, used mainly for private charter and scheduled flights to such destinations as the islands of Jersey and Guernsey and the Isle of Man, for pilot training, and by the aircraft of emergency services.
Taxi services are provided by numerous local firms.
## Education
### Primary schools
Elementary education is provided by thirteen primary schools in the town and its suburbs including eight Church of England, one Roman Catholic, and four non-denominational state schools. With the exception of The Grove (1962), Poolbrook Primary School (1977), and Northleigh (1991) that replaced the Cowleigh C of E school destroyed by arson in 1989, all the Malvern primary schools were established between 1836 and 1916, during and shortly after the town's rapid development as a spa.
### High schools
The Chase School in the suburb of Barnards Green near the town centre is a secondary school with around 1300 pupils. It is a specialist Technology, Language and Science college under the specialist schools programme, previously designated a Beacon School.
Dyson Perrins Church of England Academy in the northern part of the large suburb of Malvern Link, a Church of England school with almost 1000 pupils, is a specialist Sports College.
Hanley Castle High School, with around 1000 pupils, including its sixth form centre, is a specialist Language College and was founded in 1326 as a chantry school, making it one of the oldest schools in England. Although the school is in the village of Hanley Castle, about 4 miles (6.4 km) from the town, many of its pupils come from the Malvern area.
### Independent schools
Two large independent 'public' schools – Malvern College for boys and girls and Malvern St James for girls – now remain following mergers of Malvern's many private primary and secondary schools.
Malvern College is a coeducational public school, founded in 1865. Until 1992, it was a school for boys aged 13 to 18. Following a merger with Ellerslie School for Girls in 1992 it became coeducational. Among its alumni are two Nobel Laureates (James Meade and Francis William Aston), an Olympic Gold medalist (Arnold Jackson), and leading politicians. Further acquisition of Hillstone and merger with The Downs (in nearby Colwall) preparatory schools has established an independently run coeducational feeder school, The Downs Malvern, for pupils up to 13 years old.
Malvern St James was formed in 2006 by the merger of Malvern Girls' College and St. James's School, West Malvern (formerly St James's and The Abbey) and other mergers with local private schools over the last thirty years. It is now the last of the independent girls' schools in the Malvern area. The main building of Malvern St James on the campus of the former Malvern Girls' College is the former Imperial Hotel, built in the second half of the 19th century. Hatley St James, a Victorian mansion on Albert Road South, and former residence of the Seton-Karr family, was used as a house for the school.
The Abbey College is an international boarding school providing education mainly for students from countries outside the United Kingdom. Founded in 1974, it provides pre university preparation for mixed gender students aged 14 to 20.
### Further education
Malvern Hills College is a centre for further education providing government certificate vocational courses for adults and post 14-year-old students. Malvern also has an active University of the Third Age that was founded at Malvern Hills College in 1995. Its inaugural meeting was attended by around 150 members of the public, and by 2011 it had over 80 interest groups and 1,100 members.
## Leisure
The Priory Park with its adjoining Malvern Splash pool and Winter Gardens complex occupies a large area in the centre of the town. The Winter Gardens complex is home to the Malvern Theatres, a cinema, a concert venue/banqueting room, bars and cafeterias. For almost half a century, the Malvern Winter Gardens has also been a leisure centre and a major regional venue for classical music, and concerts by major rock bands of the 60s, 70s and 80s. The Splash Leisure Complex flanks the eastern boundary of Priory Park and has an indoor swimming pool and gymnasium. In the town centre is also an extensive public Library that includes access to the Internet and many community services.
The Worcestershire Way, a waymarked long-distance trail in Worcestershire, runs 31 miles (50 km) from Bewdley to Great Malvern.
## Sport
The Manor Park Club multi-sports complex, close to the town centre, provides the area with indoor and outdoor sports facilities including tennis, squash, indoor bowls, racketball, archery and table tennis. It is assisted by grants from various bodies, including the Malvern Hills District Council, the Sport England Lottery, and the Lawn Tennis Association. In 2010, a new indoor facility was unveiled at the club by tennis player Tim Henman. Traditional outdoor bowls is played on a green in Priory Park. Other public areas such as Victoria Park in Malvern Link provide space for field sports and tennis. Malvern Town FC has a football first team that plays in the Hellenic Football League and which has twice reached the third qualifying round of the FA Cup. The Malvern Hills are a popular launching site for hang gliding and paragliding and Malvern has a local hang gliding club. Cricket is provided for at Barnards Green Cricket Club, a professional class ground.
## Notable people
In addition to those born in Malvern, many notable people came to the town to provide or partake of its Hydrotherapy, to be educated or to teach at the large number of independent boarding schools such as Malvern College with its long list of notable alumni, and its elementary school, The Downs, and Malvern St James for girls, that still remain active into the 21st century.
A significant number of people were scientists at the Telecommunications Research Establishment, and its successor the Royal Radar Establishment, the country's largest secret defence research facility with around 4,000 civil servants and military personnel, and the quango it became (as of 2011), QinetiQ.
The Malvern Hills, a designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, have also inspired several poets and novelists.
- Thomas Attwood, British economist and campaigner for electoral reform, died in Malvern, on 9 March 1859.
- Michael P. Barnett, (24 March 1929 – 13 March 2012) was a British theoretical chemist and computer scientist; researcher at the Royal Radar Establishment in 1953. Wikipedia editor and also significant contributor to this Malvern, Worcestershire article.
- William Algernon Churchill (1865–1947) British diplomat and art historian retired to Worlfield House, Malvern in early 1920s.
- Nigel Coates, architect and Emeritus professor of the Royal College of Art grew up in Malvern and was educated at Hanley Castle Grammar School.
- Anne, Charles Darwin's daughter, is buried in the graveyard of Malvern Priory.
- David Davis (1908–1996) BBC radio executive and broadcaster, was born and raised in Malvern.
- Evan Davis, economist, journalist and television presenter, was born in Malvern and grew up in Ashtead, Surrey.
- Anne Diamond, television journalist and presenter, grew up in Malvern.
- Edward Elgar, composer, lived and taught in Great Malvern. He is buried in the graveyard of St Wulstan's Roman Catholic Church in the village of Little Malvern.
- Basil Foster (1882–1959), English cricketer who played 34 first-class matches in the early 20th century, was born in Malvern.
- Arthur Troyte Griffith, architect and friend of Elgar
- Julius Harrison (1885–1963), was a contemporary of Elgar, and Professor of Composition at the Royal Academy of Music. He was music director at Malvern College and director of the early Elgar Festivals in Malvern. He lived in Pickersleigh Road from most of the 1940s.
- Charles Hastings, founder of the British Medical Association, spent his final years at Hastings House, Barnards Green.
- Graeme Hick, cricketer, currently resides in the Malvern area, and coaches at Malvern College.
- Dorothy Howell, composer ('the English Strauss') lived and taught in Malvern. She is buried in the graveyard of Places of worship in Malvern, Worcestershire#St Wulstan's Church in the village of Little Malvern.
- Elsie Howey, suffragette, lived most of her life and died in Malvern.
- Nigel Kennedy, violinist and composer, and his Polish wife Agnieszka, have a home in Malvern.
- Muriel Lanchester (1901-1992) potter and puppeteer
- Waldo Lanchester (1897-1978) puppeteer
- William Langland's allegorical narrative poem Piers Plowman (written c. 1360–1387) begins on the Malvern Hills.
- C. S. Lewis, novelist, was a pupil at the preparatory school Cherbourg House and Malvern College. He boarded at these two establishments between early 1911 and June 1914.
- Jenny Lind, opera singer, lived and died in Malvern, and is buried in Great Malvern cemetery.
- Cher Lloyd, singer, songwriter, and model.
- Caroline Lucas, British politician of the Green Party of England and Wales, was born and raised in Malvern.
- Ellen Marriage, Balzac translator, died in Malvern in 1946.
- Jamie McKelvie, British comic book artist and writer. His work Suburban Glamour was set in a fictional version of Malvern
- David Mitchell, author whose works include Cloud Atlas (also a 2012 Hollywood movie) and Black Swan Green, the latter taking place in Malvern. Mitchel was educated at Hanley Castle Grammar School.
- Malcolm Nokes (1897–1986), teacher, soldier, Olympic medalist, nuclear scientist and CENTO official.
- Jeremy Paxman, journalist, author, broadcaster, presenter of University Challenge, was educated at Malvern College
- Charles William Dyson Perrins, (1864–1958), art collector, philanthropist and local government office holder.
- Charles Ranken, chess champion, lived in Malvern from 1871 until his death in 1905.
- Evie Richards, GB cycling team (Mountain Bike), Tokyo Olympics.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt, later President of the US, stayed at the Aldwyn Tower Hotel while convalescing from an illness at the age of 7.
- George Sayer, biographer of C. S. Lewis.
- Haile Selassie, emperor of Ethiopia, visited Malvern during his 1936–1941 exile, staying at the Abbey Hotel and attending the Holy Trinity Church.
- Jacqui Smith, politician, former British Home Secretary, was born and raised in Malvern.
- Rosie Spaughton, English YouTuber from duo Rose and Rosie
- Philip Woodward (1919–2018), mathematician, worked on radar and related topics at the Royal Radar Establishment for 40 years, and also made major contributions to horology.
## Related settlements
Malvern is the source of the name of many towns and villages, including Malverne, in New York state, as one of the many in the US and around 15 others around the world in current or former British possessions. |
17,877,412 | The Blood Red Tape of Charity | 1,167,314,124 | 1913 film | [
"1910s American films",
"1913 drama films",
"1913 films",
"1913 lost films",
"1913 short films",
"American black-and-white films",
"American drama short films",
"American propaganda films",
"American silent short films",
"Films directed by Edwin August",
"Lost American drama films",
"Silent American drama films",
"Universal Pictures short films"
] | The Blood Red Tape of Charity is a 1913 American silent short propaganda drama film written, directed and starring Edwin August and produced by Pat Powers. August wrote the scenario with the intent to highlight the evils of organized charity while entertaining the viewers. The film focuses on William Weldon, a telegraph lineman who is injured on the job and cannot work for several weeks. The family seeks aid from charity organizations, but "red tape" regulations prevent the family from receiving timely assistance. A gentleman thief named Marx decides to do one last job for the benefit of the family. He forces a doctor to treat the Weldon's invalid daughter Alice before proceeding to rob a charity ball's attendees. Marx pawns the stolen articles and saves the family before turning himself in to the police.
The film was released on September 26, 1913, and played in theaters throughout the United States. The unbilled cast list has been stated to include Lon Chaney in the role of the pawn broker. The Charity Organization Societies sought to produce a film to counter the negative portrayal of charities in The Blood Red Tape of Charity. P. L. Whitney stopped short of directly calling the film's portrayal dangerous, but advocated that charity members use the media to highlight the film's faults and exaggerations. Patricia Erens would use the surviving film still of the pawn broker, claimed to be Lon Chaney by scholars, as an example of Jewish character archetypes that were prominent in silent films. The film is now considered lost, with only a surviving still and the plot details available online.
## Synopsis
The film's plot survives because of Universal's publication of the details in Moving Picture News. The official description is as follows:
> "Charity, through excessive organization, often defeats its own purpose. William Weldon, a telegraph lineman, is the father of a large family, and finds it a hard struggle to make ends meet on his small wages. By a fall from a telegraph pole one afternoon he sustains injuries which force a lay-off for several weeks. His family is left destitute and, after a time, seek aid from various charity organizations. In each case the organization promises to make a full investigation and do what they can, but by the time all the red tape and rules are complied with, the family would starve. In the meantime, Marx, a gentleman thief who has a secret retreat in the same building in which the Weldon family live, meets the invalid daughter, Alice Weldon. She tells him of the family's condition and Marx endeavors to aid her, although at the time he is out of ready cash himself. Taking desperate measures, he holds up a doctor and forces him to attend to Weldon's needs. Then, in company with the female leader of the gang, he attends the charity ball. There he makes a haul — plucking jewelry and trinkets from every one with whom he comes in contact. He pawns the stolen articles and uses the money to help the Weldons. After the family has recovered, through Marx's aid, the charity organizations finally send a few dollars and a skimpy supply of food. Marx decides to reform — in fact, his reformation has been intended for some time, and his last "job" was only the outcome of his desire to do a worthy charity. He goes to the police, declares himself, and surrenders. Marx is sentenced, and while sitting in his cell a vision of Alice appeared before him, repaying him for his sacrifice and charity."
## Cast
- Edwin August as Marx, a Gentleman Thief
- Unknown as William Weldon
- Lon Chaney as a Jewish pawnbroker
It is possible that Mary Charleston was a part of the cast due to Edwin August's having been noted as working with her in Powers' productions.
## Production
According to an interview with Dorothy Donnell, Edwin August wrote The Blood Red Tape of Charity with an intent on showing the evils of organized charity. He also directed the production.
Within months of completing this production, August would leave Universal. Donnell stated that August was tired of earning money for other people when he would make more under his own brand.
The film's cast and credits were unbilled and very few details emerged, but two scholars have claimed that it featured Lon Chaney. Jon Mirsalis states that Chaney has an unbilled part as a pawnbroker. Michael Blake notes that Chaney had a role in the film, but also states that the film had only one reel and lists the production code as 0119. Blake's claim that it was a single reel is the subject of dispute because the release was originally referred to as a two-reel production in publications and many advertisements. Indeed, Blake's book cites a review from "Moving Picture World" that stated "Edwin August has written a brilliant two-part drama along this theme....", but he doesn't state if a two-part movie means one or two reels.
## Release
The film was released on September 26, 1913, by Universal Film Manufacturing Company under the Powers label. On August 15, 1913, prior to the film's release, the Daily Capital Journal of Salem, Oregon contained a brief section on Edwin August which lists The Blood Red Tape of Charity as one of his latest successes. This occurred more than a month prior to the film's release, and is not known to have appeared in any other source or any known pre-release viewing event. After the film was released nationwide, advertisements for its viewing appeared in newspapers including in El Paso, Texas, Chicago, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Ohio, Nebraska, Kansas, and Pennsylvania.
## Reception
Jon C. Mirsalis's website cites a review in Moving Picture World which states, "There is considerable strength in the offering, but it has some bad faults. One of these is melodramatic and insincere acting. The photography is good and in spite of numerous absurdities the picture has strong moments." Descriptive ads for the film were often informative; an ad by the Crystal Theater indicates that August wrote and acted in the film, but also did not shy away from film's depiction of charity organizations and instead promoted the film's defining message as "Charity Organizations Pay Dearly for Incompetency". Another advertisement cites the New York World review detailing the propaganda film's intent to gain public attention to incite a "regeneration" of charitable organizations. An advertisement in the El Paso Herald by the Alamo Theater described the film as "a beautiful story of love, devotion and charity. It is a strong moral lesson and should appeal to the "charity workers" in this country." The advertisement also said the film would make viewers more charitable and good, but that the film's critique on charity workers in particular would be far from appealing or well received.
The film provoked a response by the Charity Organization Societies because of its melodramatic and exaggerated depiction of the family's suffering due to regulation delays. In its response to letters about the film, the Charity Organization Bulletin wished for a scenario to be written and produced to "give a true picture of the work done by organized charity." In the book The Charity Organization Movement in the United States: A Study in American Philanthropy, Volume 19, the film is said to be to an attack on organized charity by a distortion of the facts.
These characterizations were accurate, as August's intention to instruct and entertain audiences of the evils of organized charity makes The Blood Red Tape of Charity a propaganda film by definition.
Another response by P. L. Whitney, Extension Secretary of United Charities, stopped short of calling the film outright dangerous, but noted its intent and the "poetic justice" that surrounds the two secretaries, one of whom results in Marx postponing his retirement, and later takes their jewelry to provide for the family. Whitney advised the editor and readers to keep watch for the film and use the media to highlight its faults and exaggerations.
Patricia Erens used the film still of the pawnbroker, claimed by Mirsalis to be Lon Chaney, as an example of the common depictions of Jews in her book The Jew in American Cinema. |
2,468,451 | New York State Route 9L | 1,093,887,965 | State highway in Warren County, New York, in the United States | [
"State highways in New York (state)",
"Transportation in Warren County, New York",
"U.S. Route 9"
] | New York State Route 9L (NY 9L) is a state highway in Warren County, New York, in the United States. The road is 18.58 miles (29.90 km) long and is a suffixed highway of U.S. Route 9 (US 9). NY 9L goes through three municipalities in Warren County: the city of Glens Falls, the town of Queensbury and the town of Lake George. It starts at an intersection with US 9 and NY 32 in Glens Falls and ends at a junction with US 9 and NY 9N in Lake George. NY 9L is a scenic route for people traveling to Lake George as the road provides many views of the lake. The route was assigned as part of the 1930 renumbering of state highways in New York along the path of an old military road originally built during the American Revolution.
## Route description
NY 9L begins at an intersection with US 9 and NY 32 in downtown Glens Falls. It heads north, intersecting with local roads as it exits the city and enters the town of Queensbury. At the city line, maintenance of the route shifts from the city of Glens Falls to the New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT). Just north of the city limits, NY 9L intersects NY 254. The route continues northward through Queensbury, passing Floyd Bennett Memorial Airport and running parallel to the Washington County line on its way toward and eventually across the Blue Line into Adirondack Park. NY 9L intersects NY 149, an east–west arterial connecting Interstate 87 (I-87) to Vermont, just north of the park limits.
The route continues into Brayton, a hamlet situated in northeast Queensbury. At a junction 11.3 miles (18.2 km) northeast of Glens Falls and 1 mile (1.6 km) north of Brayton, NY 9L meets Pilot Knob Road (County Route 38 or CR 38), a local roadway serving several communities located on the shores of Lake George and along the base of Pilot Knob. NY 9L turns southwest here, roughly paralleling the southern shore of Lake George. A mile west of Brayton, NY 9L intersects with Cleverdale Road, a road serving the small island hamlet of Cleverdale. Just afterward, it passes an open area called Joshua's Rock, with a cluster of buildings. This is Owl's Nest, the home of early realist novelist Edward Eggleston, a designated National Historic Landmark.
After passing the community of Rockhurst, the route intersects Assembly Point Road, another local road serving a minor peninsula and Assembly Point on its tip. Past this point, NY 9L tightly parallels the southern shore of Lake George southwest into the town of Lake George. The route comes to an end at a junction with US 9 and NY 9N south of the village of Lake George at the southwestern extent of the lake.
## History
Modern NY 9L follows the length of the Old Military Road, which was the first road to connect to what is now the town of Queensbury. It was first built in 1755 as the Colonial Army headed north from Albany. The construction of the road helped to increase development in the town. In 1832, the Glens Falls Feeder Canal opened, further improving transportation in Queensbury. Sixteen years later, in 1848, a plank road was built over the old Military Road.
NY 9L was assigned as part of the 1930 renumbering of state highways in New York to its current alignment. The bridge carrying NY 9L over Halfway Creek in Queensbury was originally built in 1923. On August 27, 2007, the New York State Department of Transportation announced that the bridge would be replaced at a cost of \$1.3 million. Initially, work on the project was to begin in September of that year; however, the start of construction was delayed until April 21, 2008. The new bridge was completed in September.
## Major intersections
## See also |
22,819,299 | Generalissimo (30 Rock) | 1,148,294,595 | null | [
"2009 American television episodes",
"30 Rock (season 3) episodes"
] | "Generalissimo" is the tenth episode of the third season of the American television comedy series 30 Rock. It was written by executive producer Robert Carlock and directed by Todd Holland. The episode originally aired on NBC in the United States on February 5, 2009. Guest stars in "Generalissimo" include Jon Hamm, Salma Hayek, Patrick Heusinger, Matt Lauer, Doug Mand, Greg Tuculescu, and Teresa Yenque.
In the episode, Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) begins receiving mail intended for her new neighbor, Dr. Drew Baird (Hamm), and after going through it she decides she would like to meet him. Meanwhile, Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin) resembles a Spanish-language soap opera villain, "The Generalissimo", which prompts the grandmother (Yenque) of Jack's girlfriend, Elisa (Hayek), to disapprove of their relationship. Back at 30 Rock, the new The Girlie Show with Tracy Jordan (TGS) interns (Heusinger, Tuculescu, and Mand) invite Tracy Jordan (Tracy Morgan) out for a night of partying.
"Generalissimo" received generally positive reviews. According to the Nielsen ratings system, it was watched by 6.4 million households during its original broadcast. Todd Holland received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series for "Generalissimo". This episode was submitted for consideration on the behalf of Baldwin for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series.
## Plot
Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) receives the mail of her new neighbor, Dr. Drew Baird (Jon Hamm). After going through it, she believes he is the perfect man for her. To try and woo him, she follows the actions of an evil Spanish soap character called "The Generalissimo" from Los Amantes Clandestinos, despite the warnings of Jenna Maroney (Jane Krakowski) and Elisa (Salma Hayek). She invites Drew to a nonexistent party, and, when he arrives expecting a party, she informs him that the party is scheduled for the following evening, but nevertheless invites him in. While this plan initially appears to work, things go wrong when Liz accidentally gives Drew Rohypnol and he finds some of his opened mail in her handbag. The next day Drew receives some of Liz's mail and reads it. He says that based on her mail he probably would have wanted to meet Liz, in the same vein as she had wanted to meet him. They decide to start with a clean slate and go on a real date.
Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin) meets his girlfriend Elisa's grandmother (Teresa Yenque). The grandmother does not like Jack because he reminds her of the Generalissimo, the antagonist from her favorite Mexican telenovela Los Amantes Clandestinos. Jack buys Los Amantes Clandestinos and tries to kill the Generalissimo off, but the actors on the show refuse to cooperate. Jack then meets Hector Moreda (also played by Baldwin), the actor who plays the Generalissimo, and asks why he will not follow the script. According to Hector, his role as the Generalissimo allows him to cut in line at Disney World, among other perks. Jack shows him a picture of Elisa, explaining that he wants to kill off the character for her. Understanding Jack's feelings, Hector agrees to help Jack by making the character fall in love with an elderly Hispanic woman, thereby winning the affection of Elisa's grandmother. The grandmother subsequently accepts Jack as Elisa's boyfriend, but makes one more request of him: to make NBC News less depressing. Jack responds by airing a montage of pictures of Puerto Rican babies to the music of Tito Puente on The Today Show, much to the displeasure of Matt Lauer.
Meanwhile, NBC has hired recently laid off investment bankers (Patrick Heusinger, Greg Tuculescu, and Doug Mand) from Lehman Brothers as interns on TGS with Tracy Jordan. Tracy Jordan (Tracy Morgan) is invited to go out on the town with them, but finds that he is incapable of keeping up with their lifestyle. Tracy fears that if the public were to learn that he no longer lives a fast lifestyle, his image would be severely compromised and he would be forced to change from a comedic actor to a dramatic actor. Tracy refuses to allow this to happen, so he buys out Lehman Brothers and sends the interns back to their old jobs on Wall Street.
## Production
"Generalissimo" was written by executive producer Robert Carlock and directed by Todd Holland. This was the tenth episode written by Carlock and was Holland's first directed episode. Holland was hired to direct this episode on the recommendation of his agent, who also represents series creator, executive producer and lead actress Tina Fey. "Generalissimo" originally aired in the United States on February 5, 2009, on NBC.
In October 2008, when actor Jon Hamm hosted the sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live (SNL), negotiations took place with the show's producers for him to guest star on 30 Rock. Two months later, it was confirmed Hamm would appear as a love interest for Fey's character, Liz Lemon. It was also announced by NBC that Hamm would star in a three-episode arc; he made his debut in this episode, made his second appearance in "St. Valentine's Day", and made his final guest spot in the show's third-season episode "The Bubble". Hamm later appeared in the season four episodes "Anna Howard Shaw Day" and "Emanuelle Goes to Dinosaur Land" and the season five episode "Live Show."
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Fey said when the writing staff is developing a script, "We'll have an actor in mind and we'll keep referring to them. Like for this we said, 'Then Hamm comes in, blah blah blah.'" She believed that there was no possibility of getting Hamm, though "we were lucky with the timing because Mad Men was on hiatus and he was hosting SNL. So I called over there and asked them [whispering], 'Hey, is that guy funny? Tell me the truth.' And they were like, 'Yes, he's really funny.' By Saturday I knew they were right."
This episode was actress Salma Hayek's third appearance on 30 Rock. She first appeared in the episode "Señor Macho Solo" as a nurse for Jack Donaghy's mother and love interest for Jack. Hayek's second appearance came in "Flu Shot".
## Critical reception
According to the Nielsen ratings system, "Generalissimo" was watched by 6.4 million households, the same as the previous week's episode "Retreat to Move Forward", in its original American broadcast. It earned a 3.1 rating/7 share in the 18–49 demographic. This means that it was seen by 3.1% of all 18- to 49-year-olds, and 7% of all 18- to 49-year-olds watching television at the time of the broadcast. The episode was the eleventh highest-rated show on the NBC network that week. Todd Holland, director of this episode, received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Directing For a Comedy Series at the 61st Primetime Emmy Awards. This episode was submitted for consideration on the behalf of Alec Baldwin for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series at the same awards show.
Bob Sassone of TV Squad admitted in his review that after seeing the promos for "Generalissimo" audibly groaned, and believed the story about a fictitious soap character resembling Baldwin's Jack would not work. He wrote that all of the "over-the-top surreal subplots" featured in the season would make this episode "the worst one of all." After watching the episode, however, Sassone said all the elements worked. Annie Barrett for Entertainment Weekly reported that the two stories, involving Liz and Drew and Jack and Elisa, respectively, were sublime. Barrett said that Baldwin's performance "alone" would have made the episode great. Jeremy Medina of Paste praised this episode, along with "St. Valentine's Day", concluding, "There's no possible way to mention every funny joke or one-liner in the past two episodes. The show is just too lightning-quick for that." Writing for The Monterey County Herald Marc Cabrera noted Jack's interactions with Elisa's grandmother amongst his favorite moments of season 3. The Guardian's Will Dean wrote that "Generalissimo" was the "best episode" of the series. Staci Gold of North by Northwestern wrote that this episode was majorly improved by Baldwin's "hilarious imitation of a Spanish accent." IGN writer Robert Canning said that Baldwin stole the show in this episode, and rated it a 9.4 out of 10.
Time contributor James Poniewozik was complimentary towards the casting of Jon Hamm as Tina Fey's love interest, but hoped that Hamm get "fleshed out beyond the central-casting dreamboat" in the series. Further in his review, Poniewozik said that he most enjoyed episodes in which Liz shows her "evil side" because the show "does an excellent job of showing how much work it is for her to be assertive and slightly evil, how she's excited yet made nervous by the idea at the same time." As with Poniewozik, Nathan Rabin of The A.V. Club complimented 30 Rock as they "pulled it off with aplomb" in regards to Liz's actions in this episode. He said that Liz and Drew "are so damned delightful that it's hard not to root for them even if Liz's antics increasingly border on deranged and criminal." Rabin said that the Rohypnol incident was funny "but also sweet and more than a little romantic." Sassone enjoyed Liz and Drew's scenes, writing that when Fey and Hamm work together they are quite good. Gold said that Liz's unsuccessful attempts of seduction were "hilarious effects". Canning wrote that Liz's "scam" started weakly but that her storyline "grew at a great pace."
Not all reviews were positive. Television columnist Alan Sepinwall of The Star-Ledger said that past 30 Rock episodes took "old sitcom cliches" and were able to find a "demented" new take on them. In his review, Sepinwall wrote that "Generalissimo" felt like the staff "came up with the cliches they wanted to mock – goofy/evil twins, a character spinning a ridiculous web of lies to land a new crush – and never moved to the next step." |
43,002,988 | Howard Llewellyn Swisher | 1,107,215,696 | American businessperson, real estate developer, orchardist, editor, writer, and historian | [
"1870 births",
"1945 deaths",
"19th-century American historians",
"19th-century American male writers",
"19th-century American writers",
"20th-century American businesspeople",
"20th-century American writers",
"American businesspeople in the oil industry",
"American male non-fiction writers",
"American male poets",
"American orchardists",
"American people of French descent",
"American people of Swiss-German descent",
"American publishers (people)",
"Burials at Oak Grove Cemetery (Morgantown, West Virginia)",
"Businesspeople from Morgantown, West Virginia",
"Deaths from hypertension",
"Editors of West Virginia newspapers",
"Education in Hampshire County, West Virginia",
"Educators from West Virginia",
"Fairmont State University alumni",
"Historians of West Virginia",
"Local historians",
"People from Hampshire County, West Virginia",
"Poets from West Virginia",
"Real estate and property developers",
"West Virginia Democrats",
"West Virginia University alumni",
"Writers from West Virginia"
] | Howard Llewellyn Swisher (September 21, 1870 – August 27, 1945) was an American businessperson, real estate developer, orchardist, editor, writer, and historian. As a prominent businessman, he established several companies responsible for the development of businesses and real estate in Morgantown, West Virginia.
Swisher was born in 1870 near Levels, West Virginia. He became a schoolteacher there at the age of 18, then graduated from Fairmont State Normal School (present-day Fairmont State University) and West Virginia University. He then remained in Morgantown, where he established a bookstore and stationery shop. Following the success of his bookstore, Swisher organized the Main Street Building Company, the Howard L. Swisher Company, and the Morgantown Building Association, each of which constructed a large number of residences in the city. He was also the inaugural secretary-treasurer of the West Virginia Real Estate Dealers' Association.
Swisher was secretary of the Royalty Oil Company, which owned mining rights for approximately 16,000 acres (65 km<sup>2</sup>) of prospective oil lands throughout the United States. He also held prominent leadership and management roles in the Valley Wood Working Company, the Monongahela Valley Posting and Distributing Plant, the Federal Savings and Trust Company, and the West Virginia Tri-Products Company. In Hampshire County, Swisher maintained fruit growing interests and served as the president of the South Branch Merchandising Company. He was an active member of the West Virginia Democratic Party and was selected as a delegate from West Virginia to the 1936 Democratic National Convention.
In 1897, Swisher co-authored History of Hampshire County, West Virginia: From Its Earliest Settlement to the Present with West Virginia historian Hu Maxwell. The book was the first comprehensive history of Hampshire County ever compiled. He composed a collection of poetry and short stories, Briar Blossoms, in 1899, and was the editor of The Ghourki, a literary journal of poetry, short stories, and aphorisms. In 1908, Swisher published Book of Harangues, a selection of passages from The Ghourki.
## Family background
Howard Llewellyn Swisher was born on September 21, 1870, on a farm near the unincorporated community of Levels, West Virginia. He was the son of David Warner Swisher and his wife, Mary Katherine Bonnifield Swisher. David was born in Augusta County, Virginia on April 29, 1822, and was of Swiss German and French ancestry. David moved to Preston County in present-day West Virginia in 1838, and a few years later, he purchased land near present-day Levels in Hampshire County and relocated there. He then established a farm on this land, known as "The Levels," and remained there for the remainder of his life. The Swisher family owned and operated one of the largest orchard operations in the Levels community. In 1846, David married his wife, Mary Katherine Bonnifield, the daughter of Dr. Arnold Bonnifield of St. George, West Virginia.
## Early life and education
Swisher spent his early years and adolescence on his father's farm, until he became a schoolteacher in Hampshire County at the age of 18. He began his post-secondary education at Fairmont State Normal School (present-day Fairmont State University) in Fairmont, which he graduated from in 1892. While enrolled there, Swisher became affiliated with the Mu Mu Chapter of the Sigma Chi fraternity. Following his graduation, he traveled throughout the northwestern United States and the Canadian provinces and territories of Alberta, Assiniboia, British Columbia, and Manitoba. Swisher then moved to Fresno, California, where he worked as a public schoolteacher for two years. He then returned to West Virginia and attended West Virginia University in Morgantown. While at the university, he aspired to become a journalist and edited The Athenaeum, the institution's official student newspaper. In 1897, after three years of studies, Swisher graduated from the university with a Bachelor of Arts degree.
## Business career
As a prominent businessman, Swisher established several corporations and companies responsible for the development of businesses and commercial and residential real estate in Morgantown. He remained in Morgantown after his graduation from West Virginia University, and in 1897 with \$700 in capital, he opened a book and stationery store known as the Acme Book Store. The business prospered, and in April 1898, Swisher established the Acme Publishing Company, which he served as president of for several years.
Swisher subsequently organized the Main Street Building Company, which became responsible for building the Strand Building, a business and commercial block in Morgantown. He established and incorporated the Howard L. Swisher Company in November 1914. He also organized the Morgantown Building Association in November 1918 with an authorized capital of \$250,000 and himself serving as its general manager. The Morgantown Building Association undertook extensive construction of residences in the city. In December 1914, following its organization in Parkersburg, Swisher was named the secretary-treasurer of the West Virginia Real Estate Dealers' Association. The association was formed in cooperation with the West Virginia Department of Agriculture and other state agencies for the promotion and development of the states's agricultural resources, real estate, and investments.
In addition to his real estate and construction ventures, Swisher was an organizer and secretary of the Royalty Oil Company, which owned mining rights to approximately 16,000 acres (65 km<sup>2</sup>) of prospective oil lands throughout the southern and southwestern United States. He built and operated the Swisher Theater in Morgantown. Swisher was also a director of the Valley Wood Working Company, the owner of the Monongahela Valley Posting and Distributing Plant, and the secretary of the Federal Savings and Trust Company prior to 1903. By 1913, he was the president of the West Virginia Tri-Products Company, which invested in coal and oil production, glass manufacturing, and the production of timber and fruit. Swisher maintained fruit growing interests on South Branch Mountain (known as Jersey Mountain) in Hampshire County, and served as the president of the South Branch Merchandising Company.
## Writing career
During his travels, Swisher contributed articles and poetry to newspapers throughout the Northwest. While attending West Virginia University, he published a small book containing approximately 600 lines of poetry, which he dedicated to his classmates. In 1897, Swisher co-authored History of Hampshire County, West Virginia: From Its Earliest Settlement to the Present with West Virginia historian Hu Maxwell. The book was the first comprehensive history of Hampshire County ever compiled. He composed a collection of poetry and short stories titled Briar Blossoms, which was published by his Acme Publishing Company in 1899. Swisher was the editor of The Ghourki, a literary journal of poetry, short stories, and aphorisms. He began each issue with an introductory commentary entitled "Harangues to the Ghourki" in which he referred to himself as the "Chief of the Tribe". In 1908, Swisher published Book of Harangues, a selection of passages from The Ghourki.
## Politics
Swisher was an active member of the West Virginia Democratic Party. In 1900, he was selected as a candidate for State Superintendent of Free Schools. In the 1902 general election, he ran as the Democratic candidate for the Eleventh District of the West Virginia State Senate. Despite his loss, Swisher received the largest number of Democratic votes ever amassed in Monongalia County up until that time. Swisher was a delegate at the 1936 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, and was selected as an alternate delegate to the Democratic National Conventions of 1912 and 1924.
## Personal life
In August 1897, Swisher married Mary Dering of Morgantown, daughter of Edward A. Dering and his wife, Cordelia Walker Dering of Morgantown. Both the Dering and Walker families, from which Swisher's wife descended, had arrived in the Colony of Virginia during its earlier periods of settlement.
Swisher was a member of the Morgantown Union Lodge No. 4 of the Free and Accepted Masons, Morgantown Lodge No. 411 of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, the Morgantown Chamber of Commerce, the Kiwanis Club, the Country Club, and the Old Colony Club. Swisher served on the Old Colony Club's National Advisory Council.
On August 27, 1945, Swisher died of a cerebral hemorrhage due to hypertension at his residence at 80 Donley Street in Morgantown. Swisher was interred on August 30, 1945, at Oak Grove Cemetery in Morgantown's Chancery Hill Historic District.
## Selected works
- History of Hampshire County, West Virginia: From Its Earliest Settlement to the Present. 1897. Co-authored with Hu Maxwell.
- Briar Blossoms: Being a Collection of a Few Verses and Some Prose. 1899.
- Book of Harangues. 1908. |
996,969 | Vuelve (album) | 1,171,962,527 | null | [
"1998 albums",
"Albums produced by Desmond Child",
"Albums produced by Draco Rosa",
"Albums produced by K. C. Porter",
"Grammy Award for Best Latin Pop Album",
"Ricky Martin albums",
"Sony Discos albums",
"Spanish-language albums"
] | Vuelve (transl. Come Back) is the fourth studio album by Puerto Rican singer Ricky Martin. Sony Discos and Columbia Records released it on February 12, 1998. Martin worked with producers KC Porter, Robi Draco Rosa, and Desmond Child to create the album. Following the worldwide success of the song "María" from his previous album, A Medio Vivir (transl. Half Alive) (1995), Martin returned to the studio and began recording material while on tour. Vuelve is a Latin record with Latin dance numbers and pop ballads. "María" caught the attention of FIFA, who asked Martin to write an anthem for the 1998 FIFA World Cup being held in France. Martin subsequently recorded "La Copa de la Vida", composed by Porter, Rosa, and Desmond Child for the World Cup.
Critics' reviews of the album were generally positive; they praised its uptempo tracks and its production, though some criticized it for containing too many ballads. Martin received several accolades, including the Best Latin Pop Performance at the 41st Annual Grammy Awards in 1999. Vuelve debuted at number one on the US Billboard Top Latin Albums chart and peaked at number forty on the Billboard 200. Martin's performance of "La Copa de la Vida" on the Grammy Awards show was credited for boosting the album's sales. Certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), it sold more than 888,000 copies in the United States, standing as the 10th best-selling Latin album in the country. Vuelve reached number one in Norway, Portugal, and Spain, as well as the top 10 in seven other countries, including Australia and Italy. As of 2008, the album had sold over six million copies worldwide.
Vuelve spawned six singles: its title track, "Vuelve", "La Copa de la Vida", "La Bomba", "Perdido Sin Ti", "Por Arriba, Por Abajo", and "Casi un Bolero". "Vuelve" and "Perdido Sin Ti" both reached number one on the Billboard Hot Latin Songs in the US while "La Copa de la Vida" became an international hit in both Europe and South America. For promotion, Martin embarked on the worldwide Vuelve tour performing in Asia, Australia, Europe, Mexico, South America, and the United States.
## Background and recording
In 1995, Ricky Martin released his third studio album, A Medio Vivir. On it, he shifted from his traditional ballad-style compositions to a riskier fusion of music focused on traditional Latin sounds, epitomized by the song "María". Taken aback by the starkly different musical style, his record label executives felt the song would ruin Martin's career. Despite this, "María" was chosen as the album's second single and became a breakthrough success, reaching number one in France, Spain, Germany, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, Finland, Italy, Turkey, and the whole of South America. As of 2014, A Medio Vivir has sold over three million copies worldwide. "María" caught the attention of FIFA. They contacted Martin in the middle of his tour and asked him to write an anthem for the 1998 World Cup; Martin subsequently recorded "La Copa de la Vida" (transl. "The Cup of Life") composed by KC Porter, Desmond Child, and fellow ex-member of Menudo Robi Draco Rosa. According to the vice president of marketing at Sony Music Europe, Richard Ogden, FIFA chose Martin because he "exemplified all of the ideals that organizers of the famed football (soccer) tournament wanted us to try to embody in music".
While on tour in 1997, Martin returned to the studio and began recording material for his fourth studio album. He said the experience of touring and recording at the same time was "brutal and incredibly intense". On December 7, 1997, Martin confirmed he was completing his next project and that the album would be released in February of the following year. He worked on the album with producers Porter and Rosa, and recorded it in studios across the United States, Puerto Rico, and Spain. The album's title, Vuelve, was announced on January 25, 1998. In an interview with CNN en Español, he emphasized it was going to "reaffirm the internationalization of my career and I know that it will help me a lot to destroy the stereotypes that may exist with my culture".
## Composition and lyrics
Vuelve is a Latin album composed of 14 songs, consisting mainly of "red-hot" Latin dance numbers and "melodramatic" pop ballads. The uptempo tracks "Lola, Lola" and "La Bomba" (transl. "The Bomb") mix the musical styles of salsa and rumba with jazz, rock, and pop. On "Por Arriba, Por Abajo" (transl. "Over the Top, Through the Bottom"), Martin asks the saints to have his love interest dance with him. It is a samba-influenced track, accompanied by African chants and "wicked horn blasts". "La Bomba" is influenced by the Puerto Rican dance of the same name; its lyrics discuss how the singer gets drunk from the rhythm. The song features Cuban musician Paquito Hechavarría on the piano. "Lola, Lola" is an uptempo number, on which the singer sings about the women he desires. The title track, penned by Venezuelan singer-songwriter Franco De Vita, is a "sultry" love song with a gospel chorus and includes the narrator pleading with Martin's love interest to return as she gives meaning to his life. In a 2007 interview with Estudio Billboard, De Vita recalled he had been writing the song for 10 years when Martin asked him to compose a track for the album. "Corazonado" (transl. "Heartful") and "Perdido Sin Ti" (transl. "Lost Without You") are ballads with "aching, slower-paced narratives", with the latter track being a "bedroom staple with a dreamy hook and a simmering feel". "Casi un Bolero" (transl. "Almost [Like] a Bolero") is a bolero about an artist "[o]bsessed with his own broken heart and threatening to die if his lover does not return". An instrumental version of the song was recorded for Vuelve, which serves as the closing track.
"Hagamos el Amor" (transl. "Let's Make Love") is an orchestrated ballad with a string arrangement and a "brooding" piano". "La Copa de la Vida", the official theme for the 1998 World Cup, is a samba song featuring various instruments including bells, whistles, horns, trumpets, and percussion. On the song, Martin declares life is a competition where one has to "dream to be the champ". "Así es la Vida" (transl. "That's Life") is as "openly pop as it is romantic" and includes a chorus in the background. Martin recorded two cover songs in Spanish for the album: "Marcia Baila" (transl. Marcía Dances) and "Gracias por Pensar en Mi" (transl. "Thank You for Thinking of Me"). Les Rita Mitsouko originally performed "Marcia Baila", and was a success in France in the 1980s. "Gracias por Pensar en Mi" is an adaptation of "A Via Lactea" (transl. "To the Milky Way") by Legião Urbana from their album A Tempestade ou O Livro dos Dias (1996). Renato Russo had written it months before he died of AIDS. The narrator for "Gracias por Pensar en Mi is a person close to dying. Vuelve also features the song "No Importa la Distancia", the Spanish-language version of "Go the Distance" by Michael Bolton from the movie Hercules. It was released as a single for the Latin American edition of the Hercules soundtrack in 1997 and peaked at number 10 on the Latin Pop Airplay chart.
## Singles
The title track was released as the album's first single on January 26, 1998. It was his first number-one song on the Billboard Hot Latin Songs chart in the US. The song became a top five hit in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Panama, and on Mexico's ballads chart. It reached number one in Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Peru, and Venezuela. The track was the theme song for the Mexican telenovela Sin ti (1997). "La Copa de la Vida" was released as the second single on March 9, 1998. The song grew to be an international success, appearing on the charts in more than 60 countries, and reaching number one in 30 countries, including Australia, Belgium (Wallonia), Costa Rica, El Salvador, France, Germany, Italy, Panama, Spain, Nicaragua, Sweden, Switzerland, Venezuela, as well as topping the European Hot 100 Singles chart. It peaked at number two in Norway, as well as on the ballads chart in Mexico, and the Hot Latin Songs chart in the US. The song has been ranked as the best World Cup anthem of all-time by multiple publications.
The third single from Vuelve, "La Bomba", was released on June 16, 1998; it reached number five in Spain, number 27 on the Hot Latin Songs chart, and ranked on several charts in Europe and Australia. The album's fourth single, "Perdido Sin Ti", was released on August 18, 1998, and became Martin's second number one on the Hot Latin Songs chart. "Por Arriba, Por Abajo", was the fifth single to be released from Vuelve on November 3, 1998; it reached number 13 in Spain and number 33 on the Hot Latin Songs chart. The album's final single, "Casi un Bolero", was launched on December 21, 1998. "Corazonado" was released as a promotional single in the US and peaked at number 20 on the Hot Latin Songs chart. Music videos were filmed for "Vuelve", "La Copa de la Vida", "La Bomba", "Perdido Sin Ti", and "Por Arriba, Por Abajo".
## Marketing
### Release
Sony Music released Vuelve in Puerto Rico on February 12, 1998. Martin was on hand for the album's launch. It was released on the same day in the United States, February 24 in Spain, and the following month across the rest of Europe and Southeast Asia. To promote Vuelve in Asian markets, Sony Music Asia released a promo CD containing three versions of "María", and "The Cup of Life" (the English-language version of "La Copa de la Vida"). Sony Music Japan launched the album in the label's native country on March 25, 1998, to coincide with Martin's advertisement campaign for Suzuki. The European edition of Vuelve includes the Spanglish radio edit of "La Copa de la Vida" while the Australian adds the radio edit of "María" as well; neither features the instrumental rendition of "Casi un Bolero". The Japanese release includes the three aforementioned tracks. For the Asian market, the album includes two more remixes of "La Copa de la Vida" in addition to a remix of "La Bomba", the Spanglish rendition of "Casi un Bolero" and Martin's previously-recorded songs "Corazón" (transl. "Heart"), "Dónde Estarás" (transl. "Where Could You Be"), and "Te Extraño, Te Olvido, Te Amo" (transl. "I Miss You, I Forget You, I Love You"). Martin advertised Vuelve on Siempre en Domingo in Mexico and Hey Hey It's Saturday in Australia.
### Live performances
To further promote Vuelve, Martin embarked on the worldwide Vuelve Tour; he performed in Asia, Australia, Europe, Mexico, South America, and the United States. The day after releasing the album, Martin held two sold-out concerts at the 30,000-seat Hiram Bithorn Stadium in Puerto Rico on February 13 and 14, 1998, respectively. In South America, he performed in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Peru, and Venezuela. His shows in Venezuela and Peru were held as benefit concerts, the former as part of "A Venezuela Without Drugs" campaign, and the latter for the Foundation for Children of Peru . Martin also participated in the second annual "Festival Presidente de Música Latino" in the Dominican Republic on June 26, 1997, where he had top billing for the event. In Asia, he toured in India, China, Japan, Malaysia, and Singapore. A concert was planned for Indonesia in May of the same year but was cancelled because of anti-government rioting. In the US, he performed at the Miami Arena in Miami, the Arrowhead Pond in Anaheim, and Madison Square Garden in New York. His sold-out performance at the Arrowhead Pond grossed over \$446,805 which landed it at number 10 on the Boxscore chart on November 7, 1998. For this achievement, the concert's promoter, the Nederlander Organization, presented Martin with the Estrella del Pond Award. His show at Madison Square Garden grossed \$632,180 placing it second on the Boxscore chart of November 10.
A 14-piece band accompanied Martin during his tour, which included four backup vocalists alongside percussion and brass sections. His hour-and-45 minute show consisted of 17 tracks of uptempo numbers and ballads from Vuelve and his earlier career. Aside from the tour, Martin sang "The Cup of Life" live at the 1998 FIFA World Cup Final in France, on the halftime show at the Dallas Cowboys-New England Patriots football game at the Estadio Azteca in Mexico City, and the 1999 Grammy Awards. Billboard'''s John Lannert criticized Martin's presentation in Puerto Rico for the uneven number of slow-tempo and dance numbers as well as the awkward pauses when he changed outfits off-stage. The Los Angeles Times critic Ernesto Lechner felt that Martin "showcased his slick, masterfully composed pop material" at his show at the Arrowhead Pond but remarked that the singer "might have served himself and his fans better by performing a handful of nights at a more intimate venue than the Pond".
## Critical reception
Vuelve was met with generally favorable reviews from music critics with the uptempo tracks receiving with the most positive reactions. AllMusic's Jose F. Promis complimented Martin over how it "effectively balances" dance tracks and ballads. He cited "La Copa de la Vida" as the main highlight but preferred the original version on the album to the English-language adaption. He also lauded the other dance numbers from the record. John Lannert of Billboard magazine compared Vuelve to A Medio Vivir as a "like-minded package of meaty, bitter-sweet romantic ballads and chest-pumping, upbeat numbers". He felt the uptempo songs had the potential to be a hit. Vilma Maldonado of The Monitor praised the record as "creative history" and its production as "seamless" and mentioned that "La Copa de la Copa" stands out the most. Writing for Vista magazine, Carmen Teresa Roiz described the record as a metamorphosis for Martin; she regarded it as the culmination of his music career in "all his splendor".
In the San Antonio Express-News, Ramiro Burr remarked Martin "took careful notes" following the success of "Maria" as Vuelve "continues in that same party fever vein but with more intensity". Burr complimented Porter for being able to maintain the "right balance between the gorgeous R&B drive of the horn and high-energy pop rhythms" on the production and commented that the ballads "serve only as breaks from dancing". David Wild of Rolling Stone touted the record's "extremely polished and infectious Latin pop that's immediately accessible even to dogged English-speaking types". The Miami Herald editor Leila Cobo wrote a positive review of Vuelve; she called the album a "collection of baila-able tunes interspersed with catchy pop ballads and felt the arrangements make it "stand above the often heavily synthesized Latin pop fray". For The Dallas Morning News, Mario Tarradell complimented the singer for "showing a refreshing flair for diversity". He regarded the dance tunes "Lola, Lola", "La Bomba", and "Marcia Baila" as the best tracks on the album.
Critics, however, were divided on the ballads. Promis found some of them forgettable, particularly on the second half of the record. Maldonado found the hook on the title track to be "instant and unforgettable" a sentiment shared by Roiz whereas Cobo criticized it as one of the weakest songs from the album and felt its choruses were "irritating" as they overshadowed Martin's voice. Burr's only complaint about Vuelve was the inclusion of "No Importa la Distancia", describing it as "sappy" which Tarradell similarly expressed as an "unwelcome dose of sugary pap". Tarradell also opined that the ballads "fell into excess" and called the instrumental version of "Casi un Bolero" an "overkill" although he praised "Vuelve" and "Perdido Sin Ti". The Los Angeles Times' Lechner commended Martin's vocal ability on the album to "handle both ballads and up-tempo tunes" and cited the title track would make the album "most likely survive the test of time". In addition, he admired "Hagamos el Amor" for its "sly use of the orchestral passages, passionate delivery, and an overall mood that belongs only to an album by a real artist" despite recognizing the title of the song. Richard Torres of Newsday, writing a positive review of Vuelve, was more receptive of the ballads. He complimented Martin's "soulful falsetto" on "Corazonado", the "sweetness" of "Perdido Sin Ti", and the "gospel-ish intensity" on the title track.
### Accolades
At the 10th Annual Lo Nuestro Awards in 1998, Vuelve received a nomination for Pop Album of the Year, but lost to Me Estoy Enamorando by Alejandro Fernández. At the 41st Annual Grammy Awards in 1999, Martin won the Grammy Award for Best Latin Pop Performance for Vuelve. At the 1999 Billboard Latin Music Awards, it won Pop Album of the Year by a Male Artist, and El Premio de la Gente for Male Pop Artist or Group and Album of the Year at the Ritmo Latino Music Awards in the same year. In 2015, the album was listed among Billboard's 50 Essential Latin Albums of the 50 Past Years. An editor opined, "Pop and dance beats never sounded so good."
## Commercial performance
In the US, Vuelve debuted atop the Billboard Top Latin Albums the week of February 28, 1998, succeeding Me Estoy Enamorando. The album spent 26 weeks in this position. Billboard's Lannert credited its success on Valentine's Day weekend sales. On the US Billboard 200, Vuelve debuted at number 81. A year after its release, sales of Vuelve climbed after Martin's performance of "La Copa de la Vida" at the Grammy Awards. The album ended 1998 as the second best-selling Latin album (after Me Estoy Enamorando), and the best-selling Latin record the following year in the US. His rendition, along with anticipation of Martin's first English-language album, helped the former to peak at number 40 on the Billboard 200. According to Nielsen SoundScan, Vuelve has sold over 888,000 copies in the US, making it the 10th best-selling Latin album in the country as of October 2017. It was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for shipping over 1,000,000 units. In Canada, Vuelve reached number three on the RPM chart and number 11 on the Canadian Albums Charts; it was certified double platinum for shipping 200,000 copies in Canada. Over 1.5 million copies of the album have been shipped in Latin America. Vuelve has been certified triple platinum in both Argentina and Mexico, and platinum in the respective countries of Peru and Uruguay.
Vuelve debuted atop the Spanish Albums Chart on the March 4, 1998, issue. It was certified six-times platinum by the Productores de Música de España (PROMUSICAE), shipment of over 600,000 copies in Spain. The album also peaked at number one on the Portuguese Albums Chart, and received a platinum certification from Associação Fonográfica Portuguesa (AFP) denoting shipments of over 40,000 copies in Portugal. Vuelve debuted at number 34 on the Norwegian Albums Chart. In its fifth week on the chart, it peaked at number one and stayed on the top for three consecutive weeks. It became Martin's first number-one album in Norway, and was certified gold by International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) Norway for selling over 25,000 copies in the country. In Sweden, Vuelve debuted at number 29 on the albums chart on April 10, 1998. After fluctuating on the chart for 17 weeks, on July 31, 1998, it reached its peak at number two. The album was certified platinum by the Swedish Recording Industry Association (GLF), denoting shipments in Sweden of over 80,000 copies. It received a platinum certification from the IFPI signifying sales of 1,000,000 copies in Europe, and as of 2006, over 2.1 million copies have been shipped in the region.
In Southeast Asia, Vuelve was certified gold in Singapore and platinum in Indonesia, Taiwan, and Thailand. In Malaysia, the record reached number three on the albums chart, while it peaked at number 19 on Japan's Oricon Albums Chart, and was certified gold in both countries. In Turkey, Vuelve certified sextuple platinum for sales of 180,000 copies, making it the best-selling album in the country by an international solo artist. Vuelve shipped over one million copies in Asia and had sold over six million copies worldwide by 2008.
## Track listing
## Personnel
Credits for Vuelve adapted from AllMusic and the album liner notes.
### Recording and mixing locations
- Ocean Way Recording, Los Angeles
- Worldbeat Recording, Calabasas
- Disney Studios, Burbank
- Criteria Studios, Miami
- South Beach Studios, Miami
- Centlemania Club Studio, Miami
- Rumbo Recorders, Canoga Park
- LAFX Studios, North Hollywood
- After Hours Studios, Miami
- The Bunny Hop Studios, Studio City
- O'Henry Studios, Burbank
- Circle House Studios, Miami
- Capitol Studios, Hollywood
- Eurosonic Studios, Madrid
- Studio 56, Hollywood
- Alpha Recording Studios, Puerto Rico
- Tone King Studios, Hollywood
### Musicians and technical
- Michael Aarvold – mixing assistant
- Andy Abaz – tres
- Luis Aguino – percussion (Brazilian), trumpet
- Josie Aiello – background vocals
- Mike Ainsworth – mixing assistant
- Rusty Anderson – acoustic guitar (tracks 3, 8)
- Jonathan Antin – stylist
- Iris Aponte – project coordinator
- Karla Aponte – composer
- Carmit Bachar – background vocals
- Steve Bartek – orchestration
- John Beasley – piano (tracks 2, 11)
- Marcelo Berestovoy – acoustic guitar
- Curt Bisquera – drums (track 5)
- Phillipe Bourgués – acoustic guitar
- Chris Brooke – mixing assistant
- Robbie Buchanan – keyboards, piano
- Ed Calle – Metales
- Kari Cameron – bass (tracks 4, 9)
- Karl Cameron – engineer
- David Campbell – orchestration
- Chris Carroll – mixing assistant
- Teresa Cassin – assistant engineer
- Gloria Cheng – piano (track 7)
- Fred Chichin – composer
- Desmond Child – arranger, composer, producer
- Steve Churchyard – engineer
- Tony Concepcion – trumpet, flugel horn (tracks 8)
- Luis Conte – percussion (track 3)
- Ricardo Cordero – background vocals
- Joseph Lito Cortés – acoustic guitar, background vocals
- Orion Crawford – arranger, orchestration
- Franco De Vita – composer
- David Dominguez – assistant engineer
- G.B. Dorsey – background vocals
- Bruce Dukov – concertmaster
- Charles Dye – engineer, mixing
- Luis Enrique – percussion
- Luis Gómez Escolar – composer, Spanish adaptation
- Benny Faccone – engineer, mixing
- Kenneth Faulk – Metales
- Robert Fernandez – engineer
- Jesus "Chuy" Flores – engineer
- Marco Flores – composer
- Humberto Gatica – mixing
- Jim Gilstrap – background vocals
- Francisco Manuel – palmas
- Ruiz Gómez – palmas
- Rich Gomez – acoustic guitar
- Jules Gondar – engineer
- Paul Gordon – assistant engineer
- Reggie Hamilton – bass (tracks 2, 10, 13)
- Katrina Harper – background vocals
- Paquito Hechavarria – piano (track 6)
- Femio Hernández – engineer
- Leo Herrera – mixing assistant
- Bunny Hull – background vocals
- Matt Hyde – engineer
- Ingram – background vocals
- Ethan James – Hurdy Gurdy
- Jorge M. Jaramillo – assistant Engineer
- Brian Jenkins – engineer
- Mortonette Jenkins – background vocals
- Marlena Jeter – background vocals
- Maxine Jeter – background vocals
- Jo Ann Kane – copyist
- John Karpowich – engineer
- Todd Keller – mixing assistant
- Erik Kerly – French horn (track 8)
- Scott Kieklak – assistant engineer
- John Kricker – trombone (track 8)
- Michael Landau – electric guitar (tracks 2, 4, 10, 13)
- Cesar Lemos – arranger, composer
- Gene Lo Assistant – engineer
- Manny López – guitar (track 8)
- Renato López – composer
- John Lowson – engineer
- Ángel "Angie" Machado – Brazilian percussion
- Ricky Martin – primary artist, Spanish adaptation, background vocals
- Peter McCabe – engineer
- Ángelo Medina – associate producer
- Alan Menken – composer
- Dwight Mikkelsen – copyist
- Lee Moore – stylist
- June Murakawa – mixing assistant
- Kristle Murden – background vocals
- Kieran Murray – assistant engineer
- René Juan De La Cruz Napoli – graphic design
- Rick Nelson – background vocals
- Carlos Nieto – engineer
- Meia Noite – Brazilian percussion
- Rafael Padilla – percussion
- Rik Pekkonen – engineer
- Tony Peluso – mixing
- Archie Peña – arranger, percussion (tracks 1, 6, 8)
- Phil Perry – background vocals
- Stella Petrova – background vocals
- Darryl Phinnessee – background vocals
- Alberto Pinto – assistant engineer
- Jeff Poe – engineer
- Javier Pontón – composer
- Mike Porcaro – bass (track 5)
- KC Porter – arranger, composer, multiple instruments, electric piano, producer, programming
- Luis Quine – mixing assistant
- Leo Quintero – cuatro (track 6)
- John "J.R." Robinson – drums
- Lázaro Rodriguez – guitar (track 8)
- Angelina Rosa – background vocals
- Héctor Iván Rosa – engineer
- Robi Rosa – arranger, background vocals, bass programming, composer, engineer, palmas, piano, producer
- Juan Rosario – assistant engineer
- Keith Rose – engineer
- William Ross – orchestration
- Bob Rothstein – mixing assistant
- Renato Russo – composer
- Iris Salazar – assistant engineer
- Rafa Sardina – assistant engineer
- Jeffrey Shannon – assistant engineer
- Jackie Simley – background vocals
- Bill Smith – assistant engineer
- Travis Smith – mixing assistant
- Rafael Solano – percussion (tracks 1, 6, 8)
- Luis Fernándea Soria – engineer
- Stephanie Spruill – background vocals
- Lance Staedler – photography
- Ramón Stagnaro – acoustic guitar (track 4
- Ted Stein – engineer
- Neil Stubenhaus – bass (track 12)
- Sarah Sykes – project coordinator
- Dana Taboe – trombrone (tracks 8)
- Michael Thompson – guitar
- Francisco "Pancho" Tomaselli – assistant engineer
- Carmen Twillie – background vocals
- Robert Valdez – assistant engineer
- Camilo Valencia – arranger
- Jose Luis Vega – background vocals
- Danny Vicari – engineer
- Esteban Villanueva – engineer, project coordinator
- Luis Felipe Villanueva – assistant engineer
- Randy Waldman – piano (track 2)
- Julia Waters – background vocals
- Oren Waters – background vocals
- Peter Yussi Wenger – acoustic guitar (tracks 1, 3)
- John West – background vocals
- Doc Wiley – engineer
- Maxine Willard Waters – background vocals
- Juan Vincente Zambrano – arranger, keyboards, programming
- David Zippel – composer
## Charts
### Weekly charts
### Year-end charts
### All-time charts
## Certifications and sales
## Release history
## See also
- 1998 in Latin music
- List of best-selling albums in Turkey
- List of best-selling Latin albums
- List of best-selling Latin albums in the United States
- List of number-one Billboard Top Latin Albums from the 1990s
- List of number-one Billboard'' Latin Pop Albums from the 1990s
- List of number-one singles of 1998 (Spain) |
13,980,877 | USS Maria J. Carlton | 1,096,749,240 | Union schooner during the American Civil War | [
"Maritime incidents in April 1862",
"Schooners of the United States Navy",
"Ships of the Union Navy",
"Shipwrecks of the American Civil War",
"Shipwrecks of the Mississippi River"
] | USS Maria J. Carlton was a schooner acquired by the United States Navy on October 15, 1861, during the American Civil War. Built before the war, the vessel was converted into a mortar schooner by the Navy. She was then transferred to the mouth of the Mississippi River in early 1862, as part of a force tasked with neutralizing Confederate forts guarding New Orleans, Louisiana. Maria J. Carlton participated in the Battle of Forts Jackson and St. Philip on April 18, but, the battle continuing, was sunk the next day by a shot from Fort Jackson. She was the only Union warship sunk solely by artillery fire from Confederate forts on the Mississippi River during the war.
## Construction and characteristics
According to naval historian Paul Silverstone, the schooner Maria J. Carlton had been built in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, before the American Civil War and launched at an unknown date. However, naval historian Craig W. Gaines states she was built in 1859 at Saybrook, Connecticut, while an 1862 account in the Baltimore Sun states she was built in 1856 in East Haddam, Connecticut, from white oak and chestnut wood. She was 98 feet (30 m) long, had a beam of 27 feet (8.2 m), and a draft of 7 feet 8 inches (2.34 m), with a tonnage of 178 tons. Maria J. Carlton was used as part of the packet trade between New York City and Boston, Massachusetts. On October 15, 1861, the United States Navy purchased Maria J. Carlton from a Mr. Warner at Middletown, Connecticut; the previous name remained in use after the Navy took over. After the purchase, Maria J. Carlton was sent to the New York Navy Yard in Brooklyn to be converted for military use. During her Navy service, she had a crew of 28 and was armed with a 13-inch (33 cm) mortar and two 12-pounder howitzers. She was then commissioned on January 29, 1862; her commander was Acting Master Charles E. Jack.
## Service history
After her commissioning, Maria J. Carlton was assigned to the Mortar Flotilla, which was tasked with helping neutralize Confederate forts guarding New Orleans, Louisiana, which was the largest and wealthiest city in the Confederacy. In mid-February, she began moving towards the mouth of the Mississippi River, and lost her mainmast, rigging, and sails in a gale off of Cape Hatteras. Using a jury mast, the vessel was able to make it to Key West, where she joined the Mortar Flotilla under David Dixon Porter by March 2. Traveling via Ship Island, Maria J. Carlton moved through Pass a Loutre on March 18, and entered the Mississippi River Delta, working with only one mast.
On April 18, the vessel and the rest of the Mortar Flotilla were present at the start of the Battle of Forts Jackson and St. Philip. Porter's fleet was subdivided into smaller commands, with Maria J. Carlton assigned to the 2nd Division of the flotilla, which was commanded by Lieutenant Walter W. Queen, along with five other vessels. With the battle opening, the 2nd Division moved to the east side of the Mississippi, and opened fire on Fort Jackson at a range of a minimum of 3,680 yards (3.36 km). As Confederate fire began to fall among Queen's ships, several were damaged. The mortar schooners USS T. A. Ward and USS George Mangham were both damaged, with the former having to temporarily withdraw from the fight. Firing continued until nightfall, although Fort Jackson ceased replying by 17:00. Both sides resumed the action on April 19, with Queen's vessels opening fire at 08:30 after shifting to the other side of the river in an attempt to avoid damage. Maria J. Carlton was struck at 10:00. The shot went through the quarterdeck, knocked away some lines, passed through the magazine, and exited through the side of the ship, tearing a hole through it. Two or three men on the ship were wounded. but the entire crew of the ship was saved by being brought off by boats from the rest of the fleet and many of the ship's supplies were reported to have been saved. Union ships commanded by David Glasgow Farragut passed Fort Jackson and Fort St. Philip on April 24. Maria J. Carlton*'s wreck was destroyed on April 25 by Union forces. The two forts surrendered on April 28. Maria J. Carlton* was the only Union warship sunk solely by artillery fire from Confederate forts on the Mississippi River during the war. |
9,815,728 | Rockwood Lodge | 1,120,923,922 | Former training facility of the Green Bay Packers | [
"1937 establishments in Wisconsin",
"Buildings and structures in Green Bay, Wisconsin",
"History of the Green Bay Packers",
"Sports in Green Bay, Wisconsin"
] | Rockwood Lodge was the training facility of the Green Bay Packers from 1946 to 1950. Originally built in 1937 as a retreat for a local Norbertine Order, the Lodge was purchased by Packers coach and general manager Curly Lambeau in 1946 and then heavily renovated, making it the first self-contained training facility in professional football history. Although the facility was state-of-the-art at the time, many members of the Packers franchise and local fans complained of its high cost, distance from Green Bay, Wisconsin, and its poor practice field. The Lodge burned down in 1950, with the likely cause being faulty electrical wiring or lightning. The Packers received \$75,000 in insurance from the fire, which would be used to help reestablish the Packers' long-term financial security. Lambeau resigned from the Packers just a week after the fire, citing a lack of unity in the team's direction between him and the Packers' board of directors. The Rockwood Lodge site would lay vacant for a number of years before being purchased by Brown County, Wisconsin, and developed into a public park.
## History
Rockwood Lodge was built in 1937 as a retreat for the Norbertine Order, whose abbey was located in nearby De Pere. The grounds were located approximately 17 miles (27 km) north of the city of Green Bay, Wisconsin, on 53 acres (0.21 km<sup>2</sup>) of land sitting on a limestone bluff overlooking the eponymous Green Bay, an arm of Lake Michigan. The Lodge itself was a stone and timber cross-shaped mansion that comprised 40 rooms, including a large lobby and fireplace. The Norbertines built a boat dock, tennis courts, a baseball field, and an amphitheater on the grounds. The facility was rented for weddings or other public events.
## Green Bay Packers
From 1935 to 1947, the Packers hosted their training camp at Pinewood Lodge, a resort in Rhinelander, Wisconsin. However, Packers head coach and general manager Curly Lambeau had a desire to develop a training facility where his players and their families could live together for the entire season. He had been "smitten" with Rockwood Lodge and in 1946 convinced the Packers board of directors to authorize the purchase of the estate for \$32,000 (), which at the time was a significant amount of money for the Packers. They also authorized an additional \$12,000 () for renovations and the construction of cottages for players' families. The renovations made the Lodge "a state-of-the-art football facility complete with lockers, classrooms, dorms and a restaurant-quality kitchen". It is also considered to be the first self-contained training facility in pro football history.
The Lodge was widely praised by those who were connected to the Packers. The facility provided free housing for players and their families and strengthened team chemistry. However, the Lodge was not without controversy. The players complained that the field was extremely hard and led to multiple injuries. This hardness was caused by the location of the Lodge and practice field on a granite bluff above Lake Michigan. On some days, Lambeau had to move practices to softer fields near the team's then-home, City Stadium. The players derisively called the Lodge "The Rock"—a veiled reference to Alcatraz Island. According to a 2013 article in ESPN The Magazine, the beating that the players took at the Lodge was a major factor in the Packers' marked downturn after winning the 1944 NFL title; within five years, they had fallen to 2–10, at the time the worst record in franchise history.
Many team executives also thought the cost of the facility and renovations were exorbitant, considering the purchase price was 25% of the team's yearly operating budget. While Lambeau had held near-complete control over the Packers' day-to-day operations for three decades, some members of the Packers' board felt the facility was a step too far and nearly resigned. Lastly, many fans were disappointed at the distance from Green Bay to Rockwood Lodge and missed seeing the players and practices in town. The facility also proved to be a severe drain on the Packers' finances, who were also facing poor on-field performance and a possible merger with the All-America Football Conference that many feared would lead to the team folding or being moved to another market.
## 1950 fire
On January 24, 1950, Rockwood Lodge, empty except for a caretaker and his family, caught fire. The family was unharmed, but the building completely burned down except for the stone walls and chimney. Everything in the building except a couch and a photo of Curly Lambeau, including all of the caretaker's possessions, was destroyed. The building's large wood roof, cellulose insulation, and heavy winds all contributed to the destruction. The cause of the fire was never officially ascertained, although faulty wiring or a lightning strike was suspected. Due to the Packers' financial woes and the lack of a clear cause of the fire, rumors quickly spread that someone linked with the team deliberately set the fire for the insurance money. These rumors still persist, however they have been debunked based on interviews with the caretaker's family and team officials.
A number of consequences resulted from the fire. First, the insurance money of \$75,000 () ended up providing a significant boost to the team's financial outlook. Instead of rebuilding the facility, the team used the insurance money, funds from a special Thanksgiving Day intra-squad game, and a stock sale to return the team to profitability. Second, Lambeau resigned his position with the Packers about a week after the fire, citing a "dangerous disunity of purpose within the corporation". Earlier, he had rejected a new contract that would have stripped him of all non-football duties. Lambeau did not retire from football though, as he quickly moved to Chicago to coach the Cardinals football team. Lastly, after the fire, the Packers moved their training camp to Grand Rapids, Minnesota, from 1950 through 1953. They then moved to Stevens Point, Wisconsin, from 1954 to 1957, before switching to St. Norbert College in De Pere, Wisconsin, where they train to this day.
## Bay Shore Park
After sitting dormant for a number of years, the area comprising Rockwood Lodge was purchased from the Packers by Brown County, Wisconsin. In 1968, the county was awarded \$33,500 () from the Land and Water Conservation Fund to help develop a new county park. Bay Shore Park opened in 1974, although some boating facilities and vehicle parking were developed later in the mid-1970s. The park includes campgrounds, picnic areas, a playground, trails, and parking. The park's boat facilities include a ramp, a breakwater, and docks. Although little remains from the Packers' years, the park still hosts Packers-related activities. |
28,916 | Shetland | 1,173,687,114 | Archipelago in the Northern Atlantic | [
"Archipelagoes of Scotland",
"Archipelagoes of the Atlantic Ocean",
"Council areas of Scotland",
"Counties of Scotland",
"Counties of the United Kingdom (1801–1922)",
"Former Danish colonies",
"Former Norwegian colonies",
"Highlands and Islands of Scotland",
"Kingdom of Norway (872–1397)",
"Lieutenancy areas of Scotland",
"National scenic areas of Scotland",
"Northern Isles",
"Shetland"
] | Shetland, also called the Shetland Islands and formerly Zetland, is an archipelago in Scotland lying between Orkney, the Faroe Islands, and Norway. It is the northernmost region of the United Kingdom.
The islands lie about 80 km (50 mi) to the northeast of Orkney, 170 km (110 mi) from mainland Scotland and 220 km (140 mi) west of Norway. They form part of the border between the Atlantic Ocean to the west and the North Sea to the east. Their total area is 1,466 km<sup>2</sup> (566 sq mi), and the population totalled 22,920 in 2019. The islands comprise the Shetland constituency of the Scottish Parliament. The local authority, the Shetland Islands Council, is one of the 32 council areas of Scotland. The islands' administrative centre, largest settlement and only burgh is Lerwick, which has been the capital of Shetland since 1708, before which time the capital was Scalloway.
The archipelago has an oceanic climate, complex geology, rugged coastline, and many low, rolling hills. The largest island, known as "the Mainland", has an area of 967 km<sup>2</sup> (373 sq mi), and is the fifth-largest island in the British Isles. It is one of 16 inhabited islands in Shetland.
Humans have lived in Shetland since the Mesolithic period. Picts are known to have been the original inhabitants of the islands, before the Norse conquest and subsequent colonisation in the Early Middle Ages. During the 10th to 15th centuries, the islands formed part of the Kingdom of Norway until they were annexed into the Kingdom of Scotland due to a royal dispute involving the payment of a dowry. In 1707, when Scotland and England united to form the Kingdom of Great Britain, trade between Shetland and continental Northern Europe decreased. The discovery of North Sea oil in the 1970s significantly boosted Shetland's economy, employment and public-sector revenues. Fishing has always been an important part of the islands’ economy.
The local way of life reflects the Norse heritage of the isles, including the Up Helly Aa fire festivals and a strong musical tradition, especially the traditional fiddle style. Almost all place names in the islands also have Norse origin. The islands have produced a variety of prose writers and poets, who have often written in the distinctive Shetland dialect. Numerous areas on the islands have been set aside to protect the local fauna and flora, including a number of important seabird nesting sites. The Shetland pony and Shetland Sheepdog are two well-known Shetland animal breeds. Other animals with local breeds include the Shetland sheep, cow, goose, and duck. The Shetland pig, or grice, has been extinct since about 1930.
The islands' motto, which appears on the Council's coat of arms, is "Með lögum skal land byggja" (“By law shall the land be built"). The phrase is of Old Norse origin, is mentioned in Njáls saga, and was likely borrowed from provincial Norwegian laws such as the Frostathing Law.
## Etymology
The name Shetland may derive from the Old Norse words hjalt ('hilt'), and land ('land'). Another possibility is that the first syllable is derived from the name of an ancient Celtic tribe.
In 43 CE, the Roman author Pomponius Mela made reference in his writing to seven islands he called the Haemodae. In 77 CE, Pliny the Elder called these same islands the Acmodae. Scholars have inferred that both of these references are to islands in the Shetland group. Another possible early written reference to the islands is Tacitus' report in Agricola in 98 CE. After he described the Roman discovery and conquest of Orkney, he added that the Roman fleet had seen "Thule, too". In early Irish literature, Shetland is referred to as Insi Catt — "the Isles of Cats" (meaning the island inhabited by the tribe called Cat). This may have been the pre-Norse inhabitants' name for the islands. Cat was the name of a Pictish people who occupied parts of the northern Scottish mainland (see Kingdom of Cat); and their name survives in the names of the county of Caithness and in the Scottish Gaelic name for Sutherland, Cataibh, which means "among the Cats".
The oldest known version of the modern name Shetland is Hetland; this may represent "Catland", the Germanic language softening the C- to H- according to Grimm's law. It occurs in a letter written by Harald, earl of Orkney, Shetland and Caithness, in c.1190. By 1431, the islands were being referred to as Hetland, after various intermediate transformations. It is possible that the Pictish "cat" sound contributed to this Norse name. In the 16th century, Shetland was referred to as Hjaltland.
Gradually, the Scandinavian Norn language previously spoken by the inhabitants of the islands was replaced by the Shetland dialect of Scots and Hjaltland became Ȝetland. The initial letter is the Middle Scots letter, yogh, the pronunciation of which is almost identical to the original Norn sound, . When the use of the letter yogh was discontinued, it was often replaced by the similar-looking letter z (which at the time was usually rendered with a curled tail: ⟨ʒ⟩) hence Zetland, the form used in the name of the pre-1975 county council. This is also the source of the ZE postcode used for Shetland.
Most of the individual islands have Norse names, although the derivations of some are obscure and may represent pre-Norse, Pictish, or even pre-Celtic names or elements.
## Geography and geology
Shetland is around 170 km (106 mi) north of Great Britain and 230 km (143 mi) west of Bergen, Norway. It covers an area of 1,468 km<sup>2</sup> (567 sq mi) and has a coastline 2,702 km (1,679 mi) long.
Lerwick, the capital and largest settlement, has a population of 6,958 and about half of the archipelago's total population of 22,920 people live within 16 km (10 mi) of the town.
Scalloway on the west coast, which was the capital until 1708, has a population of fewer than 1,000 people.
Only 16 of about 100 islands are inhabited. The main island of the group is known as Mainland. The next largest are Yell, Unst, and Fetlar, which lie to the north, and Bressay and Whalsay, which lie to the east. East and West Burra, Muckle Roe, Papa Stour, Trondra, and Vaila are smaller islands to the west of Mainland. The other inhabited islands are Foula 28 km (17 mi) west of Walls, Fair Isle 38 km (24 mi) south-west of Sumburgh Head, and the Out Skerries to the east.
The uninhabited islands include Mousa, known for the Broch of Mousa, the finest preserved example in the world of an Iron Age broch; Noss to the east of Bressay, which has been a national nature reserve since 1955; St Ninian's Isle, connected to Mainland by the largest active tombolo in the United Kingdom; and Out Stack, the northernmost point of the British Isles. Shetland's location means that it provides a number of such records: Muness is the most northerly castle in the United Kingdom and Skaw the most northerly settlement.
The geology of Shetland is complex, with numerous faults and fold axes. These islands are the northern outpost of the Caledonian orogeny, and there are outcrops of Lewisian, Dalradian and Moine metamorphic rocks with histories similar to their equivalents on the Scottish mainland. There are also Old Red Sandstone deposits and granite intrusions. The most distinctive feature is the ophiolite in Unst and Fetlar which is a remnant of the Iapetus Ocean floor made up of ultrabasic peridotite and gabbro.
Much of Shetland's economy depends on the oil-bearing sediments in the surrounding seas. Geological evidence shows that in around 6100 BC a tsunami caused by the Storegga Slide hit Shetland, as well as the west coast of Norway, and may have created a wave of up to 25 m (82 ft) high in the voes where modern populations are highest.
The highest point of Shetland is Ronas Hill at 450 m (1,480 ft). The Pleistocene glaciations entirely covered the islands. During that period, the Stanes of Stofast, a 2000-tonne glacial erratic, came to rest on a prominent hilltop in Lunnasting.
Shetland has a national scenic area which, unusually, includes a number of discrete locations: Fair Isle, Foula, South West Mainland (including the Scalloway Islands), Muckle Roe, Esha Ness, Fethaland and Herma Ness. The total area covered by the designation is 41,833 ha, of which 26,347 ha is marine (i.e. below low tide).
In October 2018, legislation came into force in Scotland to prevent public bodies, without good reason, showing Shetland in a separate box in maps, as had often been the practice. The legislation requires the islands to be "displayed in a manner that accurately and proportionately represents their geographical location in relation to the rest of Scotland", so as make clear the islands' real distance from other areas.
### Climate
Shetland has an oceanic temperate maritime climate (Köppen: Cfb), bordering on, but very slightly above average in summer temperatures, the subpolar variety, with long but cool winters and short warm summers. The climate all year round is moderate owing to the influence of the surrounding seas, with average night-time low temperatures a little above 1 °C (34 °F) in January and February and average daytime high temperatures of near 14 °C (57 °F) in July and August. The highest temperature on record was 27.8 °C (82.0 °F) on 6 August 1910 at Sumburgh Head and the lowest −8.9 °C (16.0 °F) in the Januaries of 1952 and 1959. The frost-free period may be as little as three months. In contrast, inland areas of nearby Scandinavia on similar latitudes experience significantly larger temperature differences between summer and winter, with the average highs of regular July days comparable to Lerwick's all-time record heat that is around 23 °C (73 °F), further demonstrating the moderating effect of the Atlantic Ocean. In contrast, winters are considerably milder than those expected in nearby continental areas, even comparable to winter temperatures of many parts of England and Wales much further south.
The general character of the climate is windy and cloudy with at least 2 mm (0.08 in) of rain falling on more than 250 days a year. Average yearly precipitation is 1,003 mm (39.5 in), with November and December the wettest months. Snowfall is usually confined to the period November to February, and snow seldom lies on the ground for more than a day. Less rain falls from April to August although no month receives less than 50 mm (2.0 in). Fog is common during summer due to the cooling effect of the sea on mild southerly airflows.
Because of the islands' latitude, on clear winter nights the northern lights can sometimes be seen in the sky, while in summer there is almost perpetual daylight, a state of affairs known locally as the "simmer dim". Annual bright sunshine averages 1110 hours, and overcast days are common.
## Settlements
The main Tier 1 settlements, i.e. locality areas having the greatest population and/or service provision/facilities, are:
List of islands by largest population:
## Prehistory
Due to the practice, dating to at least the early Neolithic, of building in stone on virtually treeless islands, Shetland is extremely rich in physical remains of the prehistoric eras and there are over 5,000 archaeological sites all told. A midden site at West Voe on the south coast of Mainland, dated to 4320–4030 BC, has provided the first evidence of Mesolithic human activity in Shetland. The same site provides dates for early Neolithic activity and finds at Scord of Brouster in Walls have been dated to 3400 BC. "Shetland knives" are stone tools that date from this period made from felsite from Northmavine.
Pottery shards found at the important site of Jarlshof also indicate that there was Neolithic activity there although the main settlement dates from the Bronze Age. This includes a smithy, a cluster of wheelhouses and a later broch. The site has provided evidence of habitation during various phases right up until Viking times. Heel-shaped cairns, are a style of chambered cairn unique to Shetland, with a particularly large example in Vementry.
Numerous brochs were erected during the Iron Age. In addition to Mousa there are significant ruins at Clickimin, Culswick, Old Scatness and West Burrafirth, although their origin and purpose is a matter of some controversy. The later Iron Age inhabitants of the Northern Isles were probably Pictish, although the historical record is sparse. Hunter (2000) states in relation to King Bridei I of the Picts in the sixth century AD: "As for Shetland, Orkney, Skye and the Western Isles, their inhabitants, most of whom appear to have been Pictish in culture and speech at this time, are likely to have regarded Bridei as a fairly distant presence". In 2011, the collective site, "The Crucible of Iron Age Shetland", including Broch of Mousa, Old Scatness and Jarlshof, joined the UKs "Tentative List" of World Heritage Sites.
## History
### Scandinavian colonisation
The expanding population of Scandinavia led to a shortage of available resources and arable land there and led to a period of Viking expansion so the Norse gradually shifted their attention from plundering to invasion. Shetland was colonised during the late 8th and 9th centuries, the fate of the existing indigenous Pictish population being uncertain. Modern Shetlanders still retain the Norse DNA with many family trees showing the Norse patronymic system(-sson/son, -dottir/daughter). Modern DNA studies such as the Viking Health Study are severely flawed as they only account for a tiny fraction of the population.
Vikings then used the islands as a base for pirate expeditions to Norway and the coasts of mainland Scotland. In response, Norwegian king Harald Hårfagre ("Harald Fair Hair") annexed the Northern Isles (comprising Orkney and Shetland) in 875. Rognvald Eysteinsson received Orkney and Shetland as an earldom from Harald as reparation for the death of his son in battle in Scotland, and then passed the earldom on to his brother Sigurd the Mighty.
The islands converted to Christianity in the late 10th century. King Olaf I Tryggvasson summoned the jarl Sigurd the Stout during a visit to Orkney and said, "I order you and all your subjects to be baptised. If you refuse, I'll have you killed on the spot and I swear I will ravage every island with fire and steel". Unsurprisingly, Sigurd agreed and the islands became Christian at a stroke. Unusually, from c. 1100 onwards the Norse jarls owed allegiance both to Norway and to the Scottish crown through their holdings as Earls of Caithness.
In 1194, when Harald Maddadsson was Earl of Orkney and Shetland, a rebellion broke out against King Sverre Sigurdsson of Norway. The Eyjarskeggjar ("Island Beardies") sailed for Norway but were beaten in the Battle of Florvåg near Bergen. After his victory King Sverre placed Shetland under direct Norwegian rule, a state of affairs that continued for nearly two centuries.
### Increased Scottish interest
From the mid-13th century onwards Scottish monarchs increasingly sought to take control of the islands surrounding their seas. The process was begun in earnest by Alexander II and was continued by his successor Alexander III. This strategy eventually led to an invasion of Scotland by Haakon IV Haakonsson, King of Norway. His fleet assembled in Bressay Sound before sailing for Scotland. After the stalemate of the Battle of Largs, Haakon retreated to Orkney, where he died in December 1263, entertained on his deathbed by recitations of the sagas. His death halted any further Norwegian expansion in Scotland and following this ill-fated expedition, the Hebrides and Mann were yielded to the Kingdom of Scotland as a result of the 1266 Treaty of Perth, although the Scots recognised continuing Norwegian sovereignty over Orkney and Shetland.
### Absorption by Scotland
In the 14th century, Orkney and Shetland remained a Norwegian possession, but Scottish influence was growing. Jon Haraldsson, who was murdered in Thurso in 1231, was the last of an unbroken line of Norse jarls, and thereafter the earls were Scots noblemen of the houses of Angus and St Clair. On the death of Haakon VI in 1380, Norway formed a political union with Denmark, after which the interest of the royal house in the islands declined. In 1469, Shetland was pledged by Christian I, in his capacity as King of Norway, as security against the payment of the dowry of his daughter Margaret, betrothed to James III of Scotland. As the money was never paid, the connection with the Crown of Scotland became permanent. In 1470, William Sinclair, 1st Earl of Caithness, ceded his title to James III, and the following year the Northern Isles were directly absorbed by the Crown of Scotland, an action confirmed by the Parliament of Scotland in 1472. Nonetheless, Shetland's connection with Norway has proved to be enduring.
From the early 15th century onward Shetlanders sold their goods through the Hanseatic League of German merchantmen. The Hansa would buy shiploads of salted fish, wool and butter, and import salt, cloth, beer and other goods. The late 16th century and early 17th century were dominated by the influence of the despotic Robert Stewart, Earl of Orkney, who was granted the islands by his half-sister Mary Queen of Scots, and his son Patrick. The latter commenced the building of Scalloway Castle, but after his imprisonment in 1609, the Crown annexed Orkney and Shetland again until 1643, when Charles I granted them to William Douglas, 7th Earl of Morton. These rights were held on and off by the Mortons until 1766, when they were sold by James Douglas, 14th Earl of Morton to Laurence Dundas.
### 18th and 19th centuries
The trade with the North German towns lasted until the Act of Union 1707, when high salt duties prevented the German merchants from trading with Shetland. Shetland then went into an economic depression, as the local traders were not as skilled in trading salted fish. However, some local merchant-lairds took up where the German merchants had left off, and fitted out their own ships to export fish from Shetland to the Continent. For the independent farmers of Shetland this had negative consequences, as they now had to fish for these merchant-lairds.
Smallpox afflicted the islands in the 17th and 18th centuries (as it did all of Europe), but as vaccines became available after 1800, health improved. The islands were very badly hit by the potato famine of 1846 and the government introduced a Relief Plan for the islands under the command of Captain Robert Craigie of the Royal Navy who stayed in Lerwick to oversee the project 1847–1852. During this period Craigie also did much to improve and increase roads in the islands.
Population increased to a maximum of 31,670 in 1861. However, British rule came at a price for many ordinary people as well as traders. The Shetlanders' nautical skills were sought by the Royal Navy. Some 3,000 served during the Napoleonic wars from 1800 to 1815 and press gangs were rife. During this period 120 men were taken from Fetlar alone, and only 20 of them returned home. By the late 19th century 90% of all Shetland was owned by just 32 people, and between 1861 and 1881 more than 8,000 Shetlanders emigrated. With the passing of the Crofters' Holdings (Scotland) Act 1886 the Liberal prime minister William Gladstone emancipated crofters from the rule of the landlords. The Act enabled those who had effectively been landowners' serfs to become owner-occupiers of their own small farms. By this time fishermen from Holland, who had traditionally gathered each year off the coast of Shetland to fish for herring, triggered an industry in the islands that boomed from around 1880 until the 1920s when stocks of the fish began to dwindle. The production peaked in 1905 at more than a million barrels, of which 708,000 were exported.
The Local Government (Scotland) Act 1889 established a uniform system of county councils in Scotland and realigned the boundaries of many of Scotland's counties: Zetland County Council, which was created in 1890, was established at County Buildings in Lerwick.
### 20th century
During World War I, many Shetlanders served in the Gordon Highlanders, a further 3,000 served in the Merchant Navy, and more than 1,500 in a special local naval reserve. The 10th Cruiser Squadron was stationed at Swarbacks Minn (the stretch of water to the south of Muckle Roe), and during a single year from March 1917 more than 4,500 ships sailed from Lerwick as part of an escorted convoy system. In total, Shetland lost more than 500 men, a higher proportion than any other part of Britain, and there were further waves of emigration in the 1920s and 1930s.
During World War II, a Norwegian naval unit nicknamed the "Shetland Bus" was established by the Special Operations Executive in the autumn of 1940 with a base first at Lunna and later in Scalloway to conduct operations around the coast of Norway. About 30 fishing vessels used by Norwegian refugees were gathered and the Shetland Bus conducted covert operations, carrying intelligence agents, refugees, instructors for the resistance, and military supplies. It made over 200 trips across the sea, and Leif Larsen, the most highly decorated allied naval officer of the war, made 52 of them. Several RAF airfields and sites were also established at Sullom Voe and several lighthouses suffered enemy air attacks.
Oil reserves discovered in the later 20th century in the seas both east and west of Shetland have provided a much-needed alternative source of income for the islands. The East Shetland Basin is one of Europe's prolific petroleum provinces. As a result of the oil revenue and the cultural links with Norway, a small Home Rule movement developed briefly to recast the constitutional position of Shetland. It saw as its models the Isle of Man, as well as Shetland's closest neighbour, the Faroe Islands, an autonomous dependency of Denmark.
The population stood at 17,814 in 1961.
## Economy
Today, the main revenue producers in Shetland are agriculture, aquaculture, fishing, renewable energy, the petroleum industry (crude oil and natural gas production), the creative industries and tourism. Unst also has a rocket launch site called SaxaVord Spaceport (previously known as Shetland Space Centre). A February 2021 news item indicated that a rocket manufacturer from Germany, HyImpulse Technologies, planned to launch spacecraft powered by hydrogen from the Spaceport, starting in 2023. During the previous month, the Space Centre had filed plans with Council for a "satellite launch facility and associated infrastructure".
As of February 2021, information on the Promote Shetland Web site indicated that "Shetland is less reliant on tourism than many Scottish islands" and that oil was an important sector of the economy. The "process of gradually transitioning from oil to clean renewable energy ... production of clean hydrogen" was also emphasized. Fishing remained the primary sector and was expected to grow.
### Fishing
Fishing is central to the islands' economy today, with the total catch being 75,767 t (83,519 tons) in 2009, valued at over £73.2 million. Atlantic mackerel makes up more than half of the catch in Shetland by weight and value, and there are significant landings of haddock, cod, herring, whiting, monkfish and shellfish.
A report published in October 2020 was optimistic about the future of this sector in: "With new fish markets in Lerwick and Scalloway, and plans to expand its aquaculture offerings in Yell, Shetland is preparing for more growth in its biggest industry".
As of February 2021, the Promote Shetland Web site stated that "more fish is landed in Shetland than in England, Wales and Northern Ireland combined', that "Shetland harvests 40,000 tonnes of salmon a year, worth £180 million" and that "6,500 tonnes of mussels are grown in Shetland, more than 80 per cent of the total Scottish production".
### Energy and fossil fuels
Oil and gas were first landed in 1978 at Sullom Voe, which has subsequently become one of the largest terminals in Europe. Taxes from the oil have increased public sector spending on social welfare, art, sport, environmental measures and financial development. Three quarters of the islands' workforce is employed in the service sector, and the Shetland Islands Council alone accounted for 27.9% of output in 2003. Shetland's access to oil revenues has funded the Shetland Charitable Trust, which in turn funds a wide variety of local programmes. The balance of the fund in 2011 was £217 million, i.e., about £9,500 per head.
In January 2007, the Shetland Islands Council signed a partnership agreement with Scottish and Southern Energy for the Viking Wind Farm, a 200-turbine wind farm and subsea cable. This renewable energy project would produce about 600 megawatts and contribute about £20 million to the Shetland economy per year. The plan met with significant opposition within the islands, primarily resulting from the anticipated visual impact of the development. The PURE project in Unst is a research centre which uses a combination of wind power and fuel cells to create a wind hydrogen system. The project is run by the Unst Partnership, the local community's development trust.
A status report on hydrogen production in Shetland, published in September 2020, stated that Shetland Islands Council (SIC) had "joined a number of organisations and projects to drive forward plans to establish hydrogen as a future energy source for the isles and beyond". For example, it was a member of the Scottish Hydrogen Fuel Cell Association (SHFCA). The ORION project, previously named the Shetland Energy Hub, was underway; the plan was to create an energy hub that would use clean electricity in the development of "new technologies such as blue and green hydrogen generation".
In December 2020 the Scottish government released a hydrogen policy statement with plans for incorporating both blue and green hydrogen for use in heating, transportation and industry. The government also planned an investment of £100 million in the hydrogen sector "for the £180 million Emerging Energy Technologies Fund". Shetland Islands Council planned to obtain further specifics about the availability of funding. The government had already agreed that the production of "green" hydrogen from wind power near Sullom Voe Terminal was a valid plan. A December 2020 report stated that "the extensive terminal could also be used for direct refuelling of hydrogen-powered ships" and suggested that the fourth jetty at Sullom Voe "could be suitable for ammonia export".
### Farming and textiles
Farming is mostly concerned with the raising of Shetland sheep, known for their unusually fine wool.
Knitwear is important both to the economy and culture of Shetland, and the Fair Isle design is well known. However, the industry faces challenges due to plagiarism of the word "Shetland" by manufacturers operating elsewhere, and a certification trademark, "The Shetland Lady", has been registered.
Crofting, the farming of small plots of land on a legally restricted tenancy basis, is still practised and is viewed as a key Shetland tradition as well as an important source of income. Crops raised include oats and barley; however, the cold, windswept islands make for a harsh environment for most plants.
### Media
Shetland is served by a weekly local newspaper, The Shetland Times and the online Shetland News with radio service being provided by BBC Radio Shetland and the commercial radio station SIBC.
### Tourism
Shetland is a popular destination for cruise ships, and in 2010 the Lonely Planet guide named Shetland as the sixth best region in the world for tourists seeking unspoilt destinations. The islands were described as "beautiful and rewarding" and the Shetlanders as "a fiercely independent and self-reliant bunch". Overall visitor expenditure was worth £16.4 million in 2006, in which year just under 26,000 cruise liner passengers arrived at Lerwick Harbour. This business has grown substantially with 109 cruise ships already booked in for 2019, representing over 107,000 passenger visits. In 2009, the most popular visitor attractions were the Shetland Museum, the RSPB reserve at Sumburgh Head, Bonhoga Gallery at Weisdale Mill and Jarlshof. Geopark Shetland (now Shetland UNESCO Global Geopark) was established by the Amenity Trust in 2009 to boost sustainable tourism to the islands.
According to the Promote Shetland organisation's website, tourism increased "by £12.6 million between 2017 and 2019 with more than half of visitors giving their trip a perfect rating".
Extremely popular in many countries, with five series having been filmed and aired by early 2021, Shetland (TV series) was inspired by the Ann Cleeves books about the fictional Detective Inspector Jimmy Perez. This has created an interest in Shetland and some tourists visit because they wish to see the places where the series is set and filmed. In 2018, series star Douglas Henshall said in an interview, "When we were there filming, there’s people from Australia and different parts of America who had come specifically because of the show ... It’s showing all over the world. Now you get a lot of people from Scandinavia on these noir tours".
An October 2018 report stated that 91,000 passengers from cruise ships arrived that year (a record high), an increase over the 70,000 in 2017. There was a drop in 2019 to "over 76,000 cruise ship passengers".
#### Effect of the COVID-19 pandemic
Tourism dropped significantly in 2020 (and into 2021) due to restrictions necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic and the major decline in the number of cruise ships that continued to operate worldwide.
As of early February 2021, the Promote Shetland website was still stating this information: "At present, nobody should travel to Shetland from a Level 3 or Level 4 local authority area in Scotland, unless it's for essential purposes". That page reiterated the government recommendation "that people avoid any unnecessary travel between Scotland and England, Wales, or Northern Ireland".
A September 2020 report stated that "The Highlands and Islands region has been disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic to date, when compared to Scotland and the UK as a whole". The tourism industry required short term support for "business survival and recovery" and that was expected to continue as the sector was "severely impacted for as long as physical distancing and travel restrictions". As of 31 December 2020, the usage of ferries and buses was restricted to those traveling for essential purposes. The Island Equivalent scheme was introduced in early 2021 by the Scottish government to financially assist hospitality and retail businesses "affected by Level 3 coronavirus restrictions". Previous schemes in 2020 included the Strategic Framework Business Fund and the Coronavirus Business Support Fund.
### Quarries
- Brindister:
- Scord: Scalloway 05
- Sullom:
- Vatster:
### Transport
Transport between islands is primarily by ferry, and Shetland Islands Council operates various inter-island services. Shetland is also served by a domestic connection from Lerwick to Aberdeen on mainland Scotland. This service, which takes about 12 hours, is operated by NorthLink Ferries. Some services also call at Kirkwall, Orkney, which increases the journey time between Aberdeen and Lerwick by 2 hours. There are plans for road tunnels to some of the islands, especially Bressay and Whalsay; however, it is hard to convince the mainland government to finance them.
Sumburgh Airport, the main airport in Shetland, is located close to Sumburgh Head, 40 km (25 mi) south of Lerwick. Loganair operates flights to other parts of Scotland up to ten times a day, the destinations being Kirkwall, Aberdeen, Inverness, Glasgow and Edinburgh. Lerwick/Tingwall Airport is located 11 km (6.8 mi) west of Lerwick. Operated by Directflight in partnership with Shetland Islands Council, it is devoted to inter-island flights from the Shetland Mainland to Fair Isle and Foula.
Scatsta Airport was an airport near Sullom Voe which allowed frequent charter flights from Aberdeen to transport oilfield workers. The airport closed on 30 June 2020.
Public bus services are operated in Mainland, Trondra, Burra, Unst and Yell, with scheduled dial-a-ride services available in Bressay and Fetlar. Buses also connect with ferries leading to Foula, Papa Stour, and Whalsay.
The archipelago is exposed to wind and tide, and there are numerous sites of wrecked ships. Lighthouses are sited as an aid to navigation at various locations.
## Government
The Shetland Islands Council is the local government authority for all the islands and is based in Lerwick Town Hall.
Shetland is sub-divided into 18 community council areas and into 12 civil parishes that are used for statistical purposes.
## Education
As of early 2021, Shetland had 22 primary schools, five junior high schools, and two high schools: Anderson High School and Brae High School.
Shetland College UHI is a partner of the University of the Highlands and Islands (UHI). UHI’s Centre for Rural Creativity partners with Shetland Arts Development Agency to provide courses on film, music and media up to Masters level at Mareel. The North Atlantic Fisheries College (NAFC) also operates in partnership with UHI offering "a range of training courses relevant to the maritime industries".
The Institute for Northern Studies, operated by UHI, provides "postgraduate teaching and research programmes"; one of the three locations is at Shetland.
## Sport
The Shetland Football Association oversees two divisions — a Premier League and a Reserve League — which are affiliated with the Scottish Amateur Football Association. Seasons take place during summer.
The islands are represented by the Shetland football team, which regularly competes in the Island Games.
## Churches and religion
The Reformation reached the archipelago in 1560. This was an apparently peaceful transition and there is little evidence of religious intolerance in Shetland's recorded history.
In the 2011 census, Shetland registered a higher proportion of people with no religion than the Scottish average. Nevertheless, a variety of religious denominations are represented in the islands.
The Methodist Church has a relatively high membership in Shetland, which is a District of the Methodist Church (with the rest of Scotland comprising a separate District).
The Church of Scotland had a Presbytery of Shetland that includes St. Columba's Church in Lerwick. On 1 June 2020 the Presbytery of Shetland merged with the Presbytery of Aberdeen becoming the Presbytery of Aberdeen and Shetland. In addition there was further church reorganisation in the islands with a series of church closures and all parishes merging into one, covering the whole of Shetland.
The Catholic population is served by the church of St. Margaret and the Sacred Heart in Lerwick. The parish is part of the Diocese of Aberdeen.
The Scottish Episcopal Church (part of the Anglican Communion) has regular worship at: St Magnus' Church, Lerwick; St Colman's Church, Burravoe; and the Chapel of Christ the Encompasser, Fetlar, the last of which is maintained by the Society of Our Lady of the Isles, the most northerly and remote Anglican religious order of nuns.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has a congregation in Lerwick. The former print works and offices of the local newspaper, The Shetland Times, has been converted into a chapel. Jehovah’s Witnesses has a congregation and Kingdom Hall in Lerwick.
## Politics
Shetland is represented in the House of Commons as part of the Orkney and Shetland constituency, which elects one Member of Parliament (MP). As of May 2023, and since 2001, the MP is Alistair Carmichael, a Liberal Democrat. He grew up on Islay, the son of hill farmers who raised sheep and cattle and worked at various occupations before running for election.
This seat has been held by the Liberal Democrats or their predecessors the Liberal Party since 1950, longer than any other seat in the United Kingdom.
In the Scottish Parliament the Shetland constituency elects one Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) by the first past the post system. Tavish Scott of the Scottish Liberal Democrats had held the seat since the creation of the Scottish Parliament in 1999. Beatrice Wishart MSP, also of the Scottish Liberal Democrats, was elected to replace Tavish Scott in August 2019. Shetland is within the Highlands and Islands electoral region.
The political composition of the Shetland Islands Council is 21 Independents and 1 Scottish National Party.
In the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence from the United Kingdom, Shetland voted to remain in the United Kingdom by the third largest margin of the 32 local authority areas, by 63.71% to 36.29% in favour of the Union.
In the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum, Shetland voted for the UK to remain an EU member state, with 56.5% voting to remain and 43.5% voting to leave. In comparison to the rest of Scotland, Shetland had lower-than-average support for remaining in the EU.
The Wir Shetland movement was set up in 2015 to campaign for greater autonomy. In September 2020, the Shetland Islands Council voted 18–2 to explore replacing the council with a new system of government which controls a fairer share of the islands revenue streams and has a greater influence over their own affairs, which could include very lucrative oil fields and fishing waters.
In 2022, as part of the Levelling Up White Paper, an "Island Forum" was proposed, which would allow local policymakers and residents in Shetland to work alongside their counterparts in Orkney, the Western Isles, Anglesey and the Isle of Wight on common issues, such as broadband connectivity, and provide a platform for them to communicate directly with the government on the challenges island communities face in terms of levelling up.
## Flag
Roy Grönneberg, who founded the local chapter of the Scottish National Party in 1966, designed the flag of Shetland in cooperation with Bill Adams to mark the 500th anniversary of the transfer of the islands from Norway to Scotland. The colours are identical to those of the flag of Scotland, but are shaped in the Nordic cross. After several unsuccessful attempts, including a plebiscite in 1985, the Lord Lyon King of Arms approved it as the official flag of Shetland in 2005.
## Local culture and the arts
After the islands were officially transferred from Norway to Scotland in 1472, several Scots families from the Scottish Lowlands emigrated to Shetland in the 16th and 17th centuries. Studies of the genetic makeup of the islands' population, however, indicate that Shetlanders are just under half Scandinavian in origin, and sizeable amounts of Scandinavian ancestry, both patrilineal and matrilineal, have been reported in Orkney (55%) and Shetland (68%). This combination is reflected in many aspects of local life. For example, almost every place name in use can be traced back to the Vikings. The Lerwick Up Helly Aa is one of several fire festivals held in Shetland annually in the middle of winter, starting on the last Tuesday of January. The festival is just over 100 years old in its present, highly organised form. Originally held to break up the long nights of winter and mark the end of Yule, the festival has become one celebrating the isles' heritage and includes a procession of men dressed as Vikings and the burning of a replica longship.
Shetland also competes in the biennial International Island Games, which it hosted in 2005.
The cuisine of Shetland is based on locally produced lamb, beef and seafood, some of it organic. The real ale-producing Valhalla Brewery is the most northerly in Britain. The Shetland Black is a variety of blue potato with a dark skin and indigo-coloured flesh markings.
### Language
The Norn language was a form of Old Norse spoken in the Northern Isles, and continued to be spoken until the 18th century. It was gradually replaced in Shetland by an insular dialect of Scots, known as Shetlandic, which is in turn being replaced by Scottish English. Although Norn was spoken for hundreds of years, it is now extinct and few written sources remain, although influences remain in the Insular Scots dialects. The Shetland dialect is used in local radio and dialect writing, and is kept alive by organisations such as Shetland Forwirds, and the Shetland Folk Society.
### Music
Shetland's culture and landscapes have inspired a variety of musicians, writers and film-makers. The Forty Fiddlers was formed in the 1950s to promote the traditional fiddle style, which is a vibrant part of local culture today. Notable exponents of Shetland folk music include Aly Bain, Jenna Reid, Fiddlers' Bid, and the late Tom Anderson and Peerie Willie Johnson. Thomas Fraser was a country musician who never released a commercial recording during his life, but whose work has become popular more than 20 years after his death in 1978.
The annual Shetland Folk Festival began in 1981 and is hosted on the first weekend of May.
### Writers
Walter Scott's 1822 novel The Pirate is set in "a remote part of Shetland", and was inspired by his 1814 visit to the islands. The name Jarlshof meaning "Earl's Mansion" is a coinage of his. Robert Cowie, a doctor born in Lerwick published the 1874 work entitled
Hugh MacDiarmid, the Scots poet and writer, lived in Whalsay from the mid-1930s through 1942, and wrote many poems there, including a number that directly address or reflect the Shetland environment, such as "On A Raised Beach", which was inspired by a visit to West Linga. The 1975 novel North Star by Hammond Innes is largely set in Shetland and Raman Mundair's 2007 book of poetry A Choreographer's Cartography offers a British Asian perspective on the landscape. The Shetland Quartet by Ann Cleeves, who previously lived in Fair Isle, is a series of crime novels set around the islands. In 2013, her novel Red Bones became the basis of BBC crime drama television series Shetland.
Vagaland, who grew up in Walls, was arguably Shetland's finest poet of the 20th century. Haldane Burgess was a Shetland historian, poet, novelist, violinist, linguist and socialist, and Rhoda Bulter (1929–1994) is one of the best-known Shetland poets of recent times. Other 20th- and 21st-century poets and novelists include Christine De Luca, Robert Alan Jamieson who grew up in Sandness, the late Lollie Graham of Veensgarth, Stella Sutherland of Bressay, the late William J. Tait from Yell and Laureen Johnson.
There is one monthly magazine in production: Shetland. The quarterly The New Shetlander, founded in 1947, is said to be Scotland's longest-running literary magazine. For much of the later 20th century, it was the major vehicle for the work of local writers — and of others, including early work by George Mackay Brown.
### Films and television
Michael Powell made The Edge of the World in 1937, a dramatisation based on the true story of the evacuation of the last 36 inhabitants of the remote island of St Kilda on 29 August 1930. St Kilda lies in the Atlantic Ocean, 64 km (40 mi) west of the Outer Hebrides but Powell was unable to get permission to film there. Undaunted, he made the film over four months during the summer of 1936 in Foula and the film transposes these events to Shetland. Forty years later, the documentary Return to the Edge of the World was filmed, capturing a reunion of cast and crew of the film as they revisited the island in 1978.
A number of other films have been made on or about Shetland including A Crofter's Life in Shetland (1932), A Shetland Lyric (1934), Devil's Gate (2003) and It's Nice Up North (2006), a comedy documentary by Graham Fellows. The Screenplay film festival takes place annually in Mareel, a cinema, music and education venue.
The BBC One television series Shetland, a crime drama, is set in the islands and is based on the book series by Ann Cleeves. The programme is filmed partly in Shetland and partly on the Scottish mainland.
## Wildlife
Shetland has three national nature reserves, at the seabird colonies of Hermaness and Noss, and at Keen of Hamar to preserve the serpentine flora. There are a further 81 SSSIs, which cover 66% or more of the land surfaces of Fair Isle, Papa Stour, Fetlar, Noss, and Foula. Mainland has 45 separate sites.
### Flora
The landscape in Shetland is marked by the grazing of sheep and the harsh conditions have limited the total number of plant species to about 400. Native trees such as rowan and crab apple are only found in a few isolated places such as cliffs and loch islands. The flora is dominated by Arctic-alpine plants, wild flowers, moss and lichen. Spring squill, buck's-horn plantain, Scots lovage, roseroot and sea campion are abundant, especially in sheltered places. Shetland mouse-ear (Cerastium nigrescens) is an endemic flowering plant found only in Shetland. It was first recorded in 1837 by botanist Thomas Edmondston. Although reported from two other sites in the nineteenth century, it currently grows only on two serpentine hills in the island of Unst. The nationally scarce oysterplant is found in several islands and the British Red Listed bryophyte Thamnobryum alopecurum has also been recorded. Listed marine algae include: Polysiphonia fibrillosa (Dillwyn) Sprengel and Polysiphonia atlantica Kapraun and J.Norris, Polysiphonia brodiaei (Dillwyn) Sprengel, Polysiphonia elongata (Hudson) Sprengel, Polysiphonia elongella, Harvey. The Shetland Monkeyflower is unique to Shetland and is a mutation of the Monkeyflower (mimulus guttatus) introduced to Shetland in the 19th century.
### Fauna
Shetland has numerous seabird colonies. Birds found in the islands include Atlantic puffin, storm-petrel, red-throated diver, northern gannet and great skua (locally called "bonxie"). Numerous rarities have also been recorded including black-browed albatross and snow goose. A single pair of snowy owls bred in Fetlar from 1967 to 1975. The Shetland wren, Fair Isle wren, and Shetland starling are subspecies endemic to Shetland. There are also populations of various moorland birds such as curlew, lapwing, snipe and golden plover.
One of the early ornithologists that wrote about the wealth of birdlife in Shetland was Edmund Selous (1857–1934) in his book The Bird Watcher in the Shetlands (1905). He wrote extensively about the gulls and terns, about the arctic skuas, the black guillemots and many other birds (and the seals) of the islands.
The geographical isolation and recent glacial history of Shetland have resulted in a depleted mammalian fauna and the brown rat and house mouse are two of only three species of rodent present in the islands. The Shetland field mouse is the third and the archipelago's fourth endemic subspecies, of which there are three varieties in Yell, Foula, and Fair Isle. They are variants of Apodemus sylvaticus and archaeological evidence suggests that this species was present during the Middle Iron Age (around 200 BC to 400 CE). It is possible that Apodemus was introduced from Orkney where a population has existed since at the least the Bronze Age.
### Domesticated animals
There is a variety of indigenous breeds, of which the diminutive Shetland pony is probably the best known, as well as being an important part of the Shetland farming tradition. The first written record of the pony was in 1603 in the Court Books of Shetland and, for its size, it is the strongest of all the horse breeds. Others are the Shetland Sheepdog or "Sheltie", the endangered Shetland cattle and Shetland goose and the Shetland sheep which is believed to have originated prior to 1000 AD. The Grice was a breed of semi-domesticated pig that had a habit of attacking lambs. It became extinct sometime between the middle of the nineteenth century and the 1930s.
## See also
### Lists
- List of counties of the United Kingdom
- List of islands in Scotland
- List of populated places in Shetland
### About Shetland
- Mavis Grind
- Udal law
### Others
- Hjeltefjorden
- Battle of Florvåg
- Rögnvald Kali Kolsson
- Timeline of prehistoric Scotland
- Prehistoric Scotland
- Constitutional status of Orkney, Shetland and the Western Isles |
13,002,275 | Christine Langan | 1,147,781,482 | English film producer (born 1965) | [
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"Alumni of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge",
"BBC executives",
"British women television directors",
"British women television producers",
"Businesspeople from London",
"English film producers",
"English television directors",
"English television producers",
"Filmmakers who won the Best Film BAFTA Award",
"ITV people",
"Living people"
] | Christine Langan (born January 1965) is an English film producer who was appointed Head of BBC Films in 2009. In 2016, she left the role to become CEO of comedy television production company Baby Cow Productions.
After graduating from Cambridge University in 1987 and working in advertising for three years, Langan joined Granada Television's drama serials department where she script edited daytime soap operas. From there, she transferred to Granada's newly created comedy department, where she developed the acclaimed television series Cold Feet, and other one-off comedies. In 2000, she left Granada to become a freelance producer, and produced the romantic comedy series Rescue Me for the BBC. She returned to Granada in 2002, where she produced the acclaimed dramas The Deal (2003) and Dirty Filthy Love (2004). She made her feature film production debut on Pierrepoint (2005), which got her a Carl Foreman Award nomination at the 60th British Academy Film Awards. Langan also produced The Queen (2006) for Granada, which won the BAFTA Award for Best Film and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture.
In 2006, Langan became an executive producer at BBC Films, developing features such as The Other Boleyn Girl (2008) and The Duchess (2008). In April 2009, she was appointed Creative Director of BBC Films, giving her control of a £12 million annual budget and which projects are commissioned for development. By 2010, Langan had led BBC Films to a record 13 nominations at the British Academy Film Awards, which included In the Loop (2009), Fish Tank (2009) and An Education (2009).
Langan lives in London with her partner, writer Christian Spurrier, and their two children.
## Background
Christine Langan was born in January 1965 in Edmonton, London, England. Her mother and father, a dinner lady and a bricklayer respectively, already had three children. Growing up, Langan became interested in television production after seeing Lew Grade's name in the credits of several programmes. She attended a Catholic grammar school and read English at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge.
After graduating from Cambridge University in 1987, Langan spent three years working as a copywriter for an advertising company. She also contributed film reviews to BBC Radio 2's Cinema 2 programme. In 1990, Langan began her career in film production as an assistant developer for Tessa Ross at British Screen. The following year, she responded to an advertisement for a script editor at Granada Television's drama serials department, located in Manchester. She was hired by David Liddiment, and worked mainly on Granada's daytime soap operas.
## Career
### Granada comedy
In 1993, Langan returned to London to work for Andy Harries at Granada's newly created comedy department, where she script-edited September Song, the television adaptation of An Evening with Gary Lineker, and the second series of Rik Mayall Presents. In 1995, she was associate producer on The Perfect Match, a one-off comedy drama written by former BBC radio producer Mike Bullen. The Perfect Match was broadcast in September 1995, and shortly afterwards, Harries asked Langan to develop more ideas from Bullen.
They devised Cold Feet, another one-off comedy drama based on the love lives of Bullen himself and his friends. Langan produced Cold Feet, guiding Bullen through his script drafts, and hiring Father Ted director Declan Lowney to shoot it. Cold Feet was broadcast in March 1997 as one of four Comedy Premieres on ITV (two others of which Langan script edited). It received poor ratings and little critical reaction. However, in May 1997, it won the Rose d'Or at the Montreux International Television Festival. ITV Network Centre commissioned a series of Cold Feet in August, which Langan also produced. For the series, Langan tried to achieve a written and visual style that differed from regular sitcoms by avoiding "one-liners and quick laughs" and hiring directors who had done little television work before. Cold Feet premiered as a series in November 1998, and Langan stayed until the third series in 2000. She and Bullen received a nomination for the British Academy Television Award for Best Drama Series in 2000. Also in 1998, Langan worked on her first feature film, script editing the Parker Posey-led The Misadventures of Margaret.
In 1999, Langan was made an executive producer in the department. She oversaw several productions, including Passion Killers (1999, starring Ben Miller), Safe as Houses (2000, starring Ricky Tomlinson), and the pilot episode of David Nicholls' I Saw You (2000, starring Paul Rhys and Fay Ripley). In 2000, Langan was offered a position at the BBC's drama department, which had been rearranged that year. The trade magazine Broadcast reported the BBC had made a "substantial offer" to her. Granada's director of programmes Grant Mansfield countered the BBC's bid by offering Langan the position of deputy controller of drama, operating under Andy Harries, who had recently been appointed controller of the same department. Langan accepted neither offer, and instead became a freelance producer after her contract with Granada expired.
As a freelancer, Langan developed three more episodes of I Saw You for Granada. Her only other project was producing David Nicholls' romantic comedy series Rescue Me with Tiger Aspect Productions for BBC One. As well as producing it, she made her credited directorial debut on the final episode. The six-part series, starring Sally Phillips, was broadcast in 2002. It was not a ratings success, and the BBC did not commission a second series.
### Granada drama
In September 2002, Langan signed a new contract to develop new projects at Granada's combined drama, film and comedy department. Her first production was the romantic comedy television film Watermelon, starring Anna Friel. At the end of 2002, she began developing Peter Morgan's The Deal, a dramatisation of the political rise of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Although initially giving full backing, the ITV network backed out during pre-production. Channel 4 picked up the film from Granada, and it was broadcast in September 2003. The Deal was presented with the British Academy Television Award for Best Single Drama in 2004. The same year, she produced the one-off drama Dirty Filthy Love, which was also nominated for the BAFTA for Best Single Drama.
In 2005, Langan's feature debut Pierrepoint was released at major film festivals. Based on the life of British hangman Albert Pierrepoint (played by Timothy Spall), Pierrepoint got Langan a nomination for the Carl Foreman Award for Most Promising Newcomer at the 60th British Academy Film Awards in 2007. 2006 saw the theatrical release of The Queen, a feature film follow-up to The Deal, that focused on the impact the death of Diana, Princess of Wales had on Tony Blair and Queen Elizabeth II. Michael Sheen reprised his role as Tony Blair from The Deal, and Helen Mirren played Elizabeth. The film was produced by Granada in co-operation with the ITV network, and was released in late 2006 to critical acclaim. In 2007, it won the BAFTA Award for Best Film and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. Of Langan's work on Pierrepoint and The Queen, a Variety writer said, "both pics are a tribute to her tactful skill at working with tricky but talented writers and directors to take stories that could easily have been confined to the small screen and give them real cinematic depth and breadth".
### BBC Films
In September 2006, Langan made a low-key departure from Granada to take up a position as an executive producer with BBC Films. Although approached to join BBC Films some years before, only in 2007 did she feel it was the time to "concentrate more exclusively on film". She immediately began overseeing editing work on The Other Boleyn Girl, which was already in post-production. She also began developing The Damned United, a film based on David Peace's novel that fictionalised the 44 days Brian Clough managed Leeds United F.C. in 1974. The film was adapted by Peter Morgan, executive produced by Andy Harries, and starred Michael Sheen as Clough. On why she continues to work with the same people on her projects, Langan said, "The reason I return to working with the same people is that you have invested time, energy and thought and care into these relationships and that can pay dividends—The Queen is an example of those relationships paying dividends".
Following David M. Thompson's announcement that he would be retiring from the post of head of BBC Films in September 2007, Langan was widely expected to take over his duties. Confirmation was made the following month when she was appointed Commissioning Editor of the company, taking over the day-to-day duties of BBC Films and reporting to Jane Tranter, the Controller of Fiction at the BBC. When Tranter transferred to a BBC Worldwide position in Los Angeles in 2009, the BBC decided not to fill the Controller of Fiction vacancy with a single person. Instead, the responsibilities were divided between four people; Langan became Creative Director of BBC Films, responsible for "editorial strategy and commissioning", and also joined the BBC Fiction board.
By 2010, Langan was overseeing a £12 million annual budget at BBC Films, and had executive produced high-profile films such as In the Loop (Armando Iannucci, 2009), Fish Tank (Andrea Arnold, 2009), and An Education (Lone Scherfig, 2009). BBC Films received 13 nomination at the 63rd British Academy Film Awards, described in the London Evening Standard as a record number. In 2010, Langan also executive produced The Special Relationship—the final part of Peter Morgan's "Blair trilogy"—and StreetDance, the first British feature film to be made in 3D. The Guardian recognised Langan's achievements at BBC Films by ranking her at number 36 in its inaugural Film Power 100 list in September 2010.
Through 2011, Langan executive produced Ralph Fiennes' directorial debut Coriolanus, the Marilyn Monroe biopic My Week with Marilyn, and Lynne Ramsay's adaptation of Lionel Shriver's novel We Need to Talk About Kevin. The project was in development hell since 2007 until Langan realised BBC Films was trying to get too big a budget to make it with. Ramsay rewrote the script in 2010 to allow a lower budget.
## Filmography
## Awards and nominations
Langan was made Honorary Associate of London Film School. |
2,840,857 | Dennō Senshi Porygon | 1,171,061,925 | null | [
"1997 anime",
"1997 controversies",
"1997 in Japanese television",
"1997 television episodes",
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"Anime and manga controversies",
"Articles containing video clips",
"December 1997 events in Asia",
"Mass psychogenic illness",
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] | "Dennō Senshi Porygon" (Japanese: でんのうせんしポリゴン, Hepburn: Dennō Senshi Porigon, translated as "Computer Warrior Porygon", although more commonly "Electric Soldier Porygon") is the 38th episode of the Pokémon anime's first season. Its sole broadcast was in Japan on December 16, 1997.
In the episode, Ash and his friends find that there is something wrong with the Poké Ball transmitting device at the local Pokémon Center. To find out what is wrong, they must go inside the machine.
The episode contained repetitive visual effects that induced photosensitive epileptic seizures in a substantial number of Japanese viewers, with more than 600 children across Japan taken to hospitals. The incident is referred to in Japan as the "Pokémon Shock" (ポケモンショック, Pokemon Shokku).
As a result of the incident, the episode was pulled from rotation and it has not aired in any country since. After the incident, the Pokémon anime went into a four-month hiatus.
## Plot
Ash, Misty, Brock and Pikachu make their way to the nearest Pokémon Center, where they discover that the Poké Ball transmitting device is malfunctioning. On Nurse Joy's request, they go to Professor Akihabara, the one who created the Poké Ball transfer system. He tells them that Team Rocket stole his prototype Porygon, a digital Pokémon that can exist in cyberspace, and is using it to steal trainers' Pokémon from inside the computer system.
Akihabara sends Ash, Misty, Brock, Pikachu and his second Porygon into the cyberspace system, using his Dimension Transporter, to stop Team Rocket, whom they learn have set up a blockade that stops Pokéballs from traveling the network. Porygon is able to defeat Team Rocket's Porygon; unfortunately, Nurse Joy, monitoring the situation and unaware that Ash and the others are inside, has sent an antivirus program into the system to combat the computer virus Team Rocket set up. In the ensuing chaos, Pikachu uses a Thunderbolt attack on the program, which manifests as 4 cyber missiles, which causes a large explosion. Two of the missiles enter the portal, completely destroying Akihabara's house, much to his dismay, as his Dimension Transporter is now broken. The group and Team Rocket successfully escape the computer, and with Team Rocket's blockade removed, the Poké Ball transmitting device returns to normal.
## Broadcast
"Dennō Senshi Porygon" had its sole broadcast in Japan on Tuesday, December 16, 1997, at 6:30 PM Japan Standard Time (09:30 UTC). It was broadcast over 37 TV stations that Tuesday night. It held the highest ratings for its time slot, and was watched by approximately 4.6 million households.
## Strobe lights
Twenty minutes into the episode, Pikachu stops "vaccine" missiles with his Thunderbolt attack, resulting in an explosion that flashes red and blue lights. Although there were similar parts in the episode with red and blue flashes, two anime techniques, called "paka paka" and "flash", made the scene particularly intense. These flashes were bright strobe lights, with blinks at a rate of about 12 Hz for approximately six seconds.
At this point, some of the viewers experienced blurred vision, headaches, dizziness and nausea. Some suffered seizures, blindness, convulsions and unconsciousness. Japan's Fire Defense Agency reported that 685 viewers – 310 boys and 375 girls – were taken to hospitals by ambulances. Although many victims recovered during the ambulance trip, more than 150 were admitted to hospitals. Two were hospitalized for more than two weeks. The incident was referred to as "Pokémon Shock" (ポケモンショック, Pokémon Shokku) by the Japanese press.
Later studies showed that 5–10% of the viewers had mild symptoms that did not need hospital treatment. Twelve thousand children who were not sent to hospital reported mild symptoms of illness; however, their symptoms more closely resembled mass hysteria than a seizure. A study following 103 patients over three years after the event found that most had no further seizures. Although approximately 1 in 4,000 people are susceptible to these types of seizures, the number of people affected by the Pokémon episode was unprecedented.
## Aftermath
### Immediate response
To prevent any similar incidents from occurring, the episode was pulled from rotation, and it has not aired since in any country.
The following day, the television station that had originated the lone broadcast of that episode, TV Tokyo, issued an apology to the Japanese public, suspended the program, and said it would investigate the cause of the seizures. Video retailers all over Japan removed the Pokémon anime from their rental shelves.
Officers from Atago police stations were ordered by Japan's National Police Agency to question the anime's producers about the show's contents and production process. An emergency meeting was held by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, in which the case was discussed with experts and information collected from hospitals.
On the Tokyo Stock Exchange, shares in Nintendo (the company that publishes the games that the anime is based on) fell by 400 yen the following morning to 12,200 yen (almost 3.2%). The president of Nintendo, Hiroshi Yamauchi, said at a press conference the day after the episode had aired that the video game company was not responsible since the original Pokémon game for its Game Boy product was presented in black and white.
Shortly after the incident, speaking to USA Today, Mike Lazzo, vice president of programming for the Cartoon Network, reassured parents that American children were unlikely to suffer seizures provoked by cartoons as U.S. networks at the time rarely aired anime, which he argued was substantially different to animation aired on Cartoon Network.
### Effect on the Pokémon anime
After the airing of "Dennō Senshi Porygon", the Pokémon anime went into a four-month hiatus. Its time slot was taken over by Class King Yamazaki [ja] (学級王ヤマザキ).
The episode "Rougela's Christmas" ("Holiday Hi-Jynx"), which would have aired the following week, December 23, 1997, was pulled following the incident, and would not air until October 5, 1998. Airing out of order caused confusion to viewers because Ash still had a Charmander instead of Charizard, and Misty did not have Togepi yet, but Starmie and Horsea. Also, a New Year special that would have aired on December 30, 1997, was pulled and never resurfaced.
All 37 episodes of Pokémon: Indigo League were rerun on Kids Station in Tokyo leading up to the show's return on April 16, 1998, with airing of "Forest of Pikachu" ("Pikachu's Goodbye") and "The Four Eevee Brothers" ("The Battling Eevee Brothers"). After the hiatus, the time slot changed from Tuesday to Thursday. Several episodes (including the opening, credits, and "Dare da?" segments) were heavily edited to reduce flashing lights (with special emphasis on lightning that consumes the screen).
Before broadcasting resumed, the special program "Problem Inspection Report on the Pocket Monsters Anime" (アニメ ポケットモンスター問題検証報告, Anime Poketto Monsutā Mondai Kenshō Hōkoku) was shown. Broadcast in Japan on April 16, 1998, host Miyuki Yadama went over the circumstances of the program format and the on-screen advisories at the beginning of animated programs, as well as showing letters and fan drawings sent in by viewers, most of whom were concerned that the incident would lead to the anime being cancelled.
In early January 1998, 4Kids Entertainment announced that they intended to air Pokémon in the U.S., albeit ensuring that the flashing effects were removed. Electronic Gaming Monthly suggested that without the publicity around the seizures, Pokémon may have never been localized to the U.S. Pokémon successfully premiered in the U.S. (without this episode) in September 1998, with more children's anime airing on broadcast and cable networks in the U.S. immediately afterwards.
"Dennō Senshi Porygon" itself has never been aired again, in any country. The Pokémon anime has not featured Porygon or its evolutions, Porygon2 and Porygon-Z, in any subsequent episodes outside of brief cameos, despite Pikachu being the one to cause the seizure-inducing strobe effect.
### Changes to television standards
Many Japanese television broadcasters and medical officials (along with the United Kingdom's Independent Television Commission) came together to find ways to make sure the incident was not repeated. They established a series of guidelines for future animated programs, including that flashing images, especially those with red, should not flicker faster than three times per second; if the image does not have red, it still should not flicker faster than five times per second; flashing images should not be displayed for a total duration of more than two seconds; and stripes, whirls and concentric circles should not take up a large part of the television screen. The Harding test for content that now airs on Japanese TV and streaming sites ensures no more than one flashing light occurs every 10 frames, reproduced at 29.97 FPS, where "flashing lights" are classified as extreme changes in colors from one frame to the next. Footage may either clear or fail checks, or "pass with a warning" in which case the video's luminance is automatically adjusted to mitigate potential effects.
After the incident, TV broadcasters voluntarily added on-screen warnings to shows targeted at young children encouraging viewers to watch anime in a well-lit room and to sit far away from the television set.
## Cultural impact
The "Pokémon Shock" incident has been parodied many times in popular culture, including a 1999 episode of The Simpsons, "Thirty Minutes over Tokyo". In the episode, Bart watches an anime entitled Battling Seizure Robots featuring robots with flashing eye lasers, and asks: "Isn't this that cartoon that causes seizures?" The flashing eyes cause him, Marge, Lisa, and Homer to have seizures. The same scene is seen again in the episode's end credits, this time covering the entire screen.
An episode of South Park, "Chinpokomon", revolves around a Pokémon-like phenomenon, called Chinpokomon. Chinpokomon toys and video games are sold to children in South Park by a Japanese company. The company's president, Mr. Hirohito, uses the toys to brainwash the American children, making them into his own army to topple the "evil" American "empire". These toys included a video game in which the player attempts to bomb Pearl Harbor. While playing this game, Kenny has an epileptic seizure and later dies.
The incident was included in the 2004 edition and the 2008 Gamer's Edition of the Guinness World Records book, holding the record for "Most Photosensitive Epileptic Seizures Caused by a Television Show".
In So Yesterday, a 2004 novel by Scott Westerfeld, this episode is mentioned and shown to one of the characters. The flashing red light that caused the seizure is also used in the storytelling elements.
On September 19, 2020, the official Pokémon Twitter account referenced the episode, saying "Porygon did nothing wrong," in reference to the resulting explosion from Pikachu's Thunderbolt attack being the in-universe cause of the flashing lights, not Porygon. The tweet was deleted shortly thereafter, speculated to be because of the taboo subject matter.
## See also
- Burger King Pokémon container recall
- Pokémon episodes removed from rotation — other controversial Pokémon episodes
- — a similar incident
### Lists
- List of Pokémon episodes
- List of Pokémon episodes (seasons 1–13)
- Pokémon: Indigo League |
73,537,806 | Cafileria | 1,157,738,024 | Genus of marine protists | [
"Bikosea",
"Biota of Norway",
"Heterokont genera",
"Taxa described in 2019"
] | Cafileria is a genus of marine microscopic protists. It is monotypic, comprising the single species Cafileria marina, described in 2019 from Norway. It is part of a clade of heterotrophic flagellates that consume bacteria, known as Bicosoecida, a basal lineage of Stramenopiles. Due to its small size it is described as a nanoflagellate. It is the only organism where direct connections between mitochondria and the cell nucleus have been observed. Another peculiarity of C. marina is the change in shape of the Golgi apparatus during the cell cycle.
## Discovery
Cells of Cafileria marina were sampled from part of an algal mat community in a rock surface from Kvernesfjord, Norway. Their morphology, ultrastructure, flagellar apparatus and mitochondrial genome were investigated. The results, along with the formal taxonomic description of Cafileria marina, were published in 2019 by Czech researchers Dagmar Jirsová, Zoltán Füssy, Jitka Richtová, Ansgar Gruber and Miroslav Oborník.
The hapantotype of C. marina was deposited under the name IP CAS Pro 59 in the slide collection at the Biological Centre of the Czech Academy of Sciences in České Budějovice, Czech Republic.
## Etymology
Cafileria is named after kafilerie [cs], the Czech name for a rendering plant where the biomass of animal origin is transformed for the production of lipids, glue and fertilizers. In a parallel manner, Cafileria feasts on bacteria and recycles organic materials that are part of their biofilm habitat. The species epithet marina is due to the marine origin of the species.
## Cell structure
### External appearance
Cells of C. marina are rounded on the right side and flattened on the left side, resembling the shape of a “D”. The cell body is 3–4 μm wide and 5–6 μm long, making it a nanoflagellate by size. The cellular surface is smooth, without any features (no lorica, cell wall, etc.) visible by light or scanning electron microscopy. Like other bicosoecids, they have two smooth flagella (anterior and posterior), with an equal length of around 1.5–2 times the length of the cell body. The flagella are in a sub-apical position and emerge from a dent on the ventral side.
### Organelles
C. marina cells localize their nucleus and mitochondria with tubular cristae (as is common in Stramenopiles) in the anterior part of the cell. A peculiar phenomenon in C. marina is that, in young cultures (≤ 2 weeks old), the nucleus and mitochondria are tightly connected through junctions. Although clustering of mitochondria near the nucleus is seen in mammalian tissues, this is the first time that a full connection between these compartments has been described. Various functions for this peculiar connection have been hypothesized:
\(i\) enabling the exchange of ATP/ADP between the two organelles, thereby providing the high energy needed by the nucleus,
\(ii\) facilitating the transport of necessary nuclear tRNA that the mitochondria cannot produce,
\(iii\) transporting mRNA to be translated in the mitochondria,
\(iv\) equally segregating mitochondria to the daughter cells after mitosis,
\(v\) or simply a more efficient use of the limited space in a small cell size.
The Golgi apparatus is in the anterior part of the cell, with its 4–5 cisternae aligned parallel to the nuclear envelope. During the cell cycle, the shape of the Golgi cisternae changes from flat-stacked to rounded: the flat cisternae curve inside and create hollowed rounded shapes. A similar phenomenon happens in mammalian cells, in association with changes in sphingomyelin metabolism, but in the case of Cafileria the mechanism responsible is unknown.
Several small vesicles are scattered across the cytosol, while food vacuoles are considerably larger and are localized in the posterior part of the cell, occupying almost one third of its volume. Some of the food vacuoles can contain intact or partially digested bacteria.
### Flagellar apparatus
C. marina has its two flagella attached to four roots made of microtubules. There are two basal bodies, in the anterior (front) part of the cell, at a 45° angle to each other, connected to each other through a striated fiber. The flagella each have an axoneme structure with two central microtubules and a circle of nine microtubules around them. The four roots (named R1, R2, R3 and R4) have 8, 3, 1, and 1 microtubules respectively, an arrangement unique to C. marina.
## Ecology and cell behavior
Cafileria marina lives in close association with an unidentified species of pelagophyte alga. It glides through the mucilage secreted by the pelagophyte. While moving, it exhibits a tumbling motion, with the anterior flagellum freely sweeping while the posterior one is used as an anchor, attached to the surface. It is constantly feeding through phagotrophy, with a permanent cytostome; no resting stages or spores have been observed.
## Genetic characteristics
The mitochondrial genome of C. marina is 42,797 base pairs long, with a content of 21.3% CG (cytosine-guanine pairs), much lower than other heterotrophic stramenopile mitochondrial genomes.
The genetic code of the mitochondrial genome is an unusual type 4 code, found across different prokaryotic and eukaryotic groups, in which the UGA codon codes for the aminoacid tryptophan and the UAA/UAG codons are the stop codons. The mitochondrial genome is also unusual in lacking any group I or group II introns, which are typical of other mitochondria.
The mitochondrial genome contains genes for all tRNAs except for threonine, alanine and glycine—which are carried by nuclear tRNAs instead—, large and small subunit ribosomal RNA genes arranged in tandem, and protein-coding genes for subunits of several complexes: respiratory complexes (I, III and IV), ATP synthase, and the protein portion of the large and small subunits of ribosomes. Despite having a very similar gene content compared to other heterotrophic stramenopiles, the order of genes is highly rearranged in C. marina. For example, it is the only stramenopile species known to encode the nad11 gene (a subunit of NADH-ubiquinone oxidoreductase) with 4Fe–4S domains within the N-terminal ferredoxin-type module, instead of the C-terminal molybdopterin-type module, although the consequences of this change are unclear.
## Evolutionary relationships
Cafileria belongs to the Bicosoecida lineage, a basal stramenopile clade, but its position within this group is still unclear. According to the study that described Cafileria marina in 2019, phylogenetic and morphological analyses group the family Cafeteriidae as the closest relative of Cafileria marina, with Caecitellus as the sister taxon of C. marina, though the authors explain "further investigation is [...] needed to confirm this claim". A posterior analysis from 2022 recovered Cafileria outside the Anoecales; as the authors put it, "The phylogenetic resolution of the bicosoecids is still an ongoing issue". |
966,089 | Battle of Alton | 1,150,548,100 | 1643 battle in the First English Civil War | [
"1643 in England",
"17th century in Hampshire",
"Alton, Hampshire",
"Battles of the English Civil Wars",
"Conflicts in 1643",
"Military history of Hampshire"
] | The Battle of Alton (also Storm of Alton), of the First English Civil War, took place on 13 December 1643 in the town of Alton, Hampshire, England. There, Parliamentary forces serving under Sir William Waller led a successful surprise attack on a winter garrison of Royalist infantry and cavalry serving under the Earl of Crawford. The Battle of Alton was the first decisive defeat of Sir Ralph Hopton, leader of Royalist forces in the south, and the event had a significant psychological effect on him as commander. More important to Hopton was the loss of men, however, as he was already short-handed in much-needed infantry. The successful Parliamentarians were able, after their victory, to attack and successfully besiege Arundel, a larger and more formidable Royalist outpost to the south-east of Alton.
At dawn on the 13th, as Waller's army approached Alton, Crawford fled with the cavalry to Winchester, leaving Colonel Richardus Boles to defend Alton with only the infantry. Outnumbered and overpowered, Boles's men were soon forced to seek refuge in the Church of St Lawrence, where they made a desperate last stand. Boles was killed, along with most of his remaining men. The Parliamentarians won a clear victory, losing only a few men and taking many prisoners.
Boles's fight is also notable for its demonstrated drama and heroism. Stories boast that Boles killed a number of his enemies before falling himself. The battle of Alton is known as one of the "most savage encounters" of the English Civil War. Musket holes from the fight can still be seen in the south door to the church and inside, where so many cornered men were killed and captured. The Battle of Alton was also the first battle in the English Civil War to use leather guns, employed effectively by Waller before and during the battle proper.
## Background
On 13 September 1643, the English Parliament ordered Major General William Waller to muster forces for the "protection" of Hampshire County. In November, he was given control of forces stationed in Farnham, a major Parliamentary staging ground, in order to take control of Kent, Surrey, Sussex and Hampshire. These forces were supplemented by a brigade of Trained Bands from London, the Westminster Red Regiment, the London Green Auxiliaries and the Tower Hamlets Yellow Auxiliaries. Also at Waller's disposal was a personal regiment of foot soldiers and surviving cavalry from the Battle of Roundway Down.
Waller marched from Farnham for Odiham and Alton, intending to occupy these towns while gradually approaching his objective, Basing. While not of great strategic importance, Basing's proximity to the main road between London, Salisbury, and Winchester made it worthy of attention. Marching toward Alton, Waller halted at Bentley Green on 3 November, where he determined his capabilities. He marched further that day, but later retreated to Farnham. On 2 November, Waller attacked one hundred men of Bennett's at Alton. From 7–9 November, Waller laid siege to Basing House, but withdrew to Basingstoke in failure, with his soldiers near mutiny from poor weather conditions. He tried again on the night of 11 November, but retreated to Farnham to await Hopton's army.
Hopton arrived on 27 November, given by King Charles 1,580 horse, but only around 2,000 conscripted infantry and 500 troops recently returned from fighting in Munster, Ireland. Hopton had been ordered in late September to make secure Dorset, Wiltshire and Hampshire, and to push as far as possible toward London. Toward this end, Hopton spread his men across Hampshire, quartering them for the winter at Winchester, Alresford, Petersfield and Alton. He did so to alleviate the burden on any one town, and because winter was approaching quickly. However, this left his army vulnerable. Hopton placed Crawford in charge of Alton, and on 1 December Crawford began to fortify the small town as quickly as he could. Crawford had at his disposal one cavalry regiment and one infantry regiment, though his exact number of men is unknown; it was likely around 1,000.
## Prelude
During the week prior to the Battle of Alton, Waller scouted the town and planned his attack. He confided his intent to only a few of his senior men, maintaining secrecy. Waller did make another raid on the evening of 9 December, where a small party of his forces struck at Crawford's lodging but fell back after the minor attack. During the morning hours of 12 December, Crawford sent a missive to Farnham, requesting of Waller that he be sent a "runlet of sack", promising an ox in exchange. When the wine was sent, Crawford refused to send the ox, challenging Waller to fetch it himself.
> "[Lieutenant Elias Archer remembered:] 'Our worthy Sir William sent in a loving compliment to the Lord Crawford half a hogshead of sack, who mistrusting the matter and the messenger, caused the messenger and divers [sic] others to taste thereof, and then caused it to be carefully laid by for his own drinking.' Waller demanded the promised ox, whereupon Crawford replied that he would bring it himself. Waller fails not at nightfall to go in search of his ox, and instead of a beast, brought away 565 prisoners."
During this exchange, Waller, eager to repair his reputation after Roundway Down, promptly decided to attack Alton, the nearest Royalist outpost to Farnham and only ten miles away. According to the Mercurius Aulicus, a contemporary publication, Crawford was watching only the main road from Farnham at this time.
## Battle
Waller mustered his men in Farnham Park near 10:30 p.m., on 12 December. At around midnight, 5,000 of Waller's men marched west from Farnham toward Basing House. The Parliamentarians marched about two miles in this direction (in order to confuse Royalist scouts), until around 1:00 a.m., before abruptly turning south toward Alton. The march was quick and quiet, owing to a long frost which had hardened the roads and Waller's judicious use of wooded areas. Also helpful in Waller's advance was his use of leather guns, here employed for the first time in the English Civil War. Unlike heavier artillery, a leather gun could be led by a single horse, transported efficiently over difficult terrain, and still be an effective tool for bombardment.
Waller's forces reached the western side of Alton at around 9:00 a.m., capturing six of Crawford's sentries posted in the north. One Royalist sentry, however, managed to raise the alarm just before dawn, leading Crawford and his horse to quit Alton and head for Winchester at a gallop, as Waller approached the town. It is reported that they had promised the remaining infantry men that they would return soon with reinforcements. Initially, Crawford and his cavalry attempted to flee from the eastern border of Alton, but were routed back into town and to the south (heading directly for Winchester) by Parliamentary horse. The fleeing Royalists were chased for a half-mile by Waller's heavy cavalry (these under Sir Arthur Haslerig and nicknamed the "Lobsters"), losing a few men and some number of horses. Haslerig, forfeiting pursuit, guarded the entrances to the town.
Meanwhile, Boles's men concentrated to the north-west corner of town, before the Church of St Lawrence. A regiment of Waller's infantry, five companies of Haslerig's, and five companies of Kentish Men attacked Alton from the north and north-west. The Royalist infantry, however, took effective cover inside buildings, out of which they fired quickly; they particularly favoured a large brick house near the church. This house, however, was soon abandoned as Waller's artillery, positioned at the foot of the hill to the west, fired upon it, forcing these defenders to retreat to the church. The Parliamentary regiments from London and four companies from Farnham Castle descended the hill: Waller's Red Regiment attacked a lunette and breastwork which the Royalists had built and which they were using as an effective fortification. The Green Regiment flanked the Royalists which were behind these fortifications forcing them out, while marching through town under the cover of smoke from a thatch house which they had set on fire. Soon after, the rest of Waller's men entered the town en masse, flying their colours and pushing Boles's men back to the Church of St Lawrence. From the church and nearby fortifications (including a large earthwork on its north side), the Royalists held their ground for two hours. The Royalists fired from the windows of the church, and employed a scaffolding inside the church proper to fire from greater heights.
Eventually, the Parliamentarians forced the Royalists to abandon the south-east part of the wall around the church. However, since the retreating men had left their muskets sticking up, the Parliamentarians were temporarily unaware that the Royalists had left. After some time it was concluded that the defenders had gone, and the Parliamentary army promptly attacked the churchyard, driving the last of Boles's men into the church itself. Waller's forces threw hand grenades into the windows while working to enter the church themselves. Inside the building, Boles declared he would, "run his sword through him which first called for quarter." There had been no time for the Royalists to barricade the church doors, and the Parliamentarians soon managed to gain entry. Inside, the Royalists shot from behind a jury-rigged breastwork of dead horses. Some of Boles's men were killed; others surrendered. Boles did not give up, and he killed up to seven men before being killed himself. With Boles killed, all but a few of the Royalists requested quarter.
Inscribed in Boles's honour was this epitaph:
> > Alton will tell you of that famous Fight Which ys man made, and bade this world good-night. His Vertious Life fear'd not Mortality, His body must, his Vertues cannot die, Because his Bloud was there so nobly spent, This is his Tombe; that Church his Monument.
>
>
> Ricardus Boles, Wiltoniensis in Art. Mag.
>
> : Composuit Posuitque Dolens. An. Domi 1679.
## Aftermath
During and after the battle, Waller captured at least 500 men, around 100 of these re-enlisting with him. Additionally, more than 100 Royalist soldiers were killed. Together, the men lost represented nearly half of Hopton's infantry forces in the south. Waller, on the other hand, lost around ten men and gained much reputation for his success. Waller put his prisoners to work dragging the horse carcasses from the church, dismantling the scaffoldings inside, and burying their fallen comrades near the northern wall of the building. All of the captured men were then marched to Farnham tied together in pairs.
Waller ordered his men to demolish the town's fortifications, and had survivors that did not re-enlist paraded through the streets of London to mark his victory. Crawford's hat, cloak and gifted wine were all left behind in Alton. From then on, it was said that Crawford, in fleeing, "left his sack at Alton". King Charles, upon hearing of Boles's death, called for a mourning scarf, lamenting at the loss of what he considered to be one of "the best Commanders in this Kingdome". In the following weeks, letters were sent from Crawford and Hopton to Waller:
> To Sir W. Waller.—Sir, I hope your gaining of Alton cost you dear. It was your lot to drinke of your own sack, which I never intended to have left for you. I pray you favour me so much as to send me my own chirurgion, and upon my honour I will send you a person suitable to his exchange.
> To Sir W. Waller.—Sir, This is the first evident ill success I have had. I much acknowledge that I have lost many brave and gallant men. I desire you, if Colonel Bolles be alive, to propound a fit exchange; if dead, that you will send me his corps. I pray you sende me a list of such prisoners as you have, that such choice men as they are may not continue long unredeemed. God give a sudden stop to this issue of English Blood, which is the desire, Sir, of you faithful friend to serve you.
Hopton was severely depressed by his defeat at Alton, more than seemed appropriate given its military import. On the Parliamentarian side, the morale boost enjoyed by Waller was significant, and on 15 December, the House of Commons of England ordered Sir Arthur Haslerig and Sir Gilbert Gerard to draft a letter to Waller commending him for his success. The Parliamentary victory at the Battle of Alton allowed Waller to advance south-east, and upon Arundel where he began a successful siege on the Royalists garrisoned there. Hopton was unable to break the siege with his few remaining foot soldiers, and the 1,000 horse he received from Oxford were unhelpful. After the siege of Arundel, both armies were forced to retire for the winter due to the harsh weather. |
26,247,436 | Woman of the Year (Parks and Recreation) | 1,146,026,578 | null | [
"2010 American television episodes",
"Parks and Recreation (season 2) episodes",
"Television episodes directed by Jason Woliner"
] | "Woman of the Year" is the 17th episode of the second season of the American comedy television series Parks and Recreation, and the 23rd overall episode of the series. It originally aired on NBC in the United States on March 4, 2010. In the episode, Ron is presented with a woman of the year award, much to the frustration of Leslie. Meanwhile, Tom tries to seek investors in a nightclub ownership share, and April helps Andy look for an apartment.
The episode was written by Norm Hiscock and directed by Jason Woliner. The script included a theme about the political nature of local awards. "Woman of the Year" featured guest appearances by Ben Schwartz as Jean-Ralphio and Ian Roberts as Ian Winston, both of whom have appeared in the series in past episodes. Rashida Jones, a regular Parks and Recreation cast member who plays Ann Perkins, did not appear in "Woman of the Year" because she was filming scenes for the David Fincher film The Social Network.
According to Nielsen Media Research, "Woman of the Year" was seen by 4.6 million viewers, which marked a continued recent improvement in ratings for the series. It tied a record set by the previous two episodes, "Sweetums" and "Galentine's Day", for the season's highest rating among viewers aged between 18 and 49. The episode received generally positive reviews, particularly for the character moments between Leslie and Ron.
## Plot
The parks and recreation department receives a letter from the Pawnee chapter of the Indiana Organization of Women, which Leslie (Amy Poehler) believes is her congratulatory letter as the recipient of the group's Dorothy Everton Smythe Woman of the Year award. Much to her surprise and disappointment, however, the award has actually gone to Ron (Nick Offerman) in recognition of town projects Leslie primarily developed. Ron secretly acknowledges the award as a ridiculous mistake. However, he uses the mistake as an opportunity to tease Leslie before later recommending her as the award recipient. Ron constantly brags about the award, even commissioning a professional photographer to take his official portrait for the award ceremony. Eventually, Ron admits he is joking and attempts to recommend Leslie for the award. However, the IOW director (Maribeth Monroe) reveals that a man was strategically chosen for the first time for marketing purposes. Frustrated with the politics of the awards, Leslie and Ron plan for him to make a disparaging acceptance speech condemning the awards. However, at the ceremony itself, Ron instead publicly presents the award to Leslie, to the frustration of the IOW director and members. The next day's newspaper proclaims Ron the winner, with Leslie and Ron later deciding that the award is meaningless, anyway. The plaque is thrown into a wastebasket, where Leslie later secretly retrieves it.
In a subplot, Tom (Aziz Ansari) drops off a temporary liquor license renewal at the Snakehole Lounge nightclub, where the owner Freddy (Andy Milder) tells him they are seeking investors who can buy a share for \$10,000. Although he does not have the money, Tom reveals part-ownership in a nightclub is a longtime dream of his, so he seeks assistance from his fast-talking friend, Jean-Ralphio (Ben Schwartz), who contributes \$5,000. Tom has \$4,000 of his own but still needs \$1,000, so he seeks further help from his co-workers. Donna (Retta) expresses an interest, but decides against it when she meets Jean-Ralphio, of whom she immediately declares, "I hate that guy." Meanwhile, when Andy's (Chris Pratt) band-mate Burly (Andrew Burlinson) tells Andy he can no longer live with him, April (Aubrey Plaza) helps Andy look for an apartment. They find one near her house, prompting a smitten April to note that they can carpool to work together. But when Andy learns Tom needs \$1,000, he forgoes the apartment to give Tom the money as a gift. April is surprised by the choice and disappointed with the result. In the episode's final scene, Tom is shown enjoying his nightclub part ownership, until he learns Donna has bought three shares herself.
## Production
"Woman of the Year" was written by Norm Hiscock and directed by Jason Woliner. It featured a guest appearance by Ben Schwartz as Jean-Ralphio, a fast-talking playboy character introduced in "The Set Up". The episode also featured an appearance by comedian Ian Roberts, who worked with Amy Poehler on the Upright Citizens Brigade sketch comedy troupe. Roberts guest starred as Ian Winston, the coach of a girls' soccer team who complains to Leslie about a lack of field space during the episode's cold open. Roberts previously appeared as the same character in the show's pilot episode. Rashida Jones, a regular Parks and Recreation cast member who plays Ann Perkins, did not appear in "Woman of the Year" because she was filming scenes for The Social Network, a David Fincher film about the founding of the social-networking website Facebook.
The "Woman of the Year" script included a theme about the political nature of awards, arguing despite the value and prestige people like Leslie assign to them, they are ultimately meaningless. Some commentators speculated this subplot served as a commentary about the meaninglessness of award ceremonies in the entertainment industry. "Woman of the Year" originally aired three days before the 82nd Academy Awards, prompting Entertainment Weekly to suggest it was a commentary about the Oscars, whereas others suggested the episode was a joke about how Parks and Recreation itself has failed to win any awards at the Golden Globes, Screen Actors Guild Awards or the Emmys.
Shortly after the episode aired, a copy of the "Pawnee Journal" newspaper article announcing Ron Swanson's Woman of the Year award win, which was featured within the episode, was posted in a downloadable form on the "Pawnee, Indiana" website set up by NBC.
## Cultural references
Although the Woman of the Year award is formally named after the fictional feminist leader Dorothy Everton Smythe, who spent four years in jail for wearing pants on a Sunday, Ron mistakenly calls it the "Dorothy Everytime Smurf Girl Trophy for Excellence in Female Stuff", a reference to the cartoon, The Smurfs. During one scene, Ron said he is attracted to strong and powerful women, prompting Leslie to point out Ron indeed attends a shocking number of Women's National Basketball Association games. When Jean Ralphio tried to make a pass at April, she replied, "Don't you work at Lady Foot Locker?", a women's footwear retailer. Ron mistakenly refers to Leslie's Camp Athena as "Camp Xena", a reference to the protagonist from the fantasy adventure television series Xena: Warrior Princess. In seeking nightclub investments from his co-workers, Tom presents a computer presentation with photos of several celebrities, including reality television stars Jon Gosselin and Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi. In defending his financial gift to Tom, Andy calls it an investment and compares himself to businessman Warren Buffett, incorrectly pronouncing the nickname like a dinner buffet. Tom aspires to open his own club called "Tom's Bistro", a reference to Jack's Bistro, the restaurant Jack Tripper opens in the 1970s and 1980s sitcom, Three's Company.
## Reception
In its original American NBC broadcast on March 4, 2010, "Woman of the Year" was seen by 4.6 million viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research. It drew a 2.3 rating/7 share among viewers between ages 18 and 49, matching a series-high rating in that age group shared with the episode "Sweetums" and "Galentine's Day". In overall viewers, "Woman of the Year" received a 2.9 rating/5 share. This marked a continued recent improvement in ratings for the series, especially because "Woman of the Year" performed well despite direct competition from the popular reality television singing competition American Idol, which also aired during its time period.
"Woman of the Year" received generally positive reviews. Sandra Gonzalez of Entertainment Weekly called "Woman of the Year" one of the best episodes of the second season, particularly complimenting the one-liner jokes and ensemble cast performances. Gonzalez said she particularly liked the "big brother-little sister vibe" between Leslie and Ron. The Star-Ledger television columnist Alan Sepinwall said "Woman of the Year" was well-executed because revealing to the viewers that Ron was going to tease Leslie made his pranks more humorous and less mean-spirited. Sepinwall also said the episode had several good moments for the supporting characters, including Andy's selfless act toward Tom and Donna's purchase of shares with the nightclub. The A.V. Club writer Steve Heisler said he liked that Ron genuinely cares for Leslie. Heisler said: "If he resented Leslie as much as he hinted at during season one, it'd become an ongoing thorn in the show's foot that during every single episode. [...] Getting along is underrated in comedy."
Steve Kandell of New York magazine said the episode felt like "a bit of a place-holder" compared to other episodes in the season, but that "Woman of the Year" included amusing scenes and introduced new ways to mock bureaucracy "without ever feeling like the sly satire it secretly is". Kandell also said he enjoyed the jokes at Leslie's and Jerry's expense. Kona Gallagher of TV Squad said every character was at their best, and that he particularly enjoyed Ron's taunting of Leslie once it was made clear he was only joking. Gallagher said the "only thing about this episode I didn't love" was the way the subplot involving Tom's investment with the nightclub ended, because she felt it "started off strong, but kind of went nowhere." Matt Fowler of IGN said the episode was not a stand-out, but offered great character moments between Leslie and Ron. Fowler said Tom's desire to live like a hip hop mogul was funny "but not always engaging", and that he enjoyed the "little moments" between Andy and April.
## DVD release
"Woman of the Year", along with the other 23 second-season episodes of Parks and Recreation, was released on a four-disc DVD set in the United States on November 30, 2010. The DVD included deleted scenes for each episode. It also included a commentary track for "Woman of the Year" featuring Amy Poehler, Nick Offerman, Chris Pratt, Aubrey Plaza, Jim O'Heir, Retta and series co-creator Michael Schur. |
79,578 | Finnegans Wake | 1,173,847,715 | 1939 novel by James Joyce | [
"1939 novels",
"Books written in fictional dialects",
"Dreams in fiction",
"Experimental literature",
"Faber and Faber books",
"Finnegans Wake",
"Irish novels",
"Irish satirical novels",
"Macaronic language",
"Modernist novels",
"Nonlinear narrative novels",
"Novels by James Joyce",
"Novels first published in serial form",
"Novels set in Dublin (city)",
"Novels set in Ireland",
"Works originally published in The Transatlantic Review (1924)"
] | Finnegans Wake is a novel by Irish writer James Joyce. It is well known for its experimental style and its reputation as one of the most difficult works of fiction in the Western canon. Written over a period of seventeen years and published in 1939, the novel was Joyce's final work. It is written in a largely idiosyncratic language which blends standard English with neologisms, portmanteau words, Irish mannerisms and puns in multiple languages to create a refracted effect. It has been categorized as "a work of fiction which combines a body of fables [...] with the work of analysis and deconstruction"; many critics believe the technique was Joyce's attempt to recreate the experience of dreams and hypnagogia, reproducing the way in which concepts, memories, people and places become amalgamated in dreaming. It has also been regarded as an attempt by Joyce to combine many of his prior aesthetic ideas, with references to other works and outside ideas woven into the text. Although critics have described it as unintelligible, Joyce declared that "every syllable can be justified". Due to its linguistic experiments, stream of consciousness writing style, literary allusions, free dream associations, and abandonment of narrative conventions, Finnegans Wake has been agreed to be a work largely unread by the general public.
Despite the obstacles, readers and commentators have reached a broad consensus about the book's central cast of characters and, to a lesser degree, its plot, but key details remain elusive. The book explores, in an unorthodox fashion, the lives of the Earwicker family, comprising the father HCE, the mother ALP, and their three children Shem the Penman, Shaun the Postman, and Issy. Following an unspecified rumour about HCE, the book, in a nonlinear dream narrative, follows his wife's attempts to exonerate him with a letter, his sons' struggle to replace him, Shaun's rise to prominence, and a final monologue by ALP at the break of dawn. The opening line of the book is a sentence fragment which continues from the book's unfinished closing line, making it cyclical. Noted Joycean scholars such as Irish dramatist Samuel Beckett and Donald Phillip Verene have linked this cyclical structure to the influence of Giambattista Vico's La Scienza Nuova (The New Science), upon which they argued Finnegans Wake is structured.
Joyce began working on Finnegans Wake shortly after the 1922 publication of Ulysses. By 1928 installments of Joyce's new avant-garde work began to appear, in serialized form, in Parisian literary journals The Transatlantic Review and transition (sic), under the title "fragments from Work in Progress". The actual title of the work remained a secret until the book was published in its entirety, on 4 May 1939. The initial reception of Finnegans Wake, both in its serialized form and especially in its final published form, was largely negative, ranging from bafflement at its radical reworking of the English language to open hostility towards its seeming pointlessness and lack of respect for literary conventions.
The work has since come to assume a preeminent place in English literature. Anthony Burgess has lauded Finnegans Wake as "a great comic vision, one of the few books of the world that can make us laugh aloud on nearly every page". The prominent literary academic Harold Bloom called it Joyce's masterpiece, and, in The Western Canon (1994), wrote that "if aesthetic merit were ever again to center the canon, [Finnegans Wake] would be as close as our chaos could come to the heights of Shakespeare and Dante".
## Background and composition
Having completed work on Ulysses, Joyce was so exhausted that he did not write a line of prose for a year. On 10 March 1923, he wrote a letter to his patron, Harriet Weaver: "Yesterday I wrote two pages—the first I have since the final Yes of Ulysses. Having found a pen, with some difficulty I copied them out in a large handwriting on a double sheet of foolscap so that I could read them." This is the earliest reference to what would become Finnegans Wake.
The two pages in question consisted of the short sketch "Roderick O'Conor", concerning the historic last king of Ireland cleaning up after guests by drinking the dregs of their dirty glasses. Joyce completed another four short sketches in July and August 1923, while holidaying in Bognor. The sketches, which dealt with different aspects of Irish history, are commonly known as "Tristan and Isolde", "Saint Patrick and the Druid", "Kevin's Orisons", and "Mamalujo". While these sketches would eventually be incorporated into Finnegans Wake in one form or another, they did not contain any of the main characters or plot points which would later come to constitute the backbone of the book. The first signs of what would eventually become Finnegans Wake came in August 1923 when Joyce wrote the sketch "Here Comes Everybody", which dealt for the first time with the book's protagonist HCE.
Over the next few years, Joyce's method became one of "increasingly obsessional concern with note-taking, since [he] obviously felt that any word he wrote had first to have been recorded in some notebook." As Joyce continued to incorporate these notes into his work, the text became increasingly dense and obscure.
By 1926 Joyce had largely completed both Parts I and III. Geert Lernout asserts that Part I had, at this early stage, "a real focus that had developed out of the HCE ["Here Comes Everybody"] sketch: the story of HCE, of his wife and children. There were the adventures of Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker himself and the rumours about them in chapters 2–4, a description of his wife ALP's letter in chapter 5, a denunciation of his son Shem in chapter 7, and a dialogue about ALP in chapter 8. These texts [...] formed a unity." In the same year, Joyce met Maria and Eugène Jolas in Paris, just as his new work was generating an increasingly negative reaction from readers and critics, culminating in The Dials refusal to publish the four chapters of Part III in September 1926. The Jolases gave Joyce valuable encouragement and material support throughout the long process of writing Finnegans Wake, and published sections of the book in serial form in their literary magazine transition, under the title Work in Progress. For the next few years, Joyce worked rapidly on the book, adding what would become chapters I.1 and I.6, and revising the already written segments to make them more lexically complex.
By this time some early supporters of Joyce's work, such as Ezra Pound and the author's brother Stanislaus Joyce, had grown increasingly unsympathetic to his new writing. In order to create a more favourable critical climate, a group of Joyce's supporters (including Samuel Beckett, William Carlos Williams, Rebecca West, and others) put together a collection of critical essays on the new work. It was published in 1929 under the title Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress. In July 1929, increasingly demoralised by the poor reception his new work was receiving, Joyce approached his friend James Stephens about the possibility of his completing the book. Joyce wrote to Weaver in late 1929 that he had "explained to [Stephens] all about the book, at least a great deal, and he promised me that if I found it madness to continue, in my condition, and saw no other way out, that he would devote himself, heart and soul, to the completion of it, that is the second part and the epilogue or fourth." Apparently Joyce chose Stephens on superstitious grounds, as he had been born in the same hospital as Joyce, exactly one week later, and shared both the first names of Joyce himself and his fictional alter-ego Stephen Dedalus. In the end, Stephens was not asked to finish the book.
In the 1930s, as he was writing Parts II and IV, Joyce's progress slowed considerably. This was due to a number of factors including the death of his father John Stanislaus Joyce in 1931; concern over the mental health of his daughter Lucia; and his own health problems, chiefly his failing eyesight.
Finnegans Wake was published in book form, after seventeen years of composition, on 4 May 1939. Joyce died twenty months later in Zürich, on 13 January 1941.
## Chapter summaries
Finnegans Wake consists of seventeen chapters, divided into four Parts or Books. Part I contains eight chapters, Parts II and III each contain four, and Part IV consists of only one short chapter. The chapters appear without titles, and while Joyce never provided possible chapter titles as he had done for Ulysses, he did title various sections published separately (see Publication history below). The standard critical practice is to indicate part number in Roman numerals, and chapter title in Arabic, so that III.2, for example, indicates the second chapter of the third part.
Given the book's fluid and changeable approach to plot and characters, a definitive, critically agreed-upon plot synopsis remains elusive (see Critical response and themes: Difficulties of plot summary below). Therefore, the following synopsis attempts to summarise events in the book, which find general, although inevitably not universal, consensus among critics.
### Part I
<div class="quotebox pullquote floatright " style="
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;
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> "In the first chapter of Finnegans Wake Joyce describes the fall of the primordial giant Finnegan and his awakening as the modern family man and pub owner H.C.E." –
> Donald Phillip Verene's summary and interpretation of the Wakes episodic opening chapter
</div>
The entire work forms a cycle: the last sentence—a fragment—recirculates to the beginning sentence: "a way a lone a last a loved a long the / riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs." Joyce himself revealed that the book "ends in the middle of a sentence and begins in the middle of the same sentence." The introductory chapter (I.1) establishes the book's setting as "Howth Castle and Environs" (i.e. the Dublin area), and introduces Dublin hod carrier "Finnegan", who falls to his death from a ladder while constructing a wall. Finnegan's wife Annie puts out his corpse as a meal spread for the mourners at his wake, but he vanishes before they can eat him. A series of episodic vignettes follows, loosely related to the dead Finnegan, most commonly referred to as "The Willingdone Museyroom", "Mutt and Jute", and "The Prankquean". At the chapter's close a fight breaks out, whiskey splashes on Finnegan's corpse, and "the dead Finnegan rises from his coffin bawling for whiskey and his mourners put him back to rest", persuading him that he is better off where he is. The chapter ends with the image of the HCE character sailing into Dublin Bay to take a central role in the story.
I.2 opens with an account of "Harold or Humphrey" Chimpden receiving the nickname "Earwicker" from the Sailor King, who encounters him attempting to catch earwigs with an inverted flowerpot on a stick while manning a tollgate through which the King is passing. This name helps Chimpden, now known by his initials HCE, to rise to prominence in Dublin society as "Here Comes Everybody". He is then brought low by a rumour that begins to spread across Dublin, apparently concerning a sexual trespass involving two girls in the Phoenix Park, although details of HCE's transgression change with each retelling of events.
Chapters I.2 through I.4 follow the progress of this rumour, starting with HCE's encounter with "a cad with a pipe" in Phoenix Park. The cad greets HCE in Gaelic and asks the time, but HCE misunderstands the question as an accusation, and incriminates himself by denying rumours the cad has not yet heard. These rumours quickly spread across Dublin, gathering momentum until they are turned into a song penned by the character Hosty called "The Ballad of Persse O'Reilly". As a result, HCE goes into hiding, where he is besieged at the closed gate of his pub by a visiting American looking for a drink after hours. HCE remains silent – not responding to the accusations or verbal abuse – dreams, is buried in a coffin at the bottom of Lough Neagh, and is finally brought to trial, under the name Festy King. He is eventually freed, and goes once more into hiding. An important piece of evidence during the trial – a letter about HCE written by his wife ALP – is called for so that it can be examined in closer detail.
ALP's Letter becomes the focal point as it is analysed in detail in I.5. This letter was dictated by ALP to her son Shem, a writer, and entrusted to her other son Shaun, a postman, for delivery. The letter never reaches its intended destination, ending up in a midden heap where it is unearthed by a hen named Biddy. Chapter I.6 digresses from the narrative in order to present the main and minor characters in more detail, in the form of twelve riddles and answers. In the eleventh question or riddle, Shaun is asked about his relation to his brother Shem, and as part of his response, tells the parable of the Mookse and the Gripes.
In the final two chapters of Part I, we learn more about the letter's writer Shem the Penman (I.7) and its original author, his mother ALP (I.8). The Shem chapter consists of "Shaun's character assassination of his brother Shem", describing the hermetic artist as a forger and a "sham", before "Shem is protected by his mother [ALP], who appears at the end to come and defend her son." The following chapter concerning Shem's mother, known as "Anna Livia Plurabelle", is interwoven with thousands of river names from all over the globe, and is widely considered the book's most celebrated passage. The chapter was described by Joyce in 1924 as "a chattering dialogue across the river by two washerwomen who as night falls become a tree and a stone." These two washerwomen gossip about ALP's response to the allegations laid against her husband HCE, as they wash clothes in the River Liffey. ALP is said to have written a letter declaring herself tired of her mate. Their gossip then digresses to her youthful affairs and sexual encounters, before returning to the publication of HCE's guilt in the morning newspaper, and his wife's revenge on his enemies: borrowing a "mailsack" from her son Shaun the Post, she delivers presents to her 111 children. At the chapter's close, the washerwomen try to pick up the thread of the story, but their conversation is increasingly difficult as they are on opposite sides of the widening Liffey, and it is getting dark. Finally, as they turn into a tree and a stone, they ask to be told a Tale of Shem or Shaun.
### Part II
While Part I of Finnegans Wake deals mostly with the parents HCE and ALP, Part II shifts that focus to their children, Shem, Shaun and Issy.
II.1 opens with a pantomime programme, which outlines, in relatively clear language, the identities and attributes of the book's main characters. The chapter then concerns a guessing game among the children, in which Shem is challenged three times to guess by "gazework" the colour which the girls have chosen. Unable to answer due to his poor eyesight, Shem goes into exile in disgrace, and Shaun wins the affection of the girls. Finally, HCE emerges from the pub and in a thunder-like voice calls the children inside.
Chapter II.2 follows Shem, Shaun and Issy studying upstairs in the pub, after having been called inside in the previous chapter. The chapter depicts "[Shem] coaching [Shaun] how to do Euclid Bk I, 1", structured as "a reproduction of a schoolboys' (and schoolgirls') old classbook complete with marginalia by the twins, who change sides at half time, and footnotes by the girl (who doesn't)". Once Shem (here called Dolph) has helped Shaun (here called Kev) to draw the Euclid diagram, the latter realises that he has drawn a diagram of ALP's genitalia, and "Kev finally realises the significance of the triangles [..and..] strikes Dolph." After this "Dolph forgives Kev" and the children are given "[e]ssay assignments on 52 famous men." The chapter ends with the children's "nightletter" to HCE and ALP, in which they are "apparently united in a desire to overcome their parents."
II.3 moves to HCE working in the pub below the studying children. As HCE serves his customers, two narratives are broadcast via the bar's radio and television sets, namely "The Norwegian Captain and the Tailor's Daughter", and "How Buckley Shot the Russian General". The first portrays HCE as a Norwegian Captain succumbing to domestication through his marriage to the Tailor's Daughter. The latter, told by Shem and Shaun ciphers Butt and Taff, casts HCE as a Russian General who is shot by Buckley, an Irish soldier in the British army during the Crimean War. Earwicker has been absent throughout the latter tale, having been summoned upstairs by ALP. He returns and is reviled by his customers, who see Buckley's shooting of the General as symbolic of Shem and Shaun's supplanting their father. This condemnation of his character forces HCE to deliver a general confession of his crimes, including an incestuous desire for young girls. Finally a policeman arrives to send the drunken customers home, the pub is closed up, and the customers disappear singing into the night as a drunken HCE, clearing up the bar and swallowing the dregs of the glasses left behind, morphs into ancient Irish high king Rory O'Connor, and passes out.
II.4, portraying the drunken and sleeping Earwicker's dream, chronicles the spying of four old men (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) on Tristan and Iseult's journey. The short chapter portrays "an old man like King Mark being rejected and abandoned by young lovers who sail off into a future without him", while the four old men observe Tristan and Isolde, and offer four intertwining commentaries on the lovers and themselves which are "always repeating themselves".
### Part III
Part III concerns itself almost exclusively with Shaun, in his role as postman, having to deliver ALP's letter, which was referred to in Part I but never seen.
III.1 opens with the Four Masters' ass narrating how he thought, as he was "dropping asleep", he had heard and seen an apparition of Shaun the Post. As a result, Shaun re-awakens and, floating down the Liffey in a barrel, is posed fourteen questions concerning the significance and content of the letter he is carrying. Shaun, "apprehensive about being slighted, is on his guard, and the placating narrators never get a straight answer out of him." Shaun's answers focus on his own boastful personality and his admonishment of the letter's author – his artist brother Shem. The answer to the eighth question contains the story of the Ondt and the Gracehoper, another framing of the Shaun-Shem relationship. After the inquisition Shaun loses his balance and the barrel in which he has been floating careens over and he rolls backwards out of the narrator's earshot, before disappearing completely from view.
In III.2 Shaun re-appears as "Jaunty Jaun" and delivers a lengthy and sexually suggestive sermon to his sister Issy, and her twenty-eight schoolmates from St. Brigid's School. Throughout this book Shaun is continually regressing, changing from an old man to an overgrown baby lying on his back, and eventually, in III.3, into a vessel through which the voice of HCE speaks again by means of a spiritual medium. This leads to HCE's defence of his life in the passage "Haveth Childers Everywhere". Part III ends in the bedroom of Mr. and Mrs. Porter as they attempt to copulate while their children, Jerry, Kevin and Isobel Porter, are sleeping upstairs and the dawn is rising outside (III.4). Jerry awakes from a nightmare of a scary father figure, and Mrs. Porter interrupts the coitus to go comfort him with the words "You were dreamend, dear. The pawdrag? The fawthrig? Shoe! Hear are no phanthares in the room at all, avikkeen. No bad bold faathern, dear one." She returns to bed, and the rooster crows at the conclusion of their coitus at the Part's culmination.
### Part IV
Part IV consists of only one chapter, which, like the book's opening chapter, is mostly composed of a series of seemingly unrelated vignettes. After an opening call for dawn to break, the remainder of the chapter consists of the vignettes "Saint Kevin", "Berkely and Patrick" and "The Revered Letter". ALP is given the final word, as the book closes on a version of her Letter and her final long monologue, in which she tries to wake her sleeping husband, declaring "Rise up, man of the hooths, you have slept so long!", and remembers a walk they once took, and hopes for its re-occurrence. At the close of her monologue, ALP – as the river Liffey – disappears at dawn into the ocean. The book's last words are a fragment, but they can be turned into a complete sentence by attaching them to the words that start the book:
> A way a lone a last a loved a long the / riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.
## Critical response and themes
### Difficulties of plot summary
> "Thus the unfacts, did we possess them, are too imprecisely few to warrant our certitude..."
Commentators who have summarised the plot of Finnegans Wake include Joseph Campbell, John Gordon, Anthony Burgess, William York Tindall, and Philip Kitcher. While no two summaries interpret the plot in the same way, there are a number of central "plot points" upon which they find general agreement. A number of Joyce scholars question the legitimacy of searching for a linear storyline within the complex text. As Bernard Benstock highlights, "in a work where every sentence opens a variety of possible interpretations, any synopsis of a chapter is bound to be incomplete." David Hayman has suggested that "For all the efforts made by critics to establish a plot for the Wake, it makes little sense to force this prose into a narrative mold." The book's challenges have led some commentators into generalised statements about its content and themes, prompting critic Bernard Benstock to warn against the danger of "boiling down" Finnegans Wake into "insipid pap, and leaving the lazy reader with a predigested mess of generalizations and catchphrases." Fritz Senn has also voiced concerns with some plot synopses, saying "we have some traditional summaries, also some put in circulation by Joyce himself. I find them most unsatisfactory and unhelpful, they usually leave out the hard parts and recirculate what we already think we know. I simply cannot believe that FW would be as blandly uninteresting as those summaries suggest."
The challenge of compiling a definitive synopsis of Finnegans Wake lies not only in the opacity of the book's language but also in the radical approach to plot which Joyce employed. Joyce acknowledged this when he wrote to Eugène Jolas that:
> "I might easily have written this story in the traditional manner [...] Every novelist knows the recipe [...] It is not very difficult to follow a simple, chronological scheme which the critics will understand [...] But I, after all, am trying to tell the story of this Chapelizod family in a new way.
This "new way" of telling a story in Finnegans Wake takes the form of a discontinuous dream-narrative, with abrupt changes to characters, character names, locations and plot details resulting in the absence of a discernible linear narrative, causing Herring to argue that the plot of Finnegans Wake "is unstable in that there is no one plot from beginning to end, but rather many recognizable stories and plot types with familiar and unfamiliar twists told from varying perspectives." Patrick A. McCarthy expands on this idea of a non-linear, digressive narrative with the contention that "throughout much of Finnegans Wake, what appears to be an attempt to tell a story is often diverted, interrupted, or reshaped into something else, for example, a commentary on a narrative with conflicting or unverifiable details." In other words, while crucial plot points – such as HCE's crime or ALP's letter – are endlessly discussed, the reader never encounters or experiences them first hand, and as the details are constantly changing, they remain unknown and perhaps unknowable. Suzette Henke has accordingly described Finnegans Wake as an aporia. Joyce himself tacitly acknowledged this radically different approach to language and plot in a 1926 letter to Harriet Weaver, outlining his intentions for the book: "One great part of every human existence is passed in a state which cannot be rendered sensible by the use of wideawake language, cutanddry grammar and goahead plot." Critics have seen a precedent for the book's plot presentation in Laurence Sterne's digressive The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, with Thomas Keymer stating that "Tristram Shandy was a natural touchstone for James Joyce as he explained his attempt "to build many planes of narrative with a single esthetic purpose" in Finnegans Wake".
Part II is usually considered the book's most opaque section, and hence the most difficult to synopsize. William York Tindall said of Part II's four chapters that "nothing is denser." Similarly, Patrick Parrinder has described Part II as the "worst and most disorienting quagmire [...] in the Wake."
Despite Joyce's revolutionary techniques, the author repeatedly emphasized that the book was neither random nor meaningless; with Richard Ellmann quoting the author as having stated: "I can justify every line of my book." To Sisley Huddleston he stated "critics who were most appreciative of Ulysses are complaining about my new work. They cannot understand it. Therefore they say it is meaningless. Now if it were meaningless it could be written quickly without thought, without pains, without erudition; but I assure you that these 20 pages now before us [i.e. chapter I.8] cost me twelve hundred hours and an enormous expense of spirit." When the editor of Vanity Fair asked Joyce if the sketches in Work in Progress were consecutive and interrelated, Joyce replied "It is all consecutive and interrelated."
### Themes
Fargnoli and Gillespie suggest that the book's opening chapter "introduces [the] major themes and concerns of the book", and enumerate these as "Finnegan's fall, the promise of his resurrection, the cyclical structure of time and history (dissolution and renewal), tragic love as embodied in the story of Tristan and Iseult, the motif of the warring brothers, the personification of the landscape and the question of Earwicker's crime in the park, the precise nature of which is left uncertain throughout the Wake." Such a view finds general critical consensus, viewing the vignettes as allegorical appropriations of the book's characters and themes; for example, Schwartz argues that "The Willingdone Museyroom" episode represents the book's "archetypal family drama in military-historical terms." Joyce himself referred to the chapter as a "prelude", and as an "air photograph of Irish history, a celebration of the dim past of Dublin." Riquelme finds that "passages near the book's beginning and its ending echo and complement one another", and Fargnoli and Gillespie representatively argue that the book's cyclical structure echoes the themes inherent within, that "the typologies of human experience that Joyce identifies [in Finnegans Wake] are [..] essentially cyclical, that is, patterned and recurrent; in particular, the experiences of birth, guilt, judgment, sexuality, family, social ritual and death recur throughout the Wake. In a similar enumeration of themes, Tindall argues that "rise and fall and rise again, sleeping and waking, death and resurrection, sin and redemption, conflict and appeasement, and, above all, time itself [...] are the matter of Joyce's essay on man."
Henkes and Bindervoet generally summarise the critical consensus when they argue that, between the thematically indicative opening and closing chapters, the book concerns "two big questions" which are never resolved: what is the nature of protagonist HCE's secret sin, and what was the letter, written by his wife ALP, about? HCE's unidentifiable sin has most generally been interpreted as representing man's original sin as a result of the Fall of Man. Anthony Burgess sees HCE, through his dream, trying "to make the whole of history swallow up his guilt for him" and to this end "HCE has, so deep in his sleep, sunk to a level of dreaming in which he has become a collective being rehearsing the collective guilt of man." Fargnoli and Gillespie argue that although undefined, "Earwicker's alleged crime in the Park" appears to have been of a "voyeuristic, sexual, or scatological nature". ALP's letter appears a number of times throughout the book, in a number of different forms, and as its contents cannot be definitively delineated, it is usually believed to be both an exoneration of HCE, and an indictment of his sin. Herring argues that "[t]he effect of ALP's letter is precisely the opposite of her intent [...] the more ALP defends her husband in her letter, the more scandal attaches to him." Patrick A. McCarthy argues that "it is appropriate that the waters of the Liffey, representing Anna Livia, are washing away the evidence of Earwicker's sins as [the washerwomen speak, in chapter I.8] for (they tell us) she takes on her husband's guilt and redeems him; alternately she is tainted with his crimes and regarded as an accomplice".
### A reconstruction of nocturnal life
Throughout the book's seventeen-year gestation, Joyce stated that with Finnegans Wake he was attempting to "reconstruct the nocturnal life", and that the book was his "experiment in interpreting 'the dark night of the soul'." According to Ellmann, Joyce stated to Edmond Jaloux that Finnegans Wake would be written "to suit the esthetic of the dream, where the forms prolong and multiply themselves", and once informed a friend that "he conceived of his book as the dream of old Finn, lying in death beside the river Liffey and watching the history of Ireland and the world – past and future – flow through his mind like flotsam on the river of life." While pondering the generally negative reactions to the book Joyce said:
> I can't understand some of my critics, like Pound or Miss Weaver, for instance. They say it's obscure. They compare it, of course, with Ulysses. But the action of Ulysses was chiefly during the daytime, and the action of my new work takes place chiefly at night. It's natural things should not be so clear at night, isn't it now?
Joyce's claims to be representing the night and dreams have been accepted and questioned with greater and lesser credulity. Supporters of the claim have pointed to Part IV as providing its strongest evidence, as when the narrator asks "You mean to see we have been hadding a sound night’s sleep?", and later concludes that what has gone before has been "a long, very long, a dark, very dark [...] scarce endurable [...] night". Tindall refers to Part IV as "a chapter of resurrection and waking up", and McHugh finds that the chapter contains "particular awareness of events going on offstage, connected with the arrival of dawn and the waking process which terminates the sleeping process of [Finnegans Wake]."
This conceptualisation of the Wake as a dream is a point of contention for some. Harry Burrell, representative of this view, argues that "one of the most overworked ideas is that Finnegans Wake is about a dream. It is not, and there is no dreamer." Burrell argues that the theory is an easy way out for "critics stymied by the difficulty of comprehending the novel and the search for some kind of understanding of it." The point upon which a number of critics fail to concur with Burrell's argument is its dismissal of the testimony of the book's author on the matter as "misleading... publicity efforts". Parrinder, equally skeptical of the concept of the Wake as a dream, argues that Joyce came up with the idea of representing his linguistic experiments as a language of the night around 1927 as a means of battling his many critics, further arguing that "since it cannot be said that neologism is a major feature of the dreaming process, such a justification for the language of Finnegans Wake smacks dangerously of expediency."
While many, if not all, agree that there is at least some sense in which the book can be said to be a "dream", few agree on who the possible dreamer of such a dream might be. Edmund Wilson's early analysis of the book, The Dream of H. C. Earwicker, made the assumption that Earwicker himself is the dreamer of the dream, an assumption which continued to carry weight with Wakean scholars Harry Levin, Hugh Kenner, and William Troy. Joseph Campbell, in A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake, also believed Earwicker to be the dreamer, but considered the narrative to be the observances of, and a running commentary by, an anonymous pedant on Earwicker's dream in progress, who would interrupt the flow with his own digressions.
Ruth von Phul was the first to argue that Earwicker was not the dreamer, which triggered a number of similarly minded views on the matter, although her assertion that Shem was the dreamer has found less support.
J.S.Atherton, in a 1965 lecture, 'The Identity of the Sleeper', suggested that the dreamer of Finnegans Wake was the Universal Mind:
> 'As I see FW it is everyone’s dream, the dream of all the living and the dead. Many puzzling features become clear if this is accepted. Obviously we will hear many foreign languages....To my mind, the most revealing statement Joyce ever made about his work was: 'Really it is not I who am writing this crazy book. It is you, and you, and you, and that man over there, and that girl at the next table.' This is stressed, once you start looking for it, in the Wake itself. It is 'us.' who are brought back to 'Howth Castle and Environs' in the third line of the book. The washerwoman says: 'of course, we all know Anna Livia'. It is easy to miss the 'we'. Chapter 2 has 'we are back' in line 3. In fact all the first five chapters use "us" or "we" by the ninth line at the latest—and the sixth chapter ends 'Semus sumus.' We are Shem. All of us....It is the universal mind which Joyce assumes as the identity of the dreamer; he, of course, is writing it all down but everyone else contributes.'
The assertion that the dream was that of Mr. Porter, whose dream personality personified itself as HCE, came from the critical idea that the dreamer partially wakes during chapter III.4, in which he and his family are referred to by the name Porter. Anthony Burgess representatively summarized this conception of the "dream" thus: "Mr. Porter and his family are asleep for the greater part of the book [...] Mr. Porter dreams hard, and we are permitted to share his dream [...] Sleeping, he becomes a remarkable mixture of guilty man, beast, and crawling thing, and he even takes on a new and dreamily appropriate name – Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker."
Harriet Weaver was among the first to suggest that the dream was not that of any one dreamer, but was rather an analysis of the process of dreaming itself. In a letter to J.S. Atherton she wrote:
> In particular their ascription of the whole thing to a dream of HCE seems to me nonsensical. My view is that Mr. Joyce did not intend the book to be looked upon as the dream of any one character, but that he regarded the dream form with its shiftings and changes and chances as a convenient device, allowing the freest scope to introduce any material he wished—and suited to a night-piece.
Bernard Benstock also argued that "The Dreamer in the Wake is more than just a single individual, even if one assumes that on the literal level we are viewing the dream of publican H.C. Earwicker."
Other critics have been more skeptical of the concept of identifying the dreamer of the book's narrative. Clive Hart argues that "[w]hatever our conclusions about the identity of the dreamer, and no matter how many varied caricatures of him we may find projected into the dream, it is clear that he must always be considered as essentially external to the book, and should be left there. Speculation about the 'real person' behind the guises of the dream-surrogates or about the function of the dream in relation to the unresolved stresses of this hypothetical mind is fruitless, for the tensions and psychological problems in Finnegans Wake concern the dream-figures living within the book itself."
John Bishop has been the most vocal supporter of treating Finnegans Wake absolutely, in every sense, as a description of a dream, the dreamer, and of the night itself; arguing that the book not only represents a dream in an abstract conception, but is fully a literary representation of sleep. On the subject Bishop writes:
> The greatest obstacle to our comprehension of Finnegans Wake [...has been...] the failure on the part of readers to believe that Joyce really meant what he said when he spoke of the book as a "reconstruction of the nocturnal life" and an "imitation of the dream-state"; and as a consequence readers have perhaps too easily exercised on the text an unyielding literalism bent on finding a kind of meaning in every way antithetical to the kind of meaning purveyed in dreams.
Bishop has also somewhat brought back into fashion the theory that the Wake is about a single sleeper; arguing that it is not "the 'universal dream' of some disembodied global everyman, but a reconstruction of the night – and a single night – as experienced by 'one stable somebody' whose 'earwitness' on the real world is coherently chronological." Bishop has laid the path for critics such as Eric Rosenbloom, who has proposed that the book "elaborates the fragmentation and reunification of identity during sleep. The masculine [...] mind of the day has been overtaken by the feminine night mind. [...] The characters live in the transformation and flux of a dream, embodying the sleeper’s mind."
## Characters
> "Whence it is a slopperish matter, given the wet and low visibility [...] to idendifine the individuone"
Critics disagree on whether discernible characters exist in Finnegans Wake. For example, Grace Eckley argues that Wakean characters are distinct from one another, and defends this with explaining the dual narrators, the "us" of the first paragraph, as well as Shem-Shaun distinctions while Margot Norris argues that the "[c]haracters are fluid and interchangeable". Supporting the latter stance, Van Hulle finds that the "characters" in Finnegans Wake are rather "archetypes or character amalgams, taking different shapes", and Riquelme similarly refers to the book's cast of mutable characters as "protean". As early as in 1934, in response to the recently published excerpt "The Mookse and the Gripes", Ronald Symond argued that "the characters in Work in Progress, in keeping with the space-time chaos in which they live, change identity at will. At one time they are persons, at another rivers or stones or trees, at another personifications of an idea, at another they are lost and hidden in the actual texture of the prose, with an ingenuity far surpassing that of crossword puzzles." Such concealment of character identity has resulted in some disparity as to how critics identify the book's main protagonists; for example, while most find consensus that Festy King, who appears on trial in I.4, is a HCE type, not all analysts agree on this – for example Anthony Burgess believes him to be Shaun.
While characters are in a constant state of flux—constantly changing names, occupations, and physical attributes—a recurring set of core characters, or character types (what Norris dubs "ciphers"), are discernible. During the composition of Finnegans Wake, Joyce used signs, or so-called "sigla", rather than names to designate these character amalgams or types. In a letter to his Maecenas, Harriet Shaw Weaver (March 1924), Joyce made a list of these sigla. For those who argue for the existence of distinguishable characters, the book focuses on the Earwicker family, which consists of father, mother, twin sons and a daughter.
### Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker (HCE)
Kitcher argues for the father HCE as the book's protagonist, stating that he is "the dominant figure throughout [...]. His guilt, his shortcomings, his failures pervade the entire book". Bishop states that while the constant flux of HCE's character and attributes may lead us to consider him as an "anyman," he argues that "the sheer density of certain repeated details and concerns allows us to know that he is a particular, real Dubliner." The common critical consensus of HCE's fixed character is summarised by Bishop as being "an older Protestant male, of Scandinavian lineage, connected with the pubkeeping business somewhere in the neighbourhood of Chapelizod, who has a wife, a daughter, and two sons."
HCE is referred to by literally thousands of names throughout the book; leading Terence Killeen to argue that in Finnegans Wake "naming is [...] a fluid and provisional process". HCE is at first referred to as "Harold or Humphrey Chimpden"; a conflation of these names as "Haromphreyld", and as a consequence of his initials "Here Comes Everybody". These initials lend themselves to phrase after phrase throughout the book; for example, appearing in the book's opening sentence as "Howth Castle and Environs". As the work progresses the names by which he may be referred to become increasingly abstract (such as "Finn MacCool", "Mr. Makeall Gone", or "Mr. Porter").
Some Wake critics, such as Finn Fordham, argue that HCE's initials come from the initials of the portly politician Hugh Childers (1827–96), who had been nicknamed "Here Comes Everybody" for his size.
Many critics see Finnegan, whose death, wake and resurrection are the subject of the opening chapter, as either a prototype of HCE, or as another of his manifestations. One of the reasons for this close identification is that Finnegan is called a "man of hod, cement and edifices" and "like Haroun Childeric E'''ggeberth", identifying him with the initials HCE. Parrinder for example states that "Bygmester Finnegan [...] is HCE", and finds that his fall and resurrection foreshadows "the fall of HCE early in Book I [which is] paralleled by his resurrection towards the end of III.3, in the section originally called "Haveth Childers Everywhere", when [HCE's] ghost speaks forth in the middle of a seance."
### Anna Livia Plurabelle (ALP)
Patrick McCarthy describes HCE's wife ALP as "the river-woman whose presence is implied in the 'riverrun' with which Finnegans Wake opens and whose monologue closes the book. For over six hundred pages, Joyce presents Anna Livia to us almost exclusively through other characters, much as in Ulysses we hear what Molly Bloom has to say about herself only in the last chapter." The most extensive discussion of ALP comes in chapter I.8, in which hundreds of names of rivers are woven into the tale of ALP's life, as told by two gossiping washerwomen. Similarly hundreds of city names are woven into "Haveth Childers Everywhere", the corresponding passage at the end of III.3 which focuses on HCE. As a result, it is generally contended that HCE personifies the Viking-founded city of Dublin, and his wife ALP personifies the river Liffey, on whose banks the city was built.
### Shem, Shaun and Issy
ALP and HCE have a daughter, Issy – whose personality is often split (represented by her mirror-twin). Parrinder argues that "as daughter and sister, she is an object of secret and repressed desire both to her father [...] and to her two brothers." These twin sons of HCE and ALP consist of a writer called Shem the Penman and a postman by the name of Shaun the Post, who are rivals for replacing their father and for their sister Issy's affection. Shaun is portrayed as a dull postman, conforming to society's expectations, while Shem is a bright artist and sinister experimenter, often perceived as Joyce's alter-ego in the book. Hugh Staples finds that Shaun "wants to be thought of as a man-about-town, a snappy dresser, a glutton and a gourmet... He is possessed of a musical voice and is a braggart. He is not happy in his work, which is that of a messenger or a postman; he would rather be a priest." Shaun's sudden and somewhat unexpected promotion to the book's central character in Part III is explained by Tindall with the assertion that "having disposed of old HCE, Shaun is becoming the new HCE."
Like their father, Shem and Shaun are referred to by different names throughout the book, such as "Caddy and Primas"; "Mercius" and "Justius"; "Dolph and Kevin"; and "Jerry and Kevin". These twins are contrasted in the book by allusions to sets of opposing twins and enemies in literature, mythology and history; such as Set and Horus of the Osiris story; the biblical pairs Jacob and Esau, Cain and Abel, and Saint Michael and the Devil – equating Shaun with "Mick" and Shem with "Nick" – as well as Romulus and Remus. They also represent the oppositions of time and space, and tree and stone.
### Minor characters
The most commonly recurring characters outside of the Earwicker family are the four old men known collectively as "Mamalujo" (a conflation of their names: Matt Gregory, Marcus Lyons, Luke Tarpey and Johnny Mac Dougall). These four most commonly serve as narrators, but they also play a number of active roles in the text, such as when they serve as the judges in the court case of I.4, or as the inquisitors who question Yawn in III.4. Tindall summarises the roles that these old men play as those of the Four Masters, the Four Evangelists, and the four Provinces of Ireland ( "Matthew, from the north, is Ulster; Mark, from the south, is Munster; Luke, from the east, is Leinster; and John, from the west, is Connaught"). According to Finn Fordham, Joyce related to his daughter-in-law Helen Fleischmann that "Mamalujo" also represented Joyce's own family, namely his wife Nora (mama), daughter Lucia (lu), and son Giorgio (jo).
In addition to the four old men, there are a group of twelve unnamed men who always appear together, and serve as the customers in Earwicker's pub, gossipers about his sins, jurors at his trial and mourners at his wake. The Earwicker household also includes two cleaning staff: Kate, the maid, and Joe, who is by turns handyman and barman in Earwicker's pub. Tindall considers these characters to be older versions of ALP and HCE. Kate often plays the role of museum curator, as in the "Willingdone Museyroom" episode of 1.1, and is recognisable by her repeated motif "Tip! Tip!" Joe is often also referred to by the name "Sackerson", and Kitcher describes him as "a figure sometimes playing the role of policeman, sometimes [...] a squalid derelict, and most frequently the odd-job man of HCE's inn, Kate's male counterpart, who can ambiguously indicate an older version of HCE."
## Language and style
Joyce invented a unique polyglot-language or idioglossia solely for the purpose of this work. This language is composed of composite words from some sixty to seventy world languages, combined to form puns, or portmanteau words and phrases intended to convey several layers of meaning at once. Senn has labelled Finnegans Wakes language as "polysemetic", and Tindall as an "Arabesque". Norris describes it as a language which "like poetry, uses words and images which can mean several, often contradictory, things at once" The style has also been compared to rumour and gossip, especially in the way the writing subverts notions of political and scholarly authority. An early review of the book argued that Joyce was attempting "to employ language as a new medium, breaking down all grammatical usages, all time space values, all ordinary conceptions of context [...] the theme is the language and the language the theme, and a language where every association of sound and free association is exploited." Seconding this analysis of the book's emphasis on form over content, Paul Rosenfeld reviewed Finnegans Wake in 1939 with the suggestion that "the writing is not so much about something as it is that something itself [..] in Finnegans Wake the style, the essential qualities and movement of the words, their rhythmic and melodic sequences, and the emotional color of the page are the main representatives of the author's thought and feeling. The accepted significations of the words are secondary."
While commentators emphasize how this manner of writing can communicate multiple levels of meaning simultaneously, Hayman and Norris contend that its purpose is as much to obscure and disable meaning as to expand it. Hayman writes that access to the work's "tenuous narratives" may be achieved only through "the dense weave of a language designed as much to shield as to reveal them." Norris argues that Joyce's language is "devious" and that it "conceals and reveals secrets." Allen B. Ruch has dubbed Joyce's new language "dreamspeak," and describes it as "a language that’s basically English, but extremely malleable and all-inclusive, a fusion of portmanteau words, stylistic parodies, and complex puns." Although much has been made of the numerous world languages employed in the book's composite language, most of the more obscure languages appear only seldom in small clusters, and most agree with Ruch that the latent sense of the language, however manifestly obscure, is "basically English". Burrell also finds that Joyce's thousands of neologisms are "based on the same etymological principles as standard English." The Wake's language is not entirely unique in literature; for example critics have seen its use of portmanteaus and neologisms as an extension of Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky.
Although Joyce died shortly after the publication of Finnegans Wake, during the work's composition the author made a number of statements concerning his intentions in writing in such an original manner. In a letter to Max Eastman, for example, Joyce suggested that his decision to employ such a unique and complex language was a direct result from his attempts to represent the night:
> In writing of the night I really could not, I felt I could not, use words in their ordinary connections. Used that way they do not express how things are in the night, in the different stages – the conscious, then semi-conscious, then unconscious. I found that it could not be done with words in their ordinary relations and connections. When morning comes of course everything will be clear again [...] I'll give them back their English language. I'm not destroying it for good.
Joyce is also reported as having told Arthur Power that "what is clear and concise can't deal with reality, for to be real is to be surrounded by mystery." On the subject of the vast number of puns employed in the work Joyce argued to Frank Budgen that "after all, the Holy Roman Catholic Apostolic Church was built on a pun. It ought to be good enough for me", and to the objection of triviality he replied "Yes. Some of the means I use are trivial – and some are quadrivial." A great many of the book's puns are etymological in nature. Sources tell us that Joyce relished delving into the history and the changing meanings of words, his primary source being An Etymological Dictionary of the English Language by the Rev. Walter W. Skeat (Oxford, at the Clarendon Press; 1879). For example, one of the first entries in Skeat is for the letter A, which begins: "...(1) adown; (2) afoot; (3) along; (4) arise; (5) achieve; (6) avert; (7) amend; (8) alas; (9) abyss..." Further in the entry, Skeat writes: "These prefixes are discussed at greater length under the headings Of, On, Along, Arise...Alas, Aware, Avast..." It seems likely that these strings of words prompted Joyce to finish the Wake with a sentence fragment that included the words: "...a way a lone a last a loved a long..."
Samuel Beckett collated words from foreign languages on cards for Joyce to use, and, as Joyce's eyesight worsened, wrote down the text from his dictation. Beckett described and defended the writing style of Finnegans Wake thus: "This writing that you find so obscure is a quintessential extraction of language and painting and gesture, with all the inevitable clarity of the old inarticulation. Here is the savage economy of hieroglyphics".
Faced with the obstacles to be surmounted in "understanding" Joyce's text, a handful of critics have suggested readers focus on the rhythm and sound of the language, rather than solely on "meaning." As early as 1929, Eugène Jolas stressed the importance of the aural and musical dimensions of the work. In his contribution to Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress, Jolas wrote:
> Those who have heard Mr. Joyce read aloud from Work in Progress know the immense rhythmic beauty of his technique. It has a musical flow that flatters the ear, that has the organic structure of works of nature, that transmits painstakingly every vowel and consonant formed by his ear.
### Allusions to other works
Finnegans Wake incorporates a high number of intertextual allusions and references to other texts; Parrinder refers to it as "a remarkable example of intertextuality" containing a "wealth of literary reference." Among the most prominent are the Irish ballad "Finnegan's Wake" from which the book takes its name, Italian philosopher Giovanni Battista Vico's La Scienza Nuova, the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the plays of Shakespeare, and religious texts such as the Bible and Qur'an. These allusions, rather than directly quoting or referencing a source, normally enter the text in a contorted fashion, often through humorous plays on words. For example, Hamlet Prince of Denmark becomes "Camelot, prince of dinmurk" and the Epistle to the Hebrews becomes a "farced epistol to the hibruws".
The book begins with one such allusion to Vico's New Science: "riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs".
"Commodius vicus" refers to Giambattista Vico (1668–1744), who proposed a theory of cyclical history in his work La Scienza Nuova (The New Science). Vico argued that the world was coming to the end of the last of three ages, these being the age of gods, the age of heroes, and the age of humans. These ideas recur throughout Finnegans Wake, informing the book's four-part structure. Vico's name appears a number of times throughout the Wake, indicating the work's debt to his theories, such as "The Vico road goes round and round to meet where terms begin". That a reference to Vico's cyclical theory of history is to be found in the opening sentence which is a continuation of the book's closing sentence – thus making the work cyclical in itself – creates the relevance of such an allusion.
One of the sources Joyce drew from is the Ancient Egyptian story of Osiris, and the Egyptian Book of the Dead, a collection of spells and invocations. Bishop asserts that "it is impossible to overlook the vital presence of the Book of the Dead in Finnegans Wake, which refers to ancient Egypt in countless tags and allusions." Joyce uses the Book of the Dead in Finnegans Wake, "because it is a collection of the incantations for the resurrection and rebirth of the dead on the burial". At one of their final meetings, Joyce suggested to Frank Budgen that he write an article about Finnegans Wake, entitling it "James Joyce's Book of the Dead". Budgen followed Joyce's advice with his paper "Joyce's Chapters of Going Forth by Day", highlighting many of the allusions to Egyptian mythology in the book.
The Tristan and Iseult legend – a tragic love triangle between the Irish princess Iseult, the Cornish knight Tristan and his uncle King Mark – is also oft alluded to in the work, particularly in II.4. Fargnoli and Gillespie argue that "various themes and motifs throughout Finnegans Wake, such as the cuckoldry of Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker (a King Mark figure) and Shaun's attempts at seducing Issy, relate directly to Tristan and Isolde [...] other motifs relating to Earwicker's loss of authority, such as the forces usurping his parental status, are also based on Tristan and Isolde."
The book also alludes heavily to Irish mythology, with HCE sometimes corresponding to Fionn mac Cumhaill, Issy and ALP to Gráinne, and Shem/Shaun to Dermot (Diarmaid). Not only Irish mythology, but also notable real-life Irish figures are alluded to throughout the text. For example, HCE is often identified with Charles Stewart Parnell, and Shem's attack on his father in this way mirrors the attempt of forger Richard Pigott to incriminate Parnell in the Phoenix Park Murders of 1882 by means of false letters. But, given the flexibility of allusion in Finnegans Wake HCE assumes the character of Pigott as well, for just as HCE betrays himself to the cad, Pigott betrayed himself at the inquiry into admitting the forgery by his spelling of the word "hesitancy" as "hesitency"; and this misspelling appears frequently in the Wake.
Finnegans Wake also makes a great number of allusions to religious texts. When HCE is first introduced in chapter I.2, the narrator relates how "in the beginning" he was a "grand old gardener", thus equating him with Adam in the Garden of Eden. Spinks further highlights this allusion by highlighting that like HCE's unspecified crime in the park, Adam also "commits a crime in a garden".
### Norwegian influence
With Dublin, an early Viking settlement, as the setting for Finnegans Wake, it is perhaps not surprising that Joyce incorporated a number of Norwegian linguistic and cultural elements into the work (e.g., Riksmål references). One of the main tales of chapter II.3 concerns a Norwegian tailor, and a number of Norwegian words such as bakvandets, Knut Oelsvinger and Bygmester Finnegan (the latter a reference to Ibsen's Bygmester Solness) are used throughout. Indeed, most of Ibsen's works, many of his characters and also some quotations are referenced in the Wake. While Joyce was working on Finnegans Wake, he wanted to insert references to Scandinavian languages and literature, hiring five teachers of Norwegian. The first one turned out to be the poet Olaf Bull. Joyce wanted to read Norwegian works in the original language, including Peter Andreas Munch's Norrøne gude- og heltesagn (Norse tales of gods and heroes). He was looking for puns and unusual associations across the barriers of language, a practice Bull well understood. Lines from Bull's poems echo through Finnegans Wake, and Bull himself materializes under the name "Olaph the Oxman", a pun on his surname.
### Hundred-letter words
An extreme example of the Wake's language are a series of ten one-hundred letter words spread throughout the text (although the tenth in actuality has a hundred and one letters). The first such word occurs on the text's first page; all ten are presented in the context of their complete sentences, below.
These ten words have come to be known as thunders, thunderclaps, or thunderwords, based upon interpretation of the first word as being a portmanteau of several word-forms for thunder, in several languages. The Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan (with Quentin Fiore and Jerome Agel) made this connection explicit in his War and Peace in the Global Village, where he identified the ten words as "thunders", reproducing them in his own text. For the purposes of his book, McLuhan appropriated the ten words and interpreted them as symbolizing various forms of human technology, which together with other liberal quotations from the Wake form a parallel rhetoric which McLuhan used to discuss technology, warfare, and human society. Marshall's son Eric McLuhan carried on his father's interpretation of the thunders, publishing The Role of Thunder in Finnegans Wake, a book expressly devoted to the meaning of the ten words. For [Eric] McLuhan, the total letter count of the above ten words (1001) intentionally corresponds to the One Thousand and One Nights of Middle Eastern folklore, which buttresses the critical interpretation of the Wake as being a book of the night.
> -The hundredlettered name again, last word of perfect language. But you could come near it, we do suppose, strong Shaun O', we foresupposed. How?
## Literary significance and criticism
The value of Finnegans Wake as a work of literature has been a point of contention since the time of its appearance, in serial form, in literary reviews of the 1920s. Initial response, to both its serialised and final published forms, was almost universally negative. Even close friends and family were disapproving of Joyce's seemingly impenetrable text, with Joyce's brother Stanislaus "rebuk[ing] him for writing an incomprehensible night-book", and former friend Oliver Gogarty believing the book to be a joke, pulled by Joyce on the literary community, referring to it as "the most colossal leg pull in literature since Macpherson's Ossian". When Ezra Pound, a former champion of Joyce's and admirer of Joyce's Ulysses, was asked his opinion on the text, he wrote "Nothing so far as I make out, nothing short of divine vision or a new cure for the clap can possibly be worth all the circumambient peripherization." H. G. Wells, in a personal letter to Joyce, argued that "you have turned your back on common men, on their elementary needs and their restricted time and intelligence [...] I ask: who the hell is this Joyce who demands so many waking hours of the few thousands I have still to live for a proper appreciation of his quirks and fancies and flashes of rendering?" Even Joyce's patron Harriett Weaver wrote to him in 1927 to inform him of her misgivings regarding his new work, stating "I am made in such a way that I do not care much for the output from your Wholesale Safety Pun Factory nor for the darknesses and unintelligibilities of your deliberately entangled language system. It seems to me you are wasting your genius."
The wider literary community were equally disparaging, with D. H. Lawrence declaring in a letter to Maria and Aldous Huxley, having read sections of the Wake appearing as "Work in Progress" in Transition, "My God, what a clumsy olla putrida James Joyce is! Nothing but old fags and cabbage-stumps of quotations from the Bible and the rest, stewed in the juice of deliberate journalistic dirty-mindedness – what old and hard-worked staleness, masquerading as the all-new!" Vladimir Nabokov, who had also admired Ulysses, described Finnegans Wake as "nothing but a formless and dull mass of phony folklore, a cold pudding of a book, a persistent snore in the next room [...] and only the infrequent snatches of heavenly intonations redeem it from utter insipidity." In response to such criticisms, Transition published essays throughout the late 1920s, defending and explaining Joyce's work. In 1929, these essays (along with a few others written for the occasion) were collected under the title Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress and published by Shakespeare and Company. This collection featured Samuel Beckett's first commissioned work, the essay "Dante... Bruno. Vico.. Joyce", along with contributions by William Carlos Williams, Stuart Gilbert, Marcel Brion, Eugene Jolas and others. As Margot Norris highlights, the agenda of this first generation of Wake critics and defenders was "to assimilate Joyce's experimental text to an already increasingly established and institutionalized literary avant-garde" and "to foreground Joyce's last work as spearhead of a philosophical avant-garde bent on the revolution of language".
Upon its publication in 1939, Finnegans Wake received a series of mixed, but mostly negative reviews. Louise Bogan, writing for Nation, surmised that while "the book's great beauties, its wonderful passages of wit, its variety, its mark of genius and immense learning are undeniable [...], to read the book over a long period of time gives one the impression of watching intemperance become addiction, become debauch" and argued that "Joyce's delight in reducing man's learning, passion, and religion to a hash is also disturbing." Edwin Muir, reviewing in Listener wrote that "as a whole the book is so elusive that there is no judging it; I cannot tell whether it is winding into deeper and deeper worlds of meaning or lapsing into meaningless", although he too acknowledged that "there are occasional flashes of a kind of poetry which is difficult to define but is of unquestioned power." B. Ifor Evans, writing in the Manchester Guardian, similarly argued that, due to its difficulties, the book "does not admit of review", and argued that, perhaps "in twenty years' time, with sufficient study and with the aid of the commentary that will doubtless arise, one might be ready for an attempt to appraise it." Taking a swipe at many of the negative reviews circulating at the time, Evans writes: "The easiest way to deal with the book would be [...] to write off Mr. Joyce's latest volume as the work of a charlatan. But the author of Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist and Ulysses is not a charlatan, but an artist of very considerable proportions. I prefer to suspend judgement..."
In the time since Joyce's death, the book's admirers have struggled against public perception of the work to make exactly this argument for Finnegans Wake. One of the book's early champions was Thornton Wilder, who wrote to Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas in August 1939, a few months after the book's publication: "One of my absorptions [...] has been James Joyce's new novel, digging out its buried keys and resolving that unbroken chain of erudite puzzles and finally coming on lots of wit, and lots of beautiful things has been my midnight recuperation. A lot of thanks to him". The publication in 1944 of the first in-depth study and analysis of Joyce's final text—A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake by mythologist Joseph Campbell and Henry Morton Robinson—tried to prove to a skeptical public that if the hidden key or "Monomyth" could be found, then the book could be read as a novel with characters, plot, and an internal coherence. As a result, from the 1940s to the 1960s critical emphasis moved away from positioning the Wake as a "revolution of the word" and towards readings that stressed its "internal logical coherence", as "the avant-gardism of Finnegans Wake was put on hold [and] deferred while the text was rerouted through the formalistic requirements of an American criticism inspired by New Critical dicta that demanded a poetic intelligibility, a formal logic, of texts." Slowly the book's critical capital began to rise to the point that, in 1957, Northrop Frye described Finnegans Wake as the "chief ironic epic of our time" and Anthony Burgess lauded the book as "a great comic vision, one of the few books of the world that can make us laugh aloud on nearly every page." Concerning the importance of such laughter, Darragh Greene has argued that the Wake through its series of puns, neologisms, compounds, and riddles shows the play of Wittgensteinian language-games, and by laughing at them, the reader learns how language makes the world and is freed from its snares and bewitchment.
In 1962, Clive Hart wrote the first major book-length study of the work since Campbell's Skeleton Key, Structure and Motif in "Finnegans Wake" which approached the work from the increasingly influential field of structuralism. However through the 1960s it was to be French post-structuralist theory that was to exert the most influence over readings of Finnegans Wake, refocussing critical attention back to the work's radical linguistic experiments and their philosophical consequences. Jacques Derrida developed his ideas of literary "deconstruction" largely inspired by Finnegans Wake (as detailed in the essay "Two Words for Joyce"), and as a result literary theory—in particular post-structuralism—has embraced Joyce's innovation and ambition in Finnegans Wake. Derrida tells an anecdote about the two books' importance for his own thought; in a bookstore in Tokyo,
> an American tourist of the most typical variety leaned over my shoulder and sighed: "So many books! What is the definitive one? Is there any?" It was an extremely small book shop, a news agency. I almost replied, "Yes, there are two of them, Ulysses and Finnegans Wake.
The text's influence on other writers has grown since its initial shunning, and contemporary American author Tom Robbins is among the writers working today to have expressed his admiration for Joyce's complex last work:
> the language in it is incredible. There's so many layers of puns and references to mythology and history. But it's the most realistic novel ever written. Which is exactly why it's so unreadable. He wrote that book the way that the human mind works. An intelligent, inquiring mind. And that's just the way consciousness is. It's not linear. It's just one thing piled on another. And all kinds of cross references. And he just takes that to an extreme. There's never been a book like it and I don't think there ever will be another book like it. And it's absolutely a monumental human achievement. But it's very hard to read.
More recently, Finnegans Wake has become an increasingly accepted part of the critical literary canon, although detractors still remain. As an example, John Bishop described the book's legacy as that of "the single most intentionally crafted literary artifact that our culture has produced [...] and, certainly, one of the great monuments of twentieth-century experimental letters." The section of the book to have received the most praise throughout its critical history has been "Anna Livia Plurabelle" (I.8), which Parrinder describes as being "widely recognized as one of the most beautiful prose-poems in English."
## Publication history
Throughout the seventeen years that Joyce wrote the book, Finnegans Wake was published in short excerpts in a number of literary magazines, most prominently in the Parisian literary journals Transatlantic Review and Eugene Jolas's transition. It has been argued that "Finnegans Wake, much more so than Ulysses, was very much directly shaped by the tangled history of its serial publication." In late October 1923 in Ezra Pound's Paris flat, Ford Madox Ford convinced Joyce to contribute some of his new sketches to the Transatlantic Review, a new journal that Ford was editing.
The eight-page "Mamalujo" sketch became the first fragment from the book to be published in its own right, in Transatlantic Review 1.4 in April 1924. The sketch appeared under the title "From Work in Progress", a term applied to works by Ernest Hemingway and Tristan Tzara published in the same issue, and the one by which Joyce would refer to his final work until its publication as Finnegans Wake in 1939. The sketch appeared in the final published text, in radically altered form, as chapter 2.4.
In 1925 four sketches from the developing work were published. "Here Comes Everybody" was published as "From Work in Progress" in the Contact Collection of Contemporary Writers, edited by Robert McAlmon. "The Letter" was published as "Fragment of an Unpublished Work" in Criterion 3.12 (July 1925), and as "A New Unnamed Work" in Two Worlds 1.1. (September 1925). The first published draft of "Anna Livia Plurabelle" appeared in Le Navire d'Argent 1 in October, and the first published draft of "Shem the Penman" appeared in the Autumn–Winter edition of This Quarter.
In 1925-6 Two Worlds began to publish redrafted versions of previously published fragments, starting with "Here Comes Everybody" in December 1925, and then "Anna Livia Plurabelle" (March 1926), "Shem the Penman" (June 1926), and "Mamalujo" (September 1925), all under the title "A New Unnamed Work".
Eugene Jolas befriended Joyce in 1927, and as a result serially published revised fragments from Part I in his transition literary journal. This began with the debut of the book's opening chapter, under the title "Opening Pages of a Work in Progress", in April 1927. By November chapters I.2 through I.8 had all been published in the journal, in their correct sequence, under the title "Continuation of a Work in Progress". From 1928 Part's II and III slowly began to emerge in transition, with a brief excerpt of II.2 ("The Triangle") published in February 1928, and Part III's four chapters between March 1928 and November 1929.
At this point, Joyce started publishing individual chapters from Work in Progress. In 1929, Harry and Caresse Crosby, owners of the Black Sun Press, contacted James Joyce through bookstore owner Sylvia Beach and arranged to print three short fables about the novel's three children Shem, Shaun and Issy that had already appeared in translation. These were "The Mookse and the Gripes", "The Triangle", and "The Ondt and the Gracehoper". The Black Sun Press named the new book Tales Told of Shem and Shaun for which they paid Joyce US\$2,000 for 600 copies, unusually good pay for Joyce at that time. Their printer Roger Lescaret erred when setting the type, leaving the final page with only two lines. Rather than reset the entire book, he suggested to the Crosby's that they ask Joyce to write an additional eight lines to fill in the remainder of the page. Caresse refused, insisting that a literary master would never alter his work to fix a printer's error. Lescaret appealed directly to Joyce, who promptly wrote the eight lines requested. The first 100 copies of Joyce's book were printed on Japanese vellum and signed by the author. It was hand-set in Caslon type and included an abstract portrait of Joyce by Constantin Brâncuși, a pioneer of modernist abstract sculpture. Brâncuși's drawings of Joyce became among the most popular images of him.
Faber and Faber published book editions of "Anna Livia Plurabelle" (1930), and "Haveth Childers Everywhere" (1931), HCE's long defence of his life which would eventually close chapter III.3. A year later they published Two Tales of Shem and Shaun, which dropped "The Triangle" from the previous Black Sun Press edition. Part II was published serially in transition between February 1933 and May 1938, and a final individual book publication, Storiella as She Is Syung, was published by Corvinus Press in 1937, made up of sections from what would become chapter II.2.
By 1938 virtually all of Finnegans Wake was in print in the transition serialisation and in the booklets, with the exception of Part IV. Joyce continued to revise all previously published sections until Finnegans Wake's final published form, resulting in the text existing in a number of different forms, to the point that critics can speak of Finnegans Wake being a different entity to Work in Progress. The book was finally published simultaneously by Faber and Faber in London and by Viking Press in New York on 4 May 1939, after seventeen years of composition.
In March 2010, a new "critically emended edition" was published in a limited edition of 1,000 copies by Houyhnhnm Press in conjunction with Penguin. This edition was published in a trade edition in 2012. Edited by Danis Rose and John O'Hanlon, is the "summation of thirty years' intense engagement by textual scholars Danis Rose and John O’Hanlon verifying, codifying, collating and clarifying the 20,000 pages of notes, drafts, typescripts and proofs." In the publisher's words the new edition "incorporates some 9,000 minor yet crucial corrections and amendments, covering punctuation marks, font choice, spacing, misspellings, misplaced phrases and ruptured syntax." According to the publisher, "Although individually minor, these changes are nonetheless crucial in that they facilitate a smooth reading of the book’s allusive density and essential fabric."
## Translations and derivative works
Despite its linguistic complexity, Finnegans Wake has been translated into French, German, Greek, Japanese, Korean, Latin, Polish, Spanish (by M. Zabaloy), Dutch, Portuguese, Turkish, and Swedish (by B. Falk). Well-advanced translations in progress include Chinese, Italian, and Russian.
A musical play, The Coach with the Six Insides by Jean Erdman, based on the character Anna Livia Plurabelle, was performed in New York in 1962. Parts of the book were adapted for the stage by Mary Manning as Passages from Finnegans Wake, which was in turn used as the basis for a film of the novel by Mary Ellen Bute. Danish visual artists Michael Kvium and Christian Lemmerz created a multimedia project called "the Wake", an 8 hour long silent movie based on the book. A version adapted by Barbara Vann with music by Chris McGlumphy was produced by The Medicine Show Theater in April 2005 and received a favorable review in the 11 April 2005 edition of The New York Times.
André Hodeir composed a jazz cantata on Anna Plurabelle (1966). John Cage's Roaratorio: an Irish circus on Finnegans Wake combines a collage of sounds mentioned in Finnegans Wake, with Irish jigs and Cage reading his Writing for the Second Time through Finnegans Wake, one of a series of five writings based on the Wake. The work also sets textual passages from the book as songs, including The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs and Nowth upon Nacht. Phil Minton set passages of the Wake to music, on his 1998 album Mouthfull of Ecstasy. Thornton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth uses many devices from Finnegans Wake, such as a family that represents the totality of humanity, cyclical storytelling, and copious Biblical allusions. In recent years Olwen Fouéré's play riverrun, based on the theme of rivers in Finnegans Wake has received critical accolades around the world. Adam Harvey has also adapted Finnegans Wake for the stage. Martin Pearlman's three-act Finnegan's Grand Operoar is for speakers with an instrumental ensemble. In 2015 Waywords and Meansigns: Recreating Finnegans Wake [in its whole wholume] set Finnegans Wake to music unabridged, featuring an international group of musicians and Joyce enthusiasts.
In the years 2014–2016, particularly many adaptations of Finnegans Wake saw completion in Poland, including publication of the text as a musical score, a short film Finnegans Wake//Finneganów tren, a multimedia adaptation First We Feel Then We Fall and K. Bartnicki's intersemiotic translations into sound and verbovisual.
In October 2020, Austrian illustrator Nicolas Mahler presented a small-format (ISO A6) 24-page comic adaptation of Finnegans Wake with reference to comic figures Mutt and Jeff.
## Cultural impact
Finnegans Wake is a difficult text, and Joyce did not aim it at the general reader. Nevertheless, certain aspects of the work have made an impact on popular culture beyond the awareness of it being difficult.
Similarly, the comparative mythology term monomyth, as described by Joseph Campbell in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces, was taken from a passage in Finnegans Wake. The work of Marshall McLuhan was inspired by James Joyce; his collage book War and Peace in the Global Village has numerous references to Finnegans Wake. The novel was also the source of the title of Clay Shirky's book Here Comes Everybody.
Esther Greenwood, Sylvia Plath's protagonist in The Bell Jar, is writing her college thesis on the "twin images" in Finnegans Wake, although she never manages to finish either the book or her thesis. According to James Gourley, Joyce's book features in Plath's "as an alienating canonical authority".
In music, the American composer Samuel Barber composed a piece for orchestra in 1971 entitled Fadograph of a Yestern Scene, a quote from the first part of the novel. The Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu used several quotes from the novel in his music: its first word for his composition for piano and orchestra, riverrun (1984). His 1980 piano concerto is called Far calls. Coming, far! taken from the last page of Finnegans Wake. Similarly, he entitled his 1981 string quartet A Way a Lone, taken from the last sentence of the work.
The German New Age musical group Tangerine Dream composed in 2011 an album called Finnegans Wake'', with each track named after a quote from the book.
In 2023, artist Anselm Kiefer exhibited his artwork titled Finnegans Wake, which was a response to the novel, at the White Cube gallery in London.
## See also
- Altus Prosator |
3,188,920 | NSB El 17 | 1,149,466,998 | Norwegian State Railways' class of twelve electric locomotives | [
"15 kV AC locomotives",
"Bo′Bo′ locomotives",
"Electric locomotives of Norway",
"Flåm Line",
"Henschel locomotives",
"Norwegian State Railways (1883–1996) locomotives",
"Norwegian State Railways locomotives",
"Railway locomotives introduced in 1982",
"Standard gauge locomotives of Norway"
] | The NSB El 17 is a class of twelve electric locomotives built by Thyssen-Henschel and Norsk Elektrisk & Brown Boveri (NEBB) for the Norwegian State Railways (NSB). The class was built in two batches, the first delivered in 1982 and numbered 2221–2226, and the second delivered in 1987 and numbered 2227–2232. The traction system of the El 17 was based on the DB Class 120 of Germany (BBC, AEG and Siemens) and were among the first in the world to feature three-phase asynchronous motors. The units were ordered to be used on the intercity Bergen, Dovre and Sørland Lines, but were plagued with technical faults (overheating traction equipment, transient voltages, etc.). The unreliability and lack of sufficient power forced NSB to instead use them in the regional Vestfold and Gjøvik Lines. With the delivery of the El 18, the first series was retired or used as shunters. The second series has been used on the Flåm Line since 1998.
The locomotives have a maximum 3,000 kilowatts (4,000 hp) power output and a 240 kN (54,000 lb<sub>f</sub>) tractive effort, allowing the locomotive to haul a six-car train. They run on a power supply and are capable of operating at 150 km/h (93 mph). The units have a Bo'Bo' wheel arrangement, have regenerative brakes and weigh 64 tonnes (63 long tons; 71 short tons). The series was delivered at the same time as the Di 4 and have some similarities with the class.
## History
During the late 1970s, NSB was in need of new rolling stock for their intercity trains. At first electric multiple units were considered, but NSB instead chose to order locomotives and waggons, to have greater operational flexibility. The choice fell on the German DB Class 120, which was the first three-phase asynchronous locomotive in the world in "almost" regular service (prototype 120.0 in test service 1979, the serial version 120.1 from 1986). However, the Norwegian variation was scaled down due to the maximum axle load (16.0 t or 15.7 long tons or 17.6 short tons, Class 120 has 21.0 t or 20.7 long tons or 23.1 short tons) and had a lower power output than the Class 120. Because of this, the El 17 is less powerful than its three predecessors, El 14, El 15 and El 16(3.0 MW instead of 4.4 MW).
When the order was placed, it was the first Norwegian electric locomotive with the mechanical components built in Germany. At the same time, NSB ordered five six-axle diesel-electric locomotives from Thyssen-Henschel (Mark Di 4), almost the same as the Danish Mark ME 1500. The Di 4/ME 1500 have many similarities to its electric counterpart El 17. The two were planned to have the same rectifiers and motors, but due to weight restrictions the El 17 received the same type as Class 120.
The first six locomotives, numbered 2221–2226, were delivered in 1982. At the same time, the delivery of the B7 passenger cars from Strømmens Verksted was made, and the first train with an El 17 and B7s in regular service operated on the Dovre Line on 14 September 1982. The El 17 was plagued with problems (overheated components, etc.), and NSB quickly decided to operate them in pairs in case one unit should fail. On 6 July 1982, there was a fire in 2224, and it was sent to Thyssen-Henschel to be redesigned. NSB initially placed the unit in service with a round trip from Oslo to Trondheim each day. Due to the technical malfunctions, all the six original trains were rebuilt several times; in the end, they all had different technical solutions.
Eventually NSB felt confident that they had found a technical solution that would be satisfactory, and ordered another six units to allow all trains on the Dovre, Bergen and Sørland Lines to be hauled with the class. Units 2227–2232 were delivered in 1987, and put into regular service on the Sørland Line. Although better than the first series, the second series was also prone to technical problems, and never entered regular service on the Bergen Line. During the 1990s, they were also put into service on the regional rail services on the Vestfold and Gjøvik Lines. The units were never well-liked by NSB, in part because of the bad name the first series had given, and partly because the number of available units was unpredictable. It also took a while for NSB to discover that asynchronous locomotives needed to be operated differently. The locomotives had been designed to haul a six-car train, but NSB regularly needed to haul eight-car trains, and therefore instead used the more powerful El 16.
In the early 1990s, NSB decided that they would replace the intercity trains with the Class 73 tilting multiple unit, and the locomotives for loco-hauled trains with the Swiss-designed El 18 (also with electric equipment from ABB, former BBC). In 1997, no. 2226 was put aside, and scrapped the following year. From 1998, the second series of El 17 was put into service on the Flåm Line, a steep tourist line that connects to the Bergen Line. The units were painted green and connected at each end of a train of six B3 passenger cars. From 2003, the first series was taken out of regular service, and units 2222, 2224 and 2225 were put into shunting service at Lodalen. Unit 2223 was transferred to the Norwegian Railway Museum, where it was put on display.
## Specifications
The El 17 was built by the manufacturer Thyssen-Henschel of Germany. The locomotives have three-phase asynchronous motors with a continuous output power of 3,000 kilowatts (4,000 hp), allowing a maximum speed of 150 kilometres per hour (93 mph). The units receive power from a pantograph and are the first class of locomotive for NSB that has regenerative brakes. The electrical equipment was designed by the manufacturer BBC (German plant Mannheim) but built by the Norwegian manufacturer Norsk Elektrisk & Brown Boveri (NEBB). Each locomotive is equipped with four NEBB BQg 3855 motors, giving a Bo'Bo' wheel arrangement and a maximum tractive effort of 240 kilonewtons (54,000 lb<sub>f</sub>) on dry rails.
The El 17 is an electric locomotive designed for intercity trains, but is also capable of hauling light freight trains. The body is welded as a self-containing construction. The roof (light alloy) sections can be removed, and the locomotives were the first Norwegian locomotives to have a center aisle in the machine room. The locomotives are 16.30 metres (53 ft 6 in) long, have a wheel diameter of 1,100 millimetres (3 ft 7 in) and weigh 64.0 tonnes (63.0 long tons; 70.5 short tons). The locomotives can run in multiple; by using a UIC 568 signalling cable, the locomotives do not need to be adjacent to each other in the train. the El 17 has the unique pointed front that was first used on the El 16, and is also found on the Di 4 and Di 6 classes. |
27,109,258 | Lee Marvin vs. Derek Jeter | 1,161,305,407 | null | [
"2010 American television episodes",
"30 Rock (season 4) episodes",
"Television episodes written by Tina Fey"
] | "Lee Marvin vs. Derek Jeter" is the seventeenth episode of the fourth season of the American television comedy series 30 Rock, and the 75th overall episode of the series. It was written by co-producer Kay Cannon and series creator Tina Fey. The episode was directed by series producer Don Scardino. It originally aired on NBC in the United States on April 22, 2010. Guest stars in this episode include Elizabeth Banks, Will Ferrell, Steve Hely, Julianne Moore, and Ariel Shafir.
In the episode, Liz Lemon (Fey) starts making an effort to date by attending singles events with her friend Jenna Maroney (Jane Krakowski). At the same time, Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin) feels forced to choose between his high school sweetheart, Nancy Donovan (Moore), and news anchor Avery Jessup (Banks). Meanwhile, a racist comment sparks an office-wide debate on affirmative action and leaves James "Toofer" Spurlock (Keith Powell) with a big decision to make regarding his future at the fictitious television series The Girlie Show with Tracy Jordan (TGS).
"Lee Marvin vs. Derek Jeter" received generally positive reviews from television critics. According to the Nielsen ratings system, the episode was watched by 4.216 million households during its original broadcast, and received a 1.9 rating/6 share among viewers in the 18–49 demographic. Kay Cannon and Tina Fey were nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award nomination in the category for Outstanding Writing in a Comedy Series for their work in this episode.
## Plot
On the weekend of Jack Donaghy's (Alec Baldwin) 51st birthday, his advances with CNBC host Avery Jessup (Elizabeth Banks) are called into question when he learns that his high school sweetheart, Nancy Donovan (Julianne Moore), has finally been divorced from her husband. Jack spends evenings having dinner and wine with both, against Liz Lemon's (Tina Fey) suggestion that it is a bad idea. He compares Nancy to actor Lee Marvin, after watching a movie marathon starring Marvin, and Avery to baseball player Derek Jeter, after he spends time with Avery at Jeter's home. He is moved by the thoughtful birthday gifts both women give him. Jack is torn between the easygoing, middle-class Nancy and his successful, wealthy counterpart Avery, and does not know whom to choose.
Meanwhile, Liz attends singles activities at the YMCA and her friend, Jenna Maroney (Jane Krakowski), joins her as her wingman. Nancy accompanies Liz to one of the activities, and is concerned when Liz speaks critically of everyone there and rebuffs a man whom Nancy has drawn into conversation. Nancy encourages Liz to focus not on the negative, but on what she does want from a man. Liz tries to follow Nancy's advice the next day at a dodgeball game, and she tells a man (Ariel Shafir), whom she hit in the face during a previous dodgeball game, what traits she wants from a man. However, the man does not speak English, and a disappointed Liz hits him with another ball.
Finally, James "Toofer" Spurlock (Keith Powell) learns he may have been hired as a writer on TGS with Tracy Jordan because of affirmative action and quits. Liz—the show's head writer—is reluctant to rehire him until TGS producer Pete Hornberger (Scott Adsit) reveals to Liz that she is also a beneficiary of affirmative action, having attended college on a Title IX scholarship and having her project The Girlie Show picked up as a mid-season replacement for a misogynistic show that received complaints. When Toofer returns, he demands that no one call him "Toofer" anymore, but when everyone comes up with more insulting nicknames, he gives up.
## Production
"Lee Marvin vs. Derek Jeter" was directed by series producer Don Scardino, and written by co-producer Kay Cannon and series creator Tina Fey. This was Cannon and Fey's fourth script collaboration, having written the episodes "Black Tie", "Somebody to Love", and "Christmas Special", for season one, season two, and season three, respectively. "Lee Marvin vs. Derek Jeter" originally aired on NBC in the United States on April 22, 2010, as the seventeenth episode of the show's fourth season and the 75th overall episode of the series.
"Lee Marvin vs. Derek Jeter" was filmed on February 8, 2010. In November 2009, it was announced that actress Julianne Moore would guest star on 30 Rock as a love interest for Alec Baldwin's character, Jack Donaghy. She made her debut as the character Nancy Donovan in the December 10, 2009, episode "Secret Santa", and later guest starred in the episode "Winter Madness". In December 2009, it was confirmed that actress Elizabeth Banks would guest star, and in the February 11, 2010, episode "Anna Howard Shaw Day" she made her debut as Avery Jessup, a CNBC correspondent. Banks later guest starred in the episode "Future Husband". 30 Rock writer and producer Steve Hely appeared in this episode as "Jerem", a man who twice refuses Jenna Maroney's attempts at conversation starters. Keith Powell, who plays Toofer Spurlock, was asked about his reaction towards his storyline in the "Lee Marvin vs. Derek Jeter" script, in which he said "They kind of warned me about that one – I thought it was a really fun thing because Affirmative Action has permeated corporate culture. It didn't freak me out that much".
Comedian actor Will Ferrell had a brief appearance in "Lee Marvin vs. Derek Jeter". In a scene, Pete reveals to Liz that the only reason The Girlie Show—before being renamed to TGS with Tracy Jordan—was green-lighted by NBC was due to criticism from women's groups after the network aired the action drama Bitch Hunter. In a clip, Ferrell, as the character "Shane Hunter", is seen with a gun, entering a woman's bathroom, and shouting "Happy birthday, bitches!" 30 Rock writer Jack Burditt and former co-chairman of NBC Entertainment and Universal Media Studios Ben Silverman are credited as executive producers of this show. Ferrell has appeared in the main cast of Saturday Night Live (SNL), a weekly sketch comedy series which airs on NBC in the United States. Fey was the head writer on SNL from 1999 until 2006. Ferrell would later appear as Shane Hunter in the May 6, 2010, 30 Rock episode "The Moms".
## Cultural references
Jenna tells Liz that she wants to accompany her to her singles activities as her wingman since she is up for a role in National Lampoon's Van Wilder's Wingman, Incorporated, a reference to the National Lampoon's Van Wilder film series. Avery and Jack attend a gala opening at a museum, and upon seeing the decorations and well dressed patrons, Avery remarks that "You always know you're at the right party when it feels like the Riddler is about to attack", the Riddler is a comic book villain who leaves behind riddles, puzzles, and word games so that they can be solved. While posing for pictures at the gala, a photographer mistakes Avery for stand-up comedian Chelsea Handler, which has been based on real life experience for Elizabeth Banks, who portrays Avery, as she has been mistaken for Handler. When Liz tells Jack that he cannot date both Avery and Nancy at the same time, she says "Mrs. Doubtfire shimself could not do this", a reference to actor Robin Williams' role in the movie Mrs. Doubtfire, and a scene late in the film in which he alternates between playing two roles in two simultaneous meetings, one as a man, and the other as an older woman named Mrs. Doubtfire.
During their dinner, Avery tells Jack some day he will be as great as a man as former U.S. President Ronald Reagan, to which Jack replies "I do like jelly beans", a reference to Reagan's real-life love of the candy. During one scene of "Lee Marvin vs. Derek Jeter", Tracy Jordan (Tracy Morgan) tells the TGS with Tracy Jordan staff "I know you're all secretly mad, because we finally have a black Disney princess", which is a reference to the 2009 Disney animated film The Princess and the Frog in which the princess character, Tiana, is the first black princess in the Disney Princess franchise. In her speech, Liz says that she wants to be with a man who "will just shut their mouth" when watching the ABC show Lost.
## Reception
In its original American broadcast, "Lee Marvin vs. Derek Jeter" was watched by 4.216 million households, according to the Nielsen ratings system. It achieved a 1.9 rating/6 share in the key 18- to 49-year-old demographic. This means that it was seen by 1.9 percent of all 18- to 49-year-olds, and 6 percent of all 18- to 49-year-olds watching television at the time of the broadcast. This was a decrease from the previous episode, "Floyd", which was watched by 6.252 million American viewers. In the 8:30 p.m. timeslot on April 22, in which this episode aired out of its usual timeslot, 30 Rock was outperformed by CBS' reality show Survivor: Heroes vs. Villains, Fox's crime drama Bones, and ABC's FlashForward. Nonetheless, "Lee Marvin vs. Derek Jeter" outperformed The CW's supernatural-fantasy horror program The Vampire Diaries, which drew 3.155 million viewers. Kay Cannon and Tina Fey received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Writing in a Comedy Series for their work on "Lee Marvin vs. Derek Jeter" at the 62nd Primetime Emmy Awards, but lost it to Modern Family's Steven Levitan and Christopher Lloyd for their work on the pilot episode. The episode received generally positive reviews from television critics.
IGN contributor Robert Canning reported that "Lee Marvin vs. Derek Jeter" was a "stellar episode that was hitting all the right beats", and commented that "[e]ven the tired, formulaic structure of Jack's two women scenario was given some great new lines" from Fey and Cannon, who developed the script. He opined that if the episode centered only around Jack's two-women dilemma it "would have been just fine." Canning appreciated Elizabeth Banks' and Julianne Moore's appearances, writing that the two "exhibited the charms that have made them welcome additions to this season". In conclusion, Canning gave the episode a 9.2 out of 10 rating. Jane Boursaw of AOL's TV Squad said that the Toofer story was "funny, without being (too) offensive." The A.V. Club's Nathan Rabin said that he enjoyed "just about every minute" of this episode, and praised Liz's speech citing it as the "crowning moment" from "Lee Marvin vs. Derek Jeter". Rabin also liked the Toofer quitting storyline writing that it "could easily have gone nowhere but the show made it both funny and surprisingly thoughtful by using it as a springboard to discuss Affirmative Action and our society's defiantly uneven playing field." Time contributor James Poniewozik noted that this episode was stronger than "Khonani", which aired the same day of the week as this episode. Sean Gandert of Paste wrote that Toofer's plot was not "given more than a few minutes of screen time [but] it also doesn't wear out its welcome ... The show doesn't address race, gender, or affirmative action in a particularly enlightened manner, but who cares, it's funny." TV Guide's Adam Mersel wrote that he found the most enjoyment in Liz's story, writing that he found it "endearing". In regards to Jack's plot, Mersel said that Jack is able to play off Nancy and Avery so well that "I am going back and forth on whether or not to scold the NBC boss or give him a pat on the back. Avery and Nancy both have their shining moments, but I feel that he must choose quite soon, or he will be loosing [sic] both."
Will Ferrell's ten second cameo was well-received, with Canning concluding, "...the cherry on the top was discovering that The Girlie Show was only picked up to offset the complaints raised by the series Bitch Hunter. The ten-second clip of this series, with a cameo from Will Ferrell, was phenomenal and I hope the web will soon produce more clips." |
49,831,152 | Thanksgiving Orphans | 1,157,610,000 | null | [
"1986 American television episodes",
"Cheers episodes",
"Television episodes directed by James Burrows"
] | "Thanksgiving Orphans" is the ninth episode of the fifth season of the American television sitcom Cheers, co-written by Cheri Eichen and Bill Steinkeller and directed by James Burrows. It aired originally on November 27, 1986, on NBC. The characters do not have families or friends to spend time with, and some of their plans backfire. They gather for a Thanksgiving feast which degenerates into a food fight. Burrows filmed the food-fight scene (which was only partially choreographed) twice. The episode had a generally positive reception. TV Guide ranked it number seven on its 100 Greatest Episodes of All Time list while The Huffington Post included the food fight sequence in a list of the 10 Most Awkward Thanksgiving Scenes of All Time from movies and television.
## Plot
At Thanksgiving, Sam (Ted Danson) has plans with his girlfriend Wendy. Frasier (Kelsey Grammer) is lonely, and wants some company. Cliff's mother volunteers to feed the homeless, but Cliff (John Ratzenberger)—who has done this during the past year—is unwilling to do so. Norm (George Wendt) does not want to go to his mother-in-law's overheated house where there is no beer or television. Woody (Woody Harrelson) is not visiting his family in Indiana. Carla's children are with her ex-husband, Nick. At Diane's insistence, Carla (Rhea Perlman) invites the gang for a Thanksgiving potluck. However, Diane (Shelley Long) has been invited to her American literature professor's annual Thanksgiving party where she hopes to meet William Styron.
At Carla's new house (first seen in the 1986 episode "House of Horrors with Formal Dining and Used Brick"), Norm arrives with a raw turkey and puts it in Carla's oven while he explains that Vera went to her mother's house alone. Sam arrives with dessert, but without Wendy; she and her sister, who arrived from out of town, did not want to go to Carla's. Diane then arrives, dressed as a pilgrim. At the professor's party she discovered that she had been invited to be domestic help, and left in tears. The gang decides to allow her to stay for dinner. The group relaxes before the meal and watches football. The 1986 games included: Green Bay Packers at Detroit Lions followed by Seattle Seahawks at Dallas Cowboys.
At the dining room, Diane orders them to wait for dinner until the turkey is ready. As suppertime is passing, the turkey is still very undercooked and the trimmings have gone cold. Carla and Norm start blaming each other for the turkey's slow cooking. Norm throws some of Carla's peas at her, and she then throws carrots back at him. Cliff throws mashed yams at Frasier, who accidentally throws gravy skin back at Woody, intended for Cliff. The whole gang is poised to start a food fight until Diane stands up and tells them loudly to stop. When she is close to scolding them, Sam throws cranberry sauce at her, so the food fight resumes. By the time the food fight ends, the turkey is finally cooked. The gang calms down and decides to eat what they can. Diane comes out of the kitchen and throws a pumpkin pie to spite Sam for throwing cranberry sauce at her. The pie misses Sam but accidentally hits Vera in the face as she enters. Vera tells Norm to fetch his coat, and Norm says, "Yes, dear."
## Production
Cheri Eichen and Bill Steinkellner wrote the episode and it was directed by James Burrows. Burrows shot the food fight scene twice, with the scene unchoreographed after the point where the character Sam Malone throws cranberry sauce at Diane Chambers' face. The extended takes resulted in a strong food odor around the set. In one of the food fight takes, the floor was covered with a "plastic tarp" in order to prevent vital materials from being broken while the cast was slipping on the floor during the scene. However, the attempt was ineffective. After the episode aired, the production crew received a few angry letters disapproving of the food fight scene "at a time when world hunger was a political cause du jour." According to Burrows, food not used for the scene was donated to charity.
Bernadette Birkett, whose husband George Wendt portrays Norm Peterson, has voiced as Norm's wife Vera in this episode and other episodes, Vera's physical appearance is portrayed by Rebecca Soladay, but Vera's face is never visible to the audience because she is struck by a pumpkin pie thrown by Diane. Neither Birkett nor Soladay is credited for the role. Birkett had previously appeared in a 1984 episode, "Fairy Tales Can Come True", as Sharon O'Hare, who dressed as Tinker Bell on Halloween.
## Reception
The episode aired on NBC on Thanksgiving Day, November 27, 1986. For the week ending November 30, it had the sixth highest Nielsen rating at 21.7, with a 38 share. Leigh Weingus of The Huffington Post included the food fight sequence in a list of the 10 Most Awkward Thanksgiving Scenes of All Time from movies and television. TV Guide ranked it number seven on its 100 Greatest Episodes of All Time list. IGN called it the fourth best Cheers episode, highlighting the witty dialogue and the bonding between characters.
An A.V. Club retrospective group review praised the episode, especially for the food fight. The reviewers also highlighted the effective short reference and a toast by the characters to their past colleague and friend, the late Coach Ernie Pantusso, and the setting of much of the episode at Carla's house rather than at the bar. Molly Eichel, one of the reviewers, was especially interested in moments other than the food fight, such as the "childishness" (also described as "devolution") of the characters, Diane's motherliness toward the gang, and Eichel's "favorite part", Vera's long-awaited appearance, even though her face was covered with pumpkin pie. |
34,624,155 | 15th (Imperial Service) Cavalry Brigade | 1,114,504,196 | World War I military force from India | [
"Brigades of India in World War I",
"Cavalry brigades of the British Indian Army",
"Hyderabad State Forces",
"Military units and formations disestablished in 1920",
"Military units and formations established in 1914",
"Military units and formations of the princely states of India"
] | The 15th (Imperial Service) Cavalry Brigade was a brigade-sized formation that served alongside British Empire forces in the Sinai and Palestine Campaign, during World War I. Originally called the Imperial Service Cavalry Brigade it was formed from Imperial Service Troops provided by the Indian Princely States of Jodhpur, Hyderabad, Mysore, Patiala and Alwar which each provided a regiment of lancers. A maximum of three regiments served in the brigade at any one time. The states of Kashmir, Idar and Kathiawar provided smaller detachments for the brigade, which was at times reinforced by other British Empire regiments and artillery batteries when on operations.
In October 1914, the Imperial Service Cavalry Brigade was moved by sea to Egypt to become part of the Force in Egypt defending the Suez Canal. In the first three years of the war, the soldiers were involved in several small-scale battles connected to the First Suez Offensive, but spent most of their time patrolling in the Sinai Desert and along the west bank of the canal. It was not until November 1917 as part of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force that the Imperial Service Cavalry Brigade was involved in the Third Battle of Gaza. The following year the brigade joined the 5th Cavalry Division when it became the 15th (Imperial Service) Cavalry Brigade and played an active role in the British victory over Turkish forces in Palestine.
In total, eighty-four men from the brigade were killed in action or died of their wounds and another 123 were wounded. Several memorials were erected to commemorate the brigade in the Middle East and in India. The anniversary of the brigade's most famous victory, the Battle of Haifa, is still celebrated today by its successors in the Indian Army.
## Background
In 1888, the Indian Government proposed that the independent armies of the Indian Princely states provide the British Empire with troops for service on the North West Frontier and outside the Indian subcontinent. The states' forces were recognised by the Indian Government and the British Indian Army as allies, and their troops were subject to the Indian Army Act when serving alongside the Indian Army. When in the field, the commander of the British Forces alongside which any Imperial Service Troops were serving was recognised as the higher legal authority in accordance with the act. To eliminate supply problems, states' armies' field uniform and weapons were the same as the regular Indian Army, and the Indian Government appointed a staff of officers designated Military Advisers and Assistant Military Advisers to assist the independent states' rulers in the training and organisation of their forces. Imperial Service Troops were commanded by Indian officers. In contrast, British Indian Army units had British officers in all senior command posts; their own Indian Viceroy's commissioned officers were trained to only a troop or platoon level of command.
The Imperial Service Troops included cavalry, infantry, artillery, sappers and transport regiments or battalions, with several states contributing both men and equipment. The first states to provide troops for active service were Gwalior and Jaipur for the Chitral Expedition in 1895. Hyderabad sent troops to Burma in 1898 and to the Second Anglo-Boer War in 1902. During the 1900 Boxer Rebellion in China, part of the British relief force contingent was an Imperial Service Brigade, raised from the troops of Alwar, Bikaner and Jodhpur. Bikaner also sent troops to serve in the 1901 Somaliland Campaign. By the start of the First World War, the princely states together provided fifteen cavalry regiments, thirteen infantry battalions, seven transport units, four companies of sappers, three camel corps regiments and two batteries of mountain artillery, totalling around 22,500 men.
## Brigade organisation
In October 1914, under the command of Brigadier-General William A. Watson of the British Indian Army, the Imperial Service Cavalry Brigade, of around 1,700 men, was gathered at Deolali for service in the First World War. The brigade headquarters had an establishment of seven officers and forty-seven men. Including the brigade commander there were five British officers on the brigade staff; also attached were Sir Pratap Singh the Maharaja of Idar and Captain Zorawar Singh the Commandant of the Bhavnagar Imperial Service Lancers. The Kathiawar Imperial Service Signal Troop, commanded by Captain Henry St. George Scott of the 4th Gurkha Rifles, were with brigade headquarters, with an establishment of one Indian officer and twenty-seven men of other ranks, including twelve despatch riders from Idar State. The brigade also included the 124th Indian Cavalry Field Ambulance, commanded by Captain T. O'Leary of the Indian Army Medical Corps, with an establishment of five Indian officers, one British and ten Indians of other ranks.
The fighting component of the brigade was formed from three cavalry regiments, each of five squadrons: the 1st Hyderabad Lancers commanded by Major Mahomed Azmatullah Bahadur with twenty-seven officers (one British) and 533 other ranks, the Mysore Lancers (including two troops of Bhavnagar Lancers and one troop of Kashmir Lancers) commanded by Regimentdar B. Chamraj Urs Bahadur with thirty-two officers (one British) and 487 other ranks,a company unit of Alwar Lancers were commanded by Captain Fateh Naseeb Khan with 7 officers and 135 other ranks and the Patiala Lancers commanded by Colonel Nand Singh Sardar Bahadur with twenty-six officers and 528 other ranks. This formation remained the same until May 1916, when the Patiala Lancers were transferred to serve in the campaign in Mesopotamia. The brigade regained its own third regiment in May 1918 when the Jodhpur Lancers, commanded by Colonel Thakur Pratap Singh Sardar Bahadur, which had been serving on the Western Front in France, arrived in the theatre. The final unit assigned to the brigade was the Imperial Service Machine-Gun Squadron formed on 10 June 1918 by amalgamating the three cavalry regiment's machine-gun sections into one unit. Some sources refer to the squadron as the 15th Imperial Service Brigade Machine-Gun Squadron.
Even though the brigade was an Imperial Service unit, the cavalry regiments and brigade headquarters included attached British Indian Army Special Service Officers (SSO), but only as advisors. In 1914, the three cavalry regiments had two SSOs attached, and Colonel J. Desaraj Urs Commander-in-Chief of the Mysore State Forces accompanied the Mysore Lancers as an observer. The Jodhpur Lancers joined the brigade with seven SSOs attached. Throughout the war the establishment of British officers assigned to the cavalry regiments was gradually increased; in February 1915 there were four in each regiment, in 1917 another two were assigned and in mid-1918 a full complement of twelve British officers in each of the regiments was reached.
## Service history
### 1914
While waiting at Deolali to embark for Egypt, the brigade conducted regimental and brigade training programmes during which all ranks and animals were inspected, and those found unfit for service were returned to their regimental depots. Between 27 and 29 October the brigade moved to Bombay for embarkation; six transport ships carrying most of the brigade sailed on 1 November, while a seventh ship carrying two squadrons of Mysore Lancers remained behind with mechanical problems and finally set sail a fortnight later. The main body of the brigade arrived at Suez on 16 November, travelled by train to Ismailia two days later and started their first war-time patrols along the banks of the Sweet Water Canal. The brigade was not assigned to a higher formation at this time but were Army Troops under command of General Headquarters. The Bikaner Camel Corps, another Imperial Service unit, was attached to the brigade at Ismailia for administrative purposes, but was not operationally attached. To expand the area the brigade could patrol, squadrons were detached to El Kubri, Kantarah and the Ferry Post crossing at Ismailia. At the same time, the brigade became responsible for patrolling the length of the Suez Canal. The other British forces defending the canal were more static infantry formations, comprising the 42nd (East Lancashire), and the 10th and 11th Indian Divisions, the latter included the Imperial Service Infantry Brigade as one of its three brigades. Their Turkish opponents had around 25,000 men in the region, including the 25th Division.
### 1915
By the end of 1914, no contact had been made with any Turkish forces. In January 1915 the brigade was informed that a large Turkish force had moved into the Sinai. The out-stations were reinforced and the squadron at Kantarah was involved in a small action at Bir El Dueidar, between Kantarah and Katia which was the brigade's first involvement in combat. Towards the end of the month, several small battles occurred until the night of 2/3 February, when Turkish opponents tried to cross the canal in force. The attempt failed and on 4 February the brigade moved into the Sinai with infantry in support. About seven miles (11 km) east of Toussoum they located the Turkish forces, estimated to be between three or four brigades in strength, and captured twenty-five men and ninety camels. By 10 February the Turkish had withdrawn to the east and the canal was no longer in immediate danger, so the brigade returned to the canal and resumed their normal patrolling routine. At the end of February 1915 the Mysore and Hyderabad Lancers were ordered to return to the Sinai and destroy the water sources used by the Turkish during their advance.
The brigade's next action was on 22 March when two squadrons of Hyderabad Lancers were included in a force sent to assault a Turkish formation of 800 infantry and 200 cavalry supported by artillery, entrenched ten miles (16 km) east of El Kubri. After a short fight the Turkish withdrew; it had been intended that the Lancers would move to cut off their retreat but the soft terrain prevented them getting into position in time. On 7 April, patrols from Kantara reported a force of about 1,200 men had opened fire on them. To counter this new threat to the canal, the whole brigade was moved to Kantarah and the next day advanced into the Sinai, but failed to locate any Turkish troops and returned to Ismailia.
On 28 April a patrol from the Bikaner Camel Corps was attacked by an estimated 400 men with artillery support. In response the brigade crossed the canal that night supported by infantry and Egyptian artillery and advanced on El Hawawish, where the Turkish were believed to be located. By daybreak however their guide reported he was lost, so the brigade continued alone. Bypassing El Hawaish, they made for Bir Mahadat, arriving at midday they discovered the Turkish were withdrawing to the north. Setting off in pursuit they caught up with the Turkish rearguard, which was forced to stop and fight. For the loss of two killed and eight wounded the brigade killed twenty Turkish soldiers and captured thirteen. At 20:00 on 29 April, the pursuit was called off and the brigade returned to Ferry Post on the canal. Several times in the following months the brigade responded to reports of Turkish incursions, but nothing came of them until 23 November when a Mysore Lancers squadron located a Turkish camel force of about sixty men fifteen miles (24 km) east of Kantarah. Pursued by the Lancers, the Turkish withdrew, during which the Lancers killed seven men, captured twelve and wounded several more. Among the dead was the Bedouin leader Rizkalla Salim who had led most of the Turkish raids on the canal, and with his death the attacks ceased.
### 1916–1917
From January 1916, all patrolling east of the Suez Canal was left to the British yeomanry and the Australian Light Horse formations. The Imperial Service Cavalry Brigade concentrated on patrolling the Sweet Water Canal, the railway line between Suez and Port Said, and the Suez Canal Zone to the west of the canal, which was a restricted area for non-military personnel. On 31 March, Major-General W.A. Watson assumed command of the Nile Delta region and was replaced as brigade commander by Brigadier-General M.H. Henderson. In May 1916, the brigade was reduced to two cavalry regiments when the Patiala Lancers left for Mesopotamia. The brigade also carried out weapons and signal training, but the year ended without them being involved in any contact with the Turkish.
In February 1917, the brigade was ordered to relieve the British 6th Mounted Brigade on the east bank of the Suez canal. The Mysore Lancers moved to Gebel-Geneffe, the Hyderabad Lancers to Ayun Musa, with the brigade headquarters at El Shatt. For the next few weeks the brigade sent patrols out into the Sinai until 14 April, when they were ordered to relocate to Kantarah, where two days later Brigadier-General Cyril Rodney Harbord took over command. To help counter an expected Turkish attack in early May, the brigade was ordered to Khan Yunis in Gaza. The brigade marched the 150 miles (240 km) in nine days, arrived on 25 April and came under command of the Imperial Mounted Division. The division was the army reserve under orders to counter-attack the Turkish left flank. The expected attack never came, but instead of moving back to the canal, the brigade became lines of communication troops, based at Khan Yunis and Rafah. For the next three months, the brigade was deployed on rear area security and patrolling duties. In May 1917, the cavalry regiments received the Vickers machine-gun to replace their older Maxim Guns and all ranks were put through training courses on the Vickers and a newer version of the Lee–Enfield Rifle, which had also just been issued. In September, the cavalry regiments' pack horses started to be replaced by horse-drawn wagons and each of the regiments was issued with twelve Hotchkiss machine-guns; one per troop.
#### Third battle of Gaza
On 27 September, the brigade was once again moved to the front line and given responsibility for patrolling the area between the Desert Mounted Corps and the XXI Corps, taking under command the XXI Corps Cavalry Regiment on 20 October. At the time the brigade was the only mounted formation not under the direct command of the Desert Mounted Corps, remaining Army Troops. The next British attack was the capture of Gaza in November 1917; the plan was for the infantry to capture their initial objectives, then the brigade would be released to advance along the Mediterranean coastline, turn right and attack the Turkish rear and their headquarters at Nuzzle. When the battle started, the British infantry captured all but one of their objectives, but as the brigade started to move out, a Turkish counter-attack regained their previous positions, so the brigade's advance was called off. However, by the night of 6/7 November, continued British attacks forced the Turkish to withdraw from Gaza and the brigade was ordered forward to pursue them. By 13:00 the brigade was north of Gaza when the Mysore Lancers' leading squadron located the Turkish rearguard, which included a heavy machine-gun position. At 15:00 the Hyderabad Lancers and the XXI Corps Cavalry Regiment attacked Beit Hanun, while the rest of the brigade attacked Beit Lahi. As the Hyderabad Lancers approached their objective, they came under a heavy artillery bombardment. Leaving one squadron and their machine-guns behind to provide fire support, the rest of the Lancers attacked, capturing the Wadi Safieh line. The Lancers, still under artillery fire, held out until 16:30, when they were ordered to withdraw and rejoin the rest of the brigade now concentrated at Beit Lahi.
The brigade now came under command of XXI Corps and at 01:45 on 8 November was ordered to move west of Beit Hanun and link up with the Australian Mounted Division, which was advancing from the east. As they moved to the east of Beit Hanun, the XXI Corps Cavalry Regiment, which was still attached to the brigade, came under heavy machine-gun and artillery fire, preventing the brigade from advancing further. The Turkish bombardment continued until 12:20, when they were observed withdrawing. The XXI Corps Cavalry Regiment and Mysore Lancers were ordered to encircle and cut off their retreat, however dug in Turkish positions at the Wadi Hesi once again halted the brigade advance. At 15:00 that day the brigade eventually made contact with the 4th Light Horse Brigade, completing the link up with the Australian Mounted Division.
The morning of 9 November was spent trying to water the horses, some of which had had no water for over twenty-four hours, so the brigade did not move after the now retreating Turkish until after 11:20. Moving at their best speed, the brigade reached the high ground east of El Medjel by 14:30, capturing two artillery guns, rifles and ammunition en route. Two troops were sent forward to locate the Turkish rearguard, which they found at 16:30 crossing the plain at El Tine. Early the next morning, patrols were again sent to locate the Turkish forces but at 07:00, the brigade was unexpectedly ordered back to Gaza. Despite the heavy fire the brigade had been subjected to, their casualties during the battle were light; only four officers and ten other ranks had been wounded, sixteen horses killed and another fifty wounded. The Turkish casualties were estimated at 100 dead; forty-nine were taken prisoner and five artillery guns were captured.
### 1918
In early January, the brigade trained and re-equipped, which included the first issue of bayonets to the Lancers. On 2 April, the Hyderabad Lancers were detached from the brigade, coming under the command of the ANZAC Mounted Division, then the Desert Mounted Corps and finally the 60th Division. The rest of the brigade moved to the Jordan Valley, arriving at Jericho on 29 April. The next day the brigade was designated the Desert Mounted Corps reserve and concentrated two miles (3.2 km) to the west of the Ghoraniyeh bridgehead over the River Jordan. On the final day of the raid on Es Salt, on 4 May, the brigade, with the New Zealand Wellington Mounted Rifles Regiment attached, was ordered to cross the Jordan and form a defensive screen on the east bank to cover the withdrawal of the ANZAC Division. They remained in place until 5 May, when the ANZAC Division reached and crossed the Jordan safely at 16:00. The brigade, less some patrols, was back within the bridgehead by 18:00. In the following twelve days, the brigade patrolled to the east of the River Jordan, resulting in numerous contacts with the Turkish defenders, during which several prisoners and deserters were captured. On 11 May, the Jodhpur Lancers were assigned to the brigade and the Wellington Mounted Rifles returned to the command of their parent New Zealand Mounted Rifles Brigade. On 23 May, the brigade came under command of the Australian Mounted Division and moved to a position four miles (6.4 km) north of Jericho, remaining with the Australians until 4 June, when they left for Ras Dieran, becoming part of the newly raised 2nd Mounted Division. For almost a month the brigade was involved in training and staff exercises, during which time the brigade machine-gun squadron was formed. On 5 July, the brigade left for the Jordan Valley to resume their place in the front line.
On 14 July, the brigade's squadrons were involved in several small battles in the Hajlah, Henu and Abu Tellul bridgehead area, which included a charge by the Jodhpur Lancers on the Turkish positions followed by a separate charge by a squadron of Mysore Lancers on those retreating from the Jodhpur's action. Accumulatively, the day's fighting resulted in over 100 Turkish dead and seventy prisoners taken, twenty of them wounded, from the 9th and 11th Cavalry Regiments. The brigade's casualties were twenty-five dead, seven wounded and six missing. For their part in the battles the Jodhpur Lancers were mentioned in army despatches. On 24 July, the 2nd Mounted Division was renamed 5th Cavalry Division and the brigade became the 15th (Imperial Service) Cavalry Brigade. In early August, the brigade carried out several patrols, crossing the bridgehead and into the Jordan Valley until 4 August, the Turkish were found to have withdrawn overnight. A small Turkish force returned on 15 August but withdrew before the brigade could move up and engage them. The brigade remained in the area until the night of the 17/18 August, when they were relieved by the 10th Cavalry Brigade from the 4th Cavalry Division.
#### Haifa
The next three weeks were taken up with regimental and brigade training, until 17 September when the brigade started returning to the front line. The Hyderabad Lancers were detached from the brigade on 22 September to escort 12,000 prisoners to Kerkur, and on 23 September, B Battery, Honourable Artillery Company was attached to the brigade for the forthcoming operations. At 03:00 on 23 September, the brigade leading the 5th Cavalry Division left Afule for Haifa and Acre. The advance was unopposed until 10:00 that day when the Mysore Lancers reached the village of Beled Esh Sheikh where the leading squadron was shelled from Mount Carmel and came under small-arms fire from the region of the village. The Turkish had four artillery guns on the heights overlooking the brigade's line of approach and another six to the east of Haifa, supported by machine-gun posts and infantry to the west of the main Haifa road.
The brigade deployed its forces, with one squadron from the Mysore Lancers supported by two machine-guns to capture Mount Carmel. A second Mysore squadron would cover the main road while the remainder of the regiment with two machine-guns would advance along the Acre railway line. The Jodhpur Lancers would deploy in the open and wait further orders, while brigade headquarters and the remainder of the machine-gun squadron and the artillery battery would be to the north of Beled Esh Sheikh. When in position, the Jodhpur Lancers—supported by covering fire from the artillery—and the Mysore Lancers would charge the guns. At 11:45 the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry caught up with the brigade and one squadron was detached to support the Mysore Lancers on Mount Carmel. The attack was scheduled to start at 14:00 but before that, the artillery battery and reconnaissance patrols sent out to look for the Turkish positions kept up suppressing fire on them, to which the Turkish responded with counter-battery fire. The attack commenced on time; the Jodhpur Lancers advanced in squadron columns in the face of heavy Turkish rifle and machine-gun fire.
The Lancers charged towards the railway line, but the terrain forced them to move to their left into a wadi, which was impassable and forced the Lancers even further left. The leading squadron crossed the railway line, captured the machine-gun positions and cleared the way for the remainder of the regiment to charge into the town. At the same time the regiment's second squadron had moved right, capturing three artillery guns and two machine-guns, while the two remaining squadrons charged through the town virtually unopposed, facing only sporadic rifle fire. As they reached the other side of the town they were soon joined by the two other squadrons which had made their way around the outskirts, capturing another two artillery guns en route. Elsewhere, one of the Mysore Lancers squadrons that had been giving covering fire came under heavy artillery and machine-gun fire from the mouth of the River Nahr el Mukutta. The squadron mounted and charged the Turkish positions, capturing two artillery guns, two machine-guns and 110 prisoners. With the town secure the Mysore squadron on Mount Carmel charged a Turkish position at Karmelheim, capturing a 6-inch naval gun, two mountain artillery guns, two machine-guns and seventy-eight prisoners. During the charge they were joined by a squadron from the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry, who captured another fifty prisoners. Prisoners taken inside the town were two German officers, twenty-three Turkish officers and 664 other ranks. Two 6-inch naval guns, four 4.2-inch guns, six 77 mm guns, four 10-pound camel guns, ten machine-guns and a large quantity of ammunition were captured in Haifa. The brigade's own casualties were relatively light; one Indian officer and two other ranks were killed, and six Indian officers and twenty-eight other ranks were wounded. Sixty horses were killed and eighty-three were wounded.
#### Advance to Homs
The brigade rested for the next two days and was rejoined by the Hyderabad Lancers on 25 September. At 05:00 the next day they resumed the advance, arriving at Lake Tiberias (Sea of Galilee) at 11:00 on 27 September. After watering the horses the brigade advanced again, reaching Kasr Atra at 22:30, where they halted for the night. They were to start again early the next day, but had to wait as the Australian Mounted Division to their right had been stopped by the Turkish forces and at 11:00 the brigade resumed their advance. Because of the delay, they did not reach El Kuneitra until midnight on 28/29 September. The next day the brigade was designated as the Desert Mounted Corps reserve, responsible for guarding their own and the Australian Mounted Division's transport columns. During the day, the two divisions were held up for fourteen hours by a small, well-placed Turkish detachment. On 30 September the brigade was ordered to head for Kiswe to round up Turkish stragglers from the Ottoman Fourth Army. By 09:30 on 1 October, the brigade was two miles (3.2 km) to the north of Kiswe but were then ordered to move to a new position two miles (3.2 km) east of Damascus, where they were to be the division reserve, while the 14th Cavalry Brigade was made responsible for the capture of Kiswe.
The next day, 2 October, was the day that British Empire forces officially entered Damascus. This was marked by a short period of rest for the British forces and the brigade advance did not resume until 05:30 on 5 October. Their first objective was Khan Meizelun then Moallaka which they reached unopposed on 6 October. The next day Lieutenant-Colonel Hyla Holden, a SSO with the Jodhpur Lancers, became the first Allied officer to enter Beirut, the Arab Revolt forces commanded by Sherif Hussein bin Ali arrived that same afternoon and assumed control of the local government. The brigade continued their advance capturing several villages in the following days. Tell Esh Sherif on 11 October, Baalbek on 13 October, Lebwe on 14 October, El Kaa on 15 October, Kusseir on 16 October and Homs was reached at midday 17 October.
#### Haritan
At Homs, the brigade rested for two days and on 19 October headed for Er Rastan, with orders to repair a bridge over the River Orontes, which had been destroyed by retreating Turkish forces. The next day, assisted by No. 5 Field Squadron Royal Engineers, was spent repairing the bridge, after which the brigade advanced, reaching Hama on 21 October. The brigade had expected to rest there for several days but were ordered to continue the advance to Aleppo. The brigade was preceded by seven light armoured cars, but the remainder of the division was following a day behind. On 24 October the armoured cars' advance was stopped by Turkish defences near Khan Tuman. The Turkish held a strong defensive line on a ridge line to the south and west of Aleppo. The brigade was ordered to occupy a position on the Aleppo-Alexandretta road and to clear Turkish trenches on the ridge to the west of Aleppo, but when they reached the ridge line on 26 October, the position had been evacuated. Intelligence from locals suggested that a force of 1,000 men with two small artillery guns were heading north out of Aleppo, so the brigade set off in pursuit. At 11:00, the leading two Jodhpur Lancers squadrons and a machine-gun section reached a position overlooking Haritan to the north of Aleppo when they came under Turkish small arms fire. Harbord ordered an immediate brigade attack; the Mysore Lancers would move around to the east of the ridge and charge the village, followed by the other two Jodhpur Lancer squadrons while the remainder of the brigade machine-gun squadron would move onto the ridge to provide covering fire, with the two other Jodhpur squadrons. The armoured cars of No. 12 Light Armoured Motor Battery arrived at 11:30 and were ordered along the main road to support the attack.
As the attack started, the leading armoured car developed a fault and returned to their start position, due to a misunderstanding, the rest of the battery followed them, taking them out of the attack. The Mysore Lancers had also started their advance but moved further east to get into a position to charge after discovering the Turkish line was longer than expected, taking them out of range of their supporting machine-guns. At 12:00 the Lancers charged the Turkish position, killing fifty men and capturing twenty, but without any fire support from their machine-gun squadron they were unable to penetrate the Turkish defences and were forced to withdraw to the rear, dismount and keep the Turkish position under observation. The extent of the Turkish position had not been fully appreciated, and was now estimated to be held by a force of 3,000 infantry, 400 cavalry, up to twelve artillery guns and between thirty and forty machine-guns. One group of Turkish soldiers started towards the Mysore Lancers position, but halted about 800 yards (730 m) short and started to dig new defensive trenches. Unable to progress against the larger force, the brigade kept the position under observation and at 21:00, the Turkish were seen to be withdrawing and had completely evacuated their positions by midnight. At 23:15 the 14th Cavalry Brigade arrived, setting up their own observation lines, until daylight when they took over the 15th Brigade's positions. In the day's battle, Turkish casualties were estimated to be around 100 men, while the brigade lost four British officers, including Holden attached to the Jodhpur Lancers, one Indian officer and sixteen other ranks. Twelve officers, six of them British, and forty-four other ranks were wounded, and three other ranks were reported missing.
That night, the Turkish forces withdrew twenty miles (32 km) to Deir el Jemel to the north-west of Aleppo. The 5th Cavalry Division was not strong enough by itself to continue the advance and halted, waiting for the Australian Mounted Division to catch up with them. On 27 October, the day after their unsuccessful charge, the brigade became the division reserve and was ordered back to Aleppo. Events now overtook them; at noon on 31 October, after the Armistice of Mudros had been agreed the previous day, the war with the Ottoman Empire ended.
## Disbandment
After the Armistice of Mudros, the brigade remained with 5th Cavalry Division in Palestine as part of the occupation forces. However, demobilization began immediately and the brigade was broken up by January 1920. Although they did not suffer the same casualties associated with the Western Front in France, its units did not escape without loss. The Mysore Lancers had twenty-three men killed in action, one man died as a result of his wounds, another two were reported missing believed killed, three wounded men were taken prisoner and released at the end of the war, and forty-nine men were wounded. The Hyderabad Lancers had twelve men killed in action, four died as a result of their wounds, seven were reported missing believed killed and forty-three were wounded. The casualties for the Jodhpur Lancers, while serving with the brigade, were seventeen men killed in action, five died as a result of their wounds, five missing believed killed, two were taken prisoner and thirty-one were wounded. The casualties for the Patiala Lancers were not recorded in the brigade history, but the Commonwealth War Graves Commission records that while attached to the brigade from 1914 to May 1916 they had seven dead. For their service, several men of the brigade were given orders or were decorated; the brigade received six Distinguished Service Orders, three Order of the Nile, one Order of the British Empire, six Order of British India, fourteen Military Crosses, two Military Medals, forty-nine Indian Distinguished Service Medals, twelve Indian Order of Merits and sixty-six were mentioned in despatches.
### Memorials
The main memorial to the brigade is the Teen Murti (three soldiers) memorial in New Delhi, a stone and bronze sculpture inscribed with the names of those members of the brigade killed in action. The three statues represent soldiers from the Indian States of Hyderabad, Mysore and Jodhpur. A memorial on the site of the fighting at Haritan is inscribed with the date of the battle, the units involved and details of the casualties. The Port Tewfik Memorial was erected at the Suez Canal to commemorate the 4,000 Indian officers and soldiers killed during the Sinai and Palestine Campaign who have no known grave. The brigade's capture of Haifa on 23 September is remembered by the present Indian Army as Haifa Day, and the Mysore and Jodhpur Lancers part in its capture was recognised by the British government, which awarded them the battle honour Megiddo.
The British army commander Edmund Allenby in his despatches also commented on the contribution of the men in the brigade:
> "I take this opportunity of expressing my appreciation of the valuable services and high soldierly qualities of the following contingents of Indian Imperial Service Troops which, through the generosity of their respective Ruling Chiefs, were placed at my disposal: — Hyderabad Lancers, Jodhpur Lancers, Kathiawar Signal Troop, Mysore Lancers."
## Formation
### Commanders
- Brigadier-General William Arthur Watson (October 1914 – 31 March 1916)
- Brigadier-General M. H. Henderson (31 March 1916 – 16 April 1917)
- Brigadier-General Cyril Rodney Harbord (16 April 1917 – 1920)
### Units assigned
- 1st Hyderabad Lancers (October 1914 – 1918)
- Mysore Lancers (October 1914 – 1918)
- Patiala Lancers (October 1914 – May 1916)
- Jodhpur Lancers (From 11 May 1918)
- 124th Indian Cavalry Field Ambulance (October 1914 – 1918)
- 15th Kathiawar Signal Troop (October 1914 – 1918)
- 15th Imperial Service Machine Gun Squadron (From 10 June 1918)
### Units attached
- Bikaner Camel Corps (for administration only)
- XXI Corps Cavalry Regiment (20 October – 9 November 1917)
- Wellington Mounted Rifle Regiment (4–11 May 1918)
- Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry (23–25 September 1918)
- B Battery Honourable Artillery Company (23–25 September 1918)
## See also
- Force in Egypt
- Imperial Service Infantry Brigade
- Hyderabad State Forces |
7,777,235 | M-121 (Michigan highway) | 1,167,314,550 | State highway in Ottawa and Kent counties in Michigan, United States | [
"State highways in Michigan",
"Transportation in Kent County, Michigan",
"Transportation in Ottawa County, Michigan"
] | M-121 is a state trunkline highway in West Michigan. The highway follows Chicago Drive, a local roadway, from Zeeland to Grandville. Chicago Drive itself runs past the M-121 segment on either side from Holland to Wyoming. The roadway passes through rural farmland on a route that runs parallel to Interstate 196 (I-196). M-121 forms the main street through the center of Hudsonville as it runs southwest–northeast. It forms a major street through the unincorporated community of Jenison before M-121 terminates at I-196 in Grandville.
The M-121 designation has been used twice before in the state. The first was for a former routing of US Highway 2 (US 2), and the second was for a connection between I-69, I-75/US 23 and Bishop International Airport in the Flint area. Since 2007, M-121 has been used for a portion of the former M-21 in Ottawa County, which was formerly designated as state-maintained "Old M-21". Future plans will reconfigure a section of the current highway from four lanes divided to four lanes undivided.
## Route description
Chicago Drive, largely signed as M-121, is a combination state trunkline highway and municipal street running from 8th Street in Holland to the intersection of Cesar E Chavez (formerly known as Grandville) and Clyde Park avenues at the border of Grand Rapids and Wyoming, approximately 23.5 miles (37.8 km) in length. Running eastward, Chicago Drive picks up the Business Loop I-196 designation east of US 31. The highway has the typical mix of industry and commercial properties for the area. At 112th Avenue, it turns northeasterly to run through Zeeland. The roadway changes names when it turns due east again, where it is named Main Avenue and Main Place, comprising the only section of the route not designated Chicago Drive.
Starting at the corner of Main Street and Chicago Drive, M-121 runs northeasterly out of Zeeland on Chicago Drive roughly parallel to I-196. A CSX railroad line also parallels the road to the northwest. The trunkline is a four-lane divided highway bordered by farms. Passing the Hudsonville Fair Grounds, Chicago Drive enters Hudsonville as the main street downtown. The highway continues to the northeast out of town through suburban residential areas to Jenison, where once again Chicago Drive is bordered by commercial properties. Through this area, the roadway is divided, utilizing Michigan lefts. The M-121 designation ends at the interchange with I-196 just across the Kent County line in Grandville.
The corridor from I-196 to its end in Grand Rapids is lined with businesses and few houses. The intersection of Chicago Drive and Wilson Avenue is in downtown Grandville. In Wyoming from north of M-11 (28th Street) to Burlingame Avenue, Chicago Drive run through a mostly industrial area with few commercial properties. Northeast of about Byron Center Avenue, Chicago Drive carries Business Spur I-196 (BS I-196). At the corner with Cesar E Chavez (formerly known as Grandville) and Clyde Park avenues, Chicago Drive and BS I-196 ends.
M-121 is maintained by the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) like other state highways in Michigan. As a part of these maintenance responsibilities, the department tracks the volume of traffic that uses the roadways under its jurisdiction. These volumes are expressed using a metric called annual average daily traffic, which is a statistical calculation of the average daily number of vehicles on a segment of roadway. MDOT's surveys in 2010 showed that the lowest traffic levels along M-121 were the 10,103 vehicles daily at the western terminus in Zeeland; the highest counts were the 20,140 vehicles per day at the eastern terminus. None of M-121 has been listed on the National Highway System, a network of roads important to the country's economy, defense, and mobility.
## History
There have been three roadways to carry the M-121 designation in Michigan.
### Previous routings
M-121 was also used as the designation along two other roadways. In 1933, it was used for a former routing of US 2 in the Upper Peninsula. In 1935, this route was redesignated as a portion of a new M-5 and the M-121 designation was transferred to Bristol Road in Flint. This Flint-area trunkline provided access to Bishop International Airport from both of the I-69 and I-75/US 23 freeways until it was retired in 2003. At that time, Bristol Road was returned to local control.
### Current routing
From 1919 to 1926, the current highway known as M-121 was designated M-51. Then until 1974, the trunkline was part of M-21; that designation was removed when I-196 was completed between those Zeeland and Grandville, and much of the route became an unsigned state trunkline designated Old M-21, although it is locally referred to by its given name, Chicago Drive. The portion of Chicago Drive now signed as M-121 is 12.763 miles (20.540 km) long; it was given its designation in late 2007.
## Future
Portions of the four-lane divided surface access highway along M-121 will become four-lane undivided as the westbound lanes are shifted south away from unstable soil and parallel train tracks.
## Major intersections
## See also |
34,878,070 | British Virgin Islands at the 1984 Winter Olympics | 961,911,006 | null | [
"1984 in British Virgin Islands sport",
"British Virgin Islands at the Winter Olympics by year",
"Nations at the 1984 Winter Olympics"
] | The British Virgin Islands sent a delegation to compete in the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia from 8–19 February 1984. This was the first time the territory had participated in Olympic competition. The British Virgin Islands delegation consisted of a single speed skater, Erroll Fraser. His best performance in any event was 40th in the 500 metre race.
## Background
The British Virgin Islands Olympic Committee was recognized by the International Olympic Committee on 31 December 1981. The 1984 Sarajevo Games were the first Olympics, Summer or Winter, the British Virgin Islands ever competed in. While their participation at the Summer Olympics has been steady, it would take 30 years before the British Virgin Islands participated in another Winter Olympic Games, in 2014. The British Virgin Islands delegation to Sarajevo consisted of a single athlete, speed skater Erroll Fraser. He was the flag bearer for the opening ceremony.
## Speed skating
Erroll Fraser was 33 years old at the time of the Sarajevo Olympics, and is a native of the British Virgin Islands. On 10 February, he took part in the 500 metres race, setting a time of 43.47 seconds, which was a little over 5 seconds behind the gold medal time. He finished in 40th place, out of 42 competitors. In the 1,000 metres race, held on 14 February, he finished with a time of 1 minute and 30.59 seconds, which put him next to last in 42nd position.
## See also
- British Virgin Islands at the 1984 Summer Olympics |
30,941,880 | Alyssa Miller | 1,171,405,228 | American model | [
"1989 births",
"21st-century American women",
"American people of German descent",
"American people of Irish descent",
"American people of Welsh descent",
"Female models from California",
"Living people",
"People from Palmdale, California"
] | Alyssa Elaine Miller (born July 4, 1989) is an American model. She has done print and runway work for numerous leading companies. Among her highlights are cover appearances for Vogue (Germany) and Elle (Italy), work as a featured model–spokesperson for Guess, and appearances in the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue.
## Early life and description
Miller was born in Los Angeles, California, to father Craig Miller. She has several siblings. Her ancestry includes German, Austrian, English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh. She grew up in Palmdale, Los Angeles County.
Miller is known for her dark brown hair, full eyebrows and bone structure. She is considered to have a very European look. Guess founder Paul Marciano said, "Alyssa is the most European-looking American girl I've ever seen!" When she had her breakthrough with Guess, she drew comparisons to Sophia Loren and Brooke Shields and was regarded as something of a throwback.
## Career
In 2003, her father sent test photos to a Los Angeles office of IMG Models. By 2005 she was an up-and-coming model with the Marilyn NY agency. She did a 2005 fall campaign for Stella McCartney at the age of 16. By February 2006, she had been featured in each of the major editions of Vogue, including the cover of a Vogue Italia supplement. Following cover appearances for the October 2006 German Vogue and the July 2010 Italian Elle (she also later appeared on the October 2012 cover), she became one of the new faces of Guess clothing in late 2010. Miller has also done work for Victoria's Secret. Other ad work has included Bebe, Billabong, Chopard, Diesel, Elie Tahari, Intimissimi, Juicy Couture, La Perla and Laura Biagiotti.
She signed with Elite Model Management in 2011. She made her Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue debut in 2011 when she was one of five rookies (along with Shannan Click, Kenza Fourati, Izabel Goulart, and fellow Guess model Kate Upton) in the issue. According to a story in The Wall Street Journal she had previously thought that if she ever appeared in Sports Illustrated it would be for soccer, since given her athletic background she had envisioned herself as a professional soccer player. She also appeared in the body painting feature in the 2011 Swimsuit Issue where Joanne Gair painted her and Stewart Shining photographed her in New York City. 2013 was her third Swimsuit Issue. In both 2011 and 2013, Miller participated in the annual Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition of David Letterman's Top 10 on the Late Show with David Letterman on the night that the Swimsuit Issue cover model was announced.
In 2012 she became the muse of Blumarine Bellissima fragrance. Miller is a former victim of bullying, and she became an advocate against bullying and cyberbullying on May 1, 2013, along with Super Bowl XLVII champion Jameel McClain, by becoming a global ambassador for STOMP Out Bullying. In 2013, Miller signed with IMG soon after a first public appearance with Jake Gyllenhaal. She was featured in the 80th anniversary issue of Esquire as one of the 80 things that define our time. In December 2013, she appeared on the cover and in the 2014 Calendar Girl Issue of the fashion magazine Galore. Her images were augmented by the artwork of Claw Money who affixed his graphic cartoon paws to both black-and-white and color photographs of her as if they were gripping her while she was modelling.
In July 2014 Miller, together with fashion publicist Robyn Berkley, launched a meditation-wear collection for Berkley's line, Live the Process, with a percentage of sales to the David Lynch Foundation. Miller made a cameo appearance in the 2015 film Entourage. In August 2017, Miller designed a collaboration with Understated Leather. In April 2018, Miller launched her own line of leather handbags, luggages, and travel accessories called Pilgrim.
## Personal life
Miller's fitness regimen includes ballet and running; she practices Transcendental Meditation. She has taken both acting and improvisation classes. She briefly dated actor Jake Gyllenhaal in 2013.
Miller married musician Cam Avery in April 2018. On November 29, 2018 Miller confirmed via her Instagram account she and Avery had separated. From late 2021 to early 2022 she was romantically linked to Andrew Garfield. |
25,678,533 | Action of 31 July 1793 | 1,169,172,811 | Minor naval engagement during the French Revolutionary Wars | [
"Conflicts in 1793",
"Military history of the Atlantic Ocean",
"Naval battles involving France",
"Naval battles involving Great Britain",
"Naval battles of the French Revolutionary Wars"
] | The action of 31 July 1793 was an inconclusive engagement between a British Royal Navy frigate and French frigate off the New Jersey coastline in the first year of the French Revolutionary Wars. The British captain, George Courtenay of HMS Boston, had arrived off New York City on 28 May and deliberately disguised his ship as a French vessel, fooling a French officer into coming aboard and making him a prisoner of war. Courtenay then sent a message into New York, where he knew a French frigate lay at anchor, challenging the French captain to battle within the next three days. The challenge was accepted and widely disseminated throughout the city, so that when Captain Jean-Baptiste-François Bompart of Embuscade sailed out to meet Courtenay on the morning of 31 July, the shore was crowded with thousands of sightseers.
The engagement between the ships was fiercely contested, but the smaller and more lightly armed Boston seemed to be taking the more serious damage when at 6:20 Captain Courtenay was thrown to the deck. What happened next has been subject to debate, with the second-in-command, Lieutenant John Edwards claiming that Courtenay had been killed and he was thrown overboard as was the custom at the time. However rumours subsequently circulated that Courtenay had only been knocked unconscious when Edwards gave the order to jettison him, a story that his family credited and was later taken up by the contemporary historian Edward Pelham Brenton, although historian William James subsequently defended Edwards' actions. With Courtenay gone, Boston continued to suffer severe damage until just after 07:00, when the remaining officers ordered all surviving sails set and the British ship attempted to escape. Although Bompart pursued, by 08:00 the strain had proved too much for his ship and he fell back. After a close encounter with French ships in the Delaware River, Boston eventually escaped to St John's, Newfoundland while Embuscade refitted in New York.
## Background
In February 1793 the newly formed French Republic declared war on Great Britain, extending the French Revolutionary Wars that had begun the year before on the continent. The French Navy was in a state of upheaval due to the social consequences of the French Revolution, and as a result found itself at a disadvantage to the Royal Navy, which had been preparing for war since June 1792. In response, the French sent several frigate squadrons to sea, including their newest ships and best sailors and officers in an attempt to disrupt British commerce in the early stages of the war. One such squadron was sent in April 1793 to the United States, carrying the French ambassador to the United States, Edmond-Charles Genêt. After the ambassador disembarked, the squadron, under the command of Captain Jean-Baptiste-François Bompart, dispersed to raid British shipping along the coast, capturing or destroying more than 60 merchant vessels before retiring to American ports for repairs.
The French threat on the American Seaboard was met by Royal Navy frigates operating out of Halifax, Nova Scotia, under orders to watch and blockade French movements in American ports. One such ship was the 32-gun frigate HMS Boston, a small and old vessel under the command of Captain George Courtenay. Courtenay was under orders to watch New York City, where one of the frigates was known to be at anchor. On 28 June 1793, Boston arrived off New York, Courtenay deliberately disguising his ship to resemble a French vessel by having the French-speaking members of his crew talk loudly on the quarterdeck while an American pilot boat was within earshot. The French ship in New York was Bompart's ship Embuscade, a large and powerful vessel that had been built less than three years before and carried a combined broadside weight of 240 pounds (108.9 kg), 30 pounds (13.6 kg) more than that of Boston. Sighting the strange ship off the harbour, Bompart sent a boat with his lieutenant, an American from Boston named Whitynow, and twelve men to investigate. Although he was suspicious of the strange vessel, Whitynow was finally convinced that the ship was a French vessel after conferring with the pilots, and came aboard only to discover his error when Courtenay seized him and his men as prisoners of war.
Courtenay suggested to his prisoner that he would be keen to meet Bompart in battle, and he agreed to send a message into New York via the pilot boat with a challenge for Bompart to bring Embuscade out of the neutral harbour and meet Boston off Sandy Hook. The pilot was initially unable to locate the French captain, and so instead posted the challenge in a coffeehouse in the city, from where the news spread rapidly. Bompart came to learn of it, and spent the next two days preparing his warship; historian Edward Pelham Brenton has claimed that Bompart was joined by 100 armed American volunteers, which he calls "a flagrant violation of the law of nations". After a consultation among the French officers Embuscade sailed from New York on the night of 30 July, although Courtenay was almost forced to miss the rendezvous: on the afternoon of 30 July a large French battle squadron of the ships of the line Éole and Patriote, four frigates and six smaller vessels passed northwards along the New Jersey coast, heading for New York. In the face of such a powerful force Boston was temporarily forced to withdraw to open water, but the squadron did not deviate to investigate the frigate and had passed into New York harbour by nightfall, allowing Courtenay to return to his station.
## Battle
At 03:00 on 31 May, lookouts on Boston reported a large ship approaching from the northeast. Courtenay readied his ship for battle and at 03:30 the ship passed at a distance of 3.5 nautical miles (6.5 km) and was shortly afterwards recognised as a frigate flying the French tricolour. Unsure of the newcomer's identity, Courtenay raised the same flag and in response the strange ship raised a blue flag bearing a white cross, identifying itself as Embuscade, come to meet his challenge. At 04:00 both ships turned eastwards, continuing for 45 minutes until Boston slowed and raised British colours. As the British ship slowed the French vessel overtook at 1.5 nautical miles (2.8 km) distance and at 05:00 Boston tacked towards the French ship, Embuscade slowing so that Courtenay's frigate passed along the starboard broadside. Boston fired first at 05:05, followed immediately by a volley from Embuscade. Both ships then tacked again, by this time approximately 12 nautical miles (22 km) southeast of Navesink, New Jersey. News of the impending battle had spread rapidly through the countryside, and thousands of spectators had gathered on the New Jersey beaches to watch the engagement.
After fifteen minutes of combat, Boston lost its cross-jack yard and by 05:45 had suffered significant damage to its rigging and sails, rendering the ship significantly less manoeuvrable than Embuscade. At 06:10 the main topmast was knocked over and the mizzen mast badly damaged, and ten minutes later, as he was exhorting his men to greater efforts, a cannonball struck the rail where Captain Courtenay and Royal Marine Lieutenant James Butler were standing. Butler was killed instantly and Courtenay fell to the deck unresponsive, possibly killed. Believing his commander to be dead, Lieutenant John Edwards assumed command and had the bodies thrown overboard in an effort to prevent his sailors losing morale from the death of their captain. Boston continued to suffer under the heavier guns of the French ship and by 06:40 the mizzen mast was close to collapse and much of the remaining rigging had been shot away. Casualties mounted, with Lieutenant Edwards and Lieutenant Alexander Kerr both badly wounded, the latter blinded in one eye and the former struck on the head and briefly rendered unconscious.
With their officers gone and their ship in an increasingly battered state, panic began to spread through the British crew. In response Edwards was assisted to the deck and assumed command. While confusion overtook Boston, Bompart remained in command of his ship despite heavy casualties and manoeuvred around to the British ship's stern, intending to finish the battle with a raking broadside. With difficulty Edwards wore away from the threat and recognised that continued resistance would be futile, turning Boston towards the open sea away from Embuscade and setting all remaining sail to escape. At 07:07, Bompart began in pursuit, but his ship was also damaged and could not match the speed of the smaller British vessel. At 08:00, with Boston 4 nautical miles (7.4 km) ahead and stretching the distance, the French captain abandoned the chase and turned back towards New York.
## Aftermath
So badly damaged was Bompart's ship that he was not able to dock in New York until 2 August and repairs to his vessel, including the replacement of all three masts, were not completed until 9 October. Accounts of the battle in the American media claimed that Embuscade's losses amounted to 50 men killed or wounded during the action from a crew of 340 men. Boston limped southwards in desperate need of repairs and initially attempted to anchor in the Delaware River. On taking on a pilot, Lieutenant Edwards was informed that the French frigates Concorde and Inconstante were anchored at Mud Fort. Aware that his ship would be rapidly overwhelmed by such a force, Edwards disembarked the pilot and sailed north, eventually bringing his battered vessel into St John's, Newfoundland. Losses aboard Boston amounted to ten killed and 24 wounded from a crew of 204, the dead including Captain Courtenay. In recognition of his service, Courtenay's widow was presented with a pension of £500 (the equivalent of £ as of 2023) and his two children with £50 per annum. Edwards' subsequent career was shortened by injury, but Bompart was presented with a gold medal on his return to France, and remained a prominent figure in the French Navy, serving at the Glorious First of June in 1794 and leading the French expeditionary force that unsuccessfully attempted to invade Ireland in 1798 and was destroyed at the Battle of Tory Island.
Edwards' report contained his account of Courtenay's death in battle, and it was widely accepted at the time. However, rumours began circulating that Courtenay had not been killed but merely stunned by the blow, and that his death may have come as a result of Edwards order for him to be thrown overboard. This second account was accepted by Courtenay's family and shortly after Edwards' death in January 1823 from the effects of the wound he received in the action with Embuscade, the naval officer and historian Edward Pelham Brenton published his work Naval History of Great Britain from the Year 1783 to 1822, in which he wrote that:
> "The action soon began, and continued with great bravery on both sides, until the iron hammock-rail of the quarter-deck being struck by a shot, a part of it took Captain Courteney [sic] on the back of the neck, and he fell, but no blood followed. The first lieutenant immediately caused the body to be thrown overboard, lest, as he said, it should "dishearten the people;" and, after this prudent precaution, hauled away from the enemy, who had no inclination to follow him".
This version of events was refuted in 1827 by historian William James, who wrote in response to Brenton that "All we [James] can say to this extraordinary statement is, that our [James'] account was taken chiefly from Boston's log book, and we have not the least reason, from subsequent inquiries, to believe it to be incorrect." Subsequent histories, including William Laird Clowes' book of 1900 and Richard Woodman's of 2001 follow James, but in his 1837 reprint Brenton defended the account and named Alexander Robert Kerr, second lieutenant of Boston during the action, as his source. In the same year a magazine article written by a niece of Captain Courtenay continued to repeat the allegations, stating that "the treacherous or – to say the least of it – the improper and unprofessional conduct of Lieutenant Edwards" had been responsible for his commander's death.
After the battle, the ladies of Halifax launched a subscription to celebrate the crew of HMS Boston. On the other hand, the population of New York had a golden medal made in honour of the crew of Embuscade; Bompart accepted the medal on the condition he would not have to wear it, as the National Convention had banned medals. |
308,293 | Mangalore | 1,173,465,605 | null | [
"Cities and towns in Dakshina Kannada district",
"Cities in Karnataka",
"Former Portuguese colonies",
"Indian Ocean",
"Mangalore",
"Populated coastal places in India",
"Port cities in India"
] | Mangalore (/ˈmæŋɡəlɔːr, ˌmæŋɡəˈlɔːr/ MANG-gə-lor, -LOR), officially known as Mangaluru, is a major industrial port city in the Indian state of Karnataka and on the west coast of India. It is located between the Arabian Sea and the Western Ghats about 352 km (219 mi) west of Bangalore, the state capital, 14 km north of Karnataka–Kerala border, 297 km south of Goa. Mangalore is the state's only city to have all four modes of transport—air, road, rail and sea. The population of the urban agglomeration was 619,664 according to the 2011 national census of India. It is known for being one of the locations of the Indian strategic petroleum reserves.
The city developed as a port in the Arabian Sea during ancient times, and after Independence a new port was constructed in 1968 and has since become a major port of India that handles 75 percent of India's coffee and cashew exports. It is also the country's seventh largest container port. Mangalore has been ruled by several major powers, including the Mauryan empire Kadambas, Alupas, Vijayanagar Empire, Keladi Nayaks, and the Portuguese. The city was a source of contention between the British and the Kingdom of Mysore rulers Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan, and was eventually annexed by the British in 1799. Mangalore remained part of the Madras Presidency until India's independence in 1947 and was unified with Mysore State (now called Karnataka) in 1956.
Mangalore is one of the fastest developing cities in India. The Dakshina Kannada district with its administrative headquarters at Mangalore has the highest Per Capita Income and Gross State Domestic Product in Karnataka, after Bangalore. Mangalore is a commercial, industrial, business, educational, healthcare, and startup hub. Mangalore City Corporation is responsible for the civic administration which manages the 60 wards of the city. Its landscape is characterised by rolling hills, coconut palms, rivers, and hard laterite soil.
Mangalore is included as one of the cities in the Smart Cities Mission list and is among the 100 smart cities to be developed in India. It has an average elevation of 22 m (72 ft) above mean sea level. It has a tropical monsoon climate and is under the influence of the southwest monsoon. In 2017, Mangalore was ranked the 48th best city in the world to live in by a US survey, and the only Indian city in the top 50. It has its own International Airport which is around 15 km from the city centre.
## Etymology
Mangalore was named after the deity Mangaladevi, the presiding deity of the Mangaladevi Temple, or a synonym of the goddess Tara of the Vajrayana Buddhist sect. According to local legend, a princess named Parimala or Premaladevi from Malabar renounced her kingdom and became a disciple of Matsyendranath, the founder of the Nath tradition. Having converted Premaladevi to the Nath sect, Matsyendranath renamed her Mangaladevi. She arrived in the area with Matsyendranath, but had to settle near Bolar in Mangalore because she fell ill on the way. When she died, the people consecrated the Mangaladevi temple at Bolar in her honour. The city was named for the temple.
One of the earliest references to the city's name was in 715 CE when Pandyan King Chettian called the city Mangalapuram. The city and the coastal region were part of the Pandyan Kingdom. According to K.V. Ramesh, president of the Place Names Society of India, Mangaluru was first used in 1345 CE during Vijayanagara rule. Many shilashasanas (stones) of the Vijayanagara period refer the city as Mangalapura. During the Alupa dynasty period, it was referred to as Mangalapura (Mangala means 'auspicious'). In the Kannada language, the city is known as Mangaluru, a reference to Mangaladevi (the suffix uru means town or city). Mangalore was historically an important centre of Indian Ocean trade on the Malabar coast. Hence, it was also known by the name Manjalūr in Arabic. During British rule from 1799, the anglicised version Mangalore became the official appellation. According to historian George M. Moraes, however, the word Mangalore is the Portuguese corruption of Mangaluru. The city's name appears on maps as far back as the 1652 Sanson Map of India.
Mangalore's diverse communities have different names for the city in their languages. In Tulu, which is the region's primary spoken language, the city is called Kudla, meaning junction because it is situated at the confluence of the Netravati and Gurupura rivers. In Konkani, Mangalore is referred to as Kodiyal and the Beary name for the city is Maikala. In Malayalam, the city is called "Mangalapuram". Mangalore was officially renamed "Mangaluru" by the Karnataka government on 1 November 2014.
## History
### Early and medieval history
Mangalore's historical importance is highlighted by the many references to the city by foreign travellers. During the first century CE, the Roman historian Pliny the Elder referred to a place called "Nitrias" and said it was an undesirable place for disembarkation because of the pirates who frequented its vicinity, while Greek second-century historian Ptolemy referenced a place named "Nitra". These references were probably about an area with the Netravati River which flows through Mangalore. In his sixth-century work Christian Topography, Cosmas Indicopleustes (a Greek monk) mentions Malabar as being the chief seat of the pepper trade and Mangarouth (port of Mangalore) as one of the five pepper markets which exported pepper.
According to Kerala Muslim tradition, the Masjid Zeenath Baksh at Mangalore is one of the oldest mosques in Indian subcontinent. According to the Legend of Cheraman Perumals, the first Indian mosque was built in 624 AD at Kodungallur with the mandate of the last the ruler (the Cheraman Perumal) of Chera dynasty, who left from Dharmadom to Mecca and converted to Islam during the lifetime of Prophet Muhammad (c. 570–632). According to Qissat Shakarwati Farmad, the Masjids at Kodungallur, Kollam, Madayi, Barkur, Mangalore, Kasaragod, Kannur, Dharmadam, Panthalayani (Koyilandy), and Chaliyam, were built during the era of Malik Dinar; they are among the oldest Masjids in Indian Subcontinent. It is believed that Malik Dinar died at Thalangara in Kasaragod town. Three of them, Mangalore, Barkur, and Kasaragod, are in Tulu Nadu.
Mangalore is considered the heart of a distinct multi-linguistic cultural region, the homeland of the Tulu-speaking people. In the third century BCE, the town formed part of the Maurya Empire, which was ruled by the Buddhist emperor Ashoka of Magadha. From the third to the sixth century CE, the Kadamba dynasty, whose capital was based in Banavasi in North Canara, ruled over the entire Canara region as independent rulers. From the middle of the seventh century to the end of the 14th century, the South Canara region was ruled by its native Alupa rulers, who ruled over the region as feudatories of major regional dynasties like the Chalukyas of Badami, Rashtrakutas of Manyakheta, Chalukyas of Kalyani, and Hoysalas of Dwarasamudra. An Old Malayalam inscription (part of the Ramanthali inscriptions which date to 1075 CE), mentions king Kunda Alupa, the ruler of Alupa dynasty of Mangalore. It can be found at Ezhimala (the former headquarters of Mushika dynasty) near Cannanore, in the North Malabar region of Kerala.
During the 1130s and 1140s, during the reign of the Alupa king Kavi Alupendra (1110–1160), the city was home to the Tunisian Jewish merchant Abraham Ben Yiju. The Moroccan traveller Ibn Battuta, who visited Mangalore in 1342, referred to it as Manjarur and stated the town was situated on a large estuary called the Estuary of the wolf, which was the greatest estuary in the country of Malabar. By 1345 the Vijayanagara rulers brought the region under their control.
During the Vijayanagara period (1345–1550), South Canara was divided into Mangalore and Barkur rajyas (provinces), and two governors were appointed to look after each of them from Mangalore and Barkur. Often a single governor ruled over both Mangalore and Barkur rajyas; when the authority passed to the Keladi rulers (1550–1763), they only had a governor at Barkur. In 1448 Abdur Razzaq who was the Persian ambassador of Sultan Shah Rukh of Samarkand, visited Mangalore en route to the Vijayanagara court. The Italian traveller Ludovico di Varthema, who visited India in 1506, said he saw nearly sixty ships laden with rice ready to sail from the port of Mangalore.
### Foundation and early modern history
In 1498, European influence in Mangalore began when the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama landed at the nearby St Mary's Islands, just after his arrival at Koyilandy, Kozhikode. The Portuguese acquired many commercial interests in Canara in the 16th century. Krishnadevaraya (1509–1529), the ruler of the Vijaynagara empire maintained a friendly relationship with the Portuguese, whose trade slowly grew and they strove to destroy the coastal Arab and Mappila trade. In 1524, Vasco da Gama ordered the blockading of rivers after he heard the Muslim merchants of Kozhikode had agents at Mangalore and Basrur. In 1526, the Portuguese under the viceroyship of Lopo Vaz de Sampaio took possession of Mangalore. The coastal trade passed into Portuguese hands.
In 1550, the Vijayanagara ruler Sadashiva Raya entrusted to Sadashiv Nayaka of Keladi with administering the coastal region of Canara. By 1554, he established political authority over South Canara. The 16th century work Tuhfat Ul Mujahideen written by Zainuddin Makhdoom II appears to be the first historical work written in detail about the contemporary history of Mangalore. It is written in Arabic and contains pieces of information about the resistance put up by the navy of Kunjali Marakkar alongside the Zamorin of Calicut from 1498 to 1583 against Portuguese attempts to colonize Tulu Nadu and Malabar coast.
After the disintegration of the Vijaynagara Empire in 1565, the rulers of Keladi attained greater power in dealing with the coastal Canara region. They continued the Vijayanagara administrative system and the provinces of Mangalore and Barkur continued to exist. The governor of Mangalore also acted as the governor of the Keladi army in his province. The Italian traveller Pietro Della Valle visited here in 1623–1624. In 1695, Arabs burnt the town in retaliation to Portuguese restrictions on Arab trade.
In 1763, Hyder Ali, the de facto ruler of the Kingdom of Mysore, conquered Mangalore, which was brought under his administration until 1767. Mangalore was ruled by the British East India Company from 1767 to 1783, but Hyder Ali's son Tipu Sultan took it from their control in 1783 and renamed it "Jalalabad". The Second Anglo–Mysore War ended with the signing of the Treaty of Mangalore by Tipu Sultan and the British East India Company on 11 March 1784. After the defeat of Tipu at the Fourth Anglo–Mysore War, the city remained under British control. South Canara district was the headquarters under the Madras Presidency.
Francis Buchanan, a Scottish physician who visited Mangalore in 1801, said the city was a prosperous port with plentiful trade. The main commodity of export was rice; it went to Muscat, Bombay, Goa, and Malabar. Supari (Betel-nut) was exported to Bombay, Surat, and Kutch. Sandalwood and black pepper were exported to Bombay.
Local capital was mainly invested in land and money lending, leading to the regional development of banking because the British colonial government did not support industrialisation there. After European missionaries arrived in the early 19th century, educational institutions and modern industries modelled on European ones were developed in the region. The opening of the Lutheran Swiss Basel Mission in 1834 was an important step towards industrialisation. Missionaries set up printing presses, textile mills and factories that made Mangalore tiles. When Canara (part of the Madras Presidency until this time) was split into North Canara and South Canara in 1859, Mangalore became the headquarters of South Canara, which remained under Madras Presidency while in 1862, North Canara was transferred to the Bombay Presidency.
### Later modern and contemporary history
On 23 May 1866, a municipal council for Mangalore with responsibility for civic amenities and urban planning was mandated by the Madras Town Improvement Act (1865). The Italian Jesuits who arrived in the city in 1878, played an important role in the city's education, economy, health, and social welfare. Mangalore was linked to the Southern Railway in 1907 and the subsequent proliferation of motor vehicles in India further increased trade and communication between the city and the rest of the country. Mangalore was a major source of educated workers to Bombay, Bangalore, and the Middle East by the early 20th century.
The States Reorganisation Act (1956) led to Mangalore being incorporated into the newly created Mysore State, which was later renamed Karnataka. Mangalore is the seventh-largest port of India, giving the state access to the Arabian Sea coastline. Between 1970 and 1980, Mangalore experienced significant growth with the opening of New Mangalore Port in 1974 and commissioning of Mangalore Chemicals & Fertilizers Limited in 1976. The late 20th and early 21st centuries saw Mangalore develop as a commercial and petrochemical hub.
## Geography
Mangalore is located on the western coast of India at in Dakshina Kannada district, Karnataka state. It has an average elevation of 22 m (72 ft) above mean sea level. The city is the administrative headquarters of Dakshina Kannada district and is the state's largest coastal urban centre.
Mangalore is bounded by the Arabian Sea to its west and by the Western Ghats to its east. As a municipal entity the city spans 170 km<sup>2</sup> (65.64 sq mi). The Netravati and Gurupura rivers encircle the city; the Gurupura flows around the north and the Netravati flows around the south of the city. The rivers form an estuary in the south-western region of the city, from where they flow into the Arabian Sea. Coconut, palm, and ashoka trees comprise the primary vegetation of the city.
The city's topography consists of a plain that stretches up to 30 km (18.64 mi) from the coast and undulating, hilly terrain towards the east near the Western Ghats. The local geology is characterised by hard laterite in hilly tracts and sandy soil along the seashore. The Geological Survey of India has identified Mangalore as a moderately earthquake-prone urban centre and categorised the city in the Seismic III Zone.
### Climate
Under the Köppen climate classification, Mangalore has a tropical monsoon climate and is under the direct influence of the Arabian Sea branch of the southwest monsoon. It receives about 95 percent of its total annual rainfall between May and September but remains extremely dry from December to March. Humidity is approximately 75 percent on average and peaks during June, July and August. The maximum average humidity is 93 percent in July and average minimum humidity is 56 percent in January. Mangalore experiences moderate to gusty winds during day time and gentle winds at night. The driest and least humid months are from December to February. During this time of year temperatures during the day stay below 34 °C (93 °F) and drop to about 19 °C (66 °F) at night. The lowest temperature recorded at Panambur is 15.6 °C (60 °F) on 8 January 1992 and at Bajpe it is 15.9 °C (61 °F) on 19 November 1974. According to the India Meteorological Department (IMD), the temperature in Mangalore has never reached 40 °C (104 °F). The summer gives way to the monsoon season, when the city experiences the highest precipitation of all urban centres in India due to the influence of the Western Ghats. The rains subside in September but there is occasional rainfall in October. The highest rainfall recorded in a 24-hour period is 330.8 mm (13 in) on 22 June 2003. In 1994, Mangalore recorded its highest annual rainfall at 5,018.52 mm (198 in).
## Economy
Industrial, commercial, agricultural processing, and port-related activities comprise this city's economy. The New Mangalore Port is India's seventh-largest container port. It handles 75 percent of India's coffee exports and the bulk of its cashew nuts. The Mangalore Customs Commissionerate collected a revenue of ₹4.47 billion (US\$55.98 million) during 2012–13 and ₹27.91 billion (US\$349.53 million) during December 2018. During 2012–13, MRPL and MCF contributed ₹501 million (US\$6.27 million) and ₹373 million (US\$4.67 million), respectively, to the state's revenue. Dakshina Kannada district has the highest percentage of workers employed in industry and the second-highest industry-to-district GDP ratio in Karnataka. Imports through New Mangalore port include crude oil, edible oil, liquefied petroleum gas, and timber.
The city's major chemical industries include BASF, Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Limited (MRPL), Mangalore Chemicals and Fertilizers (MCF), Kudremukh Iron Ore Company Ltd. (KIOCL), Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd. (HPCL), Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd. (BPCL), Indian Oil Corporation Limited (IOCL), Total Oil India Limited, and Hindustan Unilever. The Indian government has built 5.33 million tons of strategic crude oil storage at Mangalore and Padur to ensure energy security. Out of the 5 million metric tonnes (MMT) storage, 1.5 MMT is stored at Mangalore. Bharati Shipyard Ltd (BSL) (now known as Bharati Defence and Infrastructure Limited) has established a shipbuilding site near Tannirbavi in Mangalore.
Major information technology (IT) and outsourcing companies like Infosys, Cognizant, and have their offices at Mangalore. Mphasis' Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) has a branch in this city. IT parks Export Promotion Investment Park (EPIP) at Ganjimutt and Special Economic Zone (SEZ) near Mangalore University have been constructed. An IT park called Soorya Infratech park is situated in Mudipu. Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has planned to invest ₹500 crore (US\$62.62 million) and set up its office at Karnad near Mangalore. KEONICS has planned to build an IT park at Derebail in Mangalore, similar to Electronic City, spanning an area of 100 acres.
Centre for Entrepreneurship Opportunities and Learning (CEOL) is a startup incubation centre situated in the city. Corporation Bank, Canara Bank, and Vijaya Bank were the three nationalised banks established in Mangalore during the first half of the 20th century. Mangalore is the headquarters of Corporation Bank and Karnataka Bank. The Mangalore Catholic Co-operative Bank (MCC Bank) Ltd., Mangalore Cooperative Town Bank Ltd., and SCDCC Bank were the scheduled banks established in Mangalore.
Syngene International which is a contract research arm of Biocon, has set up its manufacturing plant at Mangalore. Old Mangalore Port is a fishing port located at Bunder, Mangalore, where a large number of mechanised boats anchor. The traffic at this port was 122,000 tonnes during the years 2003–04. New Mangalore Port handled over 100,000 Twenty-foot equivalent units of containers during the years 2017–18. Fishing is a traditional occupation and the products are sold in the surrounding regions. Mangalorean firms have a major presence in the tile, beedi, coffee and cashew nut industries although the tile industry has declined because concrete is preferred in modern construction. The Albuquerque tile factory in Mangalore is one of India's oldest red-roof-tile manufacturing factories. The city's suburb Ullal produces hosiery and coir yarns while beedi rolling is an important source of revenue to many of the city's residents.
## Demographics
In 2021 the population of Mangalore city was 724,159. According to the 2011 Indian census, the male literacy rate was 96.49 percent and the female literacy rate was 91.63 percent. About 8.5 percent of the population was under the age of six years. The death rate and Infant mortality rate were at 3.7 percent and 1.2 percent respectively. About 7726 people lived in slums in Mangalore city which was 1.55 percent of the total population. The Human Development Index (HDI) of Mangalore city was 0.83 in 2015.
### Religions
Hinduism is the largest religion in Mangalore, and Devadiga, Mogaveera, Billavas, Ganigas, Bunts, Vishwakarma, Padmashali, Brahmins, and Daivadnyas are the major communities among Hindus. Christians form a sizeable section of Mangalorean society; Mangalorean Catholics comprise the city's largest Christian community. Protestants in Mangalore typically speak Tulu and Kannada. Anglo-Indians were also part of the Mangalorean Christian Community. Mangalore has one of the highest percentage of Muslims in Karnataka cities. Most Muslims in Mangalore are Bearys who speak the Beary language. Most of them follow the Shafi'i school of Fiqh (Islamic Jurisprudence). Mangalore also has a small group of Urdu-speaking Dakhini Muslims. The Masjid Zeenath Baksh at Mangalore is one of the oldest mosques in the Indian subcontinent.
### Languages
Mangalore is a multi-lingual city where several prominent regional languages such as Tulu, Konkani, Kannada, and Beary are spoken. The city is known as Kudla in Tulu, Kodial in Konkani, Maikāla in Beary, Mangalapuram in Malayalam, and Mangaluru in Kannada. Among most of the residents of the city, Kudla is the most commonly used name to refer to it. There are also smaller communities of Tuluva Jains, Gujaratis, Tamils, and Marathis. Tulu is a predominant language in Mangalore and Kannada is the administrative language of Mangalore, but the city is multi-cultural. According to the 2011 census, Tulu is spoken as a first language by 33.7% of the population, Konkani by 14.03%, Kannada by 12.45%, Malayalam by 5.64%, and other languages are spoken by 34.18%. Unlike other cities in Karnataka where Kannada is a primary language, Kannada is the third most spoken language, Tulu is predominant language in Mangalore, and Konkani is the second most spoken language in Mangalore.
## Government and public services
### Civic administration
Mangalore has a city area of 170 km<sup>2</sup> (65.64 sq mi). Municipal limits begin at Surathkal in the north, Netravati River bridge in the south, the western coast, and Vamanjoor in the east. Mangalore City Corporation (MCC) came into existence in 1980; it is the municipal corporation in charge of the city's civic and infrastructural assets. The MCC council consists of 60 elected representatives which are called corporators, one from each of the city's 60 wards. A corporator from the ruling majority party is selected to be the mayor. MCC's headquarters are at Lalbagh. Mangalore Urban Development Authority (MUDA) manages the planning, urban growth, and expansion of the city. The District Commissioner is the chairperson of MUDA. The 44 projects which are listed as part of the Smart Cities Mission programme are managed by Mangalore Smart City Limited (MSCL).
Until the Delimitation commission's revised the Lok Sabha and the legislative constituencies, Mangalore contributed two members to the Lok Sabha; one for the southern part of the city that fell under the Mangalore Lok Sabha constituency and another for the northern part of the city that fell under the Udupi Lok Sabha constituency. After the delimitation of parliamentary constituencies in 2008, Mangalore Lok Sabha constituency was replaced with Dakshina Kannada Lok Sabha constituency, resulting in Mangalore being represented by one Member of Parliament (MP). Additionally Mangalore sends three members to the Karnataka Legislative Assembly from Mangalore City South, Mangalore City North, and Mangalore. The Mangalore City Police Department is headed by a Commissioner of Police. Mangalore is also the headquarters of the Western Range Police, which covers the western districts of Karnataka and is headed by an Inspector General of Police (IGP).
### Healthcare
The city is served by various hospitals such as the KMC Hospitals, Father Muller Charitable Institutions (FMCI), AJ Hospital, and Wenlock Hospital. Wenlock Hospital, a teaching hospital of KMC Mangalore has around 1000 beds and caters to the healthcare needs of the neighboring districts. Mangalore is a hub for medical tourism and receives patients from foreign countries. From 2017 to 2019, around 240 foreign nationals were treated in three hospitals across the city. Approximately 50 per cent of the patients (the foreign nationals) arrived in 2018 and 2019. KMC, AJ, and Yenepoya Hospitals have received the highest number of foreign patients, including those from the United States. At Yenepoya Hospital, 68 foreign nationals have availed treatment during 2017–19. The largest inflow of foreign patients into Mangalore is from the Gulf countries. Deralakatte is a main healthcare hub of Mangalore.
### Utility services
In Mangalore, electricity is regulated by the Karnataka Power Transmission Corporation Limited (KPTCL) and distributed through Mangalore Electricity Supply Company (MESCOM). Major state-owned enterprises such as Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Limited (MRPL) and Mangalore Chemicals & Fertilizers (MCF) operate their own captive power plants.
Potable water is supplied to the city from a vented dam that was constructed across the Netravati River at Thumbe, 14 km (9 mi) from Mangalore. The Karnataka Urban Development and Coastal Environment Management Project (KUDCEMP) aims to improve safe water supply systems also reducing leakage and losses in the city's distribution system. The distribution and rehabilitation of the drinking water in the city are handled by the French company Suez Environnement. Mangalore's official refuse disposal site is in Vamanjoor. The city generates an average of 175 tonnes per day of waste, which is handled by the MCC's health department.
Mangalore is the headquarters of the Dakshina Kannada Telecom District, the second largest telecom district in Karnataka. Fixed-line telecom services are provided alongside GSM and Code division multiple access (CDMA) mobile services. Prominent broadband internet service providers in the city include Airtel and DataOne by Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited.
## Education
The districts of Dakshina Kannada and Udupi are considered to be a major education corridor in India. Deralakatte is a university and Medical town in Mangalore where Universities like Mangalore University, Nitte, Yenepoya, Father Mullers, and Kanachur are situated. In schools and colleges which are below university-level, the media of instruction are mostly English and Kannada, and English is used for teaching in universities.
`Schools and colleges in Mangalore are either government-run or are operated by private trusts and individuals. Schools are affiliated with either the Karnataka State Board, Indian Certificate of Secondary Education (ICSE), the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), or the National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS) boards.`
Here are some of the earliest schools and colleges established in Mangalore, and their years of establishment
- Basel Evangelical School (1838)
- Milagres School (1848)
- Rosario High School (1858)
- University College (1868)
- St. Ann's High School (1870)
- St. Aloysius College (1879)
- Canara High School (1891)
- St. Agnes PU College (1921)
- St. Agnes College (Autonomous) (1921)
- Sacred Hearts' School (1943)
- Cascia High School (1946)
- Carmel School (1951)
Kasturba Medical College which was established in 1953, was India's first private medical college and Manipal College Of Dental Sciences (MCODS) was established in the city in 1987. A public library run by the Corporation Bank is located at Mannagudda. Mangalore University was established on 10 September 1980 to fulfil the higher-education needs of Dakshina Kannada, Udupi and Kodagu districts. It is a National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC)-accredited, four-star-level institution. NITK houses South India's first Regional Academy Centre for Space (RAC-S) which was launched by ISRO.
## Transport
Mangalore is the only city in Karnataka to have all modes of transport—air, road, rail and sea.
Mangalore International Airport (IATA: IXE, ICAO: VOML) is located near Bajpe-Kenjar and about 13 km (8 mi) north-east of Mangalore city centre. It operates regular scheduled flights to major cities in India and the Middle East. It is the second-largest and second-busiest airport in Karnataka. New terminals and runways at the airport accommodate both cargo and passenger requirements. This airport is accredited by the Airports Council International (ACI) under the Airport Health Accreditation (AHA) programme. State-government-run buses connect the city with the airport.
Five National Highways pass through Mangalore. NH-66 (previously known as NH-17), which runs from Panvel, Maharashtra, to Kanyakumari, Tamil Nadu, passes through Mangalore in a north–south direction. NH-75 (previously known as NH-48) runs eastward to Bangalore and Vellore. NH-169 (previously known as NH-13) runs north-east from Mangalore to Shimoga. NH-73, a 315 km (196 mi)-long National Highway connects Mangalore to Tumkur. NH-275 also connects Mangalore with Bangalore via Mysore. National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) is upgrading the national highways connecting New Mangalore Port to Surathkal on NH-66 and BC Road junction on NH-75. Under the port connectivity programme of the National Highways Development Project (NHDP), a 37.5 km (23 mi) stretch of these highways will be widened from two lanes to four.
Mangalore's city bus service is dominated by private operators, which operate routes that extend beyond the city's boundary. Bus services from Mangalore are operated by the Dakshina Kannada Bus Operators' Association (DKBOA) and Canara Bus Operators Association (CBOA). Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) also runs bus services in the city. Two distinct sets of routes for the buses exist; city routes are covered by city buses while intercity routes are covered by service and express buses. KSRTC also operates long-distance bus services that connect Mangalore with other parts of the state. KSRTC JnNurm green city buses operate within the city limits.
Rail connectivity in Mangalore was established in 1907; the city was the starting point of India's longest rail route. The city has three railway stations; Mangalore Central at Hampankatta, Mangalore Junction at Padil, and Surathkal railway station. A railway track built through the Western Ghats connects Mangalore with Sakleshpur and Hassan. The broad gauge track connecting Mangalore to Bangalore via Hassan was opened to freight traffic in May 2006 and passenger traffic in December 2007. Mangalore is also connected to Chennai, Mumbai, Pune, Bhatkal, Karwar, Surat, Ajmer, and Margao through the Konkan Railway.
Mangalore Harbour has shipping, storage, and logistical services; New Mangalore Port handles dry, bulk and fluid cargoes, and is equipped to handle petroleum oil lubricants, crude products and LPG containers. The Indian Coast Guard has a station at New Mangalore Port. The artificial harbour is India's seventh largest container port and the only major port in Karnataka. Electronic visa (e-visa) facilities are available for travellers arriving in India at New Mangalore Port.
## Culture
### Music and dance
Many classical dance forms and folk art are practised in Mangalore. Yakshagana is a night-long dance and drama performance while Pilivesha (tiger dance), a folk dance unique to the city, is performed during Dasara and Krishna Janmashtami. Karadi Vesha (bear dance) is another well-known dance that is performed during Dasara.
Paddanas, ballad-like epics passed on verbally through generations, are sung by a community of impersonators in Tulu and are usually accompanied by the rhythmic drum beats. The Bearys' unique traditions are reflected in folk songs such as Kolkai (sung during Kolata, a valour folk-dance during which sticks are used as props), Unjal Pat (traditional lullaby), Moilanji Pat and Oppune Pat (sung at weddings). The Evkaristik Purshanv (Konkani: Eucharistic procession) is an annual Catholic religious procession that is held on the first Sunday of each year.
### Festivals
Most of the popular Indian festivals are celebrated, the most important are Dasara, Diwali, Christmas, Easter, Eid and Ganesh Chaturthi. Kodial Theru, also known as Mangaluru Rathotsava (chariot festival) is unique to the Goud Saraswat Brahmin community and is celebrated at the city's Sri Venkatramana Temple.
The Mangalore Catholic community's unique festivals include Monti Fest (Mother Mary's feast), which celebrates the Nativity feast and the blessing of new harvests. The Jain Milan, a committee that consists of Jain families, organises the annual Jain food festival, while Mosaru Kudike (curd pots feast), which is part of Krishna Janmashtami festival is celebrated by the whole community. Special night prayers called Taraveeh (rest and relaxation) are offered in mosques during the month of Ramadan.
Aati, a festival worshiping Kalenja, a patron spirit of the city, is during the Aashaadha month of Hindu calendar. Festivals such as Karavali Utsav (coastal festival) and Kudlotsava (Tulu: festival of Mangalore) are celebrated with national and state-level performances in dance, drama and music. Bhuta Kola (spirit worship) is usually performed by the Tuluva community at night. Bhuta Kola is similar to Theyyam in Kerala. Nagaradhane (snake worship) is performed in praise of Naga Devatha (the serpent king), who is said to be the protector of all snakes. Kori Katta, an ancient ritual associated with the Hindu temples in rural areas, a religious and spiritual cockfight, is held at the temples when permission is given by police.
### Cuisine
Mangalorean cuisine is largely influenced by South Indian cuisine; several local cuisines are unique to the diverse communities of the region. Coconut, curry leaves, ginger, garlic, and chili are common ingredients in Mangalorean curries. Well-known Mangalorean dishes include kori rotti, neer dosa, pundi (rice ball), patrode, golibaje and Mangalore buns. Mangalorean cuisine is also known for fish and chicken dishes like bangude pulimunchi (spicy sour silver-grey mackerels), boothai gasi (sardine semi-gravy), anjal fry, Mangalorean Chicken Sukka, and Chicken Ghee Roast. Due to Mangalore being a coastal city, fish is a staple of most people's diet. The Konkani Hindu community's specialties include daali thoy (lentil curry), bibbe-upkari (tender cashew-nut curry), val val (coconut-milk-based curry), ambat (vegetable-based coconut curry), avnas ambe sasam (pineapple-mango fruit salad), kadgi chakko (raw jackfruit-coconut curry), paagila podi (spine gourd fries), and chane gashi (chickpea curry). Mangalorean Catholics' dish sanna-dukra maas (sanna—idli fluffed with toddy or yeast; dukra maas—pork), pork bafat, sorpotel, and mutton biryani of the Beary Muslims are well-known dishes. Pickles such as happala, sandige, and puli munchi are unique to Mangalore. Shendi (toddy) which is a country liquor prepared from coconut flower sap, is popular. Vegetarian cuisine, also known as Udupi cuisine, is known throughout the state and region.
## Media
Mangaluru Samachara, the first ever newspaper in Kannada, was published in 1843 by Hermann Mögling of the Basel Mission. The first Kannada-to-English dictionary was published in Mangalore by Ferdinand Kittel in 1894. Major national English-language newspapers such as Times of India, The Hindu, The New Indian Express, Deccan Herald and Daijiworld publish localised Mangalore editions. Madipu (Esteem), Mogaveera, Samparka (Contact) and Saphala (Success) are the well-known Tulu periodicals in Mangalore.
Popular Konkani language periodicals published in the city are Raknno (Guardian), Konknni Dirvem (Konkani Treasure) and Kannik (Offering). Beary periodicals published in Mangalore include Jyothi (Light) and Swatantra Bharata (Independent India). Kannada-language newspapers are Udayavani (Morning Voice) by Manipal Press Ltd, Vijaya Karnataka (Victory of Karnataka) and Vijayavani (Voice of Victory) by VRL Group, Prajavani (Voice of the People), Kannada Prabha (Kannada Radiance), Varthabharathi (Indian News), Samyukta Karnataka (United Karnataka), and Hosa Digantha (New Horizon). The city's evening newspapers include Karavali Ale (Waves from the Coast), Mangaluru Mitra (Friend of Mangalore), Sanjevani (Evening Voice), and Jayakirana (Rays of Victory) are also published in the city. The Konkani-language newspaper Kodial Khabar (Mangalore News) is published fortnightly. Malayalam newspapers such as Malayala Manorama (Malayalam Entertainer) and Madhyamam (Medium) publish localised Mangalore editions.
The state-run, nationally broadcast television channel Doordarshan provides national and local television coverage. Cable television also provides channels from independently owned private networks. Canara TV and V4 Digital infotech network, local Multi System Operators, transmits daily video news channels, live events and cultural programmes to the city through local channels. Multiple local television channels broadcast programmes and news in Tulu, Konkani, Beary and Kannada; these include Namma TV, V4 News and Spandana. Tulu channels are Namma Kudla and Posa Kural. All India Radio (AIR) has a studio at Kadri and broadcasts to Mangalore on 100.3 MHz. Mangalore's private FM stations include Radio Mirchi 98.3 FM, Big 92.7 FM and Red 93.5 FM. Radio SARANG 107.8 is a community radio station that is run by St. Aloysius College.
Mangalore is home to the Tulu film industry which releases one film per month on average. Popular Tulu films include Kadala Mage (Son of the Sea) and Suddha (The Cleansing Rites). Tulu dramas which are mostly played in the Town Hall at Hampankatta, are very popular. Mangalore hosted the Tulu film festivals in 2006 and 2015.
## Sports and pastimes
Cricket is a popular sport in Mangalore. Local cricket stadia include Mangala Stadium and B.R. Ambedkar Cricket Stadium (near NMPT). The Sports Authority of India (SAI) has a sports training centre at Mangala Stadium. Mangalore United is a Karnataka Premier League (KPL) franchise owned by Fiza Developers. Mangalore Premier League (MPL) is a cricket tournament organised by Karnataka Regional Cricket Academy. Nehru Maidan is an important local venue that hosts domestic, inter-school and intercollegiate tournaments. Mangalore Sports Club (MSC) has been elected as the institutional member for the Mangalore Zone of the Karnataka State Cricket Association (KSCA). Lokesh Rahul, commonly known as KL Rahul and Budhi Kunderan, a former Indian wicket-keeper are from Mangalore. Ravi Shastri, who represented India for several years in international cricket as an all-rounder and captained the team, is of Mangalorean descent.
Football is also a popular sport in the city and is usually played in the maidans (grounds); the Nehru Maidan is the most popular venue for domestic tournaments. Dakshina Kannada District Football Association (DKDFA) annually organises the Independence Day Cup, which is played on Independence Day at district football grounds adjacent to Nehru Maidan. Schools and colleges from across Dakshina Kannada, Udupi and Kodagu districts participate and the matches are conducted under seven categories for children and young adults in education. Chess is a popular indoor pastime in the city. Mangalore is the headquarters of South Kanara District Chess Association (SKDCA), which has hosted two All India Open Chess tournaments. Other sports such as tennis, squash, billiards, badminton, table tennis and golf are played in clubs and gymkhanas in Mangalore. Pilikula Nisargadhama, an integrated theme park, has an 18-hole golf course at Vamanjoor. U S Mallya Indoor Stadium offers sporting facilities for badminton and basketball players.
## Tourism
Mangalore lies between the Arabian Sea and the Western Ghats. The city's temples and buildings include the Mangaladevi Temple, Kadri Manjunath Temple, St Aloysius Chapel, the Rosario Cathedral, Milagres Church, Dargah of Hazrat Shareef ul Madni at Ullal, and the Zeenath Baksh Jumma Masjid in Bunder.
The city is known for beaches such as Panambur, Tannirbhavi, NITK beach, Sasihithlu beach, Someshwara beach, Ullal beach, Kotekar beach and Batapady beach. Panambur and Thannirbhavi beaches attract tourists from across the country. Panambur beach has facilities including food stalls, jet ski rides, boating and dolphin viewing; trained beach lifeguards and patrol vehicles ensure the safety of visitors.
Saavira Kambada Basadi is situated in Moodabidri, 34 km (21 mi) north-east of Mangalore. The Sultan Battery watch tower built by Tipu Sultan is situated in Boloor on the banks of Gurupura River; visitors can take the ferry across the river to Tannirbhavi Beach. Adyar waterfalls is on the city's outskirts about 12 km (7.5 mi) from Mangalore city centre. The city has developed and maintains public parks such as Pilikula Nisargadhama, Kadri Park, Tagore Park at Light House Hill, Mahatma Gandhi Park at Gandhinagar in Mannagudda, Tannirbavi Tree Park, Arise Awake Park at Karangalpady, and Corporation Bank Park at Nehru Maidan. Pilikula, which occupies 370 acres (150 ha), has a zoo, botanical garden, lake, water park (manasa), Swami Vivekananda Planetarium, science centre, and a 50-acre (20 ha) 18-hole golf course. Swami Vivekananda Planetarium is the first 3D planetarium in India with an 8K resolution display.
Mangalore Dasara, a ten-day festival held at Sri Gokarnatheswara temple attracts devotees from across India. Mangaladevi Temple attracts devotees from all over the country during Navaratri.
## Sister cities
Mangalore is twinned with two Canadian cities:
- Hamilton, Canada, since 1968
- Delta, Canada, since 2010 |
68,888,514 | Will Rogers (American football) | 1,173,862,966 | Quarterback for Mississippi State Bulldogs | [
"2001 births",
"American football quarterbacks",
"Living people",
"Mississippi State Bulldogs football players",
"People from Brandon, Mississippi",
"Players of American football from Mississippi"
] | William Wyatt Rogers III (born August 19, 2001) is an American football quarterback for the Mississippi State Bulldogs. Rogers holds Mississippi State program records in nearly every major passing category and Southeastern Conference (SEC) records for single season and career completions.
## Early life and high school career
Rogers was born on August 19, 2001, in Louisville, Mississippi. He spent his early years in Louisville before his family moved to Brandon, Mississippi when he was in the seventh grade. The second of three children, his mother Judy attended the University of Alabama while his father Wyatt, a football coach, attended the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss). His paternal grandfather Bill Rogers also attended Ole Miss, playing on the school's baseball team with Archie Manning. Rogers grew up an avid fan of the Ole Miss Rebels football team, idolizing quarterbacks Eli Manning and Bo Wallace. A strong athlete, he played a variety of sports growing up, including baseball and soccer. However, he was the most passionate about football, where in elementary school he ran drills with his father's high school players. While in middle school, Rogers would be mentored by future National Football League (NFL) quarterback Gardner Minshew, whom his father coached in high school, with the two forming a bond that continued even after Minshew had left Brandon to play college football.
Rogers attended Brandon High School, where he played football under his father who served as the team's offensive coordinator. He became the team's starting quarterback as a sophomore, throwing for 2,476 yards and 18 touchdowns. In his second season as a starter, Rogers threw for 3,009 yards and 23 touchdowns, 14 of which were caught by future 2nd round draft pick Jonathan Mingo, and helped Brandon reach the state semifinals. As a senior, Rogers threw for 3,572 yards and 38 touchdowns and was named a member of the Mississippi All–Star Team.
### Recruiting
Rogers was a 3 star prospect coming out of high school, ranked by 247Sports as the 29th best pro–style quarterback of his class. There was little mutual interest between Rogers and his childhood team of Ole Miss, as the Rebels had hired Rich Rodriguez as their offensive coordinator, whose read option offense typically utilizes a dual–threat quarterback rather than a pro–style quarterback. Rogers instead committed to play college football at Mississippi State University over an offer from Washington State, citing his relationship with Mississippi State head coach Joe Moorhead and the teams playing style as the reasons for his commitment.
## College career
### 2020
Soon after Rogers enrolled at Mississippi State, the Bulldogs fired head coach Joe Moorhead in favor of Mike Leach, who had unsuccessfully recruited Rogers while at Washington State. In the offseason, Rogers and K.J Costello battled to become the teams starting quarterback, with Leach ultimately deciding to start Costello for the season's first game. Rogers would make his collegiate appearance against Kentucky, replacing a struggling Costello. Rogers was unimpressive in his debut, throwing two interceptions. The following week, Rogers was once again put in to relieve a struggling Costello, and threw for his first career touchdown in 28–14 loss to Texas A&M. Against the eventual national champion Alabama, Rogers would for the third week in a row replace Costello mid–game, this time due to Costello suffering a concussion. Rogers had a mediocre statistical performance against Alabama, but was praised by coach Mike Leach. He would make his first career start the following week, throwing for 224 yards and a touchdown in a 24–17 win over Vanderbilt. Rogers served as the Bulldogs starter for the remainder of the season, recording a 3–3 record. His best performance of the season came in the teams Egg Bowl rivalry game against Ole Miss, throwing for a then career–high 440 yards and 3 touchdowns in a 31–24 loss.
### 2021
Rogers entered the Bulldogs 2022 campaign as the team's starting quarterback, beating out transfer Chance Lovertich for the position. In the season opener against Louisiana Tech, the Bulldogs fell behind 31–14 in the 4th quarter before Rogers led the team to three straight touchdown drives to win the game 35–34, in what was then the largest comeback in program history. Two weeks later, he threw for a season–high 419 yards on a school–record 50 completions in a 31–29 loss to Memphis. On October 2, he recorded his second 400 yard game of the season in a 26–22 upset victory over Texas A&M. For his performance against Texas A&M; he was named the SEC offensive player of the week. The following week against top five ranked Alabama, Rogers suffered an AC joint sprain but remained in the game, throwing for 300 yards, but would post his only sub–100 passer rating of the year in a 49–9 loss. On October 30, he completed 36/39 passes in a 31–17 victory over Kentucky, setting an SEC record for single game completion percentage. The following week, he once again threw for 400 yards as well as four touchdowns in a 31–28 loss to Arkansas. On November 13, Rogers would have a historic performance on the road against Auburn. After falling behind 28–3, Rogers threw for six touchdowns, setting a school record for single–game passing touchdowns and leading the Bulldog's to their largest comeback in school history, ultimately winning 43–34. In the Bulldog's final game of the regular season against Ole Miss, Rogers threw for 336 yards but the team fell to their in–state rival for the second year in a row. Rogers finished the season having thrown an SEC record 505 completions and set program records with 4,738 passing yards and 36 touchdowns.
### 2022
Rogers got off to a strong start in 2022, throwing for 450 yards and 5 touchdowns in the Bulldogs opening game victory over Memphis. Three weeks later he threw for 409 yards and 6 touchdowns in a blowout win against Bowling Green. On October 8th, Rogers had his third 400–yard performance of the season, and broke the Southeastern Conference career completions record. In doing so he eclipsed the 921 completion mark set by Aaron Murray, despite playing in 24 fewer games than Murray. Following losses to Alabama and Kentucky, Rogers bounced back by throwing for 3 touchdowns in a 39–33 win over Auburn. Two weeks later he posted a 194.0 passer rating, his highest of the season, in a blowout win over East Tennessee State. In the Bulldog's final game of the season against Ole Miss, Rogers earned his first victory against his childhood team in a 24–22 victory. Two weeks prior to the Bulldogs bowl game, coach Mike Leach died after suffering a heart attack. Rogers would lead the Bulldogs to an emotional victory in their bowl, dedicating the win to Leach in a postgame interview. He finished the season with 3,713 passing yards and 34 touchdowns. Entering the 2023 season Rogers holds Mississippi State records in career passing yards, completions and touchdowns.
### Statistics |
5,556,643 | Tim McKee | 1,162,153,230 | American swimmer | [
"1953 births",
"20th-century American people",
"21st-century American people",
"American male backstroke swimmers",
"American male medley swimmers",
"Florida Gators men's swimmers",
"Living people",
"Medalists at the 1971 Pan American Games",
"Medalists at the 1972 Summer Olympics",
"Medalists at the 1976 Summer Olympics",
"Olympic silver medalists for the United States in swimming",
"Pan American Games medalists in swimming",
"Pan American Games silver medalists for the United States",
"People from Ardmore, Pennsylvania",
"Sportspeople from Montgomery County, Pennsylvania",
"Swimmers at the 1971 Pan American Games",
"Swimmers at the 1972 Summer Olympics",
"Swimmers at the 1976 Summer Olympics",
"Swimmers from Pennsylvania"
] | Alexander Timothy McKee (born March 14, 1953) is an American former competition swimmer and three-time Olympic silver medalist. He was a successful medley and backstroke swimmer, and is often remembered for being a part of the closest Olympic swimming finish in history and the resulting rule changes regarding the timing of international swimming events.
## Early years
McKee was born in Ardmore, Pennsylvania. He was the fourth of nine children in his family; his father Alexander "Big Al" McKee was a former All-American for Ohio State University's Buckeye swimming and diving team in the late 1930s. While McKee was a child, his parents moved the family to Newtown Square, Pennsylvania, so that he and his siblings could walk through a path in their backyard to the Suburban Swim Club to practice, where his father served as coach from 1962 to 1968. Three of his brothers and two of sisters achieved some measure of national or international recognition as competition swimmers. McKee graduated from Malvern Preparatory School in Malvern, Pennsylvania in 1971.
## College swimming career
After high school, McKee accepted an athletic scholarship to attend the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida, where he swam for coach Bill Harlan's Florida Gators swimming and diving team in National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) and Southeastern Conference (SEC) competition from 1972 to 1974. He followed his older brother Mark to Gainesville, where Mark McKee was an All-American swimmer for the Florida Gators from 1969 to 1971. As a freshman in 1972, he finish fourth in the 200-yard backstroke, and fifth in the 400-yard individual medley, as the Florida Gators finished seventh overall at the NCAA men's swimming championships. In his three years as a Gator swimmer, McKee was recognized as the SEC Swimmer of the Year in 1972, won six SEC individual titles, and received four All-American honors.
## International swimming career
After graduating from high school, McKee was chosen as a member of the U.S. national swim team for the 1971 Pan American Games in Cali, Colombia. He finished second in the men's 200-meter backstroke with a time of 2:07.9, earning his first silver medal in international competition.
Following his freshman college season, McKee qualified for the 1972 U.S. Olympic team despite recovering from a bout of mononucleosis. At the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany, he represented the United States in three different events. Most memorably, McKee won a silver medal in the men's 400-meter individual medley in the closest swimming decision in Olympic history, losing by a margin of two one-thousandths (0.002) of a second to Sweden's Gunnar Larsson. Initially, the scoreboard showed that Larsson and McKee had tied with an official time of 4:31.98, but in a controversial decision, the event judges named Larsson the eventual gold medal-winner ten minutes after the race was over—Larsson's electronic clock time was 4:31.981, McKee's 4:31.983. The time difference was variously calculated as one-tenth of the time of a typical blink of a human eye, and the distance as the thickness of a coat of paint, a sheet of paper, or the minor imperfections in the individual lanes of the Olympic pool. As a result of the controversy, the international swimming federation, FINA, subsequently clarified the timing rules for competition swimming; international races are now required to be timed to the hundredth of a second, and timing to the thousandth of a second is prohibited for tie-breakers. It was the first and only Olympic swimming event ever decided on the basis of thousandths of a second. Afterward, McKee attributed his second-place finish to a tactical mistake: he looked over his shoulder to see where Larsson was in the final leg of the race.
At the 1972 Olympics, McKee garnered a second silver medal in the men's 200-meter individual medley (2:08.37), again finishing behind gold medalist Larsson, who set a new world record in the event (2:07.17). He also placed fifth in the final of the men's 200-meter backstroke (2:07.29).
After his junior year at the University of Florida, McKee left the Gators swim team to train full-time for the 1976 Olympics. The 23-year-old McKee again qualified for the U.S. team in the 400-meter individual medley at the 1976 U.S. Olympic Trials. At the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, he repeated his second-place performance in the men's 400-meter individual medley event, finishing behind gold medalist and fellow American Rod Strachan. The times of both Strachan (4:23.68) and McKee (4:24.62) broke the prior world record in the event final, with Strachan setting the new mark.
During the course of his career, McKee set six American records (short course 200- and 400-yard individual medley, 400-yard medley relay; long course 100- and 220-yard backstroke, 200-yard individual medley).
## Life after competition swimming
McKee was inducted into the University of Florida Athletic Hall of Fame as a "Gator Great" in 1987, and the International Swimming Hall of Fame as an "Honor Swimmer" in 1998. He is a veteran celebrity swimmer for Swim Across America (SAA), a charitable organization that raises funds for cancer research, and has participated in sixteen SAA events. He has worked in Miami Beach, Florida as a life guard and public safety officer for over 20 years, has also worked in real estate, and has helped train other Olympic swimmers including Nancy Hogshead. McKee married his wife Courtney, a former competition swimmer, in 1998.
## See also
- List of Olympic medalists in swimming (men)
- List of University of Florida alumni
- List of University of Florida Athletic Hall of Fame members
- List of University of Florida Olympians |
3,342,572 | Pellissippi Parkway | 1,170,990,747 | Highway in Tennessee, United States | [
"Freeways in Tennessee",
"Interstate 40",
"Roads in Tennessee",
"Transportation in Blount County, Tennessee",
"Transportation in Knox County, Tennessee",
"Transportation in Knoxville, Tennessee"
] | The Pellissippi Parkway is a major highway in Knox and Blount counties in the Knoxville metropolitan area in Tennessee that extends 19.75 miles (31.78 km) from State Route 62 at Solway to SR 33 in Alcoa. It provides access to the cities of Oak Ridge and Maryville from Interstates 40 and 75 in the western part of Knoxville and also serves a major corridor that includes Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Y-12 National Security Complex, and a number of science and technology firms. The central portion of the Pellissippi Parkway is included in the Interstate Highway System and is designated Interstate 140 (I-140), while the remainder is designated as State Route 162 (SR 162). The entire highway is part of the National Highway System, a national network of roads identified as important to the national economy, defense, and mobility. It takes its name from an older name for the Clinch River of Native American origin.
The Pellissippi Parkway was initially constructed between I-40/I-75 and Solway from 1970 to 1973 in order to improve access between Knoxville and Oak Ridge. A proposal to extend the highway to US 129 arose while the initial section was under construction, and this occurred in multiple segments between 1987 and 1996. The parkway was extended to its current eastern terminus in two sections, which opened in 1996 and 2005, and is currently planned to be extended approximately 4 miles (6.4 km) to US 321. This plan has been the subject of intense community opposition from locals, however, and has been repeatedly delayed as a result.
## Route description
The Pellissippi Parkway comprises I-140 and two sections of SR 162 that seamlessly extend from either end of the Interstate Highway segment. The northern segment of SR 162 runs 5.84 miles (9.40 km) from SR 62 at Solway south to I-40 and I-75 in Knoxville. I-140 has a length of 11.17 miles (17.98 km) from the junction with I-40 and I-75 to US 129 in Alcoa. The southern segment of SR 162 begins at US 129 and runs 2.74 miles (4.41 km) to SR 33 within Alcoa. The entire highway is a part of the National Highway System. The northernmost 4.6 miles (7.4 km) of the parkway is a four-lane limited-access highway, and the remainder is a controlled-access highway. Running in a diagonal southeast–northwest alignment, the I-140 stretch is signed as an east–west route, and both SR 162 sections are signed as north–south. In 2022, annual average daily traffic volumes ranged from 69,195 vehicles north of I-40/I-75 to 14,905 vehicles at the eastern terminus.
The Pellissippi Parkway begins at a directional interchange with SR 62 (Oak Ridge Highway) at the east end of the unincorporated community of Solway in western Knox County. This is on the east side of the Clinch River a short distance from Oak Ridge. Here, there is no direct access from westbound SR 62 to the parkway. The parkway then heads southeast as a limited-access four-lane divided highway. It crosses Beaver Creek and has a five-ramp partial cloverleaf interchange with Hardin Valley Road, which provides access to Pellissippi State Community College. The Pellissippi Parkway then has another partial cloverleaf interchange with SR 131 (Lovell Road). A short distance later, the controlled-access section begins at a partial cloverleaf interchange with Dutchtown Road. Here, the Pellissippi Parkway enters the western end of the city of Knoxville and is paralleled on both sides by frontage roads south for about one mile (1.6 km) to a large interchange with I-40 and I-75. This interchange is a near-complete cloverleaf interchange, with three loop ramps and a flyover ramp from the southbound lanes of the parkway to eastbound I-40/northbound I-75, which head concurrently toward downtown Knoxville.
The Pellissippi Parkway continues south through a near-complete cloverleaf interchange with Kingston Pike about 1⁄2 mile (0.80 km) beyond, which carries U.S. Routes 11 and 70. Here, the city limits of Knoxville begin snaking along the freeway's right-of-way to the Tennessee River. The parkway crosses a Norfolk Southern Railway line and the Sinking Creek arm of Fort Loudon Lake ahead of its diamond interchange with Westland Drive. A short distance later, the freeway curves east within a diamond interchange with SR 332 (Northshore Drive); the interchange includes a ramp from the eastbound parkway to Town Center Boulevard, providing access to a shopping center. A few miles later the Pellissippi Parkway veers south onto a peninsula within Toole's Bend, a bend of the Tennessee River, then curves southeast and crosses the Fort Loudoun Lake impoundment of the river, which forms the Knox–Blount County line, on the Lt. Alexander "Sandy" Bonnyman Memorial Bridge. On the east side of the river, the highway enters the northern outskirts of the city of Alcoa, within which it remains to its eastern end. The freeway has a diamond interchange with SR 333 (Topside Road) and crosses a CSX rail line. The Pellissippi Parkway then curves southeast through a cloverleaf interchange with US 129 (Alcoa Highway) north of McGhee Tyson Airport. The freeway then has a southbound-only exit and northbound-only entrance with Cusick Road and crosses a final Norfolk Southern rail line before reaching its terminus at a half diamond interchange with SR 33 (Old Knoxville Highway) near the Eagleton Village community. This interchange is graded to allow future extension of the parkway.
## History
### Solway to Knoxville construction
When Oak Ridge was established by the federal government in 1942 for the uranium enrichment operations of the Manhattan Project, SR 62 became the main route between Oak Ridge and Knoxville. After the completion of the adjoining section of I-40/I-75 in 1961, Oak Ridge officials began pushing for a connector route to the Interstate to improve access between Oak Ridge and Knoxville, citing inadequacies in the two-lane stretch of SR 62. On December 2, 1965, a delegation of Oak Ridge residents met with the Knox County Highway Technical Advisory Committee and presented their proposal for a new four-lane controlled-access highway to the Interstate, including a new bridge over the Clinch River. During the planning phase, a decision was made to have the route terminate with SR 62 at Solway. The new bridge over the Clinch River would then replace the two-lane bridge on SR 62 in a separate project. The route's alignment was approved on January 25, 1967, by the Knoxville-Knox County Highway Coordinating Committee, which allowed for it to be budgeted by the state. Other alignments would have had the route terminate at I-40/75 near the interchanges with SR 131 and Cedar Bluff Road, respectively. Initially referred to as the "Oak Ridge Connector", the highway was named the "Pellissippi Parkway" by an act of the Knox County Commission on December 7, 1971, which was subsequently recognized by the Tennessee General Assembly on March 15, 1976. Local officials and residents in 1968 and 1969 unsuccessfully tried to pressure the Tennessee Department of Highways, the predecessor agency to the Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT), to construct the route as a fully controlled-access highway, but they chose a limited-access design that incorporated both interchanges and at-grade intersections.
Work on the first section, located between I-40/I-75 and Hardin Valley Road, began in June 1970 and was completed in late 1972. This section was accessed via a partial Y-interchange along I-40/I-75 adjacent to the interchange with Mabry Hood Road; the Pellissippi Parkway was only accessible from the westbound lanes of the Interstate, and only the eastbound Interstate lanes were accessible from the Pellissippi Parkway. The section between Hardin Valley Road and SR 62 in Solway was completed in late 1973, after months of delays caused by rain. The highway was dedicated by Governor Winfield Dunn on May 31, 1974.
### Extension to Alcoa
Although intended to initially improve access to Oak Ridge, the Pellissippi Parkway was envisioned from the start to be eventually extended from I-40/I-75 to US 129 in Alcoa in order to provide more efficient access to McGhee Tyson Airport. State plans for extending the Pellissippi Parkway first appeared in a 1973 statewide transportation program, and in April 1975, the Tennessee General Assembly passed a resolution authorizing TDOT to study the possibility of extending the route to US 129. Environmental reviews and location studies began in late 1980, and the first public hearings were held in January 1981. Then-Governor Lamar Alexander included the extension as part of a plan to develop a science and technology corridor in the region in the early 1980s.
The extension was subject to strong opposition from some locals. In 1982 a group of local residents opposed to the extension formed the Citizens against the Pellissippi Parkway Extension (CAPPE). They charged that the route would pollute the groundwater and streams in the area and that disruptions to streams would create conditions that could result in widespread flooding. They also expressed concern that the roadbed would likely be plagued by geological problems due to large numbers of sinkholes and unstable geological formations in the area. In addition, some critics alleged that Alexander, who is from Maryville, was pushing the extension for his personal financial benefit, citing land he co-owned nearby. Alexander denied these allegations—stating that he purchased the land for preservation, not development—and pointed out that the extension had been proposed since before his Governorship began.
On December 21, 1984, the alignment for the extension was selected using a combination of two of the four proposed routings. This route had been determined to circumvent all dangerous sinkholes and caves and was judged to have the least detrimental environmental impact. The final environmental impact statement was approved on September 25, 1985, and funding for the extension was authorized under the Better Roads Program of 1986, an initiative by Alexander to fund a backlog of needed road projects throughout the state. The extension was one of six freeway projects under this program, dubbed "Bicentennial Parkways", and was initially expected to cost \$151.7 million (equivalent to \$ in ). The program also proposed that the extension be numbered Interstate 140, which was approved by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) on June 15, 1992, but not allowed to be signed until it was linked to I-40/75. On December 18, 1986, a group of landowners submitted a request to TDOT for an interchange with Tooles Bend Road, but this was rejected on October 27, 1988, after several local residents and the Knox County Commission had expressed opposition earlier that year.
Construction on the extension began in January 1987, with work on the Tennessee River bridge piers. The bridge was completed in the autumn of 1989 but not opened to traffic; as a result, it faced multiple acts of trespassing and vandalism afterwards. The short segment between Wrights Ferry Road and the Tennessee River was let in May 1988 and completed in August 1990 but also not opened to traffic. In December 1989, construction began on the short segment between US 129 and Wrights Ferry Road, and eight months later, work began on the section between the river and SR 332. On December 4, 1992, the 6.6-mile (10.6 km) segment between US 129 in and SR 332 opened. The next segment completed was the four-mile (6.4 km) segment between SR 332 and US 11/US 70 (Kingston Pike), which was contracted in November 1990 and opened on October 6, 1993. This segment was constructed on the former location of the Mabry Hood House, an antebellum home located on Kingston Pike that was demolished in 1983 after falling into disrepair.
The contract for the last major section of the extension, located between Kingston Pike and I-40/I-75, was awarded in September 1993 and included construction of part of the interchange with I-40/75. After repeated delays, this section opened on December 16, 1996, along with four ramps connecting to I-40/75, one of which was temporary. At this time, an uninterrupted access-controlled connection between the extension and original parkway did not yet exist, requiring traffic north of I-40/75 to enter what was the original parkway connection to I-40/75 via a temporary at-grade intersection. The final phase, which began in June 1995 and was completed in late 1998, after multiple delays, completed the interchange with I-40/75 and constructed new carriageways from this interchange to north of Dutchtown Road, replacing the at-grade intersection. As part of this project, the flyover ramp from the southbound lanes of the parkway was rebuilt, nearby frontage roads were modified, the at-grade intersection with Dutchtown Road was converted into an interchange, and the nearby Mabry Hood Road interchange on I-40/75 was removed.
### Extension to US 321 and controversies
Although the initial plan was to extend the Pellissippi Parkway to US 129, a concept for extending the route to US 321 (Lamar Alexander Parkway) near Walland has existed since March 1977, when Blount County, Maryville, and Alcoa officials jointly requested funding for the then-proposed extension from the Tennessee General Assembly. The approximately 7-mile (11 km) extension to US 321 was included in a preliminary draft of the Better Roads Program in January 1986 but was removed by Governor Alexander two months later, who stated that it would not be included in any proposals during his administration. After Alexander left office the following year, the extension began to be listed as a long-term plan and was first added to the Knoxville Regional Transportation Planning Organization's long-range transportation plan in 1995. After the completion of the stretch to US 129, Alcoa officials began lobbying for the extension to US 321, arguing that the eastern terminus had become a bottleneck. The first stretch of this extension, the 1.1-mile (1.8 km) segment between US 129 and Cusick Road, was contracted in December 1995 and opened on December 19, 1996, and was partially funded by the city of Alcoa. Work on the next section, located between Cusick Road and SR 33, began in November 2000 and was completed on August 15, 2005. The final section is a proposed 4.4-mile (7.1 km) extension past SR 33 to US 321, which would include an interchange with US 411.
This final section has been met with much controversy and opposition from locals, causing multiple delays, redesigns, and court reviews. In 1999, TDOT conducted an environmental assessment to evaluate alternatives to the project. On April 24, 2002, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) issued a "finding of no significant impact" (FONSI), which would have allowed TDOT to proceed with the project. On June 7, 2002, a group of local citizens, who had reorganized Citizens Against the Pellissippi Parkway Extension (CAPPE), filed a lawsuit against TDOT, the FHWA, and the U.S. Department of Transportation, arguing that the FONSI violated provisions of the National Environmental Policy Act that require an environmental impact statement. On June 22, the FHWA informed TDOT of an intent to suspend federal funding for the extension in response to the lawsuit. On July 17, Judge Todd J. Campbell of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee issued an injunction against TDOT, prohibiting them from proceeding with construction activities. On August 29, the FHWA notified TDOT that they were withdrawing the FONSI, but this action was blocked by the District Court on October 1, due to TDOT's intent to proceed with the project without federal funding. On July 7, 2004, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the District Court's ruling and modified the injunction one month later to allow TDOT to prepare an environmental impact statement. On September 27, 2004, TDOT announced plans to do so.
The draft environmental impact statement was approved on April 14, 2010. On July 27, 2013, TDOT announced that the alignment for the extension, which includes a westward shift of the southern end from the original plan, had been chosen. The final environmental impact statement was approved on September 10, 2015, and the FHWA approved the route on August 31, 2017. This extension, which TDOT is not expected to be able to begin construction on until at least 2025, has continued to be met with fierce community opposition, however.
### Other history
On September 7, 1997, the bridge over the Tennessee River was dedicated as the Alexander "Sandy" Bonnyman Medal of Honor Memorial Bridge in honor of a United States Marine Corps officer who was killed in action in the Battle of Tarawa during World War II.
Between December 2, 2009, and June 30, 2010, the southbound on-ramp from SR 131 was lengthened and straightened, which required closing the ramp to all traffic and widening of the overpass, removing a hazardous accident-prone merge with the parkway. In June 2020, work began to modify the interchange with Hardin Valley Road by lengthening and straightening the ramps, adding turn lanes to the ramps, removing an intersection with the northbound ramps, placing a concrete island between the on- and off-ramps, and adding a new northbound entrance ramp from Hardin Valley Road westbound. The project was completed in January 2022.
## Etymology
The Pellissippi Parkway, alongside other landmarks throughout Eastern Tennessee, derives its name from an older name for the Clinch River. The name "Pelisipi River" was present on older maps with such variant spellings as "Pelisippi" and "Pellissippi", and the variant form "Fiume Pelissipi". In fact, the Mitchell Map (1755–1757) labels a tributary of the "Pelisipi River" as "Clinch's River". The word "Pellissippi" was long said to have been the Cherokee name for the river and was purported to mean "winding waters" in the Cherokee language. However, research completed in 2017 instead concludes that the Miami-Illinois name Mosopeleacipi ("river of the Mosopelea" tribe) was first applied to what is now called the Ohio River. Shortened in the Shawnee language to pelewa thiipi, spelewathiipi, or peleewa thiipiiki, the name evolved through other variant forms, such as "Polesipi", "Peleson", "Pele Sipi", and "Pere Sipi", and eventually stabilized to the "Pelisipi/Pelisippi/Pellissippi" form; these names were variously applied back and forth between the Ohio and Clinch rivers.
## Exit list |
5,813,007 | 61st Infantry Division (United Kingdom) | 1,166,715,480 | Infantry division of the British Army, raised 1939 | [
"Army Reserve (United Kingdom)",
"Infantry divisions of the British Army in World War II",
"Military units and formations disestablished in 1945",
"Military units and formations established in 1939"
] | The 61st Infantry Division was an infantry division of the British Army, raised in 1939 as part of the expansion of the Territorial Army in response to the German occupation of Czechoslovakia. The division was created as a duplicate of the 48th (South Midland) Infantry Division, and was assigned to home defence duties.
While the division was never deployed overseas, its headquarters staff was deployed to Norway and briefly fought in the Norwegian campaign. Afterwards, the division was deployed to Northern Ireland for almost three years as a result of rumours of a German intention to invade. In Northern Ireland, the division manned static defences, conducted internal security, and trained for future operations. Returning to England, the division participated in military exercises and was scheduled to join the 21st Army Group for the Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of German-occupied France. It lost this role in late 1943, and was assigned to train replacements for combat units. Throughout 1944, the division aided Overlord in various deception formats, while most of the men were posted to combat formations within 21st Army Group. In late 1945, the division was reorganised as a light division and was going to be deployed to the Far East to fight Imperial Japan. The move was cancelled following the Japanese surrender, and the division was disbanded in November 1945.
## Background
In the 1930s, tensions increased between Germany and the United Kingdom and its allies. During late 1937 and throughout 1938, German demands for the annexation of Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland led to an international crisis. In an attempt to avoid war, Britain's Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain met with German Chancellor Adolf Hitler in September and brokered the Munich Agreement. The agreement averted immediate war and allowed Germany to annexe the Sudetenland. Chamberlain had intended the agreement to lead to the peaceful resolution of further issues, but relations between both countries continued to deteriorate. On 15 March 1939, Germany breached the terms of the agreement by invading and occupying the remaining provinces of Bohemia and Moravia.
In response, on 29 March, the British Secretary of State for War Leslie Hore-Belisha announced plans to increase the Territorial Army (TA) from 130,000 men to 340,000 and in so doing double the number of TA divisions. The plan of action was for the existing units to recruit over their allowed establishments (aided by an increase in pay for Territorials, the removal of restrictions on promotion that had been a major hindrance to recruiting during the preceding years, the construction of better-quality barracks and an increase in suppertime rations) and then form second-line divisions from small cadres that could be built upon. As a result, the 61st Infantry Division was to be created as a second-line unit, a duplicate of the first-line 48th (South Midland) Infantry Division. In April, limited conscription was introduced. This involved 34,500 militiamen, all aged 20, who were conscripted into the regular army, initially to be trained for six months before being deployed to the forming second-line units. Despite the intention for the army to grow, the programme was complicated by a lack of central guidance on the expansion and duplication process and issues regarding the lack of facilities, equipment and instructors.
## History
### Initial service
It was envisioned that the duplicating process and recruiting the required numbers of men would take no more than six months. Some TA divisions had made little progress by the time the Second World War began; others were able to complete this work within a matter of weeks. By the outbreak of the war, the division was active, under the general officer commanding, Major-General Robert J. Collins, and was composed of the 182nd, 183rd, and 184th Infantry Brigades and supporting elements. Following the division's formation, it was assigned to Southern Command. At the end of November, Major-General Adrian Carton de Wiart took command. The division was spread out, ranging from Birmingham to Portsmouth, and Cheltenham to Reading, and with the headquarters in Oxford. On 15 April, Carton de Wiart, as well as the divisional staff, were deployed to Norway; Major-General Edmond Schreiber assumed command of the 61st Division, and was assigned a new divisional staff.
### Headquarters deployed to Norway
In their opening assault upon Norway, German troops had seized Trondheim. In response, the British Army planned to launch a two-pronged pincer attack to retake the city. The troops to undertake this attack came from the 49th (West Riding) Infantry Division (a first-line TA division), which had already been earmarked for service in Norway prior to the German invasion. The division was temporarily broken up, its brigades acting as individual commands. The 146th Infantry Brigade, which would make up the bulk of Mauriceforce and form the northern pincer began landing on 17 April. Due to time restraints and troops already assigned to the expedition, the 61st Division was not deployed to Norway. Instead, Carton de Wiart was given command of Mauriceforce and was allowed to select his staff, which he drew from his headquarters. The southern pincer, 200 miles (320 km) to the south and separated by mountainous terrain and rivers, was to be undertaken by Major-General Bernard Paget's Sickleforce that had landed at Åndalsnes.
Soon after arriving, the 146th Brigade's leading battalions began to move south. On 21 April, Carton de Wiart's troops engaged in the first encounter of the war between British and German troops. The British, largely confined to the road network and advancing in deep snow, were engaged by a slightly larger German force that was supported by artillery and air support. The Germans, utilizing sledges, motorcycles, and ski-troops were able to outmanoeuvre and force back the British. German follow-up attacks did not materialise, but the Luftwaffe heavily bombed the small port at Namsos. Carton de Wiart cabled the War Office and stated "with my lack of equipment I was quite incapable of advancing on Trondheim and could see very little point in remaining in that part of Norway sitting out like rabbits in the snow". The evacuation was not ordered until the end of the month and then completed in the early days of May, after the loss of 157 men of Mauriceforce. The lack of success in Norway, and the withdrawal of the forces attempting to retake Trondheim, resulted in the collapse of Chamberlain's Government. Carton de Wiart, considered a daring and aggressive commander, was – per historian Jack Adams – "hampered by ... climatic and geographic conditions" and his troops were "inexperienced, poorly prepared and badly backed up".
### Deployment to Northern Ireland
As early as mid-May 1940, while the Battle of France was still being waged, the British Government began to fear that Germany would immediately launch an invasion of the British Isles. This fear was compounded by, as historian Paul McMahon commented, the "catastrophic Allied defeats" that soon followed, which produced "two hysterias in the summer of 1940: first, fear of imminent invasion and, second, a 'fifth column panic'." The initial fear of invasion was aroused by the alleged capture of German documents, by the Dutch, which contained plans for a German invasion as well as information regarding a simultaneous attack on Ireland by paratroopers who were to be assisted by the Irish Republican Army (IRA). This document, which no longer exists, caused panic within the British Government. The information was reinforced, in the following months, by reports warning of a German intent to invade Ireland from diplomatic missions and the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS). On 14 May, following his return to the United Kingdom, Carton de Wiart resumed command of the 61st Infantry Division; Schreiber had left the division two days previously, to take command of the 45th Infantry Division. After the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) was evacuated from France, the British acted on the rumours of the German intent to invade Ireland, and the decision was made to reinforce the garrison (the 53rd (Welsh) Infantry Division) by deploying the 61st Infantry Division; in the ensuing 12 months, the division would be followed by the 5th and 48th (South Midland) Divisions and the 71st and 72nd Independent Infantry Brigades).
McMahon commented that the SIS had a history of "furnish[ing] unreliable information on the IRA's foreign intrigues", but these past failures were ignored as the reports reinforced the fears of invasion. McMahon suggested that "It is even possible that the plans discovered in Holland were planted. Whether deliberate deception or not, British intelligence was well and truly deceived." Historian Eunan O'Halpin argued that while the Dutch document could be seen as a British fabrication, "it is now known ... that German deception operations prepared in anticipation of Operation 'Sealion' included the manufacturing of rumours and stories of plans to attack Ireland as a feint during the build up to an invasion of Southern England". Nicholas Mansergh commented that "Ireland had no place" in the initial Sealion plans, and it was not until 3 December 1940 that German planners even looked at the possibility before concluding that such an operation was not possible or if launched would result in failure. In his memoirs, Carton de Wiart commented "I can never believe the Germans had any intention of invading Ireland but I am very grateful for any reason which sent us there, for it was an ideal training ground for troops and the division improved enormously from the moment of our arrival."
The 61st moved to Northern Ireland, and came under the command of Northern Ireland District on 20 June. The division was responsible for manning the static defences across Northern Ireland and defending Belfast, as well as being responsible for the internal security of the country. While based across most of Northern Ireland, it was largely positioned within County Antrim, County Londonderry, and County Tyrone, with the divisional headquarters at Ballymena. The division trained to repel seaborne invasions from German forces, as well as airborne landings and small raids. The beaches of County Antrim and Londonderry were seen as the most likely areas for an invasion, and by the end of autumn, concrete pillars, barbed wire entanglements, and camouflaged firing positions had been constructed. During the division's stay in Northern Ireland, Lieutenant-General Henry Pownall took command of British forces in the country. His appointment resulted in Carton de Wiart losing command of the division on grounds of his age (one month shy of his 61st birthday). Carton de Wiart was replaced by Major-General Charles Fullbrook-Leggatt, who assumed command on 6 April 1941.
In June 1942, the division took part in the first major joint Anglo-American exercise with newly arrived U.S. Army troops. This exercise, a 10-day event codenamed Atlantic, saw U.S. V Corps (U.S. 1st Armored Division, the 59th (Staffordshire) Infantry Division, and the British 72nd Infantry Brigade) engage British Forces Northern Ireland (the U.S. 34th and the 61st Infantry). On 15 September, Major-General John Carpenter took command of the division, replacing Fullbrook-Leggatt.
### Return to England, training, and Operation Overlord
The 61st Division returned to England on 4 February 1943, and was based in Essex under the command of XI Corps. Between 4–12 March, the division participated in Exercise Spartan, the largest military exercise ever held in the United Kingdom. David French commented that the exercise "was designed to analyse the problems that would arise after a force had landed on a hostile shore and was advancing from a bridgehead". The exercise revealed weaknesses in elements of the senior leadership, in particular the officers in overall command of the armies deployed for the exercise, and highlighted the improvements made in general by the infantry. Spartan was followed, in April and May, by Exercise Jantzen. This was an administrative undertaking by the division and the headquarters of I Corps, aimed at improving the support techniques that would be used in the upcoming invasion of Europe. In May, the division was transferred to II Corps, and moved to Kent, after which Major-General Charles Wainwright took command, holding this position until the end of the war. The division was earmarked for a role in Operation Overlord, and Marcus Cunliffe wrote that Exercise Spartan "seemed to be every indication that" the division was to be a front-line unit. In September, the division, in conjunction with the 1st Polish Armoured Division, was placed under the control of II Canadian Corps for Exercise Link. In the months following the exercise, the division was relegated to Lower Establishment status. This meant that the division was now to be strictly used for home defence in a static role compared to Higher Establishment divisions that were intended for deployment overseas and combat. As part of this change in priorities, the division also became a training formation and one intended to find suitable replacements for fighting formations. By October, the division had also been assigned to anti-invasion duties in Kent. While based there, German cross-Channel guns periodically shelled the area, and in 1944 V-1 flying bombs became a minor issue. In December 1943, the division (reinforced, for the exercise, by the 31st Tank Brigade) played the defending force in Exercise Vulcan; a four-day training exercise aimed at improving the attacking process of the 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division.
During 1944, the division aided Operation Overlord in various ways. On 9 April, the 183rd Infantry Brigade ceased to exist as a formation and formed HQ Residue Concentration Area to aid the invasion preparation. The 4th Battalion, Northamptonshire Regiment and the 10th Battalion, Worcestershire Regiment were attached to 21st Army Group to aid 185th Camouflage Field Company, Royal Engineers. The men of the 4th Northamptonshire Regiment created 150 fake Landing Craft Tanks (LCTs), made from steel tubing and canvas, and positioned them along the River Deben at Ipswich, as well as at Oulton Broad, Lowestoft and Great Yarmouth. The 10th Worcestershire Regiment constructed fake landing craft at Dover, Folkestone, and Harwich, in addition to fake LCTs on the River Orwell. By 6 June, the battalion had constructed 122 such dummy displays. In May, as part of Operation Fortitude, Juan Pujol García (the British double agent known as Garbo) reported to the Germans that the division was ostensibly based around Brighton and Newhaven. Here, along with the 45th Infantry Division and Royal Marines, it allegedly took part in the build-up of the notional First United States Army Group (FUSAG). The division was then made part of the fictional British VII Corps, part of the equally fake Fourth Army, and "travelled" to Scotland before returning south to FUSAG. Furthermore, signallers from the division maintained wireless traffic to give the Germans the impression that VII Corps also included the notional 80th Division.
By mid-1944, the five Lower Establishment divisions allocated to home defence duties (the 38th (Welsh), the 45th, the 47th (London), the 55th (West Lancashire), and the 61st) had a combined total of 17,845 men. Of this number, around 13,000 were available as replacements for the 21st Army Group fighting in France. The remaining 4,800 men were considered ineligible at that time for service abroad for a variety of reasons, including a lack of training or being medically unfit. Over the following six months, up to 75 per cent of these men would be deployed to reinforce 21st Army Group following the completion of their training and certification of fitness. For example, those eligible for overseas service from the 9th Battalion, Worcestershire Regiment, were transferred to 21st Army Group. The battalion was then tasked with training those who were considered unfit, re-training soldiers who had recovered from wounds, and training men from anti-aircraft units to become infantry. On 18 July, HQ Residue Concentration Area reverted to its former infantry role. Two days later, the brigade staff of 184th Infantry Brigade became the headquarters of 183rd Infantry Brigade and likewise the headquarters staff of the 183rd became HQ 184th Infantry Brigade. In August, the 4th Northamptonshire was transferred to Force 135 that was planning to end the German occupation of the Channel Islands. Such an attack did not materialise, and the entire force was transferred to Europe to reinforce the 21st Army Group. On 1 September, the 184th Infantry Brigade (while remaining part of the division) was transferred to the Orkney and Shetland Islands for a two-month stint as the defensive garrison. Over the remainder of the year, and into 1945, the makeup of the division changed but its role remained the same. For example, the role of 4th Battalion, Devonshire Regiment, was to find drafts for other battalions fighting overseas.
### Light division, and disbandment
In August 1945, at the conclusion of the war in Europe, the 61st Division was reorganised as a light division. The light division concept had been undertaken during the Burma campaign following the initial defeats. Historian F.W. Perry commented that the Indian Army concluded that "existing Indian formations were over-mechanised and road-bound". Therefore, the surviving 17th Indian Division was reorganised as a light division. This included being reduced to two infantry brigades, all non-cross country capable vehicles being replaced with mules, jeeps, and four-wheel drive trucks, and the field artillery either completely replaced by pack howitzers or mechanised. These changes greatly increased the off-road mobility, and the increase in pack animals allowed it to operate away from a road network for an extended period of time.
The 61st Division retained its three infantry brigades, although there were changes to the divisional troops along the above lines. It was intended that the division would be able to be transferred by air to any theatre of war, and its personnel trained to fight in any terrain encountered. Once on the ground, the entire division would be mobile utilizing only jeeps. To help adapt to this new role, training exercises were carried out. The initial destination for the division was the Far East to support the fight against Imperial Japan, but the Japanese surrender resulted in the move being cancelled, and the division never left the United Kingdom. In November 1945, the division, over six years after it was formed, was disbanded.
## Order of battle
## See also
- List of British divisions in World War II
- British Army Order of Battle (September 1939) |
2,954,514 | Arthur Irwin | 1,166,467,402 | American baseball player and manager (1858–1921) | [
"1858 births",
"1921 deaths",
"1921 suicides",
"19th-century baseball players",
"Baseball players from Toronto",
"Boston Reds (AA) players",
"Boston Reds (PL) players",
"Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame inductees",
"Canadian expatriate baseball players in the United States",
"Kansas City Blues (baseball) managers",
"Major League Baseball player-managers",
"Major League Baseball players from Canada",
"Major League Baseball shortstops",
"Major League Baseball umpires",
"New York Giants (NL) managers",
"New York Yankees scouts",
"Penn Quakers baseball coaches",
"People who died at sea",
"Philadelphia Phillies managers",
"Philadelphia Quakers players",
"Providence Grays players",
"Suicides by jumping",
"Toronto Maple Leafs (International League) managers",
"Washington Nationals (1886–1889) managers",
"Washington Nationals (1886–1889) players",
"Washington Senators (1891–1899) managers",
"Washington Senators (NL) managers",
"Worcester Grays players",
"Worcester Ruby Legs players"
] | Arthur Albert Irwin (February 14, 1858 – July 16, 1921), nicknamed "Doc", "Sandy", "Cutrate" or "Foxy", was a Canadian-American shortstop and manager in Major League Baseball (MLB) during the late nineteenth century. He played regularly in the major leagues for eleven years, spending two of those seasons as a player-manager. He played on the 1884 Providence Grays team which won the first interleague series to decide the world champions of baseball. Irwin then served as a major league manager for several years.
Irwin occupied numerous baseball roles in the latter years of his career, having spent time as a college baseball coach, a major league scout and business manager, a minor league owner and manager, and a National League umpire. For most of Irwin's career, the collegiate and professional baseball schedules allowed him to hold positions at both levels in the same year.
Irwin also produced several innovations which impacted sports. He took the field with the first baseball fielder's glove, invented a type of football scoreboard, promoted motor-paced cycling tracks and ran a short-lived professional soccer league.
Irwin became terminally ill with cancer in the last weeks of his life. Shortly after his death from an apparent suicide, Irwin made headlines when it was discovered that two wives and families survived him in separate cities. He had been married to one woman since the 1880s and to the other since the 1890s. He was posthumously elected to the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame in 1989.
## Early life
Arthur Irwin was born in 1858 in Toronto, Canada West, to an Irish blacksmith and a Canadian mother. As a child, he moved with his family to Boston and attended school there. He played local amateur baseball from 1873 until he was recruited by the Worcester team of the National Association in 1879.
In late 1879, manager Frank Bancroft took Irwin and most of the other Worcester players on a baseball tour which included visits to New Orleans and Cuba. The team, which traveled under the name of the Hop Bitters (the usual nickname of a different National Association team), returned to the United States after only a few days due to financial and contractual difficulties. The team may have played as few as two games in Cuba.
## Baseball career
### Playing days
Irwin's major league career began when the Ruby Legs moved into the National League (NL) in 1880. He led the league in assists in his rookie season, and remained with the team through 1882, when it folded due to poor attendance. Irwin next spent three seasons with the Providence Grays, and was captain and starting shortstop of the 1884 Providence team that became world champions. The 1884 Grays featured star pitchers Charles Radbourn and Charlie Sweeney; the two hurlers did not get along well, and Sweeney left the team in the middle of the season. The club folded after a fourth-place finish in 1885.
Irwin moved on to the recently formed Philadelphia Phillies in 1886 where he was named team captain during spring training. Tragedy struck the Philadelphia squad in 1888 when pitcher Charlie Ferguson developed typhoid fever, dying at Irwin's home.
During the 1889 season, Irwin went to the Washington Nationals for his first opportunity as player-manager, although the team folded at the end of the season. He next played for the Boston Reds in the Players' League in 1890. That same year, Irwin coached the baseball team at Dartmouth College. While Irwin served as a player-manager for Boston in 1890, he was able to focus on the managerial role for the team in 1891. That year the team signed his brother, John Irwin, on May 21. Newspapers brought accusations of nepotism and criticized John's mediocre play. John Irwin was released by Boston on July 16, and his major league playing career was over by the next month.
Although Irwin's regular playing career ended after the 1890 season, he appeared in six games while managing the Boston team after it moved to the American Association in 1891. He also played in one game while managing the 1894 Philadelphia Phillies. A left-handed hitter, Irwin finished his playing career with 1,015 games played and batted .241 in 4,190 plate appearances. He tallied 396 runs batted in and 552 runs scored. Stolen bases were not awarded until 1886, but Irwin tallied 93 stolen bases in his last 532 games. He recorded an .878 career fielding percentage, committing 647 errors in 5,317 fielding chances. Irwin played 947 games at shortstop and 56 games at third base. He also appeared at second base, pitcher and catcher.
### Early non-playing roles
Irwin coached at the University of Pennsylvania between 1893 and 1895, and managed the Philadelphia major league club during those last two seasons.
In 1894, he angered Penn supporters when a talented first baseman named Goeckle nearly signed with Irwin's major league team just prior to a series of collegiate championship games. Nonetheless, by 1895, Irwin's coaching role at Penn included the selection of players and other duties that traditionally fell to the team captain. Irwin left Philadelphia in 1896 to manage the New York Giants. Relieved of his duties after one season in New York, he was subsequently recruited to manage in Milwaukee. However, he returned to coach the minor league team in his native Toronto instead.
Irwin coached Toronto during 1897 and 1898. He faced arrest on a libel charge in 1898, which stemmed from comments made by Irwin about the actions of the Philadelphia ownership during his time there. Though Irwin turned himself in, it appears that he was never arrested. In 1898, Irwin traded some of his best players to the Washington major league team. The moves were seen as particularly suspect when Irwin was named the Washington manager shortly thereafter. After 1899, Irwin did not return to the major leagues as a coach. He returned for a subsequent term as Penn's coach in 1900, but he left in 1902. In August 1902, Irwin was signed as an NL umpire for the remainder of that season. Irwin, who had previously only filled in for one three-day umpiring stretch in 1881, umpired his first NL game on August 7, 1902. His last umpiring appearance came with the end of the 1902 season on October 3. In fifty games as an umpire, Irwin ejected nine players, including future Hall of Fame inductees Roger Bresnahan and Fred Clarke. Irwin, who had retained partial ownership of the Toronto club, then returned to manage that team for a couple of seasons.
By 1906, Irwin was manager of the Altoona Mountaineers in the Tri-State League. In July 1907, Irwin resigned as manager of the Mountaineers after fans became disgruntled. Even after entering baseball scouting, Irwin briefly managed the 1908 Washington club in the short-lived Union Professional League. The league was plagued by financial problems—including the inability to pay players at times—and it folded less than two months after play began. He was rehired to the Penn coaching staff in 1908.
### Scouting
In the summer of 1907, Irwin became a scout for the New York Highlanders. In 1909, New York manager George Stallings rented an apartment overlooking Hilltop Park and sent Irwin up to steal signs from the opposing team. Using a system of binoculars and mirrors, Irwin read the signs and flashed them back to Stallings so they could be relayed to the batter. By 1912, almost the entire Highlanders roster had been scouted by Irwin. In a newspaper interview covering his scouting career, Irwin asserted that he preferred signing young prospects over expensive stars. "The chances are better with a young player, for by getting him early you can gradually break him into the style of play the team is using", he said.
In December 1912, New York president Frank J. Farrell promoted Irwin from scout to business manager. Upon his promotion, a statement from the team said, "He has been of such service to the club in numerous ways that Mr. Farrell has invested him with full power to look after business details in future." The poor relationship between Irwin and New York manager Frank Chance was a factor in the manager's 1914 resignation after two years of a three-year contract. The New York Times said that Chance "did not think it was possible to collect so many mediocre players on one major league club." Irwin remained with the Highlanders until Farrell sold the team to Jacob Ruppert and T.L. Huston. Upon the sale of the team, Irwin and several other Highlanders personnel submitted their resignations.
### Later coaching career
Irwin became part-owner of the Lewiston Cupids in 1915 and managed that club in the final season of the original New England League. The 1915 Cupids featured 16-year-old Cuban pitcher Oscar Tuero, who won 17 games in his third professional season. The team did not win the pennant that year, but the race came down to the final days of the season. Irwin and Christy Mathewson were considered for a coaching position at Harvard College that year, but former Highlanders catcher and professional scout Fred Mitchell was ultimately selected. In 1916, Irwin publicly accused Philadelphia's Connie Mack of underhanded dealings in obtaining third baseman Jim Ritter from Baltimore. He said that Mack convinced the New England League's Baltimore club to draft Ritter so that Mack could later obtain him cheaply. Mack was outraged at the accusations and immediately severed all connections with the player. Ritter never appeared in a major league game.
Irwin managed the Rochester Hustlers between 1918 and 1920. Rochester was not successful under Irwin; the 1920 Hustlers finished with 45 wins and 106 losses. Cray L. Remington of the Rochester Evening Journal later wrote, "Local fans used to pan Arthur Irwin in the old days when Arthur was as innocent of wrong as the little sparrows on the limbs. Arthur's job was to win ball games minus talent. He couldn't do it." While managing the Eastern League's Hartford Senators in 1921 against a New York semi-pro team, Irwin noticed the play of Lou Gehrig and convinced him to sign his first professional contract with Hartford. Gehrig had already committed to play at Columbia University and professional experience would affect his collegiate eligibility, so he began playing for Hartford using assumed names like Lou Lewis. However, Columbia found out about Gehrig's play and the slugger was forced to sit out of college baseball for a year.
## Sports innovations
While playing with Providence in 1883, Irwin broke the third and fourth fingers of his left hand. Not wanting to miss any games, he obtained an oversized buckskin driving glove, padded it and sewed the third and fourth fingers together to allow space for bandages. He used the glove even after his fingers healed. John Montgomery Ward of New York soon took the field with a similar glove. By the following season, almost every professional player was using the "Irwin glove." Prior to 1884, use of gloves was limited to first basemen and catchers. In 1882, Irwin committed a league-high 78 errors in 84 games. He committed 66 errors in 98 games the following year. Over his next two seasons with the glove, Irwin committed 98 errors in 163 games.
Irwin organized and was president of the American League of Professional Football (ALPF) for its lone season in 1894. The organization represented the first American professional soccer league. Teams in the league were named after their MLB counterparts in the same cities. Some of the active baseball managers served as coaches for the soccer teams, and fans were sometimes enticed by the rumor of MLB players who might participate in the league. Irwin was also involved in an attempt to popularize roller polo.
Irwin developed and patented a football scoreboard, which was in use in the Ivy League by the 1890s. The large scoreboard featured a miniature representation of a football field, and the ball moved along the board to report each play. By 1915, Irwin's scoreboards were featured at each end of the field for the Army-Navy game at the Polo Grounds.
## Other influence
Irwin owned athletic facilities in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and negotiated with baseball officials about bringing organized baseball there in 1900. Irwin opened a motor-paced bicycle racing track in the city in July 1902. His focus on the bicycle track enterprise had been a factor in his resignation from the Penn coaching staff in 1902. He also became involved with the Hartford Avenue Colosseum Company and oversaw its Philadelphia bicycle track.
## Death
On June 21, 1921, Irwin gave up his managerial role with the Hartford club in the Eastern League due to health concerns. He was experiencing abdominal trouble and severe nervous attacks. Irwin was diagnosed with stomach cancer; he had lost 60 pounds in two weeks. While in the hospital, he was told that he only had a few days to live. While traveling from New York City to Boston on the vessel Calvin Austin, Irwin was lost overboard in an apparent suicide on July 16. Shortly after his death, a theory emerged that Irwin had been robbed for \$5,000 and then murdered aboard the ship. This theory was discounted when it was learned from family members that Irwin had taken only \$35 on the trip. When Irwin was last seen aboard the ship around midnight on July 16, he told a friend that he was "coming home to his brother John's to die."
During the investigation into Irwin's disappearance and death, two widows emerged; one lived in Boston and the other lived in New York. He first married Elizabeth, the woman in Boston, in 1883. Together they had three children, including a son who was 37 at the time of Irwin's death, and nine grandchildren. In the 1890s he married again, this time in Philadelphia to May, a woman he met while coaching baseball at the University of Pennsylvania. They settled in New York and had a son who was 24 when Irwin died.
In his final days, Irwin sold his rights from his scoreboard business for \$2000. Though he sent \$1500 to May and only \$500 to Elizabeth, his Boston widow was surprised at the gesture since Irwin rarely visited Boston and provided almost no financial support to their family. In fact, May said that he had not been away from New York for more than a few days at a time in 27 years. She said that his only long trips were baseball-related, when he would scout players in other cities. Before he left New York for the final time, he told May that he was going to say goodbye to friends in Boston and that he would return to New York. Though neither woman knew of the other, Irwin's New York son Harold learned about an unknown brother while he was visiting his father in the hospital just before Irwin's death.
In 1989, Irwin was posthumously inducted into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame.
## See also
- List of Major League Baseball player–managers
- List of Major League Baseball umpires |
52,754 | Final Fantasy IV | 1,172,844,567 | 1991 video game | [
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] | known as Final Fantasy II for its initial North American release, is a role-playing video game developed and published by Square (now Square Enix) for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Released in 1991, it is the fourth main installment of the Final Fantasy series. The game's story follows Cecil, a dark knight, as he tries to prevent the sorcerer Golbez from seizing powerful crystals and destroying the world. He is joined on this quest by a frequently changing group of allies. Final Fantasy IV introduced innovations that became staples of the Final Fantasy series and role-playing games in general. Its "Active Time Battle" system was used in five subsequent Final Fantasy games, and unlike prior games in the series, IV gave each character their own unchangeable character class.
Final Fantasy IV has been ported to several other platforms with varying differences. A remake, also called Final Fantasy IV, with 3D graphics was released for the Nintendo DS in 2007 and 2008. The game was re-titled Final Fantasy II during its initial release outside Japan as the original II and III had not been released outside Japan at the time. All later localizations of Final Fantasy IV, which began to appear after Final Fantasy VII (released worldwide under that title), used the original title.
The various incarnations of the game have sold more than four million copies worldwide. A sequel, Final Fantasy IV: The After Years, was released for Japanese mobile phones in 2008, and worldwide via the Wii Shop Channel on June 1, 2009. In 2011, both Final Fantasy IV and The After Years were released for the PlayStation Portable as part of the compilation Final Fantasy IV: The Complete Collection, which also included a new game, set between the two; Final Fantasy IV: Interlude. Ports of the Nintendo DS remake were released for iOS in 2012, for Android in 2013 and for Windows in 2014. Another enhanced port of FFIV was released as part of the Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster compilation series for iOS, Android and Windows in 2021, and for Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4 in 2023.
Retrospectively, Final Fantasy IV is often regarded as one of the greatest video games of all time, noting that it pioneered many now common console role-playing game features, including the concept of dramatic storytelling in an RPG. It has been included in various lists of the best games of all time, by IGN (at \#9 in 2003) as the highest-ranking RPG, as well as Famitsu in 2006 reader poll among the best games ever made. It also appeared in various rankings for Best Games of All Time for Electronic Gaming Monthly in 2001 and 2006, Game Informer in 2001 and 2009, GameSpot in 2005, and GameFAQs in 2005, 2009 and 2014.
## Gameplay
In Final Fantasy IV, the player controls a large cast of characters and completes quests to advance the story. Characters move and interact with people and objects on a field map, which may represent a variety of settings, such as towers, caves, and forests. Travel between areas occurs on the overworld. The player can use towns to replenish strength, buy equipment, and discover clues about their next destination. Conversely, the player fights monsters at random intervals on the overworld and in dungeons. In battle, the player has the option to fight, use magic or an item, retreat, change character positions, parry, or pause. Certain characters have special abilities. The game was the first in the series to allow the player to control up to five characters in their party; previous games had limited the party to four.
Player characters and monsters have hit points (HP), with the characters' HP captioned below the main battle screen. Attacks reduce remaining HP until none are left, at which point the character faints or the monster dies. If all characters are defeated, the game must be restored from a saved game file. The player can restore the characters' hit points by having them sleep in an inn or use items in the party's inventory, such as potions, as well as using healing magic spells. Equipment (such as swords and armor) bought in towns or found in dungeons can be used to increase damage inflicted on monsters or minimize damage received. The player can choose whether characters appear on the front line of a battle or in the back. A character's placement impacts damage received and inflicted depending on the type of attack.
Final Fantasy IV introduced Square's Active Time Battle (ATB) system, which differed from the turn-based designs of previous RPGs. The ATB system centers on the player inputting orders for the characters in real time during battles. The system was used in many subsequent Square games.
Each character has certain strengths and weaknesses; for instance, a strong magic user may have low defense, while a physical fighter may have low agility. Like other Final Fantasy games, characters gain new, more powerful abilities with battle experience. Magic is classified as either "White" for healing and support; "Black" for offense; or "Summon" (or "call") for summoning monsters to attack or carry out specialized tasks. A fourth type, "Ninjutsu", consists of support and offensive magic and is available to only one character. Magic users, who account for eight of the twelve playable characters, gain magic spells at preprogrammed experience levels or fixed story events. The game includes balanced point gains, items, and rewards to eliminate long sessions of grinding. Due to the Super NES' greater processing power, Final Fantasy IV contains improved graphics when compared to previous Final Fantasy titles, all of which were released on the NES. The game employs the Super NES' Mode 7 technology to give enhanced magic spell visuals and to make airship travel more dramatic by scaling and tilting the ground for a bird's eye view.
## Plot
### Setting
Most of Final Fantasy IV takes place on Earth, also known as the Blue Planet, which consists of a surface world (or Overworld), inhabited by humans, and an underground world (or Underworld), inhabited by the Dwarves. An artificial moon orbits the planet, upon which the Lunarians live. The Lunarians are a race of beings originally from a world which was destroyed, becoming the asteroid belt surrounding the Blue Planet, and are identified by a moon-shape crest on their foreheads. They created the artificial moon, resting until a time when they believe their kind can co-exist with humans. A second, natural moon orbits the Blue Planet as well, although it is never visited in the game.
### Characters
Final Fantasy IV offers twelve playable characters, each with a unique, unchangeable character class. During the game, the player can have a total of five, or fewer, characters in the party at any given time. The main character, Cecil Harvey, is a dark knight and the captain of the Red Wings, an elite air force unit of the kingdom of Baron. He serves the king alongside his childhood friend Kain Highwind, the commander of the Dragoons. Rosa Farrell is a white mage and archer, as well as Cecil's love interest. The Red Wings' airships were constructed by Cecil's friend, the engineer Cid Pollendina.
During his quest, Cecil is joined by others, including Rydia, a young summoner from the village of Mist; Tellah, a legendary sage; Edward Chris von Muir, the prince of Damcyan who is a bard as well as the husband of Tellah's daughter Anna; Yang Fang Leiden, the head of the monks of Fabul; Palom and Porom, a black mage and a white mage, twin apprentices from the magical village of Mysidia; Edward "Edge" Geraldine, the ninja prince of Eblan; and Fusoya, the guardian of the Lunarians during their long sleep.
Zemus is the main antagonist of the game. He is a Lunarian who wishes to destroy the human race so that his people can populate the earth. He uses Golbez to do this by controlling him and Kain with his psychic powers to activate the Giant of Babil, a huge machine created to carry out the genocide and take over the world.
### Story
The Red Wings attack the city of Mysidia to steal their Water Crystal, and return to the Kingdom of Baron. Afterwards, when Cecil, Captain of the Red Wings, questions the king's motives, he is stripped of his rank and sent with Kain, his friend and Captain of the Dragoons, to deliver a ring to the Village of Mist. There, Kain and Cecil watch in horror as monsters burst forth from inside the ring and lay waste to the village. A young girl, Rydia, is the only survivor and summons a monster named Titan in anger. This monster causes an earthquake, separating Cecil and Kain. Cecil awakens afterward and takes the wounded Rydia to a nearby inn. Baron soldiers come for Rydia but Cecil defends her, and she joins him on his journey.
It is revealed that Rosa, Cecil's love interest, had followed him and is extremely ill with a fever. Soon after this, Cecil and Rydia meet Tellah, who is going to Damcyan Castle to retrieve his eloping daughter, Anna. However, Anna is killed when the Red Wings bomb the castle. Edward, Anna's lover and the prince of Damcyan, explains that the Red Wings' new commander, Golbez, did this to steal the Fire Crystal for Baron as they had stolen the Water Crystal from Mysidia. Tellah leaves the party to exact revenge on Golbez for Anna's death. After finding a cure for Rosa, the party decides to go to Fabul to protect the Wind Crystal. On the way there they meet Master Yang, a warrior monk serviced to the kingdom and the protection of the crystal. The Red Wings attack Fabul, and Kain reappears as one of Golbez's servants. He attacks and defeats Cecil; when Rosa intervenes, Golbez kidnaps her and Kain takes the crystal. On the way back to Baron, the party is attacked by Leviathan and separated.
Cecil awakes alone near Mysidia. When he enters the town, he finds that its residents deeply resent him for the prior attack on their town. Through the Elder of Mysidia, he learns that to defeat Golbez, he must climb Mt. Ordeals and become a Paladin. Before embarking on his journey, he is joined by the twin mages, Palom and Porom. On the mountain he encounters Tellah, who is searching for the forbidden spell Meteor to defeat Golbez. After defeating the fiend Scarmiglione and casting aside the darkness within himself, Cecil becomes a Paladin, while Tellah learns the secret of Meteor. Upon reaching Baron, the party discovers an amnesiac Yang and return him to his senses. The party then confronts the King, only to discover that he is an imposter and one of Golbez's minions, Cagnazzo. After defeating him, Cid arrives and takes them to one of his airships, the Enterprise. On the way, the party enters a room booby-trapped by Cagnazzo, where Palom and Porom sacrifice themselves to save Cecil, Tellah, Cid, and Yang.
On the airship, Kain appears and demands Cecil retrieve the final crystal in exchange for Rosa's life, which the party obtains with assistance from a bedridden Edward. Kain then leads the party to the Tower of Zot, where Rosa is imprisoned. At the tower's summit, Golbez takes the crystal and attempts to flee. Tellah casts Meteor to stop Golbez, sacrificing his own life in the process, but the spell only weakens Golbez, ending his mind control of Kain. Kain helps Cecil rescue Rosa, and defeat Barbariccia another fiend before Rosa teleports the party out of the collapsing tower to Baron.
In Baron, Kain reveals that Golbez must also obtain four subterranean "Dark Crystals" to achieve his goal of reaching the Moon. The party travels to the underworld and encounter the Dwarves, who are currently fighting the Red Wings. They defeat Golbez thanks to a sudden appearance by Rydia, now a young woman due to her time spent in the Feymarch, the home of the Eidolons. However, the party ultimately fails to prevent Golbez from stealing the Dwarves' crystal. With the help of the Dwarves, they enter the Tower of Babil in order to obtain the crystals Golbez has stored there, only to find that they have been moved to a surface portion of the tower. Yang later sacrifices himself in order to stop the tower's cannons from firing on the Dwarves (though he's later revealed to have survived). After escaping a trap set by Golbez, the party flees the underworld aboard the Enterprise, with Cid sacrificing himself to reseal the passage between the two worlds and to prevent the Red Wings from continuing their pursuit. The party, now joined by Edge, the prince of Eblan, travels back to the Tower of Babil in order to take back the stolen crystals and revenge himself upon Rubicante the last of the fiends. Upon reaching the crystal room, however, the party falls through a trap door to the underworld. Meeting with the Dwarves once again and finding Cid to be alive, the party sets out to retrieve the eighth crystal before Golbez can. When the crystal is obtained, Golbez appears and reveals he still has control over Kain, while taking the crystal for himself. After learning of the Lunar Whale, a ship designed to take travelers to and from the moon, the party return to Mysidia where the town's Elder and mages summon the ship.
Arriving on the Moon, the party meets the sage Fusoya, who explains that Cecil's father was a Lunarian. Fusoya also explains that a Lunarian named Zemus plans to destroy life on the Blue Planet so that the Lunarians can take over, using Golbez to summon the Giant of Babil, a colossal robot. The party returns to Earth and the forces of the two worlds attack the Giant, including Palom and Porom, who have been revived. After the party breaks the robot, Golbez and Kain confront them, only to have Fusoya break Zemus' control over Golbez, in turn releasing Kain. Cecil learns that Golbez is his older brother. Golbez and Fusoya head to the core of the Moon to defeat Zemus, and Cecil's party follows. In the Moon's core, the party witnesses Golbez and Fusoya kill Zemus, but then quickly fall to an evil spirit named Zeromus, the embodiment of all of Zemus' hatred and rage. Back on Earth, the Elder of Mysidia entreats all of Cecil's allies and friends to pray for the party, which gives Cecil and his allies the strength to fight and destroy Zeromus. Following the battle, Fusoya and Golbez opt to leave Earth with the moon. Cecil, at last accepting the truth, acknowledges Golbez as his brother, and bids him farewell.
During the epilogue, most of the cast reunites to celebrate Cecil and Rosa's wedding and their coronation as Baron's new king and queen, while Kain is seen atop Mount Ordeals, having vowed to atone for his misdeeds.
## Development
After completing Final Fantasy III in 1990, Square planned to develop two Final Fantasy games—one for the Famicom and the other for the forthcoming Super Famicom, to be known as Final Fantasy IV and V respectively. Due to financial and scheduling constraints, Square dropped plans for the Famicom game and continued development of the Super Famicom version, retitled Final Fantasy IV. A mock-up screenshot of the cancelled title was produced for a Japanese magazine, but little other information exists about it. Series creator and director Hironobu Sakaguchi has stated that the Famicom version was approximately 80% complete and certain ideas were reused for the Super Famicom version.
Final Fantasy IV was lead designer Takashi Tokita's first project at Square as a full-time employee. Before this, Tokita wanted a career as a theater actor, but working on the game made him decide to become a "great creator" of video games. Initially Hiromichi Tanaka, the main designer of Final Fantasy III, was also involved in the development of the game. However, Tanaka wanted to create a seamless battle system that had no separate battle screen and was not menu-driven, and since Final Fantasy IV was not going in that direction, he changed development teams to work on the action RPG Secret of Mana instead. According to Tanaka, he originally wanted the title to have a "more action-based, dynamic overworld" but it "wound up not being" Final Fantasy IV anymore, instead becoming a separate project that eventually became Seiken Densetsu 2 (Secret of Mana), which was codenamed "Chrono Trigger" during development. The development team of Final Fantasy IV contained 14 people in total, and the game was completed in roughly one year.
Initial ideas were contributed by Sakaguchi, including the entire story and the name of Baron's royal air force, the "Red Wings". The Active Time Battle (ATB) system was conceived and designed by Hiroyuki Ito when he was inspired while watching a Formula One race and seeing racers pass each other at different speeds. This gave him the idea of different speed values for the individual characters. The system was developed by Kazuhiko Aoki, Ito and Akihiko Matsui. As the game's lead designer, Tokita wrote the scenario and contributed pixel art. He said that there was a lot of pressure and that the project would not have been completed if he did not work diligently on it. According to Tokita, Final Fantasy IV was designed with the best parts of the previous three installments in mind: the job system of Final Fantasy III, the focus on story of the second game, and the four elemental bosses acting as "symbols for the game" as in the first installment. Other influences include Dragon Quest II. The themes of the game were to go "from darkness to light" with Cecil, a focus on family and friendship among the large and diverse cast, and the idea that "brute strength alone isn't power". Tokita feels that Final Fantasy IV is the first game in the series to really pick up on drama, and the first Japanese RPG to feature deep characters and plot.
The game's script had to be reduced to one fourth of its original length due to cartridge storage limits, but Tokita made sure only "unnecessary dialogue" was cut, rather than actual story elements. As the graphical capacities of the Super Famicom allowed regular series character designer Yoshitaka Amano to make more elaborate character designs than in the previous installments, with the characters' personalities already evident from the images, Tokita felt the reduced script length improved the pacing of the game. Still, he acknowledges that some parts of the story were "unclear" or were not "looked at in depth" until later ports and remakes. One of the ideas not included, due to time and space constraints, was a dungeon near the end of the game where each character would have to progress on their own—this dungeon would only be included in the Game Boy Advance version of the game, as the Lunar Ruins.
### Music
The score of Final Fantasy IV was written by longtime series composer Nobuo Uematsu. Uematsu has noted that the process of composing was excruciating, involving trial and error and requiring the sound staff to spend several nights in sleeping bags at Square's headquarters. His liner notes were humorously signed as being written at 1:30 AM "in the office, naturally". The score was well received; reviewers have praised the quality of the composition despite the limited medium. The track "Theme of Love" has even been taught to Japanese school children as part of the music curriculum. Uematsu continues to perform certain pieces in his Final Fantasy concert series.
Three albums of music from Final Fantasy IV have been released in Japan. The first album, Final Fantasy IV: Original Sound Version, was released on June 14, 1991, and contains 44 tracks from the game. The second album, Final Fantasy IV: Celtic Moon, was released on October 24 the same year, and contains a selection of tracks from the game, arranged and performed by Celtic musician Máire Breatnach. Lastly, Final Fantasy IV Piano Collections, an arrangement of tracks for solo piano performed by Toshiyuki Mori, was released on April 21, 1992, and began the Piano Collections trend for each successive Final Fantasy game. Several tracks have appeared on Final Fantasy compilation albums produced by Square, including The Black Mages and Final Fantasy: Pray. Independent but officially licensed releases of Final Fantasy IV music have been orchestrated by such groups as Project Majestic Mix, which focuses on arranging video game music. Selections also appear on Japanese remix albums, called dōjin music, and on English remixing websites such as OverClocked ReMix.
### North American localization
Because the previous two installments of the Final Fantasy series had not been localized and released in North America at the time, Final Fantasy IV was distributed as Final Fantasy II to maintain naming continuity. This remained the norm until the release of Final Fantasy VII in North America (after the release of Final Fantasy VI under the title of Final Fantasy III) and subsequent releases of the original Final Fantasy II and III on various platforms. Final Fantasy II has since gone under the title Final Fantasy IV.
The English localization of Final Fantasy IV retains the storyline, graphics, and sound of the original, but the developers significantly reduced the difficulty for beginning gamers. Square was worried that western fans would find it difficult to adjust to the game's complexity due to not having played the previous two entries, so decreased the overall depth considerably. Other changes include the removal of overt Judeo-Christian religious references and certain potentially objectionable graphics. For example, the magic spell "Holy" was renamed "White", and all references to prayer were eliminated; the Tower of Prayers in Mysidia was renamed the Tower of Wishes. Direct references to death were also omitted, although several characters clearly die during the course of the game. The translation was changed in accordance with Nintendo of America's censorship policies (at a time before the formation of the ESRB and its rating system).
## Re-releases
In addition to its original release, Final Fantasy IV has been remade into many different versions. The first of these was Final Fantasy IV Easy Type, a modified version of the game which was released for the Super Famicom in Japan. In this version, the attack powers of weapons have been enhanced, while the protective abilities of certain spells and pieces of armor are amplified. The American release is partially based on Easy Type.
A PlayStation port debuted in Japan on March 21, 1997. Ported by Tose and published by Square, it was designed and directed by Kazuhiko Aoki, supervised by Fumiaki Fukaya, and produced by Akihiro Imai. This version is identical to the original game, although minor tweaks introduced in the Easy Type are present. The most notable changes in the PlayStation release are the inclusion of a full motion video opening and ending sequence, the ability to move quickly in dungeons and towns by holding the Cancel button, and the option of performing a "memo" save anywhere on the world map. This version was released a second time in Japan in March 1999 as part of the Final Fantasy Collection package, which also included the PlayStation versions of Final Fantasy V and VI. Fifty-thousand limited edition copies of the collection were also released and included a Final Fantasy-themed alarm clock.
The PlayStation port was later released with Chrono Trigger in North America as part of Final Fantasy Chronicles in 2001 and with Final Fantasy V in Europe and Australia as part of Final Fantasy Anthology in 2002. The English localizations feature a new translation, although certain translated lines from the previous localization by Kaoru Moriyama, such as "You spoony bard!", were kept, as they had become fan favorites. A remake for the WonderSwan Color, with few changes from the PlayStation version, was released in Japan on March 28, 2002. Character sprites and backgrounds were graphically enhanced through heightened details and color shading.
Final Fantasy IV was ported again by Tose for the Game Boy Advance and published as Final Fantasy IV Advance (ファイナルファンタジーIVアドバンス, Fainaru Fantajī Fō Adobansu). It was released in North America by Nintendo of America on December 12, 2005; in Japan by Square Enix on December 15; in Australia on February 23, 2006; and in Europe on June 2. In Japan, a special version was available which included a limited edition Game Boy Micro with a themed face plate featuring artwork of Cecil and Kain. The enhanced graphics from the WonderSwan Color port were further improved, and minor changes were made to the music. The localization team revised the English translation, improving the flow of the story, and restoring plot details absent from the original. The abilities that were removed from the original North American release were re-added, while spells were renamed to follow the naming conventions of the Japanese version, changing "Bolt2" to "Thundara" for example. A new cave at Mt. Ordeals was added featuring powerful armor and stronger weapons for five additional characters, as was the Lunar Ruins, a dungeon accessible only at the end of the game.
The game was remade with 3D graphics for the Nintendo DS as part of the Final Fantasy series' 20th anniversary, and was released as Final Fantasy IV in Japan on December 20, 2007, in North America on July 22, 2008, and in Europe on September 5. The remake adds a number of features not present in the original, such as voice acting, minigames, and some changes to the basic gameplay. The game was developed by Matrix Software, the same team responsible for the Final Fantasy III DS remake, and was supervised by members of the original development team: Takashi Tokita served as executive producer and director, Tomoya Asano as producer and Hiroyuki Ito as battle designer. Animator Yoshinori Kanada storyboarded the new cutscenes.
The original version of the game was released on the Wii Virtual Console in Japan on August 4, 2009, and in PAL regions on June 11, 2010. An enhanced port for i-mode compatible phones was released in Japan on October 5, 2009. It retains features introduced in the Wonderswan Color and Game Boy Advance ports, while incorporating enhanced character graphics on par with those found in The After Years, as well as an exclusive "extra dungeon" available after completing the game.
Along with Final Fantasy IV: The After Years, the game was released for the PlayStation Portable as part of the compilation Final Fantasy IV: The Complete Collection. This version used updated 2D graphics, as opposed to the 3D graphics seen in the DS remake. The collection also includes a new episode called Final Fantasy IV: Interlude, which takes place between the original game and The After Years. Masashi Hamauzu arranged the main theme for the game. It was released worldwide in April 2011, with the exception of Japan in March. The PlayStation port was re-released as part of the Final Fantasy 25th Anniversary Ultimate Box Japanese package in December 2012.
In December 2012, the Nintendo DS version of Final Fantasy IV was released for the iOS and Android (June 2013) mobile platforms, introducing an optional easier difficulty level. Final Fantasy IV was also released for Windows in September 2014, with no prior advertisement.
The PlayStation version was released as a PSOne Classic in Japan on June 27, 2012, compatible with PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita and PlayStation Portable.
The Super Famicom version was released on the Wii U Virtual Console in Japan on February 19, 2014, while the Game Boy Advance version was released on April 13, 2016.
## Reception
The game received positive reviews upon release. Famitsu's panel of four reviewers gave it ratings of 9, 9, 10, and 8, adding up to an overall score of 36 out of 40, one of the highest scores it awarded to any game in 1991, second only to The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. In its November 1991 issue, Nintendo Power proclaimed it set a "new standard of excellence" for role-playing games. They praised the battles as being "more interesting than in previous RPGs" because the player "must make snap decisions" and the "enemies don't wait for you to make up your mind" and concluded that the "story, graphics, play and sound will keep fans riveted". Electronic Gaming Monthly' panel of four reviewers gave it ratings of 8, 9, 7, and 8, out of 10, adding up to 32 out of 40 overall. In its December 1991 issue, Ed Semrad, who gave it a 9, wrote that "Square has just redefined what the ultimate RPG should be like", noting the "spectacular Mode 7 effects, outstanding graphics and a quest unequalled in a video game", concluding that it "makes use of all the Super NES has to offer" and is "the best made to date!" Ken Williams (as Sushi-X), who gave it an 8, said that it is "a totally awesome RPG", the "storyline is actually coherent and the plot moves along with a combination of speaking sequences and battles". On the other hand, Martin Alessi, who disliked role-playing games, gave it a 7. They gave the game an award for 1991's Best RPG Video Game, stating that the "Mode 7 is great here and Square does a spectacular job in using it to zoom in and away from the planet" and that the "quest is huge and also one of the most difficult ever attempted in a video game".
GamePro rated it a perfect 5.0 out of 5 in all five categories (graphics, sound, control, fun factor, and challenge) in its March 1992 issue. The reviewer Monty Haul stated that it "truly redefines the standards for fantasy adventure games", proclaiming that "one-dimensional characters, needless hack 'em combat, and linear gameplay will be things of the past if other RPGs learn a lesson or two from this cart", concluding that it "is one small step for Square Soft, and one giant leap for SNES role-playing games". In the November 1993 issue of Dragon, Sandy Petersen gave it an "Excellent" rating. He criticized the "stylized" combat system and the graphics as "inferior" to Zelda, but praised how every "spell has a different on-screen effect" and the difficulty for being "just about right" where bosses "nearly beat you every time" unlike other RPGs such as Ultima where enough "adventuring" makes it possible to "trash" enemies "with ease". He praised the "great" music, preferring it over Zelda, stating what it "lacks in graphics, it more than makes up for in sound". He praised the story in particular, noting that, in a departure from other RPGs where the party always "sticks together through thick and thin", the characters have their own motives for joining and leaving the group, with one that "even betrays" them. He said that it is like "following the storyline of a fantasy novel", comparing it to The Lord of the Rings and Man in the Iron Mask, concluding that, because "the characters often spoke up for themselves", he "got much more attached" to the party "than in any other computer game".
Retrospectively, major reviewers have called Final Fantasy IV one of the greatest video games of all time, noting that it pioneered many now common console role-playing game features, including the concept of dramatic storytelling in an RPG. In a 1997 retrospective, GamePro credited it as "the first game where a turn-based combat system allowed you to change weapons, cast spells, and use items during a battle, and it featured some of the most exciting villains to date". Reviewers have praised the game for its graphics, gameplay and score, and have noted that Final Fantasy IV was one of the first role-playing games to feature a complex, involving plot. However, some retrospective reviews have criticized the game's original English-language translation.
It has been included in various lists of the best games of all time. Nintendo Power included it in the "100 Greatest Nintendo Games" lists, placing it ninth in 1997's issue 100, and twenty-eighth in 2005's issue 200. IGN included it in its top 100 lists of the greatest games of all time, ranking it \#9 in 2003, as the highest-ranking RPG, and at \#26 in 2005, as the highest rated Final Fantasy title on the list. In 2007, it was ranked at \#55, behind Final Fantasy VI and Final Fantasy Tactics. Famitsu released a reader poll in 2006 ranking it as the sixth best game ever made. It was also listed among the best games of all time by Electronic Gaming Monthly in 2001 and 2006, Game Informer in 2001 and 2009, GameSpot in 2005, and GameFAQs in 2005, 2009 and 2014.
Weekly Famitsu gave Final Fantasy Collection a score of 54 out of 60 points, scored by a panel of six reviewers. The Game Boy Advance version, Final Fantasy IV Advance, was met with praise from reviewers, although a few noted the game's graphics do not hold up well to current games, especially when compared to Final Fantasy VI. Reviewers noted that some fans may still nitpick certain errors in the new translation. The Nintendo DS version of the game was praised for its visuals, gameplay changes and new cutscenes. It was a nominee for Best RPG on the Nintendo DS in IGN's 2008 video game awards.
### Sales
Upon release in Japan, Final Fantasy IV sold about 200,000 cartridges on its first day, about 4.5 times less than what Final Fantasy V sold on its first day a year later, no doubt because audiences were hoping for more of the same. The Super Famicom version of Final Fantasy IV went on to sell 1.44 million copies in Japan.
The PlayStation version sold an additional 261,000 copies in Japan in 1997. By March 2003, the game, including the PlayStation and WonderSwan Color remakes, had shipped 2.16 million copies worldwide, with 1.82 million of those copies being shipped in Japan and 340,000 abroad. The Game Boy Advance version of the game sold over 219,000 copies in Japan by the end of 2006. As of 2007, just before the release of the Nintendo DS version, nearly 3 million copies of the game had been sold around the world. By May 2009, the DS version of the game had sold 1.1 million copies worldwide. According to Steam Spy, another 190,000 copies of the PC version were sold by April 2018.
In addition, Final Fantasy Collection, which includes Final Fantasy IV, sold over 400,000 copies in 1999. This makes it the 31st best selling release of that year in Japan.
## Legacy
Final Fantasy IV: The After Years, the sequel to Final Fantasy IV, is set seventeen years after the events of the original. The first two chapters of the game were released in Japan in February 2008 for NTT DoCoMo FOMA 903i series phones, and for au WIN BREW series phones in spring. The game revolves around Ceodore, the son of Cecil and Rosa, with most of the original cast members returning, some of whom are featured in more prominent roles than before, among other new characters. After the mobile release, The After Years was released outside Japan, for Wii's WiiWare service. The first two chapters were released in June 2009, in North America and PAL territories, with the additional chapters being released in the following months.
A two-volume novelization of Final Fantasy IV was released in Japan on December 25, 2008.
## See also
- List of Square Enix video game franchises |
17,320,805 | Leif Tronstad | 1,153,280,497 | Norwegian scientist and military officer (1903-1945) | [
"1903 births",
"1945 deaths",
"Academic staff of the Norwegian Institute of Technology",
"Burials at Vestre gravlund",
"Companions of the Distinguished Service Order",
"Deaths by firearm in Norway",
"Honorary Officers of the Order of the British Empire",
"Knights of the Legion of Honour",
"Norwegian Army personnel of World War II",
"Norwegian Institute of Technology alumni",
"Norwegian Special Operations Executive personnel",
"Norwegian male middle-distance runners",
"Norwegian military personnel killed in World War II",
"Norwegian resistance members",
"People educated at the Haagaas School",
"People from Bærum",
"Recipients of the Croix de Guerre 1939–1945 (France)",
"Recipients of the Medal of Freedom",
"Recipients of the War Cross with Sword (Norway)",
"Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters"
] | Leif Hans Larsen Tronstad DSO, OBE (27 March 1903 – 11 March 1945) was a Norwegian inorganic chemist, intelligence officer and military organizer. He graduated from the Norwegian Institute of Technology in 1927 and was a prolific researcher and writer of academic publications. A professor of chemistry at the Norwegian Institute of Technology from 1936, he was among the pioneers of heavy water research, and was instrumental when a heavy water plant was built at Vemork.
After the invasion of Norway by Germany during World War II, Tronstad conducted domestic resistance for one year before fleeing the country for England. There, he gathered valuable intelligence from Norwegian sources, both on the development of the V-2 rocket and the growing German interest in heavy water. In 1943 Tronstad planned Operation Gunnerside, in which the German access to heavy water processing at Vemork was severely impeded. His information about the V-2 rocket contributed to the massive Allied bombing of Peenemünde.
For a long time Tronstad had wanted to return to Norway to organize resistance work, however he was prevented by the Norwegian military authorities in Britain. In 1944, he did travel to Norway, to organize Operation Sunshine, for the defence of Norwegian infrastructure. After five months in the country, he was killed in action after his team had taken the local bailiff hostage.
## Early life
Tronstad was born in Bærum; the son of Hans Larsen and Josefine Amalie Tronstad, Hans died three months before Leif was born. Leif thus grew up in Sandvika with his mother and four siblings. He graduated from middle school in 1918, with top grades in mathematics. He then embarked on thirty months of professional practice in two local electricity companies, which was a requirement to enrol at Kristiania Technical School, a predecessor of the Faculty of Engineering at Oslo University College. When he enrolled in 1920 he chose technical chemistry instead of electronic engineering. He graduated in 1922, the best chemistry student; a fellow student recalled that he "did not have to read anything more than once" in order to remember it. In the spring of 1923, he also took the examen artium after attending the Haagaas School for one year. He was ready to enroll at the Norwegian Institute of Technology, but waited one year, possibly wanting to strengthen his personal finances. In the meantime, he started on his compulsory military service.
He was an accomplished athlete and helped his hometown club Grane SK to two Norwegian 4 × 1500 metres relay records. The records were set in 1921 and 1923, but broken by the team IL i BUL in 1926. His brother John, a bronze medalist in 1500 metres at the 1917 Norwegian championships, was on the relay team as well. Both brothers used their father's name Larsen at the time; Leif took up his mother's name Tronstad later.
In 1924 Tronstad moved to Trondheim to study at the Norwegian Institute of Technology, graduating in 1927. His graduation paper was deemed exceptional and as such was reported to King Haakon of Norway. Regarded as a fully-fledged academic work, it was published scientifically in 1928. Tronstad had taken various stray jobs while studying, and also finished his military service, reaching the rank of Second Lieutenant in the Norwegian Army Corps of Weaponry in 1927. From 1927 to 1928 Tronstad worked briefly as an assistant at the Norwegian Institute of Technology as well as in a private company in Kristiansand. In 1928 he returned to the Norwegian Institute of Technology as a research fellow. In the same year, Tronstad married Edla Obel, who was nine years his junior, in Trondheim. The couple had two children.
## Academic career
Tronstad spent the first year of a research period as an assistant to Herbert Freundlich in Dahlem, Berlin. He studied the passivity of metal surfaces, and made a breakthrough when he managed to measure extremely thin oxide surface coatings, thus solving a problem dating from the time of Michael Faraday. He continued to Stockholm to study metallography under Carl Benedicks, and to elaborate further on his results from Berlin. The work was completed in 1931 and his thesis, spanning 250 pages, was published in German as Optische Untersuchungen zur Frage der Passivität des Eisens und Stahls. For it, he received the doctorate degree. He was hired at the Norwegian Institute of Technology as a lecturer in the summer of 1931, although he spent the first year at the University of Cambridge, conducting further research with a scholarship from a memorial fund of Christian Michelsen. The research at Cambridge was a continuation of his thesis work, but this time he tested his method on mercury.
Following the death in 1934 of a professor of technical inorganic chemistry at the Norwegian Institute of Technology, Tronstad was appointed his successor on 17 April 1936, effective from 1 May. At the time, he was one of the youngest professors in Norway. He was a member of the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters, and in early 1940 he became vice president of the Norwegian Chemical Society. During his short scientific career, Tronstad penned about eighty scientific publications, including fourteen on heavy water-related topics.
The properties of heavy water had been discovered in 1932 by Harold Urey. In 1933, Leif Tronstad and Jomar Brun, the head of Norsk Hydro Rjukan, created a plan for industrial production of heavy water in Norway. As Norsk Hydro were already producing ammonia for nitrogen fertilizer, Tronstad and Brun had realized that large amounts of electrolyzed water were available. Tronstad was paid by Norsk Hydro as a consultant. Already in 1934, Norsk Hydro had opened a plant near the power station at Vemork. This was the world's first plant for industrial mass production of heavy water. Both French and German scientists expressed interest in the project.
## World War II
### German invasion of Norway
Tronstad, holding a military rank, had a standing order to report to the Norwegian military headquarters in Oslo in the face of a military peril. When Germany invaded Norway on 9 April 1940, he first informed his students of the situation, and then drove towards Oslo. He brought his wife and children with him, but having no intention of taking them to a possible theatre of war, he left them in the Drivdalen valley. He continued alone but shortly after, upon learning that Oslo was the first city to fall to the invaders, he stopped at Dovre. The family had a cabin in the vicinity. Here, he helped organize volunteers from local rifle associations to form a line of defence meant to repel any advancing German forces. German Fallschirmjäger paratroops did land at nearby Dombås, but were surprised by a contingent of regular Norwegian forces already in the area, who ensured a tactical victory for Norway in the ensuing Battle of Dombås.
### Resistance
When the Norwegian Campaign ended and the German occupation of Norway was a reality, Tronstad became involved in resistance work, largely based around the Norwegian Institute of Technology. He was associated with the radio agent group Skylark B, which had regular contact with London from January 1941. Among other things, he sent reports on the interest shown by German authorities in the heavy water plant at Vemork. One source of this information was Tronstad's old companion, Jomar Brun, still in charge of the plant, who also helped people to flee the country by sea, via the Møre coast. After exposure of the group in September 1941, Tronstad himself had to flee the country. Another resistance member, who had already been jailed, managed to warn Tronstad, who travelled from Trondheim to Oslo by train. The following day, the Gestapo visited his house to arrest him. After a few days in hiding, Tronstad was driven by car to Østfold, and then travelled on foot to Töcksfors via Ørje. From there he continued by plane to England, rejecting an offer of a civilian job in Sweden.
He reached England in October 1941. He already had a broad network of contacts there, stemming both from his academic career as well as from his radio operations. He also maintained several contacts abroad, including scientists whom he knew from the Norwegian Institute of Technology: Harald Wergeland and Njål Hole. The opportunity to work directly for the British was presented to Tronstad, but instead he chose to aim his efforts towards disrupting the German occupation of Norway and improving the Norwegian resistance work. He even wanted to enrol in active duty, but was stopped by the Norwegian military command, who considered him "too valuable" for the war theatre. Tronstad's foremost skill was that of organization, which he owed to his experience in science. Thus, Tronstad became a part of the staff of the Ministry of Defence, and later of the Norwegian High Command. From 1943, he headed a section in department 4 (FO IV). This had been established in December 1942 under the leadership of Colonel Bjarne Øen, and Tronstad was brought in as a reinforcement as the work burden increased. Also, he had recently been promoted from Captain to Major. Tronstad's section was responsible for the special operation towards industry and shipping; training of the Norwegian Independent Company 1 (Kompani Linge); technical advice on sabotage, and towards the end of the war also the protection of Norwegian industry. He established the Norwegian High Command Technical Committee, which included other Norwegian scientists-in-exile such as Svein Rosseland, Helmer Dahl and Gunnar Randers. The Technical Committee is considered as the precursor to the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment, established in 1946.
### Heavy water sabotage
Already in 1941, Tronstad was aware that heavy water production at Vemork had greatly increased. In the beginning, Tronstad had not been aware of the connection between heavy water and atomic weaponry, but it eventually became clear that Germany could be running a nuclear energy project, especially after Harold Urey visited the United Kingdom in November 1941. Tronstad later learned from Jomar Brun that further expansion of heavy water production was being discussed. Brun had been a part of a small conference on the issue, hosted by Kurt Diebner in Berlin, in January 1942. Brun would later communicate with England through Einar Skinnarland, a covert Special Operations Executive agent hailing from Rjukan. In October 1942, Brun was summoned to England, reportedly at the request of Winston Churchill. Instead, a team of agents were parachuted into the area to gather more intelligence, under the codename Operation Grouse.
The idea of subjecting the heavy water facility at Vemork to heavy air bombing surfaced, but Tronstad was a staunch opponent of such an idea, which he saw as too hazardous. He warned of the presence of civil housing, and argued that bombing was not even guaranteed to succeed, given that the heavy water facility was located in the armoured basement of the electrolyzing plant. The first attempt to take out the facility, in November 1942, had consisted of British personnel using gliders to land near Vemork. The operation, codenamed Freshman, was a catastrophe, as all units except for one towing aircraft perished, either due to crash landings or in German captivity.
Tronstad then organized the next attempt. He had wanted to take an active part in the sabotage mission, but again he was stopped by his commanders, who regarded him as inexpendable. Tronstad and Brun supplied the would-be saboteurs with extensive knowledge of the facility, and organized the training. The operation, codenamed Gunnerside and led by Joachim Rønneberg, was carried out successfully between 27 and 28 February 1943. However, after three months, Germany managed to resume production. Against the will of Tronstad, in July 1943, an American-led raid by 161 aircraft bombed Vemork as well as the shipment yard at Herøya. The two bombings claimed the lives of 76 people, many of whom were civilian. The heavy water plant was not directly affected by the bombing, nevertheless production was halted due to a damaged generator. The Germans then tried to disassemble the production facility, followed by a retreat from Vemork with the remaining stock of heavy water. This resulted in the sinking of SF Hydro by Norwegian saboteurs, halting the heavy water transport, but again claiming many civilian lives. Tronstad had given his consent to the latter operation, reportedly with a "heavy heart".
Concealed listening posts at Rjukan and Notodden also revealed high-level German discussions of long-range weaponry. The place name Peenemünde was frequently mentioned. As this intelligence reaching Tronstad's ear via his contacts in Norway, he forwarded it to the British. As a result, the Royal Air Force bombed the Army Research Center of Peenemünde in August 1943. Further raids were made by the US Army Air Force in July and August 1944. The bombing halted the weapons program there, which centered around development of the V-1 flying bomb and the V-2 rocket. Fellow scientists Rideal and Evans later wrote that Tronstad "contributed directly to the speedy victory of the Allied Nations, besides saving the region which came to be known as 'Southern England' from an even longer and more severe ordeal than it actually endured".
### Operation Sunshine
In 1944, when the tide of war was turning against Germany, the German forces started to retreat from Northern Norway. However, they used scorched earth tactics as they retreated. Consequently, Tronstad started to plan how to organize a defence of industrial sites in Southern Norway. The first plan pertained to Upper Telemark, and was codenamed Operation Sunshine. Its basic principle was to build a defence force from the existing Milorg pockets in the district. Tronstad, who earlier had been stopped from travelling to Norway himself, did so this time. He felt that it was time to deal a decisive blow to a dwindling German war power, and called for the "full effort ... from all who would be called men".
Tronstad was parachuted into Hardangervidda on 4 October 1944, together with eight Norwegian Independent Company 1 members. The group included Gunnar Syverstad, Jens-Anton Poulsson and Claus Helberg. They lived in a small cabin built by Einar Skinnarland.
However, after a few months a situation arose that could compromise the operation. It was feared that Torgeir Lognvik, the bailiff installed by the Nazis in Rauland municipality, had become suspicious. Thus, the people behind Operation Sunshine created a plan to lure him to the mountains, and capture and interrogate him there. On 11 March 1945, resistance member Jon Landsverk managed to travel with Torgeir Lognvik towards the mountains on the pretext of showing him some stolen goods. The two were soon met by Gunnar Syverstad and Einar Skinnarland, who captured the bailiff. He was taken to a lodge in the hills of Syrebekkstølen, where he was to be interrogated by Landsverk, Syverstad and Tronstad. However, on the same day, Torgeir's brother Johans became suspicious and decided to follow the ski trails, which led him to Syrebekkstølen. Armed, he entered the lodge, firing several shots, taking the Resistance fighters by surprise. Gunnar Syverstad was killed in the initial attack. Torgeir, who was not bound, grabbed a rifle. In the struggle, Tronstad charged at Johans, but was killed. The two brothers then escaped. Jon Landsverk survived, and together with Einar Skinnarland he disposed of the two bodies in a lake. However, the next day the bodies were found and burned by German forces. After the war, Jon Landsverk testified against the Lognvik brothers as a part of the legal purge in Norway after World War II. While Landsverk claimed that the wounded Tronstad had been killed by a blow from the butt of a rifle held by Torgeir, the court found Johans guilty of both murders, and Torgeir of attempted murder. Johans was sentenced to a ten-year prison term, and Torgeir to a five-year term.
### Diaries
Tronstad's coded diaries from 1941 to 1945 are preserved, and the 13 original books are kept by the National Archival Services of Norway. They have been transcribed and made available to historians, and are regarded as an important source of information from the "outer front".
## Awards and legacy
Tronstad had a military funeral on 30 May 1945, being buried at Vestre gravlund in Oslo. He was awarded Norway's highest decoration for military gallantry, the War Cross with sword, as well as the Norwegian War Medal and the Defence Medal 1940–1945. In addition to his Norwegian decorations, Tronstad received the Order of the British Empire, Chevalier of the French Légion d'honneur and Croix de Guerre and the US Medal of Freedom with bronze palm as well as the British Distinguished Service Order.
A memorial stone was raised at Syrebekkstølen, commemorating the death of Tronstad and Gunnar Syverstad. Also, several streets in Norway have been named after him. A statue of Tronstad today stands at the square Leif Tronstads plass in Sandvika, the administrative centre of Bærum. It was commissioned in 1965 by the local Rotary club, and erected in 1973. Abstract, it was sculpted by Fritz Røed. |
72,394,405 | Wolfe-class ship of the line | 1,145,862,511 | Ship of the line class of the Royal Navy | [
"Great Lakes ships",
"Ship classes of the Royal Navy",
"Ships of the line of the Royal Navy",
"War of 1812 ships of the United Kingdom"
] | The Wolfe-class ship of the line was a 112-gun first-rate ship of the line class of two ships of the Royal Navy. The class was ordered during the arms race on the Great Lakes during the War of 1812 between Britain and America. Built at Kingston Royal Naval Dockyard, the ships were similar in design to their predecessor on Lake Ontario, the 102-gun HMS St Lawrence, but also included a quarterdeck or poopdeck. The two ships of the class, Wolfe and Canada, were laid down towards the end of 1814 but had not been completed when the war ended in the following year. Construction was suspended and the ship frames were left at the dockyard until 1831 and 1832 respectively when they were cancelled.
## Background and design
Throughout the War of 1812 America and Britain fought for control of the strategically important Great Lakes. As both sides looked to defeat the other an arms race took place in the construction of warships. This escalated quickly, increasing from 20-gun corvettes like HMS Montreal to 56-gun frigates like HMS Psyche. Early vessels on the Great Lakes had been built very shallowly to avoid the numerous shoals and bars, but this negatively affected their sailing characteristics. The new warships built by the Royal Navy prioritised speed and firepower instead and so were deeper than their forebears, although still shallower than conventional sea-going ships of their types.
The Royal Navy warships built on the Great Lakes during the war were necessarily adapted in their designs for service in the unique location, but embraced modern design features that the Royal Navy had developed for its sea-going fleet as well. They used the newly fashionable flat sheers and wall sides in their designs, and were flush decked with minimal stern gallerys.
The arms race continued, and culminated in the construction of three-decked first-rate ships of the line for service on Lake Ontario. The first of these was the 102-gun ship of the line HMS St Lawrence, designed by shipwright William Bell at Amherstburg Royal Naval Dockyard. St Lawrence, while designated as a normal ship of her type, was highly dissimilar to the extant British first rates. Being planned for service in a freshwater lake, the design of St Lawrence did not include the large amount of storage space other ships required for drinking supplies. This resulted in St Lawrence being smaller and more shallow in draught than other first rates, although she still incorporated the sharp and somewhat deep hull that Great Lakes warships had switched to for the increase in speed. The ship also had an unusually rounded bow, and was more similar in outline to a spar-decked frigate than a ship of the line.
Despite much controversy over the design, St Lawrence was completed in October 1814. As soon as she was ready for sea the ship tilted the balance of power on Lake Ontario towards the British to such a degree that the American squadron ended its operations on the lake and anchored at Sackets where it stayed for the rest of the war, only performing minor patrols with its smaller warships.
The arms race on the Great Lakes continued after the construction of St Lawrence, and the American shipyards began a first rate construction program of their own. Two 120-gun ships of the line, USS New Orleans and USS Chippewa, were begun, and the British in turn ordered two more ships of the size of St Lawrence to be built later in 1814. The new British ships were designed by Thomas Strickland, a shipwright who had been sent from England to assist in the first rate program. His design was in most characteristics similar to St Lawrence. Unlike the former ship which was flush decked, the two new first rates had a quarterdeck, or poopdeck, included in their design so that a flag officer could be accommodated on board. The two ships were named Wolfe and Canada, with the former being the name ship of the class.
## Construction and armament
Wolfe and Canada were both ordered in 1814 to be built at Kingston Royal Naval Dockyard, and laid down in the same year after the end of the sailing season. They were also known respectively as Ship No. 1 and Ship No. 2. Great Lakes ships were mostly built without the use of proper ships knees because of a lack of suitable timber, but alternative methods had been developed in other Royal Dockyards and taken up at Kingston. While the majority of warships were built with oak, the timber shortage meant that the kits of wood brought together for the construction of the Wolfe-class ships were both fir. The ships were constructed to the following dimensions: 191 feet 3 inches (58.3 m) along the gun deck, 157 feet 7+5⁄8 inches (48 m) at the keel, with a beam of 50 feet 8 inches (15.4 m) and a depth in the hold of 18 feet 4 inches (5.6 m). They were to measure 2,152 40⁄94 tons burthen. The crew complement is not recorded; St Lawrence had one of 700.
The Wolfe-class ships were laid down to hold 112 long guns. While the exact distribution of these guns throughout the ships and their decks is not recorded, thirty-six of them were to be 32-pounder long guns and seventy-six of them 24-pounder long guns. Both ships were built with 104 gun ports. Naval historian Don Bamford records that the ships were in fact planned to hold 120 guns, similar to New Orleans and Chippewa.
## Cancellation
When the War of 1812 ended in February 1815 the arms race on the Great Lakes abruptly stopped and the need for more ships was removed. The two Wolfe-class ships were not finished, but their wooden frames had been completed. The Royal Navy commander on Lake Ontario, Commodore Sir James Yeo, cancelled several ongoing shipbuilding projects in around late February, but ordered that work on Wolfe and Canada be continued. Construction was suspended rather than cancelled in March, and the shipbuilding facilities at the dockyard were reduced. Had the war continued into 1816 all five first rates constructed on the Great Lakes would have been completed, leading to what historian Donald R. Hickey describes as "five of the most powerful warships in the world...concentrated within thirty-five miles of each other...on an inland lake with no access to the sea".
In 1817 the Rush-Bagot Agreement was signed, severely limiting the number of warships the two sides could keep on the lakes, with only one each allowed on Lake Ontario. The various naval facilities on the lakes became at most supply depots. This left the Royal Navy's part-built warships in ship graveyards. The frames of Wolfe and Canada were left on the stocks at Kingston for another fifteen years and never completed. In the 1830s the dockyard began to be dispersed with. Wolfe was officially cancelled in 1831 and Canada followed her in 1832. The frame of Wolfe was then destroyed in a storm on 31 July, and Canada was broken up on the stocks.
## Notes and citations |
4,062,407 | Wormwood: A Drama of Paris | 1,142,704,563 | 1890 novel by Marie Corelli | [
"1890 British novels",
"Absinthe",
"British novels adapted into films",
"British novels adapted into plays",
"Novels by Marie Corelli",
"Novels set in Paris",
"Victorian novels"
] | Wormwood: A Drama of Paris is an 1890 novel by Marie Corelli. It tells the sensational story of a Frenchman, Gaston Beauvais, driven to murder and ruin by the potent alcoholic drink absinthe.
Like Corelli's previous four novels, Wormwood was a great commercial success. Corelli presented the story as a cautionary tale about the dangers of absinthe, and it has been implicated in bans of the spirit which later occurred in Europe and the United States. The book has also been interpreted as a condemnation of the aesthetic and decadent movements.
## Summary
Wormwood is set in Paris. The protagonist, Gaston Beauvais, is a writer engaged to be married to Pauline de Charmilles, but shortly before their marriage, she confesses that she has fallen in love with another man, Silvion Guidel, a priest in training. Beauvais turns to alcohol as a result and shows up to their wedding day drunk on absinthe, causing a scene. He turns to drugs and further debauchery with a friend, Gessonex. When he learns that Pauline has run away, he searches for her in the slums of Paris. He comes upon Guidel, and strangles him to death, throwing his body into the Seine river. He finds Pauline and confesses that he has killed Guidel, causing her to also throw herself into the river, from the Pont Neuf bridge. Beauvais slips into unconsciousness, and when he awakens the next day, he finds himself stalked by a hallucinatory leopard. The story ends with Beauvais in the morgue with Pauline's dead body.
## Style
Wormwood is written in the first person, from the perspective of Gaston Beauvais. The book's dialogue and Beauvais's narration are in English, though French words and phrases are occasionally substituted, as in "Héloise showed no inclination for marriage; she was dull and distraite in the company of men". Corelli's French was occasionally marred by errors of spelling or grammar, a feature seized on by some of her detractors. Dialogue between characters on familiar terms make use of archaisms such as thou, as when Beauvais's father says to him "Amuse thyself well, Gaston! Art thou going to see the pretty Pauline this evening?". Corelli had used a similar style in the dialogue of her earlier novel Vendetta!.
## Moral themes
Like many of Corelli's novels, Wormwood was intended to shine light on the moral deficits of modern society—in this case, the vices of Paris, particularly in association with the aesthetic and decadent movements. The book depicts the downfall of its protagonist, the decadent writer Gaston Beauvais, as a consequence of his lifestyle. Corelli takes pains in an introductory note to separate herself from Beauvais, writing that she had "nothing whatsoever to do with the wretched 'Gaston Beauvais' beyond the portraiture of him in his own lurid colours", and the novel's text includes moralistic rants against France and French literature. Despite this, some modern literary critics have seen the book's thrilling style as co-opting decadent tropes to appeal to readers. The book also quotes "Lendemain", a poem about absinthe by Charles Cros, a recently deceased decadent poet and absinthe addict, and includes a footnote in which Corelli, in her own voice, praises Cros.
The book specifically targets absinthe, with its title being a reference to the bitter herb used in the production of the spirit. Corelli included an 'Introductory note', observing that "the open atheism, heartlessness, flippancy, and flagrant immorality of the whole modern French school of thought is unquestioned." She ascribed this in part to "the reckless Absinthe-mania, which pervades all classes, rich and poor alike", and warned that this habit might come to infect Britain. An epigraph dedicated the book "à messieurs les absintheurs de Paris, ces fanfarons du vice qui sont la honte et le désespoir de leur patrie" ("to the absinthe-drinkers of Paris, those boasters of vice who are the shame and despair of their homeland").
The novel was said to have contributed to legislation in France and Switzerland relating to alcohol, and absinthe in particular (see ). It was also said to be indirectly responsible for a ban on absinthe in the United States—in response to this, Corelli said it was "a great thing to have accomplished, to have saved a noble nation from one of the most malignant curses of modern times".
## Publication
Corelli sent the manuscript for Wormwood to her long-time publisher George Bentley on 12 July 1890. She intended the novel to have a more realist style than her previous works, describing it to Bentley as "a study à la Balzac". Bentley requested that she excise some of the novel's more lurid scenes, such as one of two scenes set in the morgue; privately, he referred to Wormwood in his diary as "this repulsive book of hers". Corelli signed a contract with Bentley on 1 September, receiving £100 as an advance, £300 on publication, and 6 shillings per copy after sales passed 1,500. The book was published in November 1890 in three volumes.
The first edition was, at the direction of Corelli, bound in a pale green binding similar to the colour of absinthe, and featured a serpent on the cover, and red ribbon crisscrossed on the spine, such as was found on absinthe bottles.
It was published in France under the title Absinthe.
A modern edition with extensive footnotes was published in 2004 by Broadview Press.
## Reception
Wormwood was an immediate commercial success, with the first edition selling out in ten days. Though, according to George Bentley, some readers were so scandalised by the book that they were returning it to booksellers.
Middlebrow periodicals such as The Graphic, The Literary World, and Kensington Society praised the novel, finding it simultaneously entertaining and morally salubrious. It received somewhat positive reviews from the more highbrow literary journals The Academy and The Athenaeum, with both praising the story's realism.
Among publications which negatively reviewed the book were the Pall Mall Gazette and The Times. The Times described it as "a succession of tedious and exaggerated soliloquies, relieved by tolerably dramatic, but repulsive incidents", and criticized Corelli's writing as having a "feminine redundancy of adjectives". The Standard described the book as "repulsive". While noting that Corelli attempts to distance herself from being identified with Gaston Beauvais, the book's protagonist, the reviewer questioned the moral and artistic acceptability of an author, particularly a female author, writing from the perspective of a "vicious maniac" such as Beauvais. Corelli had anticipated such harsh criticisms, writing in private correspondence prior to Wormwood's publication, "I do not write in a ladylike or effeminate way, and for that they hate me".
Punch magazine mocked the book's style and content with a parody in an 1891 issue, as part of the magazine's "Mr. Punch's Prize Novels" series. The parody, titled "Germfood" and attributed to "Mary Morally", is an account of a Parisian man addicted to marrons glacés (a candied chestnut confection). The piece mocks Corelli's writing style, including her use of archaisms like thou and her solecistic French (for example, it quotes her narrator saying "Nous blaguons le chose."—since chose is feminine, this is grammatically incorrect, and should instead be "Nous blaguons la chose."). It furthermore sends up Wormwood's melodramatic and lurid plot, with Mary Morally warning "I'll give you fits, paralytic fits, epileptic fits, and fits of hysteria, all at the same time.", and the story ending with the revelation that the narrator has inexplicably died:
> The world is very evil. My father died choked by a marron. I, too, am dead—I who have written this rubbish—I am dead, and sometimes, as I walk, my loved one glides before me in aërial phantom shape, as on page 4, Vol. II. But I am dead—dead and buried—and over my grave an avenue of gigantic chestnuts reminds the passer-by of my fate: and on my tombstone it is written, "Here lies one who danced a cancan and ate marrons glacés all day. Be warned!" THE END.
## Adaptations
A theatrical adaptation, Wormwood, or the Absinthe Drinkers of Paris, by Charles W. Chase was staged across the United States around 1902–1903 as a temperance play. Chase's adaptation makes a number of modifications to the original story, including changing Silvion Guidel from a priest to a writer, adding the character of Mephisto, and a new scene set in hell. Moreover, unlike the novel, Chase gives his play a happy ending, recasting the story's most dramatic events as a dream sequence.
Wormwood was adapted into a silent film of the same name in 1915 produced by Fox Film. |
36,296,919 | Barbeyella minutissima | 1,170,032,010 | Genus of slime moulds | [
"Myxogastria"
] | Barbeyella minutissima is a slime mould species of the order Echinosteliales, and the only species of the genus Barbeyella. First described in 1914 from the Jura mountains, its habitat is restricted to montane spruce and spruce-fir forests of the Northern Hemisphere, where it has been recorded from Asia, Europe, and North America. It typically colonises slimy, algae-covered logs that have lost their bark and have been partially to completely covered by liverworts. The sporangia are roughly spherical, up to 0.2 mm in diameter, and supported by a thin stalk up to 0.7 mm tall. After the spores have developed, the walls of the sporangia split open into lobes. The species is one of the smallest members of the Myxogastria and is considered rare.
## Taxonomy and classification
The species was first described in 1914 by Charles Meylan on the basis of a collection made at an altitude of 1,400 metres (4,600 ft) from the Swiss Jura in September the year before. Meylan thought the species warranted a new genus based on the unique mode of dehiscence and the makeup of the capillitium. The genus was named for the Swiss botanist William Barbey (1842–1914). It and the genus Clastoderma together make up the family Clastodermataceae. Studies of the ultrastructure of the sporocarps suggests that Barbeyella occupies a systematic position intermediate between Echinosteliales and the Stemonitales.
## Characteristics
The protoplasmodium, a microscopic, undifferentiated granular mass with a slime sheath, is transparent and colourless. A single sporangiophore (the fruiting structure) is produced from the semispherical protoplasmodium, which is approximately one and a half times the diameter of mature sporangia. It acquires dark spots as it matures and the centre of the protoplasm later becomes dark. Then, the transparent and milk-white protoplasmodium climbs along the stem to the top, where first the capillitium and peridium and finally the spores are produced. At room temperature, this process lasts roughly one day.
The long-stemmed, blackish-brown or blackish-purple, barely translucent sporangia of Barbeyella are spherical, 0.15 to 0.2 mm in diameter and together with the stem measure 0.3 to 0.7 mm long. They are usually scattered on the substrate, but also often grouped in loose, large colonies. The hypothallus (the tissue upon which the sporangiophore rests) has a diameter of at least 0.7 mm. Although not visible on mosses, it has a reddish-brown color when growing on wood. The brownish-black stem is up to 0.1 mm thick, thinning to 5 μm towards the top and is filled with protoplasmatic scrap material. The columella – arising from the stem tip – matures at the upper end at roughly half the height of the sporangiophore into 7 to 13 simple or occasionally bifurcated, 1 to 4 μm large, dark-brown capillitium strands. Usually individual, occasionally in pairs, these are firmly fused with the lobed segments of the peridium, which are round in cross-section. When the spores mature, the sporangium splits and empties into the peridium towards the base. This prevents the lobes of the peridium from detaching and provides spore dispersal over a longer period, similar to a dehiscing capsule. The sporangia are filled towards the top with plasmatic granules, which diminish increasingly towards the base. Depending on the size of the plasmatic granules, the sporangia appear papillate or smooth.
The mass of spores is blackish brown, or brown if viewed under polarised light. The surface texture ranges from almost smooth to warty, and the spores measure 7–9 μm in diameter. Material collected from Oregon, however, varies from European material in several ways: the fruit body is brown; the branching of the capillitium from the columella differs (having primary and secondary branches instead of radiating branches from an expanded tip); the spore mass is tan, and individual spores measure 10–12 μm.
## Habitat and distribution
Barbeyella minutissima is considered rare. Its habitat corresponds to the mountainous spruce-fir forests of the Northern Hemisphere. It is largely restricted to altitudes between 500 and 2,500 metres (1,600 and 8,200 ft), occasionally appearing as low as sea level and as high as 3,500 metres (11,500 ft). It has been found in Europe (Finland, Germany, Switzerland, Poland, Romania, Latvia, and Russia), in west and east North America (Washington, Oregon, California, and Mexico; North and South Carolina and Virginia), in the Indian Himalayas as well as in Japan. It is relatively common in fir forests on high-altitude Mexican volcanoes, suggesting that air-borne spore dispersal is effective.
## Ecology
The species grows only on slightly to heavily rotten and barkless deadwood in coniferous forests in cool, moist areas. The wood is about 40 to 100% overgrown with Marchantiophyta, especially of the genera Nowellia or Cephalozia. B. minutissima has been found growing on the liverwort Lepidozia reptans, although Nowellia curvifolia is the main indicator for the slime mould. In addition to liverworts, Barbeyella is found socialised with monocellular algae. It is assumed that the protoplasmodium phagocytises either the algae or the bacteria on their surface. Other Myxogastria species are often found together with Barbeyella, especially Lepidoderma tigrinum, Lamproderma columbinum and Colloderma oculatum. Aphanocladium album is a myxomyceticolous fungus (i.e., living on or within the fruit bodies of myxomycetes) that has been reported growing on specimens of B. minutissima collected from North Carolina. |
37,125,755 | 12 Years a Slave (film) | 1,173,491,686 | 2013 film directed by Steve McQueen | [
"2010s American films",
"2010s British films",
"2010s English-language films",
"2010s historical films",
"2013 biographical drama films",
"2013 drama films",
"2013 films",
"2013 independent films",
"African-American biographical dramas",
"African-American films",
"African-American genealogy",
"American biographical drama films",
"American historical films",
"American independent films",
"BAFTA winners (films)",
"Best Drama Picture Golden Globe winners",
"Best Film BAFTA Award winners",
"Best Picture Academy Award winners",
"Black British films",
"British biographical drama films",
"British historical films",
"British independent films",
"Drama films based on actual events",
"English-language independent films",
"Entertainment One films",
"Film4 Productions films",
"Films about American slavery",
"Films about kidnapping in the United States",
"Films about racism in the United States",
"Films about rape in the United States",
"Films about violins and violinists",
"Films based on memoirs",
"Films directed by Steve McQueen",
"Films featuring a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award-winning performance",
"Films produced by Arnon Milchan",
"Films produced by Brad Pitt",
"Films scored by Hans Zimmer",
"Films set in 1841",
"Films set in 1853",
"Films set in Louisiana",
"Films set in New Orleans",
"Films set in the 1840s",
"Films set in the 1850s",
"Films set on farms",
"Films shot in New Orleans",
"Films whose writer won the Best Adapted Screenplay Academy Award",
"Films with screenplays by John Ridley",
"Fox Searchlight Pictures films",
"Icon Productions films",
"Independent Spirit Award for Best Film winners",
"Lionsgate films",
"Plan B Entertainment films",
"Regency Enterprises films",
"Summit Entertainment films",
"Toronto International Film Festival People's Choice Award winners"
] | 12 Years a Slave is a 2013 biographical drama film directed by Steve McQueen from a screenplay by John Ridley, based on the 1853 slave memoir Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup, an African American man who was kidnapped in Washington, D.C. by two conmen in 1841 and sold into slavery. He was put to work on plantations in the state of Louisiana for 12 years before being released. The first scholarly edition of David Wilson's version of Northup's story was co-edited in 1968 by Sue Eakin and Joseph Logsdon.
Chiwetel Ejiofor stars as Solomon Northup. Supporting roles are portrayed by Michael Fassbender, Benedict Cumberbatch, Paul Dano, Garret Dillahunt, Paul Giamatti, Scoot McNairy, Lupita Nyong'o, Adepero Oduye, Sarah Paulson, Brad Pitt, Michael Kenneth Williams, and Alfre Woodard. Principal photography took place in New Orleans, Louisiana, from June 27 to August 13, 2012. The locations used were four historic antebellum plantations: Felicity, Bocage, Destrehan, and Magnolia. Of the four, Magnolia is nearest to the actual plantation where Northup was held.
12 Years a Slave received widespread critical acclaim and was named the best film of 2013 by several media outlets and critics, and it earned over \$187 million on a production budget of \$22 million. The film received nine Academy Award nominations, winning for Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay for Ridley, and Best Supporting Actress for Nyong'o. The Best Picture win made McQueen the first black British producer to ever receive the award and the first black British director of a Best Picture winner. The film was awarded the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Drama, and the British Academy of Film and Television Arts recognized it with the BAFTA Awards for Best Film and Best Actor for Ejiofor. Since its release, the film has been cited as among the best of the 2010s and of all time, with it being named the 44th greatest film since 2000 in a BBC poll of 177 critics in 2016.
## Plot
Solomon Northup is a free African-American man in 1841, working as a violinist and living with his wife and two children in Saratoga Springs, New York. Two white men, Brown and Hamilton, offer him short-term employment as a musician in Washington, D.C.; instead, they drug Northup and deliver him to James H. Birch, who owns a slave pen. Northup is savagely beaten when he proclaims his freedom.
He is shipped to New Orleans with other captives, who tell him he must adapt if he wants to survive in the South. Slave trader Theophilus Freeman gives Northup the identity of "Platt", a runaway slave from Georgia, and sells him to plantation owner William Ford. Ford takes a liking to Northup and gives him a violin. Tensions between Northup and plantation carpenter John Tibeats break when Northup defends himself from Tibeats and beats him with his own whip. Tibeats and his men prepare to lynch Northup but are stopped by the overseer. Northup is left on tiptoes with the noose around his neck for hours before Ford arrives and cuts him down. Northup attempts to explain his situation, but Ford sells him to plantation owner Edwin Epps.
Epps, unlike Ford, is ruthless and sadistic to his slaves. Northup meets Patsey, a favored slave and Epps' top cotton picker. Epps regularly rapes Patsey, and his jealous wife abuses her. Cotton worms destroy Epps' crops, so he leases his slaves to neighbor Judge Turner's plantation for the season. Turner favors Northup and allows him to play fiddle at a celebration and keep his earnings. Northup returns to Epps and pays white field hand and former overseer Armsby to mail a letter to his friends in New York. Armsby takes Northup's money but betrays him. Epps questions Northup at knifepoint, but Northup convinces him Armsby is lying. Northup burns the letter. Patsey is caught by Epps going to a neighboring plantation to acquire soap, as Mrs. Epps will not let her have any. Epps orders Northup to whip Patsey, which he does, but Epps demands he strike her harder, eventually taking the whip and beating Patsey nearly to death. Enraged, Northup destroys his violin.
Northup begins constructing a gazebo with Canadian laborer Samuel Bass. Bass, citing his Christian faith, strongly opposes slavery and castigates Epps, earning his enmity. Northup reveals his kidnapping to Bass and asks for help sending his letter. Bass hesitates because of the risk but agrees. The local sheriff arrives, and Northup recognizes his companion as Mr. Parker, a shopkeeper he knew in New York. As they embrace, Epps furiously protests and tries to prevent Northup from leaving but is rebuffed. Northup bids farewell to Patsey and rides off to his freedom.
Northup returns home to reunite with his wife and children. His daughter, who is now married, presents his grandson and namesake, Solomon Northup Staunton. He apologizes for his long absence while his family comforts him.
The epilogue titles recount Northup's unsuccessful lawsuits against Brown, Hamilton, and Birch; the 1853 publication of Northup's slave narrative memoir, Twelve Years a Slave; his role in the abolitionist movement; and the absence of information regarding his death and burial.
## Cast
- Chiwetel Ejiofor as Solomon Northup / Platt
- Michael Fassbender as Edwin Epps
- Benedict Cumberbatch as William Ford
- Paul Dano as John Tibeats
- Garret Dillahunt as Armsby
- Paul Giamatti as Theophilus Freeman
- Scoot McNairy as Merrill Brown
- Lupita Nyong'o as Patsey
- Adepero Oduye as Eliza
- Sarah Paulson as Mary Epps
- Brad Pitt as Samuel Bass
- Michael Kenneth Williams as Robert
- Alfre Woodard as Mistress Harriet Shaw
- Chris Chalk as Clemens Ray
- Taran Killam as Abram Hamilton
- Bill Camp as Ebenezer Radburn
- J. D. Evermore as Chapin
- Christopher Berry as James H. Birch
- Rob Steinberg as Mr. Parker
- Bryan Batt as Judge Turner
- Tom Proctor as Biddee
- Jay Huguley as Sheriff
- Storm Reid as Emily
- Quvenzhané Wallis as Margaret Northup
- Dwight Henry as Uncle Abram
## Historical accuracy
African-American history and culture scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. was a consultant on the film. Researcher David Fiske, a co-author of Solomon Northup: The Complete Story of the Author of Twelve Years a Slave, provided some material used to market the film.
Emily West, an associate professor of history at the University of Reading who specializes in the history of slavery in the U.S., said she had "never seen a film represent slavery so accurately". Reviewing the film for History Extra, the website of BBC History Magazine, she wrote: "The film starkly and powerfully unveiled the sights and sounds of enslavement – from slaves picking cotton as they sang in the fields, to the crack of the lash down people's backs. We also heard a lot about the ideology behind enslavement. Masters such as William Ford and Edwin Epps, although very different characters, both used an interpretation of Christianity to justify their ownership of slaves. They believed the Bible sanctioned slavery, and that it was their 'Christian duty' to preach the scriptures to their slaves."
Scott Feinberg wrote in The Hollywood Reporter about a September 22 article in The New York Times that "dredged up and highlighted a 1985 essay by another scholar, James Olney, that questioned the 'literal truth' of specific incidents in Northup's account and suggested that David Wilson, the white amanuensis to whom Northup had dictated his story, had taken the liberty of sprucing it up to make it even more effective at rallying public opinion against slavery." Olney had observed that "slave autobiographies, when read one next to another, display an "overwhelming sameness." That is, though the autobiography by definition suggests a unique and personal story, that slave narratives present a genre of autobiographies that tell essentially the same story. When read in conjunction, as in this anthology, there is a distinct repetitiveness. While this repetitiveness disallows the creativity and shaping of one's personal story, as Olney argues, it was equally important for slave narratives to follow a form that corroborated with the stories of others to create a collective picture of slavery as it then existed. In fact, the "same" form presented in all of these unique and individual stories created a powerful and resounding message of the consistent evils of slavery and the necessity of its demise.
A journal article published by The Johns Hopkins University Press and written by Sam Worley states that "Northup's narrative, though well known, has often been treated as a narrative of the second rank, albeit one with an unusually exciting and involving story as well as, thanks to the research of its modern editors, Sue Eakin and Joseph Logsdon, one with considerable historical value."
Noah Berlatsky wrote in The Atlantic about a scene in McQueen's adaptation. Shortly after Northup's kidnapping, he is sent on a slave ship. One of the sailors attempts to rape a female slave, but is stopped by a male slave. "The sailor unhesitatingly stabs and kills [the male slave]," he wrote, stating that "this seems unlikely on its face – slaves are valuable, and the sailor is not the owner. And, sure enough, the scene is not in the book." Berlatsky also states, "the sequence is an effort to present nuance and psychological depth – to make the film's depiction of slavery seem more real. But it creates that psychological truth by interpolating an incident that isn't factually true."
The visual blog Information is Beautiful deduced that, while taking creative license into account, the film was 88.1% accurate when compared to real-life events, summarizing: "While there are a touch of dramatic license here and there, the most gut-wrenching scenes really happened".
Forrest Wickman of Slate wrote of Northup's book giving a more favorable account of the author's onetime master, William Ford, than the McQueen film. In Northup's own words, "There never was a more kind, noble, candid, Christian man than William Ford," adding that Ford's circumstances "blinded [Ford] to the inherent wrong at the bottom of the system of Slavery." The movie, however, according to Wickman, "frequently undermines Ford." McQueen undercuts Christianity itself as well, in an effort to update the ethical lessons from Northup's story for the 21st century, by holding the institutions of Christianity up to the light for their ability to justify slavery at the time. Northup was a Christian of his time, writing of his former master being "blinded" by "circumstances" that in retrospect meant a racist acceptance of slavery despite being a Christian, a position untenable to Christians now and to Christian abolitionists of the 19th century but not contradictory to Northup himself. Valerie Elverton Dixon in The Washington Post characterized the Christianity depicted in the movie as "broken".
## Production
### Development
After meeting screenwriter John Ridley at a Creative Artists Agency screening of Hunger in 2008, director Steve McQueen got in touch with Ridley about his interest in making a film about "the slave era in America" with "a character that was not obvious in terms of their trade in slavery." Developing the idea back and forth, the two did not strike a chord until McQueen's partner, Bianca Stigter, found Solomon Northup's 1853 memoir Twelve Years a Slave. McQueen later told an interviewer:
> I read this book, and I was totally stunned. At the same time, I was pretty upset with myself that I didn't know this book. I live in Amsterdam where Anne Frank is a national hero, and for me, this book read like Anne Frank's diary but written 97 years before – a firsthand account of slavery. I basically made it my passion to make this book into a film.
After a lengthy development process, Brad Pitt's production company Plan B Entertainment backed the project, which eventually helped get financing from various other film studios. The film was officially announced in August 2011 with McQueen to direct and Chiwetel Ejiofor to star as Solomon Northup, a free African-American who was kidnapped and sold into slavery in the Deep South. McQueen compared Ejiofor's conduct "of class and dignity" to that of Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte. In October 2011, Michael Fassbender (who starred in McQueen's previous films Hunger and Shame) joined the cast. In early 2012, the rest of the roles were cast, and filming was scheduled to begin at the end of June 2012.
To capture the language and dialects of the era and regions in which the film takes place, dialect coach Michael Buster assisted the cast in altering their speech. The language has a literary quality related to the style of writing of the day and the strong influence of the King James Bible. Buster explained:
> We don't know what slaves sounded like in the 1840s, so I just used rural samples from Mississippi and Louisiana [for actors Ejiofor and Fassbender]. Then for Benedict [Cumberbatch], I found some real upper-class New Orleanians from the '30s. And then I also worked with Lupita Nyong'o, who is Kenyan but she did her training at Yale. So she really shifted her speech so she could do American speech.
After both won Oscars at the 86th Academy Awards, it was reported that McQueen and Ridley had been in an ongoing feud over screenplay credit. McQueen reportedly had asked Ridley for shared credit, which he declined. McQueen appealed to Fox Searchlight, which sided with Ridley. Neither thanked the other during their respective acceptance speeches at the event. Since the event, Ridley has noted his regret for not mentioning McQueen and denied the feud. He spoke favorably of working with McQueen, and explained that his sole screenplay credit was due to the rules of the Writers Guild of America. McQueen has not commented on the alleged feud.
### Filming
With a production budget of \$22 million, principal photography began in New Orleans, Louisiana, on June 27, 2012. After seven weeks, filming concluded on August 13, 2012. As a way to keep down production costs, a bulk of the filming took place around the greater New Orleans area – mostly south of the Red River country in the north of the state, where the historic Northup was enslaved. Among locations used were four historic antebellum plantations: Felicity, Bocage, Destrehan, and Magnolia. Magnolia, a plantation in Schriever, Louisiana, is just a few miles from one of the historic sites where Northup was held. "To know that we were right there in the place where these things occurred was so powerful and emotional," said actor Chiwetel Ejiofor. "That feeling of dancing with ghosts – it's palpable." Filming also took place at the Columns Hotel and Madame John's Legacy in the French Quarter of New Orleans for the scenes set in Washington D.C.
Cinematographer Sean Bobbitt, the film's primary camera operator, shot 12 Years a Slave on 35 mm film with a 2.35:1 widescreen aspect ratio using both an Arricam LT and ST. "Particularly for a period piece, film gives the audience a definite sense of period and quality," said Bobbitt. "And because of the story's epic nature, widescreen clearly made the most sense. Widescreen means a big film, an epic tale – in this case an epic tale of human endurance."
The filmmakers avoided the desaturated visual style that is typical of a more gritty documentary aesthetic. Deliberately drawing visual comparisons in the filming to the works of Spanish painter Francisco Goya, McQueen explained:
> When you think about Goya, who painted the most horrendous pictures of violence and torture and so forth, and they're amazing, exquisite paintings, one of the reasons they're such wonderful paintings is because what he's saying is, 'Look – look at this.' So if you paint it badly or put it in the sort of wrong perspective, you draw more attention to what's wrong with the image rather than looking at the image.
### Design
To accurately depict the time period of the film, the filmmakers conducted extensive research that included studying artwork from the era. With eight weeks to create the wardrobe, costume designer Patricia Norris collaborated with Western Costume to compile costumes that would illustrate the passage of time while also being historically accurate. Using an earth-toned color palette, Norris created nearly 1,000 costumes for the film. "She [Norris] took earth samples from all three of the plantations to match the clothes," McQueen said, "and she had the conversation with Sean [Bobbitt] to deal with the character temperature on each plantation, there was a lot of that minute detail." The filmmakers also used some pieces of clothing discovered on set that were worn by slaves.
### Music
The musical score to 12 Years a Slave was composed by Hans Zimmer, with original on-screen violin music written and arranged by Nicholas Britell and performed by Tim Fain. The film also features a few pieces of western classical and American folk music such as Franz Schubert's "Trio in B-flat, D471", Daniel Dow's "Money Musk", and John and Alan Lomax's arrangement of "Run, Nigger, Run". A soundtrack album, Music from and Inspired by 12 Years a Slave, was released digitally on November 5 and received a physical format release on November 11, 2013, by Columbia Records. In addition to Zimmer's score, the album features music inspired by the film by artists such as John Legend, Laura Mvula, Alicia Keys, Chris Cornell, and Alabama Shakes. Legend's cover of "Roll, Jordan, Roll" debuted online three weeks prior to the soundtrack's release.
## Release
### Initial screenings
On November 15, 2011, Summit Entertainment announced that it had closed deals for the distribution of 12 Years a Slave in most international markets. In April 2012, a few weeks before principal photography, New Regency Productions agreed to co-finance the film. Because of a distribution pact between 20th Century Fox and New Regency, Fox Searchlight Pictures acquired the film's American and Canadian distribution rights. However, instead of paying for the distribution rights, Fox Searchlight made a deal in which it would share box-office proceeds with the financiers of the independently financed film. 12 Years a Slave premiered at the Telluride Film Festival on August 30, 2013; it was later screened at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival on September 6 where it was given the top People's Choice Award, the New York Film Festival on October 8, the New Orleans Film Festival on October 10, and the Philadelphia Film Festival on October 19. The film was commercially released on October 18, in the United States for a limited release of 19 theaters, with a wide release in subsequent weeks. The film was initially scheduled to be released in late December, but "some exuberant test screenings" led to the decision to move up the release date. The film was distributed by Entertainment One in the United Kingdom.
### Marketing
Due to both the film's explicit nature and award contender status, 12 Years a Slave's financial success was being watched closely. Many analysts compared the film's content to other drama films of a similar vein such as Schindler's List (1993) and The Passion of the Christ (2004), which became box office successes despite their respective subject matters. "It may be a tough subject matter, but when handled well ... films that are tough to sit through can still be commercially successful," said Phil Contrino of Boxoffice Magazine. Despite its content, the film's critical success has assisted its domestic distribution by Fox Searchlight that began with a limited release aimed primarily towards art house and African-American patrons. The film's release was gradually widened in subsequent weeks, similarly to how the studio had successfully done in previous years with films such as Black Swan and The Descendants. International release dates for 12 Years a Slave were largely delayed to early 2014 in order to take advantage of the attention created by awards seasons.
During its marketing campaign, 12 Years a Slave received unpaid endorsements by celebrities such as Kanye West and P. Diddy. In a video posted by Revolt, Combs urged viewers to see 12 Years a Slave by stating: "This movie is very painful but very honest, and is a part of the healing process. I beg all of you to take your kids, everybody to see it. ... You have to see this so you can understand, so you can just start to understand."
### Home media
Following its cinematic release in theaters, the Region 1 Code widescreen edition of the film was released on DVD in the United States on March 4, 2014. Special features for the DVD include; a Closed Caption option, The Team – Meet the Creative Minds Assembled by Director Steve McQueen and Bring Solomon Northup's Journey to Life bonus selection, and The Score – Follow Film Composer Hans Zimmer Creating His Dramatic Score feature. In supplemental fashion, a widescreen hi-definition Blu-ray Disc version of the film was also released on the same day. Special features include; a historical portrait from Director Steve McQueen's documentary feature, cast and crew interviews, The Team special feature, and The Score selection. An additional viewing option for the film in the media format of Video on demand has been made available as well.
## Reception
### Box office
12 Years a Slave earned \$187.7 million, including \$56.7 million in the United States. During its opening limited release in the United States, 12 Years a Slave debuted with a weekend total of \$923,715 on 19 screens for a \$48,617 per-screen average. The following weekend, the film entered the top ten after expanding to 123 theatres and grossing an additional \$2.1 million. It continued to improve into its third weekend, grossing \$4.6 million at 410 locations. The film release was expanded to over 1,100 locations on November 8, 2013. In 2014, 12 Years a Slave was the 10th most-illegally downloaded movie, with 23.653 million such downloads, according to Variety.
### Critical response
Film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 95% of critics gave the film a positive rating, based on 379 reviews, with an average score of 8.90/10. The site's consensus states, "It's far from comfortable viewing, but 12 Years a Slave's unflinchingly brutal look at American slavery is also brilliant – and quite possibly essential – cinema." Metacritic, another review aggregator, assigned the film a weighted average score of 96 out of 100 based on 57 reviews from mainstream critics, indicating "universal acclaim". It is currently one of the site's highest-rated films, as well as the best-reviewed film of 2013. CinemaScore reported that audiences gave the film an "A" grade.
Richard Corliss of TIME wrote: "McQueen's film is closer in its storytelling particulars to such 1970s exploitation-exposés of slavery as Mandingo and Goodbye, Uncle Tom. Except that McQueen is not a schlockmeister sensationalist but a remorseless artist". Corliss draws parallels with Nazi Germany, saying, "McQueen shows that racism, aside from its barbarous inhumanity, is insanely inefficient. It can be argued that Nazi Germany lost the war both because it diverted so much manpower to the killing of Jews and because it did not exploit the brilliance of Jewish scientists in building smarter weapons. So the slave owners dilute the energy of their slaves by whipping them for sadistic sport and, as Epps does, waking them at night to dance for his wife's cruel pleasure." Gregory Ellwood of HitFix gave the film an "A−" rating, stating, "12 Years is a powerful drama driven by McQueen's bold direction and the finest performance of Chiwetel Ejiofor's career." He continued by praising the performances of Fassbender and Nyong'o, citing Nyong'o as "the film's breakthrough performance [that] may find Nyong'o making her way to the Dolby Theater next March". He also admired the film's "gorgeous" cinematography and the musical score, as "one of Hans Zimmer's more moving scores in some time". Paul MacInnes of The Guardian scored the film five out of five stars, writing, "Stark, visceral and unrelenting, 12 Years a Slave is not just a great film but a necessary one." The Guardian's Andrew Pulver said, in 2017, that 12 Years a Slave is "one of the most important films about the African-American experience ever".
Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly praised it as "a new movie landmark of cruelty and transcendence" and as "a movie about a life that gets taken away, and that's why it lets us touch what life is". He also commented very positively about Ejiofor's performance, while further stating, "12 Years a Slave lets us stare at the primal sin of America with open eyes, and at moments it is hard to watch, yet it's a movie of such humanity and grace that at every moment, you feel you're seeing something essential. It is Chiwetel Ejiofor's extraordinary performance that holds the movie together, and that allows us to watch it without blinking. He plays Solomon with a powerful inner strength, yet he never soft-pedals the silent nightmare that is Solomon's daily existence." Peter Travers of Rolling Stone, gave the film a four-star rating and said: "you won't be able to tuck this powder keg in the corner of your mind and forget it. What we have here is a blistering, brilliant, straight-up classic." He later named the film the best movie of 2013.
Manohla Dargis wrote, in her review for The New York Times, "the genius of 12 Years a Slave is its insistence on banal evil, and on terror, that seeped into souls, bound bodies and reaped an enduring, terrible price". The Daily Telegraph's Tim Robey granted the film a maximum score of five stars, stating that "it's the nobility of this remarkable film that pierces the soul", while praising Ejiofor and Nyong'o's performances. Tina Hassannia of Slant Magazine said that "using his signature visual composition and deafening sound design, Steve McQueen portrays the harrowing realism of Northup's experience and the complicated relationships between master and slave, master and master, slave and slave, and so on". David Simon, the creator of the TV series The Wire, highly praised the movie, commenting that "it marks the first time in history that our entertainment industry, albeit with international creative input, has managed to stare directly at slavery and maintain that gaze".
The film was not without its criticisms. Stephanie Zacharek of The Village Voice was more critical of the film. While praising Ejiofor's work, she stated: "It's a picture that stays more than a few safe steps away from anything so dangerous as raw feeling. Even when it depicts inhuman cruelty, as it often does, it never compromises its aesthetic purity." Peter Malamud Smith of Slate criticized the story, saying, "12 Years a Slave is constructed as a story of a man trying to return to his family, offering every viewer a way into empathizing with its protagonist. Maybe we need a story framed on that individual scale in order to understand it. But it has a distorting effect all the same. We're more invested in one hero than in millions of victims; if we're forced to imagine ourselves enslaved, we want to imagine ourselves as Northup, a special person who miraculously escaped the system that attempted to crush him." Describing this as "the hero problem", Malamud Smith concluded his review explaining, "We can handle 12 Years a Slave. But don't expect 60 Years a Slave any time soon. And 200 Years, Millions of Slaves? Forget about it." Ignatiy Vishnevetsky of The A.V. Club opined that McQueen is "essentially tone-deaf when it comes to performance, and skirts by on casting". The film "lacks a necessary emotional continuity. I don't think it's something the movie is denying in the way it intentionally denies so many other conventions; it's still structured around an ending that's supposed to function as a release, but because it can't organize that sense of catharsis it so badly needs, it just feels as though McQueen is scurrying for an exit. Also: The cast is wildly uneven."
Some critics identified 12 Years a Slave as an example of the white savior narrative in film. Timothy Sneed said in U.S. News & World Report the year after the film was released, "Doubts still lingered about its ability to truly bring about a newfound racial consciousness among a national, mainstream audience ... The film also was a period piece that featured a happy ending ushered in by a 'white savior' in the form of Brad Pitt's character." At The Guardian, black Canadian author Orville Lloyd Douglas said he would not be seeing 12 Years a Slave, explaining: "I'm convinced these black race films are created for a white, liberal film audience to engender white guilt and make them feel bad about themselves. Regardless of your race, these films are unlikely to teach you anything you don't already know." A Black writer, Michael Arceneaux, wrote a rebuttal essay "We Don't Need To Get Over Slavery... Or Movies About Slavery". Arceneaux criticized Douglas for being ignorant and having an apathetic attitude towards black Americans and slavery.
### Accolades
12 Years a Slave has received numerous awards and nominations. It earned three Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Supporting Actress. It won the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Drama. The film also won the BAFTA Award for Best Film, while Ejiofor received the Best Actor award. In addition, the motion picture has been named as one of the best films of 2013 by various ongoing critics, appearing on 100 critics' top-ten lists in which 25 had the film in their number-one spot. This is both the most of any film released in its production year.
## See also
- List of black films of the 2010s
- List of films featuring slavery
- Solomon Northup's Odyssey, a 1984 television film adaptation of the same source material
- Black Seeds: The History of Africans in America (2021) |
Subsets and Splits